Hybrid Morphologies

 

  ybrid Morphologies Infrastructure,

Architecture,

Landscape

If there is to be a unew urbanism " it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the stag  ing of uncertainty ; it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation

of territories

with potential; it will no longer aim

for stable configurations fields

Marr c Angeli & Anna Klingmann Ma

but for the creation of enabling

that

accommodate

processes

crystallized

into definitive

meticulous

definition , the imposition

that

refuse

to

be

form ; it will no longer be about of limits, · but about

expanding notions , denying boundaries, not about separat ing and defining entities, but about discovering unnameable hybrids ; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipu lation of infrastructure

for endless intensifica 

tions and diversifications , shortcuts and redistributions-the reinvention of psychological space. Rem Koolhaas Koolhaas,, What Ever Happened to Urbanism , 1994 16

DAIDALOS

J·

1999

 

left page: rom Arcitecture without Architects © 1964 1964   by Bernard BernardRudofsky RudofskyConnecticut Connecticut USA below be low:: su suburb burb of Toko

Smithson wri t es: The highways cr cris isscross scross through the t owns known for hi h is earthwork projects.

and become man -mad madee geologica geologicall networks of concre concrett e. In fact.

Crystt al Land the built landscape of urban -pres in The Crys

the entire landscape has a mineral presence. From the s hiny

aanatio ns with the structure of geological formations. n recalls an excursion with Nancy Holt, Julie Judd, and fudd through New Jersey. the selfself-proclaimed Garden • duringwhich abandoned quarries wer we re visited. The text :zillespecific characteristics of the physical environment -s.srddurin g their journey. Consisting of unrelated frag of built, natural, and alter alte red landscapes a un ified image of casting terrain emerges, despite the inherent differences

chrome diner s t o glass windows of shopping centers, a sense of the crystalli ne prevails. 1 From a driver's viewpoint, this artifi 

th~ fragments

•

and power

thems elves. Urban infrastructures, su s uch as

lines, as well as the sin single gle famil fami ly houses and

cial, crystalline landscape even merges w i th the topography of the car's dashboard. The reflections on th e windshield, the plas tic buttons of the car radio. and the depression of th thee glove compartment are read as a kind of extension of the territory of the sub sub--urban conglomerate. Thi Thiss landscape, according to Smithson, has not grown organically but exhibits properties of mineralogical structures that depe depend nd equally on natural and

:;,mg ce centers nters of suburban neighborhoods, are t ogether with

synthetic processes. In its geology, the city consists of a stratification of layers forming forming a consolidated entity.

een n as one syst syst em. They are sed sediiments of one and l:acdscape ee lllDt geology geology..

Smithson introduces a method by which to scrutinize, through the juxtaposition of t he terms Site and Non-Site, the 7

 

RobertSmithson RobertSm ithson.. Unt Untii tle tled d Science-F Sc ience-Fc ct io ion n Landsca ndscap pe), 1966,negative, 1966, negative,21,6 21,6x 30 30,,5 cm, CourtesyJohn Courtesy JohnWeber WeberGallery, Gallery, New York.

interaction b etwee n the real cond iti itions ons of a place and his

menta l landscape. While the infrastructures for transportation

interpretations of that place. Site stands for t h e material reality realit y

constitute a de facto condition condition of the site, they are at the same

of a pre-e pre -existing xisting s ituation, as for e xampl e, the familiar land scape

time solidi fi fied ed fossils. fossils.Th Thee windshi e ld glass of the car is captured

of New Jersey. A Non-Site, on the other hand , is an abstract

in its physical condition but read as an e xt xtens ens io n of the land land 

representation or reinterpretation

scape. Site and Non-Site demarcate a space that, according to

of the si te in the form of a

text, a map, or a sculpture. Smithson's earthwor ks, which he calls a sedimentation of the mind, involve in s itu a context, while concurrently suggesting other readings of that context. In a series of interventions referred to as flows fl ows in which large

Smithson, can be traversed-a

space, fundamentally determin 

ing the so-called reality of space. space . Scape©

quantities of asphalt, c oncrete, mud, or glue are poured across

SCAPE©, a term introduced by Rem Koo Kooll haas, implies a r ead ead

parts of landsc apes, Non Non--Sit itee strategies are superimposed onto

ing of the urban territory as landscape.4 The term prompts a

the Site, thus altering its perception.3

strategic

Site and Non-Site Non-Sit e stand in a close r elation to one another, yet they represent different states of the same phenomenon. One

binomial and dialectical nouns town -sc -scape ape and land -s -scape cape are not considered separate en tHi tHies es but are conjoined to form a

can be transposed onto th e other and vi v ice versa. The analogy in

singular expression . SCAPE© s an idiom for the edgeless city,

Thee Crystal Th Crys tal Land between city, land land,, and geology, between the

in which the distinction between center and periphery, between

topograph y o f the urban landscape and the car's dashboard,

inside and outside, between figure and ground is erased. The city

belong to both catego categorie riess as they coalesce in into to a new physical /

is understood as a continuous, t opologically formed field structure, its modulated surface covering vast extensions of

distancing

from

traditional

t er erminolo minolo gies. The

urban regions . Despite its inherent discontinuities, breaks and fragmented orders, a s pecifi pecificc form of cohesion is attributed to the contemporaneous ci citty, the urban landscape perceived as an in terconnected tissue. Koolhaas speaks of a city of exacerbated difference that does not follow the ideal of a harm o ni nicc order but is marked, throu gh the j uxtaposition of opposites, by a perma nent hybridity-a

hybridity constituting

the city's primary

connective principle. DAIDALOS 73 · 1999

 

left: HansS HansScharoun water co collor bellow be ow:: HansScharoun apital city Berl Berlin in competition entry 19 8 Stiftung StiftungArchiv Archivder der Akadem1e er Kunste Berrlin Scharoun Be ScharounWV WV 212 2

> ANNA

K LINGMANN

• HYBRID MORPHOLOGIES

9

 

In his essay The Generic City, Koolhaas Koolhaasattempts attempts t o identify the integral int egral el e lements and structures of this new form of urban fab fab ric. He writes: How to describe it? Imagine an open space, a clear ing in the forest, a leveled city. There are three elements : clearing roads, buildings, and nature; they coexist in flexible relation ships, seemingly seemingly without reason, in spectacu lar organizational diversity. Any one of of the three may dominate: sometimes the 'road' is lost lost-- to be found meandering meandering on a incomprehensible detour; sometimes you see no bui buildin lding, g, only nature; then, equally unpredictably, you are surrounded on ly by bui buildin lding. g. In some frigh frightt ening spots, all three are simultaneous ly absent. 5 Such a view leads to a dissol disso l ution of traditionally established cat egories. Infrastructure, architecture, and land cat landscape scape amal  gamate to become one complex. Instead of accentuating their above andr and right page:Zaha page:ZahaH Had adiid design or the theT Thames hamesHabitable HabitableBridge Bridge

differences and treating them as separate entities, th thee possibility

Compeii ti on. 1997 Compe

of their convergence is proposed . When architecture is declared as landscape, infrastructure as architecture, and landscape as infrastructure, then the predicament is given for potentially understanding t he phenomenon city on on other grounds than those conventionally conventionally pursued. The method deployed is that of a hybridization of termino logies, identified by Koolhaas wi witth the term MERGE© MERGE©and and allowing hitherto separate phenomena to be connected: landscape and city= SCAPE©, SCAPE©,business business and pleasure BUSINESSVACATION©, BUSINESS VACATION©,golf course and urban fabric = SMOOTH©green crust of THIN© urbanism, 6 SMOOTH©green =

2

DAID IDA ALOS 7J · 1999

 

r _·? ira te elements of the city form a network conglomerate

• 4:-i 4:-iee co components mponents which amidst divergences offers the ~- -: -:.:> .:>   of a constant constant uniformity. This unifying principle

·

: pa part rtic icular ular

notion of spatiality considered by Koolhaas, - - o Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, a type of smooth -. · :-h :-his is peculiar kind of space is not bound by a specifi specificc -.; • _: is primarily marked by vectorial displacements, displacements, mul mul-'11.l.L. .(