Abstract (accepted)

Our abstract was accepted by Conditions Magazine. Here it is below, although I've been reluctant to post it because, to be honest, I'm not that happy with it. I struggled to try and include how the article was to be constructed around a metaphor of time (history, memory, temporal flows, rhythms of the city) and how this informs collective identity, but was unable to do it.

Anyway, here's our abstract:

Global flows and Local identity:
the Contradiction of Collective Value

Beyond the idea of material or monetary value, the question of architecture engaging in a qualitative notion of value confronts a contemporary paradox. The modern notion of value as the ideals, customs and principles of the collective rejects the notion of an external or objective system. Value derives its meaning from its societal context, yet the contemporary city is defined more than ever by forces that lie beyond it. While it has always been the case that the city is a field of struggle between the those that control the city, those that use the city, and those that appropriate the city, today it is further stressed by transnational forces that contradict any conventional notions of collective society and collective values. The space of the city, the rhythms of its spatial forms, its voids, its typology, form, ornament and image that mediate the processes of the city comprise the identity of its collective. Urban space is more than just a receiver of societal values; it is a conduit that transmits them as well. It is clear then that architecture is a participant in this conflict, constructing collective spaces that exist in tension with the city’s collective values; the question is whether it is active or passive participant.

Through the account of my four month academic exchange in the city of Rome, from my travels through Italy to my arrest at the Sistine Chapel, I was exposed to the informal and formal transnational flows that define modern Italy, and the corresponding policing of urban space that followed. This text examines the relationship between the state-engineered values of the city and the global flows that threaten it and looks at architectural methods of reflecting legitimate cultural values of modern Rome.

There is a critical need to understand Rome beyond the image presented by the state, through new and existing research, photographs, mapping exercises, and architectural projects the text reveals this complex, and multi-polar urbanism that lies beyond its state representation.

Finished Outline

I had to rewrite part three, but it's done. Now we just have to collect some data, and bang out that abstract. (Due February 12!)

Part 3. The Production of Added Value through Image Disruption

• Within a sociological interpretation of value, the production of added value engages the built environment in the construction of an image of the city, that looks beyond a quantitative notion of the city, towards a qualitative one
• Architecture interventions have an opportunity to disrupt the visual complicity of conventional urban processes by portraying “the complexities of urban reality and socio-cultural and economic characters of urbanised nations”
• creating in opposition what Stefano Boeri has called, ‘geopolitics of multiple identities’
• However the use of image is simply the most tangible manifestation of intangible qualities of the city, that is its collective : memory, identity and values
• The analysis of the city requires a semiological understanding of the city. As Lefebvre has written, one consumes signs as well as objects, and the city receives and emits messages, in multiple dimensions (115, Lefebvre). Typology, form and ornament constrain and define the social processes that occur within it, but beyond this they define the collective image and memory of the city and thus engage beyond physical space to the space of imagination
• The image is the sign, and thus belies more than the built environment expressed as spatial permanences, it is indicative of also the temporal processes of the city
• The rhythms of everyday life within the city is circumscribed within broader flows of economy, social relations mediated by built structures and institutions but transcend the scale of the city to regional, national and global scales and inter-urban connections.
• The city is in fact circumscribed within a broader ecologies both natural and artificial of temporal forces and thus exists as a spatio-temporal entity
• Image and reflections of the collective defined by complexity, multiplicity and elusiveness
• The postmodern city is defined in a word by difference, which would seem to inherently reject any notion of a collective identity, memory or value
• Beyond the simplified images crafted by the state, is it possible to create an image that can legitimately reflect and accommodate the global flows for new rhythms of urban life?
• while respecting old identity and fulfilling requirements of the assignments?

Part 4. Subversive Intervention

• This problem at the crossroads of culture and space can benefit from architectural thinking
• looking for ways in order to diffuse difference within patriarchal networks that intend to preserve the status quo
• Examples: Boeri’s Multiplicity, Markus Miessen’s safe injection sites at King’s Cross Station, and Koolhaas’s attempts to place homeless shelters in the Seattle Public Library
• This projects uses the redevelopment of Termini Train station to construct additional infrastructure that accommodates subversive global flows
• subverts state engineered idea of identity within neoliberal logic of marketizing public space

Outline: Unfinished

I'm stuck. I'm debating what the actual architectural intervention will be. I'm not sure if my studio project is entirely appropriate. It's a fairly radical design trying to resolve the issues of the site, and thus a large part of it is irrelevant to the thesis I'm presenting here. Either that, or because it is an example of a project that was appropriated for the production of additional value, may in fact be the most relevant example.

Part 1. The identity crisis of the European historic city

• the identity of the contemporary historic city is in crisis
• the Post-Fordist restructuring of the economic sphere, and European Union integration has accelerated economic processes of commerce and exchange, instigating and escalating transnational flows of labour and capital
• these temporal and social processes unfettered by the free market environment of neoliberalism materialize at the level of the city in spatial permanences and social institutions
• in the face of failing industries and declining birth rates, global flows such as tourism and immigration are a necessity to the historic city, and yet these global flows disrupt the authenticity of the location and culture
• the conflict is as thus as such: The market has dictated an urban identity defined by difference, that is untenable to its state engineered identity
• the internal contradictions of this process cleave authenticity from the historic city, reducing urban development to the fabrication of an image and marginalization of elements that threaten this image, a process that does not reflect the true cultural and social identity of the contemporary historic city
• [Insert research about Asiatic and African migrant flow into the Mediterranean area, and Rome’s immigrations statistics]


Part 2. The paradigms of vision

• the relocation of manufacturing sectors in the 1970s from, developed to developing regions have shifted the Keynesian-Fordist economy in the transformative powers of state planning to a Post-Fordist economy based on the fluidity of market processes
• therefore there has been a global shift in ownership models from public and private in the Post-Fordist era, or the era of neoliberalism
• this current era of neoliberalism relies on the combined acceleration of production and consumption in order to maintain economic equilibrium
• accelerated consumption is manufactured through a parallel image market in order to match accelerated production
• imagery and commodity fetishism has thus penetrated the societal psyche to such an extent that as Debord observes: capital accumulates to image, and image mediate relations, roles and values between people
• thus giving rise to what is variously called: media society, the society of spectacle, consumer society, the bureaucratic society of controlled consumption, or postindustrial society
• contemporary geopolitics, based on relations between countries and markets, is waged through large-scale complicity fabricated by these paradigms of vision
• the collective image is thus manipulated by the state to inform collective opinions, collective identities, with the prime tool often being the major media: the most egregious example of which is Berlusconi`s manipulation of Italy`s media sector and public space
• (Insert research about Italy`s Grandi Stazioni project in 2003, that shifted stations from public to private ownership models, hopefully other information to other spaces)
• The minaret ban in Switzerland, the veil ban in France, and the policing of public space in Italy are symptoms of this conflict between state-engineered images versus the urbanism of difference created by free market forces
• architects and architecture is complicit in this visual fabrication
• the commodification of architecture has lead to the gradual irrelevance of the profession, reducing architects to enablers of larger power structures
• In this way architecture like graffiti or pornography, `bears an obscenity...the architectural drawing can support specific meanings that the everyday experience of the actual building prevents...`( Tschumi, 12)
• Urban public space are charged spaces that are engineered to fabricate an image and identity of the city
• architectural interventions in this highly regulated, market-oriented realm has usually been limited to inserting state-friendly spectacle that fuels urban inequality and inauthenticity
• Example: Termini Train station, Trastevere, Vatican, Navona



Part 3. The Production of Added Value through Image Disruption

• Urban public space are charged spaces that are engineered to fabricate an image and identity of the city
• architectural interventions in this highly regulated, market-oriented realm has usually been limited to inserting state-friendly spectacle that fuels urban inequality and inauthenticity
• How can architecture go beyond fulfilling requirements of project to create built environments that can address legitimate social and cultural identity of the city.
• architecture interventions have an opportunity to disrupt the visual complicity of conventional urban processes by portraying “the complexities of urban reality and socio-cultural and economic characters of urbanised nations”
• creating in opposition what Stefano Boeri has called, ‘geopolitics of multiple identities’
• Architecture deals with image of city, and thus exists in tension with memory, identity and opinion of the city

Part 4. Termini Train Station Intervnetion

• ???