Deciding to Reveal Infrastructure and its Implications
Calvino’s Armilla as a Multi-Faceted Lens for Reflection
Armilla, Stripping Cities to their Bare Bones
In a similar way to mathematical algorithms such as clustering and pattern recognition, Italo Calvino’s imaginary cities help us identify similarities and differences between the various spaces we live in as soon as we transpose the text to real world elements that surround us. The potential of Invisible Cities in helping to think about past and future architecture therefore seems to be here: by fragmenting a whole city into bite-size imaginary ones that focus on limited aspects, the book gives us the opportunity to thematically analyse the world around us through specific lenses. In the context of this project I therefore looked at harnessing the tool that Invisible Cities is, to try to better understand modern challenges in Architecture. To achieve this, I chose one of the cities in Calvino’s book, namely Armilla.
Armilla challenges our traditional understanding of what a city should be: imagining a city without walls or ceilings expands our understanding of what is possible in urban design and inspires us to push the boundaries of what we consider to be the essence of a city. Without the constraints of traditional architecture, with open spaces and unobstructed views, Armilla first and foremost challenges us to imagine a city with no flat surfaces, and almost only pipes that link to every activity. In fact, the nymph’s undertakings are all centred around water which runs through what are basically all of the city’s foundations: everything from bathing, perfuming oneself, relaxing and socialising seems to be happening on, with, thanks to or around the pipes.
Now, is that really as far-fetched as it appears?
At first sight, it might seem like it is. However, if we think of pipes as of critical infrastructure that provide us with things as essential as running water, we immediately start thinking about the broader importance of infrastructure in a city. In fact, even if we never think about them, pipes are as meaningful to our modern lives as they are to the nymphs of Armilla, conducting the most essential things to our existences, namely water, energy and air.
From a more visual point of view, what seems to be key when thinking about imaginary Armilla as a tool to read our real cities is that “it has no walls or ceilings”, which is to say no partings, just an open space where pipes plane out into a floor and poetically guide our imagination in different directions as we visually envision where they will take us.
Importantly, a city with no partitions, as Calvino points out, would not be too different from a forest and this is particularly interesting when we analyse Armilla: just like a forest deprives someone from most of it’s ability to locate themselves, the lack of partitions in Armilla seems to present us with a city devoid of most if not all reference points.
Pushing this analysis even further, one could notice that pipes in cities, unlike partitions, run underground as much as they do overground and, as pipes have the ability to connect vertically, horizontally or in any imaginable direction, it seems a city without anything but them would have no up or down, at least if gravity was not involved, which for the sake of reducing limits to imagination, I did for now assume it wasn’t.
Armilla, a Lens for Political Reflection
Infrastructure, by its very nature, is inherently political as it involves allocating resources and making choices about which communities get what types of infrastructure, who pays for it, and who benefits from it. Georges-Eugene Haussmann’s work in Paris is a great example of this. His Napoleon-commissioned ambitious urban renewal program, which involved the demolition of old buildings and the construction of new infrastructure, was undertaken with the aim of modernising Paris. However, the works were controversial because they involved the demolition of many historic neighbourhoods, the displacement of thousands of people, and the construction of wide boulevards that facilitated the movement of troops and hindered the organisation of civil uprisings.
On the topic of the relationship between infrastructure and politics, it seems the decision to reveal or hide it is highly political too. Façadism, the practice of preserving only the front or façade of a building while demolishing the rest and constructing a new structure behind it, is a great example of this. While this practice may be seen as a way to preserve the history and character of a building, it ultimately undermines the essence of the original structure. Conversely, today, the extremely vast majority of buildings, regardless of their type or purpose, share common features on the inside in terms of structure and infrastructure: they all require infrastructure that includes utilities like water, electricity, and gas, as well as sewage and waste disposal systems, transportation systems (stairs, lifts…). This frame is then filled in with walls, floors, and roofs, which provide additional support and enclosure. This makes their skeleton relatively similar regardless of their size. Looking at BIM models of various types of buildings confirm this.
“Junkspace cannot be remembered. It is flamboyant yet unmemorable, like a screen saver”
Junkspace, as described in Koolhaas’ book of the same name, is a superficial and materialistic space. The emphasis on image and superficiality leads to a lack of authenticity and connection between people. Today, Junkspace is everywhere, it is used as an endlessly copied template for architecture. What is interesting about Junkspace nowadays and especially in cities like London, it is that it is no longer reserved for the poor and is marketed as being the new desirable, when really, it is nothing new.
As soon as Junkspace started springing up like mushrooms everywhere during the 20th century some architects started questioning the value of this highly celebrated yet deeply soulless new type of architecture.
In the 70’s, Richard Rogers pioneered a new style of architecture known as "high-tech architecture”, or Structural Expressionism, a style in direct opposition with Junkspace architecture in every possible way. This new style of architecture celebrated infrastructure and revealed it as much as possible. The style was associated with the broader Brutalist movement in architecture, which emphasised the use of raw, unadorned materials to create bold, monumental structures, As a result, Structural Expressionist buildings often also featured open floor plans and large, unobstructed interior spaces.
While Structural Expressionism was growing in popularity for a good 20 years, it started becoming less popular in the 80’s and 90’s. A lot of trailblazing examples of this design started being undermined by their authors not sticking to their philosophy later on. Admittedly, some reminiscence of the approach were still visible in newer work like Renzo Piano’s Shard in London, but there was no denying that it was no longer nearly as tangible as it was in his previous work like The Centre Pompidou in Paris.
Now, while being the epitome of transparent, honest and essentially authentic architecture, the fact this architectural trend hasn’t survived the test of time very well shows us that while as a society we love criticising new builds for their monotony and ‘disposable’ aspects, we haven’t settled the debate of wether we want our spaces to be honest about what they are made of or not. This is when I saw the opportunity to use the final model-making part of this project as a way to show the confrontation between two opposing architectural trends that seem to still be at war with each other: Architecture that covers and hides (Junkspace) and architecture that reveals (Structural Expressionism).