The final pre­sen­ta­tions of the 1st and 2nd year Berlage Insti­tute stu­dents are sched­uled at the school this coming week and next. All of the pre­sen­ta­tions are open to the public, and are with­out entry cost. On the 24th June, the 1st year stu­dents will present two stu­dios, Rethink­ing the All-​Inclusive, and the Sae­man­quem Project; while on the 1st July two other stu­dios, Asso­cia­tive Design: Urban Ecolo­gies, and Cap­i­tal Cities, The limits of the City: A Strate­gic Project for Seoul will be presented.

You may also watch the Livestream Broad­casts online.

2007–2008 Second-​year final presentations

Asso­cia­tive Design Research Pro­gram
Urban Ecologies

There is an ecol­ogy of bad ideas, just as there is an ecol­ogy of weeds.
——Felix Guattari

In the Three Ecolo­gies the French psy­chol­o­gist Felix Guat­tari states that now, more then ever, nature cannot be sep­a­rated from cul­ture. He argues for a pol­i­tics of “ecosphy”—or the inter­re­la­tion­ship of social, mental and envi­ron­men­tal ecolo­gies. Based on this thesis, this research studio has hypoth­e­sized the forms of urban­iza­tion that can be actu­al­ized within the var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal ecolo­gies of Phoenix, Arizona.

The studio has been study­ing the region’s spe­cific social, eco­nomic, polit­i­cal, cli­matic and mate­r­ial envi­ron­ments with the aim of pre­sent­ing seri­ous alter­na­tives to the con­tem­po­rary hous­ing pro­duc­tion sur­round­ing Phoenix. Located in a wide valley that has allowed for low-​density urban­iza­tion with few lim­i­ta­tions, the region has main­tained rapid and sus­tained growth since the end of World War II. Pro-​growth civic poli­cies have helped fuel an econ­omy that, along with the region’s nat­ural ameni­ties, has attracted many new res­i­dents. This growth has resulted in the need for more water, much of it now coming from the Col­orado River. This has also cre­ated regional and sec­to­r­ial con­flicts between Ari­zona and its neigh­bor­ing states as well as between agri­cul­tural and urban land uses. Demand for elec­tric­ity, espe­cially for air con­di­tion­ing, con­tin­ues to esca­late. An abun­dance of motor vehi­cles, but lack of high­way infra­struc­ture, has led to increased air pol­lu­tion and traf­fic con­ges­tion. These spe­cific site cir­cum­stances, and lim­ited nat­ural resources, have made Phoenix an envi­ron­men­tal ecol­ogy between growth and supply.

In oppo­si­tion to the con­ven­tions of typ­i­cal Amer­i­can sub­di­vi­sion devel­op­ment, the studio is pre­sent­ing neigh­bor­hood models that gen­er­ate an urban envi­ron­ment. Instead of estab­lish­ing a pre­de­ter­mined master plan, these growth models follow poten­tial decision-​making processes in order to react to var­i­ous changes within the eco­nomic market and the devel­op­ment of com­pli­men­tary pro­grams accord­ing to of inhab­i­ta­tion or demand. They also are actu­al­ized in rela­tion to the eco­log­i­cal con­straints set by Phoenix desert.

Five projects will be pre­sented that argue that new forms of hous­ing neigh­bor­hoods must learn from site-​specific cir­cum­stances. Each project is struc­tured in four phases, taking a quar­ter mile sec­tion of the Phoenix desert as a case study. From the local veg­e­ta­tion ecol­ogy and radi­a­tion pro­duc­tion to the effects of flood­ing in rela­tion to the eco­nomic value of the raw desert, these projects unfold spe­cific and inten­sive char­ac­ter­is­tics of the desert. Addi­tion­ally, two projects will demon­strate the desert’s poten­tial as an urban growth model of one pos­si­ble deci­sion­mak­ing process.

This studio is part of the Asso­cia­tive Design Research Pro­gram, headed by Peter Trum­mer, which inves­ti­gates the poten­tial and design of new site-​specific hous­ing envi­ron­ments by apply­ing asso­cia­tive tech­niques to all scales of a design process to increase its rel­e­vance to the archi­tec­tural discipline.

Tutor: Peter Trum­mer
Par­tic­i­pants: Tsung-​Jen Chang, Bot­sung Chiu, Daewon Kwak, Tzu-​En Hsu, Kyo Suk Lee, Chia-​Ying Lin, Fairuz Razali, and Mika Watan­abe.
Guest Crit­ics: Lawrence Barth, Christophe Cor­nu­bert, Aris Georges, Christo­pher Lee, Lars Lerup, and Matthew Moore.

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Cap­i­tal Cities Research Pro­gram
The Limits of the City: A Strate­gic Project for Seoul

We have almost suc­ceeded in lev­el­ing all human activ­i­ties to the common denom­i­na­tor of secur­ing the neces­si­ties of life and pro­vid­ing for their abun­dance.
——Hannah Arendt

The studio focuses on the rela­tion­ship between forms of met­ro­pol­i­tan labor and the pos­si­bil­ity of polit­i­cal life. As one of the most phys­i­cally dense, socially com­plex, and tech­no­log­i­cally advanced cities in Asia, Seoul is the ideal site to test how econ­omy affects a city’s polit­i­cal life.

It is gen­er­ally assumed that our con­tem­po­rary civ­i­liza­tion is a post-​industrial one, shaped by the emer­gence and the hege­mony of imma­te­r­ial labor over the pro­duc­tion of goods. The studio argues that the place of this process of pro­duc­tion is the metrop­o­lis.

The metrop­o­lis brings these processes out­side of their canon­i­cal space —the factory— and dis­sem­i­nates them through all aspects of urban life. If we assume that indus­tri­al­ism is not simply the process of pro­duc­tion of goods, but a way to make any­thing eco­nom­i­cally pro­duc­tive —from the human body to the human mind— then we can pre­sume that we are still part of the indus­trial civ­i­liza­tion where urban­ity itself is the ulti­mate fac­tory. Con­fronting this sce­nario, the crit­i­cal issue this studio explored is what kind of city­ness can be imag­ined in the con­tem­po­rary metrop­o­lis, where pro­duc­tion seems to be sus­tained by economics.

The site of research and design is the con­cep­tual border between the city as a locus of pro­duc­tion and the city as locus of polit­i­cal life. The studio attempted to answer how an archi­tec­tural inter­ven­tion can con­sciously frame pro­to­typ­i­cal forms of den­sity, shared facil­i­ties, and living and work­spaces. An over­all urban strat­egy for Seoul, con­sist­ing of 11 punc­tual and pro­to­typ­i­cal urban design inter­ven­tions, will be pre­sented. In their exem­plar­ity, these inter­ven­tions are capa­ble of trans­form­ing the geog­ra­phy of the entire region. They are mainly con­cerned with the pro­posal of living typolo­gies of space that can limit the expan­sion of the built envi­ron­ment, the pro­lif­er­a­tion of scat­tered set­tle­ments, and that can foster the cre­ation of places of encounter and shar­ing that are dif­fer­ent from the living and work­ing pat­terns imposed by eco­nomic exploitation.

This studio is part of the Cap­i­tal Cities Research Pro­gram, headed by Pier Vit­to­rio Aureli, which aims to rede­fine the idea of the city as a polit­i­cal insti­tu­tion by focus­ing on the rela­tions between archi­tec­tural form, polit­i­cal theory and urban his­tory by means of large-​scale crit­i­cal urban projects.

Tutors: Pier Vit­to­rio Aureli, Mar­tino Tat­tara, and Elia Zenghe­lis.
Par­tic­i­pants: Julica Grzy­bowski, Seung Jeong Hong, Eun Kyung Lee, Ale­jan­dro Mar­tinez, German Ramirez, and Tsai-​Ching Tsai.
Guest Crit­ics: Christo­pher Lee, Lars Lerup, Gabriele Mas­trigli, and Andreas Ruby.

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Pro­gram Tues­day, 1 July 2008

10:30am Wel­come by Rob Docter, Gen­eral Direc­tor
Intro­duc­tion by Vedran Mimica, Direc­tor
10:45am Final pre­sen­ta­tions of the Asso­cia­tive Design Research Pro­gram
studio enti­tled “Urban Ecologies”
12:00pm Com­ments by guest crit­ics and fac­ulty
12:30pm Round-​table dis­cus­sion with guest crit­ics
Mod­er­ated by Peter Trum­mer, Head of the Asso­cia­tive Design Research Pro­gram
1:30pm Com­pli­men­tary lunch
2:30pm Final pre­sen­ta­tions of the Cap­i­tal Cities Research Pro­gram
studio enti­tled “The Limits of the City: A Strate­gic Project for Seoul”
4:00pm Com­ments by guest crit­ics and fac­ulty
4:30pm Round-​table dis­cus­sion with guest crit­ics
Mod­er­ated by Pier Vit­to­rio Aureli, Head of the Cap­i­tal Cities Research Pro­gram
6:00pm End-of-year exhi­bi­tion open­ing and recep­tion
7:00pm Grad­u­a­tion ceremony

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Grad­u­at­ing participants:

Tsung-​Jen Chang, Taiwan
Bot­sung Chiu, Taiwan
Julica Grzy­bowski, Ger­many
Seung Jeong Hong, Korea
Tzu-​en Hsu, Taiwan
Dae-​Won Kwak, Korea
Eun Kyung Lee, Korea
Kyo Suk Lee, Korea
Chia-​Ying Lin, Taiwan
Ale­jan­dro Mar­tinez, Domini­can Repub­lic
German Ramirez, Colom­bia
Fairuz Reza Razali, Malaysia
Tsai-​Ching Tsai, Taiwan
Mika Watan­abe, Japan

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Guest critics:

Lawrence Barth, Senior Lec­turer in Urban­ism, Archi­tec­tural Asso­ci­a­tion, London
Christophe Cor­nu­bert, Archi­tect, Los Ange­les
Aris Georges, Dean, Tal­iesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Archi­tec­ture, Scotts­dale, Ari­zona, USA
Christo­pher Lee, Prin­ci­pal, Serie Archi­tects, London
Lars Lerup, Dean and the William Ward Watkin Pro­fes­sor of Archi­tec­ture, School of Archi­tec­ture, Rice Uni­ver­sity, Hous­ton
Gabriele Mas­trigli, Archi­tec­tural His­to­rian, Rome
Matthew Moore, Visual Artist, Phoenix
Andreas Ruby, Archi­tec­ture Critic and The­o­rist, Berlin

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Insti­tute faculty:

Vedran Mimica, Direc­tor
Pier Vit­to­rio Aureli, Head of the Cap­i­tal Cities Research Pro­gram
Joachim Declerck, Centre for Archi­tec­tural Research and Devel­op­ment
Salomon Frausto, Head of Archi­tec­tural Broad­cast­ing
Roemer van Toorn, Head of the Pro­jec­tive Theory Pro­gram
Peter Trum­mer, Head of the Asso­cia­tive Design Research Program