Material for thought » architecture

Play Time by Jacques Tati, Masterpiece of Post-modernism

Christophe Bruchansky — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:17:03 +0000

Play Time (1967) by Jacques Tati is a relatively unknown movie. It is a more than two hours long and highly sophisticated visual comedy with nearly no dialogues, which probably explains why it wasn’t a big success in the box office. The film is however the best criticism of modern society that I have ever seen, and is still very relevant today. It is also a sharp criticism on modern architecture, both capturing the ideals of modernism and pointing at its delusiveness.

The movie confronts the reality of human condition to its modern idealization, culminating in a final scene where jazz and spiritedness defeat the order so preciously orchestrated, at least for the time of a dance. Play Time is a post-modernist masterpiece because it plays with the paradoxes of human existence; humour and derision being the only possible postures.

Hiroshima mon amour: place and meaning

Christophe Bruchansky — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:14:15 +0000

Hiroshima mon amour (1959) directed by Alain Resnais is an emblematic film of the French New Wave. Its opening scene showing images of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb is narrated by Emmanuelle Riva, her voice delivering with great sensitivity the screenplay of Marguerite Duras. I could not stop thinking about my study on the appropriation of space when I saw the movie. The female character is from Nevers, a small town in France. The male character lives in Hiroshima, where they both met. There is a feeling of placeless during the whole film; the past of Hiroshima “had to be forgotten” and the couple seems to be lost in a city without any apprehensible meaning. The two characters are unrooted, they move from one place to another without care, all the settings look impersonal and interchangeable. Staying one more day in Hiroshima is too long and the night seems to never end. But there is no coming back, Nevers can only represent the troubled past of the female character. The paradox is that the film is undeniably about places, described in great details, but from the point of view of a painful detachment…

See also the Toronto or Elsewhere video that I did in 2006. I didn’t see the film of Alain Resnais back then but I realize now that the theme was somehow very similar.

Urban visions for Kinshasa

Christophe Bruchansky — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 12:34:31 +0000

The Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Köln gave recently a series of lectures in the context of its excellent afropolis exhibition. I had the opportunity to attend one of them: “Envisaging New Urban Futures for Kinshasa” presented by Prof. Filip de Boeck. It turned out to be somehow connected to the paper I wrote few months ago advocating a nomadic approach to the appropriation of space.

Kinshasa is growing organically and informally. The ownership of many of its habitations is contested between the owners of the land and the residents. According to prof. Filip de Boeck, conflicts are so frequent that many inhabitants move constantly from one habitation to another, avoiding any investment in their temporary locations. The living conditions are bad and unacceptable, but it would be misleading to apply too rapidly traditional concepts of home and ownership. A semi-nomadic lifestyle has its pros and cons and not having a permanent home is not necessary a synonym of promiscuity. It offers more flexibility; it forces a dialogue that can also lead to the emergence of neighbourhood networks. Kinshasa is dreaming of a modern and pre-planned city, a little like Dubai, called “La cité du fleuve”. Would it not be more suitable to encourage instead an organic development of the city that would address the needs of its inhabitants?

“Envisaging New Urban Futures for Kinshasa”
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Filip de Boeck, Leuven
Organized in co-operation with the Cologne African Studies Centre (CASC) at the University of Cologne
This lecture addresses the tensions between life as lived on the ground by millions of urban residents in Kinshasa and the official attempts which are currently being launched by the Congolese government to create a new -but exclusionist- urban environment. In order to illustrate this tension two concrete cases are introduced: a first case focuses on current modes of ‘informal’ urban expansion and random occupation of space in the city. The second case deals with the development of a new urban project, the ‘Cité du Fleuve’, which fully illustrates the official vision of Kinshasa’s urban future.

Beautiful brutalism

Christophe Bruchansky — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 11:41:29 +0000

I love concrete and brutalism. Concrete is crude and fits well in a natural environment. It doesn’t need paint and decorative accessories. It is there and fills the space.

Louvain-la-Neuve where I spent my years at university, 1999

Gardens at the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian in Lisbon, 2002

Station of the Washington DC Metro, 2003

The Barbican Estate in London, 2009

Complex Systems Theory applied on Urbanism: the Segregation Dynamics

Christophe Bruchansky — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:57:30 +0000

“Geographical segregation exists whenever the proportions of population rates of two or more populations are not homogenous throughout a defined space”. It is the norm in most of our cities: wealthy vicinities, china towns, Italian and Turkish districts are examples of non-uniform spread of populations. Laetitia Gauvin explained at the ECCS 2010 conference in Lisbon why it happens and presented some interesting variants of the phenomenon. I have edited the authors’ introduction in order to make it more accessible. I think there is much more here than technical jargon, with many social and philosophical implications.

Schelling’s segregation model for an open city: emergence of physical frontiers from a socio-spatial dynamics

By Laetitia Gauvin, Jean-Pierre Nadal and Jean Vannimenus

Segregation happens even if personal preferences to live closer to a community are small. In the 70s Schelling introduced a multi-agent model to describe the segregation dynamics that may occur with individuals having only weak preferences for ‘similar’ neighbours. Here we present a model where people move to a new town, which can be more or less attractive, and how they spread in the city. With a varying vacancy density, the leads to a variety of “phases” whose main characteristics are the interfaces between clusters of agents of different types (segregations). These interfaces may under certain condition partially or completely isolate groups from each other, leading to different phases of segregation. Here you can see what theses phases look like. Depending on the value of some parameters, the neighbourhoods are more or less clustered and dense, leading in some very specific circumstances to physical buffers between them.

Model of urban segregation

http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.3758

It is thus possible to model mathematically how different cultures and social classes cohabitate in a same environment. Will a multicultural environment be one day conceived at the urbanistic level thanks to complex systems theory?

Post-modernism, skyscrapers and non-places

Christophe Bruchansky — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 18:49:51 +0000

Check out my conversation with Kati Blom on the website of the International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture. It follows a philosophical paper I published last year on the appropriation of space.

“The objective of I S P A is to promote rigorous philosophical engagement with the subject of architecture by providing an informal platform for parties interested in furthering the cause.” Excellent initiative indeed!

Art and Architecture in Berlin – part 2

Christophe Bruchansky — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 23:13:29 +0000

Since my current occupation is to write a graphic novel, I’m free to work wherever I want. So, I have decided to stay in Berlin for few months. Here are few glimpses from the autumn:

What you can see when you walk the streets of North Neukölln for many hours such as I did.

An electronic shop on Hermannstrasse in Neukölln. People have more time in Berlin it seems, and they use it well.

A building in Volkspark Hasenheide, when futurism meets Berlin culture!

Canals in Neukölln, perfect for a breakfast.

The Jewish museum of Berlin, playful architecture if you want my opinion, even if it is on a serious subject.

A jazz concert at the b-flat club.

Art and Architecture in Berlin – part 1

Christophe Bruchansky — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 11:01:48 +0000

Since my current occupation is to write a graphic novel, I’m free to work wherever I want. So, I have decided to stay in Berlin for few months. Here are few glimpses from my last summer:

A magical art installation by Hans Peter Feldmann at the Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof. The objects are mechanically rotated and form a moving scene of shadows on the wall.

A ceiling painting by Daniel Richter at the Berlin's Hamburger Bahnhof. The contemporary work fits somehow well in the room.

The strange atmosphere of the forgotten Königskolonnaden built in 1780 in Kleistpark

The very elegant concrete structure of the Neue Nationalgalerie.

An interesting habitation building not far from Potsdamer Platz.

The site of the former Tempelhof airport is opened to the public, the ideal place for a jogging! Why is it possible only in Berlin?

Antennas of this habitation in Schöneberg are decorated with random images: nice initiative!

Building façades are gorgeous in Berlin. Here is an eccentric one in Schöneberg again.

The Ryoan-ji garden in Kyoto

Christophe Bruchansky — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 17:21:50 +0000

Japan is full of beautiful gardens, but none of them impressed me as much as the Ryoan-ji garden in Kyoto. The best is to visit the Zen garden early in the morning before the other tourists come in, and to be alone in front of the masterpiece. The garden itself is small and very simple, but once you have seen it, all other gardens seem gimmicky and missing the essential. Many books have been published about this garden, but one specific aspect that struck me is its relation with the outside. The walled garden is actually within a bigger garden, and even though you cannot see it from the inside, you can hear it and see the branches of the trees. I would even say that the best way to enjoy the outside garden is from the Ryoan-ji garden. It is the essence of any garden, offering a window to the outside world, a meaningful perspective.

The garden

The trees outside the garden.

Tokyo contemporary architecture

Christophe Bruchansky — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 10:01:24 +0000

I walked a lot while I was in Tokyo. The Shibuya district is particularly rich in new buildings, here are the pictures.

The H&M building by Jun Mitsui Architects

The Prada shop by Herzog and de Meuron

The Tod's building by Toyo Ito

Happy to be back at the hotel after this long walk.