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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[1S3] STRATEGIES OF THE VOID.
Our predisposition towards the modern interior has purely pragmatic roots. The great train sheds, warehouses, and exhibition spaces of the 19th century were constructed to facilitate transportation and circulation at an unprecedented scale, and relied upon advances in bridge technology and the development of iron as a building material. In fact, we are told that rotary steam power and the iron frame originated at around the same time, at the end of the 18th century.46 Thus, this interior was operational in nature, as it evolved in parallel with the vehicle which occupied it. Walter Benjamin offers this description of the development and application of iron: With iron, an artificial building material appeared for the first time in the history of architecture. It went through a development whose tempo accelerated during the course of the century. This received its decisive impulse when it turned out that the locomotive, with which experiments had been made since the end of the ‘twenties, could only be utilized on iron rails. The rail was the first unit of construction, the forerunner of the girder. Iron was avoided for dwelling-houses, and made use of for arcades, exhibition halls, railway stations, buildings which served transitory purposes. Simultaneously the architectonic areas in which glass was employed were extended. But the social conditions for its increased utilization as a building material only came into being a hundred years layer. In Scheerbart’s ‘Glasarchitektur’ (1914) it still appeared in the context of a Utopia.47
While these and other projects indicate a new scale and spirit present in international architecture, they also possess a particular deference to the void which has always been present in Japanese cities. In Barthes’ Empire of Signs, he discusses Tokyo as having "this precious paradox: it does possess a center, but this center is empty. The entire city turns around a site both forbidden and indifferent... Daily, in their rapid, energetic, bullet-like trajectories, the taxis avoid this circle, whose low crest, the visible form of invisibility, hides the sacred ‘nothing.’ "51 This ‘empty center’ is actually the Imperial Palace and its expansive grounds - most of which, unlike Central Park in New York, are off limits to the public. Like other Japanese feudal cities, Tokyo grew radially from a centrally-located stronghold, which today has lost its traditional political and cultural significance. "One of the two most powerful cities of modernity is thereby built around an opaque ring of walls, streams, roofs, and trees whose own center is no more than an evaporated notion, subsisting here, not in order to irradiate power, but to give to the entire urban movement the support of its central emptiness, forcing the traffic to make a perpetual detour. In this manner, we are told, the system of the imaginary is spread circularly, by detours and returns the length of an empty subject."52 46Frampton, Kenneth, Modern Architecture: A Critical History (London: Thames and Hudson, 1980) p. 29 47Benjamin, Walter, "Paris: Capital of the 19th Century" in New Left Review 48 (March-April 1968) 48Maki, Fumihiko, "The Theory of Group Form" in Japan Architect (Feb. 1970) p. 40 49Koolhaas, Rem, "Strategy of the Void" in S, M, L, XL (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996) p. 604 50Ibid., p. 616, 626 51Barthes, Roland, Empire of Signs, Trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982) p. 30-32 52Ibid., p. 32 Images: 1. Terminal: Photograph by Pico Harnden, 2. Buckminster Fuller Dome, 1958, 3. Fumihiko Maki, City Room Project, 4. OMA, Paris Library Project (1989), 5. Rafael Viñoly, Tokyo Forum (1997), 6. Hiroshi Hara, Umeda Sky Tower (1996), 7. Hiroshi Hara, Kyoto Train Station (1997), 8. Kenzo Tange, Fuji Television Building (1996)
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The monumental interior of the industrial age has continued
to inspire, and be integrated into, a diverse range of modern building typologies. Since
Paxton’s Crystal Palace (1851) proved that vast volumes of space could be enclosed
within relatively inexpensive, quickly fabricated structures, architecture has continued
to provide interiors sufficient for mass congregation. Essentially, the mall has
replaced the piazza. At the same time, the awe-inspiring, morality-inducing
interior of the Gothic cathedral has found a new form in the modern, secular space for
mass collection. In this space, however, the religious icon has been usurped by the
corporate billboard.
Modern
architects and engineers embraced the iron frame and, like the medieval master builders
before them, sought to push the limits of its potential. Guimard, Berlage, Wagner,
Garnier, Behrens, Gropius, and others made important contributions to the development of
the iron, and later steel and ferrocement, enclosed space. Several decades later,
Buckminster Fuller proved it possible to carry the technology of the structural enclosure
much further, with his geodesic structures that stretched the maximum efficiency per unit
weight of material to an astonishing high. The technological heroism that Fuller inspired
had a profound influence on a new generation of architects captivated with the urban
potential of buildings, including Archigram, Superstudio, and the Metabolists. 
Fumihiko Maki, one of the original Metabolist members, developed the notion
of a ‘city room’ in the form of a vast, enclosed collective space with direct
connections to the city. He considers "the most important factor in group form... [to
be] the treatment of mediating public spaces,"
and writes that "creating organic public places centering on traffic focal points
throughout the city would significantly affect the rehabilitation of city centers... In
terms of urban design we must create city corridors, city rooms, and
transportation exchanges at strategic points in the city; and second we must realize that
these new focal points become urban energy generators."48
In his explanation of the Très Grande Bibliothèque competition entry
(1989), titled "Strategy of the Void," Rem Koolhaas suggests that volumes which
are conceptually carved out of buildings offer the greatest potential for collective
activity. He says, "liberated from its former obligations, architecture’s last
function will be the creation of the symbolic spaces that accommodate the persistent
desire for collectivity."49 The project consists of a simple, rectilinear, multi-story
tower filled with a regular grid of storage, from which various voids are subtracted, or
‘suspended’ within the solid. "In this block, the major public spaces are
defined as absences of building, voids carved out of the information solid. Floating in
memory, they are multiple embryos, each with its own technological placenta... the most
important parts of the building consist of an absence of building."50
Koolhaas’ Paris Library project is a very provocative diagram, and suggests a new
realm of potential for the modern collective space, but one must ultimately question the
operability and flexibility of the voids, which are too pure and uncompromising in their
geometry.
The monumental interior has gained a new level of popularity in Japan,
indicated by an incredible array of new architectural projects conceived in the
‘megastructural’ spirit. Rafael Viñoly’s Tokyo Forum (1997) possesses a
mind-boggling, hyper-engineered atrium space which puts both George Lucas and John Portman
to shame. Hiroshi Hara’s new Kyoto Station (1997) has a similar monumental space,
inspired by 19th century terminals, although cluttered with gratuitous decoration and
clumsy forms. 
His impressive Umeda Sky Tower (1996), in
downtown Osaka, consists of two skyscrapers which are connected at the top by a thick
bridge-slab, through which a giant hole is ‘punctured’ so that escalators -
suspended over the void - can carry bewildered visitors up to the ‘sky garden’
above. Kenzo Tange’s Fuji Television Building (1996) in Tokyo is inspired by a
similar fascination for the urban-scaled void, and consists of a megastructural lattice in
which a sphere - containing a restaurant and viewing deck - is suspended above a giant plaza.
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
