Kenneth Frampton
1995
As markets become increasingly global and capital increasingly fluid, the multinational market system disseminates itself over the face of the earth and with it, of course, the ubiquitous megalopolis.
ARGUMENT:
1. Frampton discusses the power of market forces in the global building market versus the relatively small percentage of building activity actually undertaken by architects and planners. He says that this trend is not co-incidental but has been achieved systematically, contrived to further the interests of deregulated land speculation and to sustain larger units of corporate industrial production.
2. Cultural and ecological predicament of the megalopolis is the direct result of conscious political and ideological decisions made at the highest level of the power system.
Example: General Motors Company, North America
Conscious but benign neglect of railroad infrastructure and general elimination of all existing forms of public transport in post war US. Encouragement of clandestine purchase of public transit lines just to later shut them down. GM was directly involved in such operation in Los Angeles where until the 1950’s there was an extensive and highly convenient system of suburban rail transit. This network was closed down and rail lines were appropriated for freeway system. The inevitable result was a high dependence on motorcar and a proliferation of the car-accessed suburban supermarket.
Networks involved: Deregulated land speculation – symbiotic oil and automobile industries.
Deregulation operations such as that of the US were followed in Europe and other parts of the world.
Example: Rotterdam, Netherlands
In 1974, the “physical-plan” for the development of the city was replaced by a “structure plan”. Strategy conceived by Melvin Webber of a non-place urban realm to maximise economic development of the region. Freed large areas of unbuilt reclaimed land for speculation by expanding national road system.
- Evidence of the interests of maximising multinational finance together with the building industry’s to rationalise and monopolise its output through ‘package-deal’ approach.
- Undermining of the architectural profession and the title of the architect; minimise resistance from the profession and to maximise the thrust of free-market development.
- Rise of the builder-developer.
Consequence for the architecture and planning professions:
- Reduction of the art of environmental planning to the value-free, applied science of land-use and transportation management. Planning strategy became logistical and managerial.
Reaction:
Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism,
Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander
- An alternative low-rise high-density courtyard houses, residential land settlement pattern for the US, based on the mass ownership of the automobile.
Other Examples:
1. Rem Koolhaas - proposal for Lille megalopolis
2. Robert Moses - expansion of parkway system into the urban region
3. Alison and Peter Smithson – London Roads Study 1953, concepts of “land-castle” and “mat-building”.
4. Peter Land – organisation of Previ experimental quarter, Lima, Peru.
5. Aktion Schweiz – Swiss National Exhibition 1963
6. J.R. James – linear city proposal for British Home Counties, London
7. John Turner – strategy for housing deficit of the Third World.
8. Doxiades – Dynapolis model
9. Shadrach Woods – pamphlet titled ‘What U Can Do’.
Frampton provides a twelve-point assessment of where we stand as opposed to what we might do. (refer to article for the twelve points)
Key words and phrases: non-place urban realm, 'motopian' city, 'dystopia of the megalopolis, post-industrial 'scar tissue', megalopolis as a new nature, atopy, dystopia, landscaped built forms
Conclusion:
- Call to rethink our unreflecting submission to arcane theories that have no practical or ethical application to architecture and urban design.
- Need to conceive a remedial landscape that is capable of playing a critical and compensatory role in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodification of the man-made world.
- Assertion of the landscaped form as the fundamental material of a fragmentary urbanism is of greater consequence than the freestanding aestheticised object.
1995
As markets become increasingly global and capital increasingly fluid, the multinational market system disseminates itself over the face of the earth and with it, of course, the ubiquitous megalopolis.
ARGUMENT:
1. Frampton discusses the power of market forces in the global building market versus the relatively small percentage of building activity actually undertaken by architects and planners. He says that this trend is not co-incidental but has been achieved systematically, contrived to further the interests of deregulated land speculation and to sustain larger units of corporate industrial production.
2. Cultural and ecological predicament of the megalopolis is the direct result of conscious political and ideological decisions made at the highest level of the power system.
Example: General Motors Company, North America
Conscious but benign neglect of railroad infrastructure and general elimination of all existing forms of public transport in post war US. Encouragement of clandestine purchase of public transit lines just to later shut them down. GM was directly involved in such operation in Los Angeles where until the 1950’s there was an extensive and highly convenient system of suburban rail transit. This network was closed down and rail lines were appropriated for freeway system. The inevitable result was a high dependence on motorcar and a proliferation of the car-accessed suburban supermarket.
Networks involved: Deregulated land speculation – symbiotic oil and automobile industries.
Deregulation operations such as that of the US were followed in Europe and other parts of the world.
Example: Rotterdam, Netherlands
In 1974, the “physical-plan” for the development of the city was replaced by a “structure plan”. Strategy conceived by Melvin Webber of a non-place urban realm to maximise economic development of the region. Freed large areas of unbuilt reclaimed land for speculation by expanding national road system.
- Evidence of the interests of maximising multinational finance together with the building industry’s to rationalise and monopolise its output through ‘package-deal’ approach.
- Undermining of the architectural profession and the title of the architect; minimise resistance from the profession and to maximise the thrust of free-market development.
- Rise of the builder-developer.
Consequence for the architecture and planning professions:
- Reduction of the art of environmental planning to the value-free, applied science of land-use and transportation management. Planning strategy became logistical and managerial.
Reaction:
Community and Privacy: Toward a New Architecture of Humanism,
Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander
- An alternative low-rise high-density courtyard houses, residential land settlement pattern for the US, based on the mass ownership of the automobile.
Other Examples:
1. Rem Koolhaas - proposal for Lille megalopolis
2. Robert Moses - expansion of parkway system into the urban region
3. Alison and Peter Smithson – London Roads Study 1953, concepts of “land-castle” and “mat-building”.
4. Peter Land – organisation of Previ experimental quarter, Lima, Peru.
5. Aktion Schweiz – Swiss National Exhibition 1963
6. J.R. James – linear city proposal for British Home Counties, London
7. John Turner – strategy for housing deficit of the Third World.
8. Doxiades – Dynapolis model
9. Shadrach Woods – pamphlet titled ‘What U Can Do’.
Frampton provides a twelve-point assessment of where we stand as opposed to what we might do. (refer to article for the twelve points)
Key words and phrases: non-place urban realm, 'motopian' city, 'dystopia of the megalopolis, post-industrial 'scar tissue', megalopolis as a new nature, atopy, dystopia, landscaped built forms
Conclusion:
- Call to rethink our unreflecting submission to arcane theories that have no practical or ethical application to architecture and urban design.
- Need to conceive a remedial landscape that is capable of playing a critical and compensatory role in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodification of the man-made world.
- Assertion of the landscaped form as the fundamental material of a fragmentary urbanism is of greater consequence than the freestanding aestheticised object.
