Garden City

[Left Images: "Lorategi-hiriaren eskema, 1902.,"by Ebenezer Howard]

The Garden City Movement was founded by Ebenezer Howard in 1898 as an urban planning system, which made the central city, the garden cities and the country in between to be a self-sufficient unit generating under a specific rule. Howard believes that this rule, which carefully balances area of residences, industry and agriculture, would solve the problem of city’s growth.

Containing advantages of both town and country, these organized garden cities would withdraw the magnetism of the central city. Once the magnetism is reduced, there would be no longer endless expansion of the central city with population inflation.

Two garden cities were designed according to garden city principals which also influence the United States. The idea of ‘garden city’ is transferred into ‘garden suburb’ which is more practical. Without the commercial and industrial components of the garden city, the garden suburb is just a residential area. The quality of living is improved without the magnetism decreased.

According to the United Nations, more and half of world’s population live in urban areas since last year, which shows cities still keep attractive for most of people. In some developing city such as Shanghai Parks and gardens become more and more precious while the land price is rising. The enlargement of city could not be avoided. High-rises are always used to broaden the central of the city in vertical.

In the same way, a city could get to be a high-rise. When the country is laid above the town or the city, a new kind of garden city comes up. Elevators or tunnels will be substituted for highways, which quickly connect city and country.

'Underground'

'Underground' from Jun ZHU on Vimeo.

Digital Materiality?

[Image: 'Private House, Riedikon, 2004-2009', by Gramazio & Kohler]

In tonight's lecture, Matthias Kohler maintained that they just design the process but not the form, shape or geometry. The Digital Materiality is more like 'Digital Construction', but the robot as the main role in all their projects does extend the possibilities of ordinary material's use. Even these common bricks could perform so impressive, what about these new materials?

The facade of Private House, Riedikon not only gives different appearance in different position, but also provide changed transparency inside and outside. There isn't any hi-tech stuff, but just normal wood.

PARK(ing)

[Image: "Forest on Foot", by Interstice Architects]

How to combine the city with countryside? In the project PARK(ing) Day, the metered parking spaces inside the city are temporarily transformed into temporary public parks as ‘PARK’ spaces. It aims to find out the range of possible activities for this short-term lease.

This project seems to be same as the Rockplug I mentioned before. However, they actually use the opposite ways to combine the city with countryside. One is bringing countryside to the city; the other is bringing the city to countryside. In PARK(ing) Day, although these are only short-term lease, the experience of nature is real. In Rockplug, there are trees surrounding you, but you still have to answer a phone call or type a file on a notebook.

People cannot totally get rid of city in countryside or on their vocation, they could be pulled back at any time instantly by the 3G network through a single iphone. Once they get back from the countryside, it is also impossible to throw the countryside away, because all the soil and seeds stick to your boots or coat are the extension of nature. Therefore, man become the media between the city and countryside.

City - Nature

[Images: "St Pauls- A late afternoon plunge,"by Jonathan Glancey]

[Images: "Aqualta: Times Square at Night, NYC,"by Studio Lindfors]

[Images: "Terminal 2 - Fryderyk Chopin International Airport,"by Kobas Laksa]

The common point of these pictures, which illustrate a future flooded London, New York City after a catastrophic flood and Terminal 2 at Warsaw airport when there are few flights, is all the artificial city space goes back to nature.

People always have a dream of living in a garden city or countryside in order to get in touch with nature. This kind of dreams do come true in these pictures and many science fiction films such as ‘Twelve Monkeys’, ‘I’m a legend’, in which plants grow out of the concrete while lions wander in a library. However, it is cruel to tell the differences between these scenes and people’s dream, that is people have to live in another way.

Factories would be abandoned once a city is no longer an industrial city, while airport would be out of use due to an unaffordable price of oil. Then wild cats appear together with weeds in these man-made buildings. In the same way, after some catastrophe, the city would be reshaped by the nature while human could do nothing. That time the city space will be occupied by nature really.

The conversion from city to nature is in conjunction with the break down of the contemporary system. Once the usual city working style doesn’t exist anymore, people will be forced to change the mode of living. In my opinion, if men really want to be close to nature while they are still inside the city, they need to change the living way, which could result from a new viewing way of the environment.

Back To City

Back To City from Jun ZHU on Vimeo.