Planteamiento del problema

The two design projects described below start from this imaginative point of view and originate from a designerly way of thinking. In that respect they are particularly relevant to illustrate the argument being developed in the course of this text. Another reason for choosing them is that the author collaborated, as a designer, on these projects.

The project ‘The Unadapted City’ was born within a design practice that ded-icates an important role and responsibility to the development of theoretical, con-ceptual and visionary organisational models of space, without denying the necessity of daily, pragmatic and problem-solving urban design. The starting point of T.O.P.

office²and its founder, Luc Deleu, is that a conceptual design practice, by means of its examples, design methods and strategies on the formal, spatial, structural and programmatic level, is able to produce a stimulating frame for daily practice.

The M.U.D project (Fig. 1) was developed by FLC extended,³designers in free association. Typical of FLC extended is the coming together of individual back-grounds, motivations and practices from different designers.

This, almost naturally, made FLC projects evolve around crucial points where everything meets, no matter what scale or medium. FLC emphasises in each job, commission or project, the opportunity of conflicts acting as positive energy, intro-ducing the imagination of future conflicts over which space can be negotiated.

THE UNADAPTED CITY– the development of spatial models with a special focus on public space/public (infra)structure

A series of ‘Unit´e d’habitation’-like buildings, one placed after the other in a kind of rhythmic arrangement. They are all laced together by a multi-deck bridge. A linear structure, a linear city that stretches itself out over the landscape. The ground is only touched by the pilotis that support the build-ings. At first glance this project may be (wrongly) interpreted as a kind of

Fig. 1 M.U.D – artist impression – photo FLC extended (2005)

neo-modernistic design exercise. This project states that the housing should be left to the inhabitants to develop and that urban planning should instead be primarily concerned with the design of the ‘interstitial tissue’, the so-called

‘public space’ and ‘infrastructure’, in order to generate a spatially and socially interesting living environment.

Therefore the design of the basic structural form of ‘The Unadapted City’

sought to bring the urban amenities, infrastructure and living into interac-tion with each other so that a new form of public space was generated – a form of public space that was dense enough to create an intense and vibrant public sphere. This resulted in a basic concept for an urban-architectonic structure that was developed into a pragmatically rather indeterminate but formally quite strong architecture. The structure spatially consists of three main components: first there is a pedestal. This pedestal contains a car tun-nel that borders on and gives a view over several peripheral, car-orientated, urban facilities. The pedestal is a ‘car-city’. Above the pedestal a tram is floating attached to a monorail underneath the multi-level bridge. The bridge is packed with urban amenities that are situated next to bicycle and walking tracks. The bridge functions as a meeting place for the district and offers a wide panorama of the landscape. On the promenade decks there are sports facilities, little parks and kiosks. Along the way, the promenade is some-times inside, then again outdoors, covered or completely in the open air. This multi-level bridge (Fig. 4) is a three-dimensional, spatial promenade axis that floats high above ground level. A public transport system and other infras-tructures are attached to it. The bridge connects and penetrates the apartment blocks and other very diverse buildings that are ‘plugged-in’ along the way.

This (mega)structure becomes more and more refined so that free and organic filling-in becomes possible and evident. Thereby the following programmatic principles are employed: the ground level is left as much as possible as it is. Housing accommodation is paired with general urban comfort and the ut-most care is given to a calculated but unadapted mixture of urban amenities.

Car traffic is underground and public transport is above ground. Public trans-port is the main infrastructure suptrans-port, the backbone of this new city and is as such visualised and symbolised, high in the sky. The designing principle used investigates how, starting from a calculation of the amenities needed, an ensemble of spaces that is as varied as possible can be offered. The de-sign methodology that was developed consists mainly of separating function and form. The functions are only used to design a diversity of spaces. These spaces can be used freely by all urban actors, great and small. To achieve this, indispensable manipulation takes place when going from calculations through functions and programme to spatial design: the dissociation of function and form. The separation of mathematically defined programme and the resulting more or less articulated but functionally indeterminate space is fundamental.

This principle underpins the separation between urban structure and filling-in, between architecture and use, between building and life, between order and chaos. What is designed is an ‘a-functional architecture’ that can be used.

This is the basic concept and primordial design strategy throughout ‘The Unadapted City’.*

The above-mentioned only reflects a part of a much more elaborate and complex design project. ‘The Unadapted City’ investigates – as the name says – the city, or rather, the organisation of urban life (living). It is at the same time a design and research project that builds up knowledge and develops a vision of urbanisation. Furthermore this design project frames within the overarching concept of ‘Orbanism’⁴, ideas developed by Luc Deleu

Fig. 2 D.O.S. XXI: VIPCITY #7 revisited – photo T.O.P.office/Luc Deleu (2002)

and T.O.P. office, which basically investigate the preconditions and adequate models for an urbanisation process (Fig. 2) that is socially and ecologically fair.

* This description of ‘The Unadapted City’ is based on parts (pp. 21–37) of Deleu’s text ‘Urbi et Orbi (D.O.S. XXI)’ in Deleu, L (2002), Urbi et Orbi, Ludion, Gent-Amsterdam

M.U.D – the intentional rupture of the Belgian coast to induce the age of Multi-User Dimension

Sixty-seven kilometer of Belgian coastline presented in a manipulated satel-lite image, the prefiguration of a New Age, M.U.D (Fig. 1). M.U.D standing both for mud (a hybrid state between land and water and air), for multi-user domains (a collection of desiring machines, aggregates of subjective desire, architectures of articulated longing) and for multi-user dimensions (the ability to respond to simultaneous and even controversy needs, there are no laws, only agreements: a test bed for futurity). M.U.D reflects upon the spatial and social entity of the Belgian coast with the sea as main actor. M.U.D is the era of the hybrid.

Lines that were fixed boundaries between land, water and air, between use and development, from now on will have to be negotiated with a probability of 2 times a day (low and high tide) to 1 time every 10,000 years (major, tsunami-like storms and floods). Coastal defence will evolve from an absolute, static boundary between land and sea to a more relative, dynamic zone of transition.

A landscape is created that is called the ‘Future Conflict’ zone and is de-signed as a controlled flooding area – a kind of artificial flood – wherein a minimum scenario (damage control and risk management), as well as a max-imum scenario (hyper defence), can be applied.

This means that locally, depending on the opportunities and the specific context, the dike will get new proportions – ‘the porous dike’ – and the land will be de-poldered. Re-definition of the dike equally redefines and specifies the development of the coastal settlements. Some carefully selected cities are turned into capsular entities, made to be guaranteed waterproof, like islands protected against the surrounding water/mud landscape.

The previous land-dependent production is now replaced by a hyper-economic grid system on the sea (Fig. 3). This new kind of sea-exploitation becomes a new economic driving force and political instrument. The grid takes the shape of a flexible structure that rolls on the waves and evolves along with the dynamics of the sea. As a new technological grid of ref-erences and coordinates, this structure has the capacity to scan and probe, and only here and there crystallises into a physical installation: an

eco-Fig. 3 M.U.D – hyper economy de-poldering, mental grid – photo FLC extended

energetic floating field as an alternative for nuclear power stations, a drilling platform, a floating university, . . . M.U.D displays the deliberate rupture of the coastal membrane against the possibility of flooding, capsularity⁵or hyper economy.

M.U.D dissolves the coastal urban network into emergent swarms of changes surrounding the nodal points in the dynamics of current flows and future conflicts, vast flows of undifferentiated data, patterns of informa-tion. M.U.D is entirely process; infinitely more than the combined sum of its various selves; platforms sink beneath it, one after another, as M.U.D grows denser, more complex...its only reality the realm of ongoing serial creation.*

M.U.D is a project created on the occasion of the 2nd International Archi-tecture Biennial in Rotterdam (2005). The Biennial, called ‘The Flood’⁶, was dedicated to ‘water’ and more specifically, rising sea levels.

The Flemish Architecture Institute (VAi) chose two Belgian teams to take part in the exhibition. Their lines of approach were considered to be funda-mentally different but, as mode of research, complementary.

One team, Gaufre – Maritime Institute of the University of Ghent, did sci-entific research on different aspects of the Belgian sea and presented an ‘Atlas of the sea’. The other team, FLC extended (designers in free association),

developed a speculative and more radical view on the issue and simulated a spatial scenario, called M.U.D, for the coastal landscape between Calais and the Schelde estuary.

* This description of the M.U.D project is based on different (unpublished) text mate-rial that was produced by FLC extended during the design process.

The two design projects pictured above are not so much concerned with or based upon ‘engineering’, but focus rather on ‘imagineering’.⁷

They explicitly do not present designs that are intended to be implemented as masterplans for developing a site or region. Instead they scrutinously look for an-other – formal and conceptual – vocabularium for further thought about the futurity of our physical environment.

These designs generate ‘models’ that concern the organisation, the arrangement of space. They also explore and make explicit certain notions and opinions on principles that (should) underpin the development of the physical environment. In that respect they contribute to the development of knowledge and vision involving the organisation and design of space.

The models developed here do not represent a search for variations, in the sense of perfection of existing or common accepted forms of urbanisation. Instead, they question the conventional approaches by developing alternative forms of urbanisa-tion/landscaping. A search for alternatives involves criticism of, or dissatisfaction with, the existing and commonly accepted way of looking at the situation. This dissatisfaction originates from the feeling that some ways of designing a solution are no longer satisfactory and the problem should therefore be reassessed and re-constructed.

Thecore of designprojects like these is the redefining/redesigning of the (prob-lematic) situation so that the answer goes far beyond the problem in the way it was presented/perceived. It is an exercise in reframing thinking, in ‘naming and framing’⁸ instead of technical problem-solving. Therefore the emphasis is put on imagination since this is considered a central pillar and driving force of ‘naming and framing’.

Although ‘The Unadapted City’ and M.U.D are designs that could technically be realisable and at an implementation level in a way only radicalise and make explicit some possibilities that already exist, these designs are not intended to be ‘built’.

Their main purpose is to further thinking and trigger new approaches to certain issues, and by doing so, to stimulate ‘anticipatory’ criticism.

‘The Unadapted City’ and M.U.D reach the public mainly through exhibitions (Figs. 4 and 5) and publications, often in an artistic environment. The main reaction then of the public to design projects like ‘The Unadapted City’ and M.U.D is that they are ‘Utopian’ projects. This is often meant as a kind of mild critique, meaning:

‘Very nice, but not realisable and thus not to be taken seriously. We however have some urgent problems to deal with, so now stop dreaming and let’s get back to reality.’

Fig. 4 VIP City, The seamile, maquette in the show ‘TALKING CITIES 26.08 – 3.12.2006’, Zeche Zollverein, Essen, Germany – photo T.O.P. office/Luc Deleu

Fig. 5 Image of Mare Meum carpet in the university library of Gent (06.12.2006 – 13.01.06) – photo Roeland Dudal 2006

We should indeed invest in a reality check, or rather in developing the capacity to question this so-called ‘reality’ because there are many different (conflicting) realities. Investigatinghow to construct and perceive this reality is a critical aspect of ‘naming and framing’ or, let us say, ‘redesigning’ the problem. If we, as de-signers, have to deal with reality, we have to check the existing/perceived reality against the possible/desired reality. It is at this moment that the ‘Utopia’ comes into play. Utopian thinking is often reproached that it only results in unrealistic and static, ‘closed’ projects. The argument made in this chapter is that Utopian thinking offers in contrast a strong intellectual means to develop dynamic, ‘open’

frames against which reality can be checked, perceived differently and consequently

‘reconstructed’.