Kaiser,Douglas, and Kerner on Low-Income Housing Policy

Benjamin C. Marsh, a vigorous young social worker in the early years of the twentieth century, attacked the extreme congestion of poor people in the nation's largest cities. In his analysis of the causes of congestion, Marsh identified the basic dynamics of large-scale crowding and offered some of the most radical solutions of taxation, land-use, and planning proposed during his day. As an early leader against the overcrowding of land, the author of the first book devoted entirely to city planning, and the founder of the first National Conference on City Planning, Marsh's career points up the diversity of style and ideology that characterized the pioneers of the planning profession.     

DESIGNING AS A DISCURSIVE PRACTICE

The importance of Walter Benjamin s thinking to Daniel Libeskind's design process as he developed the Jewish Museum. Berlin, has been noted by a number of writers — not least Anthony Vidler and Naomi Stead — as well as the architect himself.¹ Among the opening displays was a room dedicated to the philosopher of the city, who it as not only a great chronicler of Berlin itself, but perhaps the outstanding thinker of the modem city as such. Benjamin and Libeskind are connected above all by the latter's creative use of the concept now most associated with the former: the passage, or, more accurately, passaging as the form of modern being. But the two men are also connected at a deeper theoretical level. I will show in this paper that it was a set of Benjamin's core concepts that enabled Libeskind to find a solution, not only to the problem for architecture set by Adorno, but also that set by Heidegger. The philosophical and therefore architectural originality of the Jewish Museum. Berlin — as Andrew Benjamin has also recognized — lies here.²     

Industrial architecture and negativity: the aesthetics of architecture in the works of Gordon Matta-Clark,Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher

The modernist idea of monumentality derived its inspiration from the imagery of late-nineteenth century industrial structures. In the 1960s, this monumentality and modernist 'total design' was criticised by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown who proposed the 'ugly and ordinary' architecture and 'vital mess' of commercial populism instead. On the background of these two approaches, I will read the art works of Gordon-Matta Clark, Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Bechers as giving voice to all that is forgotten, excluded or unacknowledged in architecture. The importance of these artists lies in their exploration of negativity in architecture. Their art works stage the contras, first, between the inevitable continuity of architecture as a process and its discontinuity when it is reduced to a set of objects, as well as the contrast, secondly, between the continuity of urban and architectural space and its discontinuity when our perceptions reduce it to its monumental and important parts. Negativity stands for the time 'before' and 'after' of what is commonly understood as an architecture, as well as for the 'invisible' materiality parts of urban space and buildings that are usually ignored. Today, it is in obsolete industrial architecture that negativity finds its purest expression: in the words of Walter Benjamin, the Modernists' imaginary monuments are recognised as ruins even before they have physically crumbled.     

Trauma Within the Walls: Notes Towards a Philosophy of the City

Renowned philosopher and critical theorist Andrew Benjamin provides a framework for thinking about trauma and the city. He returns to Sigmund Freud's definition of trauma as repressed memory and to Aeschylus' formulation of the unmasterable as portrayed in mythical Athens in the Oresteia trilogy. This view of unaccustomed or unpredictable forces, such as civic strife, as ever present and integral to democracy, enables the maintenance of the urban project avoiding repression. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowledge rich,knowledge poor: the distribution of opportunities for higher learning in metropolitan Perth

Opportunities for a university education are 250 times more available in the city's inner and western suburbs than they are in the east. Where the east (providing home to some 500,000 people and well over one third of Perth's population) provides just one university place for each 5,000 residents, the city's west enjoys the benefit of one place per 20. In the inner west provision is richer still: one place per four residents. Nor does this grossly skewed geography of higher learning opportunities relate meaningfully to demand or ability: almost one third of Perth's university students have eastern postcodes attached to their permanent home addresses. It is not difficult to see where the new information economy is likely to be taking root in Perth, or where globalisation's winners are most likely to work and live. Modern cities like Perth which gradually became more equal places over much of the last half century are unlikely to continue this trend as we move more fully into the post-industrial 21st century and become a more fully-fledged ‘knowledge nation’. And the evidence of unravelling equality is already clearly emerging: over the past 30 years, the community's sense of an acceptable level of unemployment has risen 3 or 4 fold, there are more chronically underemployed households and, nationally, almost a million children are living in households which have no wage earner. If it does not already, Perth will soon benefit from $1 billion in direct higher learning expenditures annually. This is an investment working for the almost exclusive benefit of communities in Perth's richer Western suburbs. On a straight per capita basis, a good third of this annual investment—and the further investment and spending such investment triggers—should be going into eastern regional centres. At the moment the east is exporting not just its brainpower but the money it spends on the further enhancement of that brainpower. It can ill afford to do either.     

Notes on Designing Surficial Elegance

Mastery of technique is as essential as design ability to the production of elegant works. Elegant features can only be realised through an understanding of the systemic logics of the digital environment and a full working knowledge of generative techniques. Benjamin H Bratton of The Culture Industry and Hernan Diaz Alonso of Xefirotarch describe Xefirotarch's wholly visceral, but exacting, approach to the design process. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

US public housing in the 1930s: The first projects in Atlanta,Georgia

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, European philanthropists, industrialists, and governments built homes and communities aimed at improving the health and welfare of low and middle income workers. By 1930, the United States remained the only developed country in the Western world without a national legislative and financial commitment to housing. This paper explores the attitudes and circumstances affecting the creation of American public housing in the 1930s and examines the federal government's first attempts at replacing slums with subsidized apartments in the Techwood and University Homes projects in Atlanta, Georgia.     

从“花园之母”到“美丽中国”

19世纪的西方植物猎人成就了中国“世界花园之 母”的美誉，中国特色花卉不仅美化了全世界的花园，而且 为世界花卉品种创新贡献了诸多关键的基因资源，为推动全 球花卉产业创新发展作出了重要贡献。从历史、现实和未来 实践3个逻辑维度分析了“花园之母”的前世今生，梳理了 1840年以后来华的33位著名植物猎人的在华采集工作，分 析了中国现代花卉产业的现状与发展形势，提出利用特色资 源、实现花卉科技自立自强和种业自主创新，是我国实现从 资源大国到品种大国、生产大国到产业强国、花园之母到美 丽中国的必然选择。     

BUILDING THAI MODERNITY: The Maha Dhammakaya Cetiya

In the lead up to the completion and consecration of the Dhammakaya Cetiya near Bangkok in May 2000, English language publications from this Thai Buddhist sect's international division promoted it as a gesture for world peace: “In 2000 the world is going to calm down.” The claim speaks to the overriding concern of the twenty first century and links the futuristic, hi-tech building with a Buddhist tradition of stupa building dating back to the third century BC stupas of the King Asoka. Great Kings built great stupas for the benefit and protection of the state, here, the people of a modem democracy were building a stupa for the benefit and protection of the world at large. This paper reads the building as a strategic statement in the discourses of modern Thai identity in an age of Western dominated globalisation and intra-Asian cultural flows. It aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion of the enduring Asian problem of how to express its modernity while still retaining cultural integrity, when being modern is popularly assumed to be a matter of measuring up with the West.     

沈阳中山公园空间利用的历史变迁 研究

沈阳中山公园(原名千代田公园)始建于1919年,是具有近百年历史的近代城市公园。将中山公园的空间利用划分为4个历史阶段:民国时期外国殖民者尝试并营造出东西方园林要素相结合的城市公园;新中国成立初期园内增添凸显中国特色的景观元素;改革开放时期全面建设空间与主题并重的中国特色城市公园;21世纪公园建设与利用呈现多样化。另外,通过山形水系、建筑设施、园路分布、活动区域4种空间构成要素分析中山公园空间利用的变迁特征。结果表明,公园空间利用最初集中在西北和中南部,以自然山水式格局为基调,增添西方园林元素,后逐步打通了东西向核心轴线,利用频率与规模在改革开放时期达到最高水平,但目前文化主题被削弱且文化景观遗产的保护与利用略显不足。     

American planning in republican China, 1911-1937

This paper argues that in China, between the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the onset of the fullfledged Chinese war of resistance (Kanzheng) against Japan in 1937, American planners and Chinese municipal experts trained in American universities initiated significant planning schemes in several Chinese cities. This influence marked a crucial change in Chinese city planning because from the mid-19th century to 1911 it had primarily been British, French or German planners who had exerted foreign influence on Chinese urban form, particularly in the treaty ports of eastern China. Three of the best examples that demonstrate this shift of emphasis to American-based ideals of municipal progress are the plans for Guangzhou (Canton) in the early 1920s, the new capital plan at Nanjing (Nanking) and the greater Shanghai plan in the late 1920s. Although some scholars have analysed the Shanghai and Nanjing plans, few have explored the ways city planning during the republican period reflects a pattern of North American influence in the reshaping of Chinese urban form. In identifying this pattern, this paper will argue that Guangzhou was a first testing ground where Chinese politicians, within a decade after the first American city planning conference of 1909, consciously tried to apply up-to-date American planning principles associated with the 'city functional', the 'city scientific' or the 'city efficient' to a Chinese city that they perceived as inefficient. There were two initial spheres of influence associated with this American connection: (1) an institutional one, in which Guangzhou planners experimented with a commission form of American municipal government which, since 1900, had become popular especially in the American west and midwest; and (2) an influence related to urban space and form, as planners widened several narrow streets of congested Guangzhou and demolished its city wall, thereby following the gospel of Americans such as Benjamin Marsh who, since 1907, had been proselytizing about the ill effects of urban congestion. Guangzhou's planning experiments in the 1920s were at the forefront of further American planning connections, manifested in four ways: (1) through the actions of largely American-trained Chinese municipal experts, who studied in the US using scholarships from the Boxer Indemnity Fund; (2) through American planning advisors, such as Henry K. Murphy, who were hired by Chinese politicians to provide direct planning assistance; (3) through the formation of professional organizations, such as the Association of Chinese and American Engineers; and (4) through publications in English and Chinese that disseminated information about city planning, urbanism and architecture to a professional audience. This paper will discuss these trends as they apply to Chinese cities of the Republican period, with particular attention to Nanjing and Guangzhou. A fuller recognition of these Chinese cities' planning histories, as well as those of others such as Xiamen (Amoy), Shenyang (Mukden) or Fuzhou (Foochow) that followed their lead, demonstrates that American planning efforts in the western Pacific were far more pervasive than has previously been assumed. Although the initiatives of Daniel Burnham and William Parsons in the Philippines after the American military victories there in 1898 are well-established, and although Walter Burley Griffin's Canberra plan of 1913 is even more fully documented, the work of American planners in China, or of Chinese planners deriving their concepts from American practices, is less well understood. This paper clarifies the historical perspective associated with these planning tendencies.     

从“本体”到“镜像”——建筑媒介的再现机制研究

在拉康的"镜像阶段"理论中,"镜像"构建并完善着"本体"关于"自我"的认知;而在建筑学中,建筑理论的构建和完善同样离不开媒介及媒介再现中的建筑"镜像"。本文的研究便是从拉康的理论出发,在建筑学的范畴内探讨建筑"本体"及其"镜像"之间的关系。本文基于跨学科的研究方法,在初步描述建筑媒介再现演变历程的同时,通过对本杰明、阿多诺、德波、鲍德里亚等人研究成果的梳理,探讨并总结了二十世纪建筑媒介的再现机制。     

Christopher Wren as a Baconian

This paper views Francis Bacon's theory of knowledge as an inseparable part of Christopher Wren's architectural production, and in doing so, attempts to explain, through selective examples, how Wren's buildings may be seen in a more appreciative light. Relevant ideas in Bacon's theory of knowledge are highlighted within their historical context as a powerful reaction to the existing intellectual traditions in seventeenth century England. In particular, the paper focuses on the Baconian notion of utility being the touchstone of credible knowledge in his search for power through knowing. His ideas became a powerhouse in the development of seventeenth century science in England, and generated a profound influence on, among others, John Wilkins and Wren's father, also Christopher Wren. Both men played an important role in the upbringing of Wren and in shaping his intellect. The works and writings of Wren and his close associate Robert Hooke are examined in this framework with an emphasis on architecture. This establishes an approach that is different from the conventional preoccupations with analyses of forms, and it provides an opportunity to give some of Wren's writings and buildings a fresh reading. Two salient themes in Wren's works emerge from this exercise. The first is an unprecedented architectural pragmatism that may be seen as fundamental to Baconian thinking; the second is a strong sense of formal freedom in architecture that seems to stem from the empiricist distrust of any notion of beauty. Although far from exhaustive, it is hoped that this examination will highlight the importance of focusing on ideas in trying to understand Wren's architecture. It is in this light, more than in the light of 'styles of forms', that Wren made his endlessly enlightening contributions to architecture; it is from this powerful Baconian empiricist background that Wren drew his confidence in creating a new architecture towards the end of the seventeenth century.     

Rudolf Schwarz and the concept of Stadtlandschaft

In 1949, an important albeit neglected book on the planning of cities was published in Germany, under the title Von der Bebauung der Erde (Of the Construction/Cultivation of the Earth). Its author, Rudolf Schwarz, was highly appreciated but equally has been marginalized by the architectural historiography of the twentieth century. His book contains a very elaborate theory on planning and the cities, based on the author's Catholic culture, his philosophical attachments to phenomenology, as well as his intellectual affinities with Hans Poelzig, Martin Wagner and Mies van der Rohe. A church-builder himself, Rudolf Schwarz was a prolific writer and a shrewd and inventive designer, but above all a harsh critic of modernity. He thus borrowed the idea of fusion between the city and the landscape, popular among his contemporaries and invested it with symbolic, transcendental meaning, focusing on the idea of the 'high city'. His 'city-landscape' appears to be polarized, but at the same time 'elastic', with 'changeable centres' and a rhizomatic structure, prefiguring later developments in urban theory. This article presents the origins of the concept of Stadtlandschaft , as they appeared in the German cultural and economic geography in the early twentieth century, its adaptation to the city-planning questions of the early 1930s, its later use by the National Socialist planning services and, particularly, its elaboration by Rudolf Schwarz during and after the Second World War.     

CONSTRUCTING A CHINESE MODERNITY: Theoretical Agenda for a New Architectural Practice

This paper explores the possibilities and problematics of a theoretical perspective for China's architectural practice at the turn of the century. Employing studies on the affinity between postmodern theses and the Chinese intellectual tradition, it argues for a Chinese approach to notions of ‘reason’ and modernity. Observing China's development in the late twentieth century as a major breakthrough in dealing with modernisation and Westernisation, this paper suggests a reading of the current transformation as an historical development of new forms of the modem project. In this context, it proposes a theoretical outlook and strategic agendas for spatial and architectural practice in four thematic areas of cross-cultural conversation.     

From natural environment to artificial system: Chang'an and its water system in the Western Han Dynasty

People around the world have shaped societies and urban spaces around water for millennia. They have transformed natural water structures and patterns to serve their diverse needs. The ways in which historical decisions affect contemporary water systems and influence future planning of urban systems still need to be fully recognized. This paper explores the multiple roles of water systems in Chang'an during the Western Han Dynasty. Chang’an, one of the ancient names for the city of Xi’an, was a typical capital city of China and East Asia in early ancient times. This study explores everyday practices pertaining to water as well as its role in defense, gardening, politics and culture.Drawing upon three historical theories, this study presents findings that water was embedded in the design of traditional Chinese capitals. The siting and construction of capital cities was first based on the Theory of Choosing the Center (3rd century BCE) and the Theory of Conforming to Nature (5th–3rd century BCE). However, the final maturation of this urban morphology, including the water system, was closely related to the Theory of Symbolizing and Modeling Heaven and Earth (4th–3rd century BCE), in a way that manifested the imperial power's organization and control of space and time.Through close analysis of historical documents, archaeological reports and modern investigations, the paper aims to clarify, analyze and summarize the historical context and evolution, functional and structural characteristics, as well as the economic, political, cultural and military connotations of water systems in Chang'an. It argues that the coordination of urban construction and the water environment was a key foundation for capital city development. It proposes that people shaped urban water supply in many ways, including daily life, waterway transportation, agricultural irrigation, aquaculture promotion, military defense and fire prevention.The water system in Chang'an also provided an important place for royalty and nobility to go fishing, to hunt and to engage in leisure and naval training. The landscape with this water system as the core, including Taiye Lake and Kunming Lake, had also inspired Chinese gardening history, and had a profound impact on future generations. More importantly, the capital's urban morphology design was a miniature of the world recognized by the monarch, as well as the symbolic image of the supreme rulers' political and cultural desire to control and possess Tianxia, which essentially means the whole world. In conclusion, the paper calls for a closer study of water-based design as a foundation for urban planning.     

DÉJ[Agrave] VU: MEMORY IN ARCHITECTURE

It was Walter Benjamin's fundamental insight that all experience is technological, that the term ‘technology’ designates the artificial organization of perception. and that architecture, as the locus of modern experience, is the vehicle of this organization of perception. Against the current technologies of ‘virtualization’ and assimilation of architecture to the media image industry, this essay turns to Walter Benjamin's notion of media and speculates on the relation between building and photography—as the old new media—to advance the possibility of viewing architecture as a form of ‘media’ in the organization of perceplion. From a psychoanalytical reading of the notion of ‘photography.’ the argument proceeds with the Benjaminian thesis that at the beginning of our modernity, ‘photography’ is the foundation forthe constitution oj the psychic-origin of technology Tbeessay concludes with the proposition that, after Benjamin, any speculation on ‘media theory’ in architecture must lake up a psychoanalytical framework in order to theorize the relation of technology to the human psyche. It is on this relation that we must locate Benjamin's legacy for contemporary criticism.     

Maurice Rotival: French planning on a world-scale (Part II)

This paper analyses the life and work of the French planner Maurice Rotival through his practical and theoretical work as well as his teachings in cities and regions in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Rotival's plans and projects reflect the influence of major events and changes of the twentieth century - two world wars and the advances in technology and research they promoted, the advent of the automobile, the subsequent urban transformations and large-scale demolitions - and influenced the development of planning in the twentieth century. Through five major steps of Rotival's international career, this article analyses the development of Rotival's pragmatic organic planning doctrine and his regional approach from his experience and training in France at the eve of the First World War, to his subsequent regional and urban planning work in Caracas, New Haven, Europe, Reims and other French cities until the 1980s. By considering Rotival's career as a part of economic globalization at a time when the colonial context was dismantled, the present article highlights the planner's role in societal transformation in collaboration with the e´lite and demonstrates the growing international exchange of planning ideas in the twentieth century.     

In search of the pointed arch: Freemasonry and Thomas Hope's 'An Historical Essay on Architecture'

Gothic architecture and Freemasonry were integral to Thomas Hope's often ignored history of architecture. While Hope was known as a leading exponent of neoclassical connoisseurship and design, his emphasis on the development of the pointed arch and its critical place in Gothic vocabulary points to significant changes in his thinking at the end of his life. In the Historical Essay Hope seemed to respond to scientific and organic themes that were to develop and deepen in the nineteenth century. His discussion of the role of Freemasons in building medieval churches highlighted a successful working process that would emerge in a different form as the 'team' design process of early twentieth century modernism. As Martin Bressani of Carleton University in Canada comments (in a letter to the author), 'By showing Gothic to be a legitimate architecture, created thanks to the rational and searching minds of Freemasons, Hope liberated practice from the idealizing (or universalizing) forms of neo-classicism, toward new experiments.'