URBAN CRITIQUE

403.2 URBAN CRITIQUE

WATER & THE CITY

INTRODUCTION

When beginning to explore and understand the instance of creation that lies within a cities life, we as urbanists often reside on the study of form as a visual explanation of the organic process that has manifested the urban environments we see today. Whether it’s Lynch’s ideas regarding centralities of nodal, operation structure (Lynch, 1981) or the gated centre points that David Shane refers to as enclaves (Shane, 2007), Form based Centralities and starting points are often indicators that explain the seemingly spontaneous moment of the birth of a city, however the true reasons that lie behind the point of creation are often much more deeply seated and often more subtle than the intricate form and patterns observed in the urban grain we see today.

“At some point, topography and natural features such as rivers show in street patterns. The street and block patterns of early European hill cities reflect topography. Similarly the impact of rivers shows, not only as undulating linear bands of public space between areas of streets and development blocks, but as determinants of the development patterns themselves”. (Jacobs 1993, 256)

Jacobs explores the idea that the city’s form can show the topographical conditions that exist amongst its mass, extents and physical representation, which in turn are determining factors in the development of the cities we explore with our bodies. However, a basic and entirely understandable relationship occurs between the water and the city at the initial point of inception, which exists in a much purer and rounded form. Within architecture there often lies an idea of the human domain being bounded by extremities, Sverre Fehn explores the primordial essence of the “cave” identifying it as a beginning.

“In the beginning the cave and earth itself were the dimensions of the cave. The Floor has its own thickness of earth and the dimension of the cave stopped at the beginning of the sea” (Fehn, 2009)

He associates the sea as a boundary of the habitable domain, defining the extents of tangible space and the horizon representing the infinite (Fehn, 2009). Contrary to this idea of water being a boundary, or an element that lends itself to defining the termination point of our physical domain, water was a starting point for the city. To The city, it doesn’t carry the same meaning of infinite; it operates as a point of creation that marks the cities embarkment on a linear process of life. This symbolises a uniqueness that lies within the cities interaction with the water it bounds.

 

If a body of water can be identified as the starting point of man modern cities, then there must be an explanation of the reason as to why this relationship engages. Spiros Kostof defines the city, as a place where a certain energized crowding of peopl­­­­e takes place, this has nothing to do with absolute size or with absolute numbers; it has to do with settlement density (Kostof, 1999).  If the city is a place where a collection of energized crowding occurs, there must be a conscious overwhelming decision present in the collective inhabitants that determined the location of the city in terms of space, and the reasons that drew and energized further inhabitants. After the first civilisations of the Mesopotamian era, the location of many cities which still exist in current day are existentially linked to the idea of water, London, Paris, Vienna, Istanbul and other leading historic world cities are all formed on the shores of some type of body of water. There are numerous practical explanations for this, such as Defence, Trade, Transportation and food, which are all provide intrinsic advantages towards such a location. However, the fundamental idea that often describes the starting point of the modern city is the idea of water and the properties it possesses.

The relationship that occurred between the infant city and the body of water it was chosen to relate to was not coincidental, the relationship was entwined in fate; the importance of water as a basic and pure element held a profound influence on the people who decide to settle and the city as an organism or machine holds water as an integral part of it’s operation; The relationship was destined to occur. Since this point of creation, the relationship between water and the city was subjected to an immeasurable number of influences that shaped and changed it’s state over time. Although these factors exist in an existentially intricate form, there are a number of trends that can be observed and attributed to major paradigm shifts within the development of the cities we inhabit and observe today. Essentially, these trends or shifts can be explained in the sense of psychological and physical both operating in a paradoxical sense.

As inhabitants, designers or purely actors within the urban environment, we had an initial psychological understanding of water that was mainly born upon the understanding of philosophy and mythology and the memories and experiences we drew from it. This psychological understanding, based upon knowledge and emotion shaped our view of water and its role within the city, which in turn shaped the forms we designed and produced; this is an entirely complex subject matter as it is subject to influence by art, culture, economics e.c.t.  Secondly the city was subjected to a lifetime of physical influences that dictated the condition of the urban to water relationship, the city was shaped by factors such as supply, trade, transportation and location. These factors had a directly observable influence on the physical form of the city. Both of these processes operate in a paradox; for example the changing way we held water within our mind had an effect upon the forms we created which in turn had a counter effect upon the way we consciously observed water. The city as a collection of actors can be viewed as the mind; the psychological state of the urban-water relationship and the physical can be represented by the forms we create and shape.

This thesis exploration aims to firstly identify the course and condition of the urban-water relationship over the life of the generic water-born city, observing and identifying trends and points of paradigm transition in order to understand the current state of how the water born city relates to it’s specific body of water and how the inhabitants view the role and importance of this body of water within the operational life of the city. After identifying the modern state of this relationship, I aim to explore a series of works by prolific modern day architects that still view and hold and adopt a relationship with water that is true to that of the first inhabitants of the city. These examples include the works of such architects as Louis Barragan, and Tadao Ando; all of whom share a passion for the basic beauty and power that water holds within the experience of our built environment.  Fundamentally this exploration will lead to a thesis design project for the Karaköy area of Istanbul, an important water-front section of the city that borders the Bosphorous that currently resides as a blank canvas that bears the scars of a struggle between city and water, that will undoubtedly follow upon the precedent of standardised regeneration unless it’s true potential is realised.