CONTENT

Foreword

10

Ilka & Andreas Ruby

City of andandand...

14

Marc Anglil and Cary Siress

between ecology
and economy
Introduction:
Beyond Programmed Obsolescence

20

Fernando Diez

A Green Masterplan Is Still a Masterplan

22

Mark Jarzombek

Zone

30

Keller Easterling

Aguada Flood-Park:
Recovering a Post-Industrial Urban Stream in Santiago de Chile

46

Pablo Allard and Jos Rosas

The Good, the Bad, and the Utilitarian:

Singapores Schizophrenic Urbanism

52

Ting-Ting Zhang and William Tan

Running the Numbers

68

Chris Jordan

Cityness
Saskia Sassen

84

between global
and local
Introduction:
The Global-Local Nexus and the New Urban Order

88

Amer Moustafa

Re: Doing Dubai

90

Wes Jones

Sustainable Difference

110

Simon Hubacher

Caribbean Strips: Tourism in the Caribbean

116

Juan Alfonso Zapata and Supersudaca

Permanent Visitors

124

Donald L. Bates

Mallorca: Island in Progress

128

Marc Rder

[Restricted Access] or The Open City?

138

Kees Christiaanse

between public
and private
Introduction:
Citizen or Shareholder?

146

Kaarin Taipale

Two Houses in Seoul

148

Minsuk Cho

Re-Searching (for) the Public: Other Means of Design

In Former East German Cities
Ines Weizman

156

Empty Lots: Collective Action of Experimental Urban Occupation

164

Louise Marie Cardoso Ganz

Ciclopaseo in Quito: Cycling Citizenship in the City

170

Ximena Ganchala

The City of Production:

A Fantastic Opportunity to Experiment with Positive Capitalism

176

Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix

Going Public

190

Sarah Whiting

A More Socially and Environmentally Sustainable City

194

Enrique Pealosa

between sanctioned
and shadow order
Introduction:
Learning from the Kinetic City

202

Rahul Mehrotra

In-Between Legal and Illegal

204

Philippe Cabane

Evasion of Temporality

208

Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss

Dont Underestimate the Rice Fields

218

Juan Du

Trans-Border Flows: An Urbanism Beyond the Property Line

226

Teddy Cruz

Urban Flux

240

Hiromi Hosoya and Markus Schaefer

Tabula Non Rasa. Toward a Performative Contextualism

252

Ilka & Andreas Ruby in Conversation with Jean-Philippe Vassal

between permanent
and transitory
Introduction:
The Endless Present

266

Eyal Weizman

Leisure Nomads of the New Third Age:

Nomadic Network Urbanism of the Senior RV Community in the US
Deane Simpson

268

Refugee Camps or Ideal Cities in Dust and Dirt

276

Manuel Herz

Model Houses and Show Flats or How to Buy an Apartment in Korea

Haewon Shin

290

International Aid Cities: A By-Product of Reconstruction in Postwar Cities

300

Pushkaraj Karakat and Snehal Hannurkar

Strategies for the Reuse of Temporary Housing

308

Cassidy Johnson

Whatever Happened to Nomadism?

312

Florian Lippe

Indifferent Urbanism or Modernism Was Almost Alright

326

Robert Somol

between Standard
and Appropriation
Introduction:
Urban Ninjas and Pirate Planners

332

Mark Lee

Subversive Standards or United Bottle: A Product Designed for Misuse

334

Dirk Hebel and Jrg Stollmann

Elemental: Housing As an Investment not a Social Expense

344

Andrs Iacobelli and Alejandro Aravena

Caracas MetroCable: Bridging the Formal/Informal City

358

Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, Urban-Think Tank

Underneath the Highway

368

Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix

Appendix
Authors
Image Credits

390
398

Holcim Foundation
Author Index

399
400

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

USA
Jordan p. 68

Hambu
Jarzom
Amsterdam
Christia
p.
141
Christiaanse
Easterl
Hubacher p. 110
Be
London
Ch
Leipzig
Sassen p. 85
p.
Pealosa p. 199 Weizman L
Bordeaux
Paris p. 205 J
Vassal p. 253
Cabane
Portugal/Spain Majorca
Rder p.128
Bates p. 105
Rome
Pealos
Madrid
Pealosa p. 199
Tunisia
Bates p. 125
Canary Islands Marocco
p.
125
Bates
Bates p. 124

Chicago
Sassen p. 86

Los Angeles
Tichuana
New York
Christiaanse p. 138
General
Cruz p.226 p. 36 Fort Worthp. 36
Sassen p. 85
Easterling
Easterling
Hebel/Stollmann p. 334
Pealosa p. 199
p.
138
New Orleans
Glendale
Christiaanse
p.
23
Quartzsite
p.
274
Jarzombek
Simpson
Whiting p. 190
Simpson p. 271
Sea Side
Houston
p. 143
p.
138
Christiaanse
Christiaanse
Cuba
Riviera Maya Zapata p. 118 Puerto Plata
Zapata p. 121
Zapata p. 121
Cap Verde
Punta Cana
Mexico City
Bates p. 124
p. 121
p.
201
Zapata
Jamaica
Pealosa
p. 118
p.
84
Zapata
Bridgetown
Sassen
Zapata p. 118
Caracas
Klumpner/Brillembourg p. 385

Lagos
Sassen p. 86
Easterling p. 41
Christiaanse p. 13

Bogota
Sassen p. 86
Pealosa p. 199
Quito
Ganchala p. 170
Brasilia
Jarzombek p. 23

Iquique
Iacobelli/Aravena p. 352

Belo Horizonte
Ganz p. 164
Sao Paolo
Pealosa p. 201
Christiaanse p. 138

Santiago de Chile
Allard/Rosas p. 46

Chad
Herz p

Buenos Aires
Angelil/Siress p. 14

urg
mbek p. 23
aanse p. 145
ling p. 31
erlin
hristiaanse p. 141

Karakorum
Lippe p. 314 Ulaanbaatar
Lippe p. 318
Beijing
Astana
Tsetserleg
Istanbul
Belgrad
p.
34
p. 144
Christiaanse p. 143
Easterling
Lippe p. 315
Weiss p. 208 Christiaanse
Cheju
Kaesong
Easterling p. 35
sa p. 199
Easterling p. 35 Seoul
Turkey
Tokyo
p.
290
Bates p. 125
Shinp. 148
Pealosa p. 200
p. 140
Cho
Johnson p. 309
China
Christiaanse
Shanghai
p. 24
Cabane p. 205
Kish
p. 84
Jarzombek
Kabul
Jerusalem
Sassen
p. 38
Hannurkar/Karakat p. 300
Christiaanse p. 143 Easterling
Pealosa p. 198
Guangming
Christiaanse p. 143
p.24
Jarzombek
Qatar
Easterling p. 35
Easterling p. 45 Dubai
Chandigarh
Islamabad
Guangzhou
p.
125
p. 23 Jarzombek p. 23
Shenzen Hosoya Schaefer p. 240
Bates
p. 33 Jarzombek
d
Easterling
Du p. 218
p. 281
Khartoum p. 42
Christiaanse p. 140
Hyderabad
Easterling p. 33
Easterling
Jones p. 90 Bombay p. 33 Easterling p. 32
Gutierrez/Portefaix p. 368
Easterling
Saipan
Subic Bay
Thailand
India
Easterling p. 42
Jarzombek p. 23
Cabane p. 205
Cabane p. 205
156

Linz
Jarzombek p. 27

38

Bangui
Herz p. 293

Singapore
Tan/Zhang p. 52
Easterling p. 33

Zimbabwe
Cabane p. 205
Mauritius
Easterling p. 32

Halifax
Jarzombek p. 23

Johannesburg
Christiaanse p. 138
South Africa
Bates p. 125
Melbourne
Pealosa p. 197

Canberra
Jarzombek p. 23

FOREWORD

Rem Koolhaas, Whatever

happened to urbanism?, in
Rem Koolhaas und Bruce Mau,
SMLXL, (Monacelli Press 1995),
p. 961.

10

How to explain the paradox that urbanism, as a profession, has disappeared at the moment when urbanization everywhere after decades of
constant acceleration is on its way to establishing a definitive, global
triumph of the urban scale?1

The book you hold in your hands evolved from a debate-platform, the
Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction on Urban Transformation,
which took place in 2007 at Tongji University in Shanghai, China. For
three days more than 250 professionals from over 40 countries
architects, urban planners, engineers, scholars, representatives from
business and governments met in working groups and for panel
sessions to discuss the challenges cities face today in respect to
urban change. The Forum was the second international symposium for
both academics and practitioners hosted by the Swiss-based Holcim
Foundation for Sustainable Construction to encourage a dialog on the
future of the built environment. The first Forum addressing the issue
of Basic Needs took place at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
(ETH Zurich), Switzerland, in 2004. Continuing the three-year cycle, the
next Forum will be held in 2010.

Dedicated to the topic of Urban Transformation, it seems only fitting that the book would also undergo a good deal of transformation
in the process of its making. Thus, this publication does not reproduce
the conference literally, but develops it further. In addition to a selection of the best papers and keynote lectures given at the Forum in
Shanghai the book also features a number of additional contributions
by experts whom we have specially invited to contribute to the publication. The structure of the book has evolved out of the Forums program, which was divided into five thematic working groups focusing
on various phenotypes of urbanism today: green, touristic, informal,

temporary, normative. Finally, we added a sixth chapter dedicated to

the topic of public and private, as it turned out to be one of the most
pertinent themes of many contributions.
Indeed, if there was a recurrent theme running through it all, then
it was the collective awareness of the need to elevate the discourse
of urbanism to match and catch the myriad of expressions materialized in the city today. After the failure of the big urban narrative of
Modernism which had attempted to subject urban realities worldwide to the reductive model of the contemporary city in the wake of
CIAM and, likewise, after the failure of Postmodernism to retrodate
the present city to a past that never existed by reverting to past
urban typologies, we have finally come to understand that any urban
discourse has to first and foremost embrace the city as a multitude
of conditions that do not (and dont have to) conform to one universal
model. The end of the grand narrative has enabled us to go beyond the
phantom pain of the disappearance of urbanism as a profession as
suggested by Rem Koolhaas and embrace the city as it is experienced from outside the professional realm. For clearly, the very notion
of urban is arguably one of the hot topics of contemporary culture; it
has become the synonym of cool and serves as a Zeitgeist indicator
of lifestyle, music, food, fashion, and design. Yet precisely what urban
means in regard to urbanism and the city has become increasingly
blurred. Depending on specific geographic, climatic, economic, and
cultural conditions, there are many, and often radically conflicting
implications of urban developments: the hyper-dense megalopolis
coexists with endless sprawl; traditional street life exists side by side
with massive web traffic; the hardware of architecture is augmented
by the software of the event; high-speed urbanism in China happens
simultaneously with the phenomenon of shrinking cities and the slow
dying-out of small towns in the highly industrialized developed countries. Even the very idea of the city as the result of planning has been
deeply questioned by the roaring surge of informal favela-style housing settlements, which represent the type of urban condition that more
than half of the worlds population today calls their home. As opposed to the colonial era of the 19th century, the term urban today no

11

longer indexes a normative cultural concept such as expressed, for

instance, in the European City but represents a cosmos of extremely
varied notions determined by geographical, cultural, and individual
preferences. Tell me what is urban for you and I can tell you who you
are. Hence, if we want to get a grip on what is urban today, we have
to capture it in all its disguises, gradations, and transformations occurring simultaneously on a global scale.
This is exactly what this book is about. Its contributors take us on a
global drive to discover emerging urban conditions in very different
places ranging from global cities that we all know about and have
been to as well as remote areas we may have heard of but where we
are unlikely to ever set foot. All of these urban conditions are equally
relevant regardless of the perceived critical mass of their issues.
There is neither hierarchy nor ranking between them, as it should be
clear after frustrating years of boycotted global climate conferences
that the challenges of our urban age can only be met with a concerted
action. Whatever happens in one place is bound to have consequences
beyond its own local perimeter, and sometimes even proliferate globally as the, by now, proverbial butterfly effect of chaos theory. The
hic et nunc of global society clearly needs to incorporate other places
and times in its definition of presence.
The contributions in the book can be differentiated into basically
four types: theoretical essays, case studies, projective prototypes, and
artworks. They all use their respective means of expression to uncover
different aspects of the discursive landscape of the city that this
book wants to probe. The theoretical essays try to trace some of the
major vectors of urban transformation today. They attempt to frame
the larger perspective on crucial developments, shedding light on the
important shifts that have occurred within recent debates on the city
and proposing new priorities for the makers of the city today. The
case studies are acute observations of specific urban conditions from
all over the globe. Analyzing urban transformation on a local level,
they expose their inherent logic in order to allow us to see that they
are not only locally relevant, but offer potential prototypical conditions which could be applied in other contexts as well. The projec-

12

tive prototypes are both speculative and real projects by architects,

urban designers, engineers, and others which test alternative modes
of urban organization, such as: how to use social housing subsidies
in order to double the built housing surface; how to retrofit a favela
city with its own public transportation system connected to the entire
public transportation network of the larger metropolitan region, or
how to re-route state funds for demolition of housing into its conservation and substantial upgrading. Lastly, the artworks selected unfold
yet another view onto the city: our attention is guided to aspects of
the books topic that would otherwise escape verbalization, aspects
that fly below the radar of critical commentary.

We would like to thank all contributors for their help in making
this book possible, for their efforts in reworking their Forum papers,
supplying illustrations and constructive feedback during the making
of the book. And in the name of all of them, we would like to thank
the Holcim Foundation for its generosity in organizing a conference
as inspiring as the Forum in Shanghai and in sponsoring this book to
make the substance of the conference accessible to a global audience of city aficionados. With its engagement the Holcim Foundation
aims to provide a vital platform for contemporary discourses, which
are necessarily heterogeneous and not limited to represent a specific
position, but are meant to explore the city as the most crucial ecology of the 21st century in all its complex and controversial aspects.
Last but not least, we wish to express our distinguished gratitude to
Marc Anglil, member of the Management Board and of the Technical
Competence Center of the Foundation, and to Edward Schwarz, General
Manager of the Holcim Foundation, who have each in their own ways
been instrumental in the making of this book with tremendous support
and invaluable advice.

Ilka & Andreas Ruby

13

between ecology
and economy
Beyond Programmed Obsolescence
If any doubt remains as to who the true magicians of
contemporary civilization are, globalization has made it
clear: the economists. As religion has been in the previous centuries, economy has become the cornerstone of
political decisions and the compass for private ones.
The notion of economic benefit has become a taboo:
the more and more rapidly a society produces, consumes,
and discards, the more successful it is considered. This
is what feeds the Gross National Product, and, therefore,
all economic indexes. Little importance is given to the
utility of such products. In the last decades of the 20th
century, a way to measure the development of a nation
even consisted in measuring the quantity of garbage produced per capita: the more, the better. Programmed obsolescence has become a goal.
20

0.5 km

waters
forest
agriculture
settlement area
infrastructure
fallow land

Fig. 3: Wigger City, Netzstadt, Franz Oswald and Peter Baccini, 2003, plan.

Lloyd Wrights Broadacre City and the ideas of Lewis Mumford,

Oswald argues that the urban need not be centered in massive
power-cities, but that it can and must be distributed. The not-inthe-center quality of these micro-cities would be offset by their
connectivity to the larger urban fabric and their economic semiindependence. The distinction between city and suburb will be
removed: there will only be urbs. What makes these cities urban,
regardless of size, is an attention to time-honored qualities, but
these cities will be designed so that from the point of view of certain
environmental issues, like electricity, engineering, food production,
and waste, they can be relatively self-sustaining. It is no accident
that the center of Oswalds study is the call for a new Swiss city to be
called Wigger City, located at the interstices between Zurich, Basel
and Bern.Fig.3 Like all real cities, Wigger would exist as an economic
reality. Its buildings would not have to look strange or be dripping
with vines to be green.
One could compare Wigger City with soon to be completed Solar
City in Linz, Austria, which is advertised as the largest settlement
ever built on the basis of the tenets of sustainable architecture. The
masterplan was made by Roland Rainer. Solar City has parallels to
some of the ideas worked out independently by Oswald and Bac-

27

of spatial products (e.g., offices, factories, warehouses, calling centers, software production facilities, etc.) that easily migrate around
the world. More and more programs and spatial products thrive in
legal lacunae and political quarantine, enjoying the insulation and lubrication of zone exemptions. Indeed, the zone as corporate enclave
is a primary aggregate unit of many new forms of the contemporary
global city, offering a clean slate, one-stop entry into the economy of a
foreign country. Most banish the negotiations that are usually associated with the contingencies of urbanism negotiations such as those
concerning labor, human rights or environment. The zone is now the
new urban paradigm.
Many of the new legal hybrids of zone, oscillating between visibility and invisibility, identity and anonymity, have neither been mapped
nor analyzed for their disposition their patency, exclusivity, aggression, resilience or violence.

1934

1960

FTZ FOREIGN TRADE ZONE

WAREHOUSING
US Foreign Trade Zone Act, 1934

EPZ EXPORT PROCESSI

WAREHOUSING AND MANUFACTURING

e.g. Shanon International Airport, Ireland, 1960, Kandla, India, 1965
Korea, 1970, Mauritius, 1971(entire country), Bataan, Philippines, 19
Iksan, Korea, 1973...

The Zone Calls Itself a City

32

The zone often calls itself a city, where city is either a noun describing an urban area or a modifier indicating a place where something is to be found in abundance (e.g., a shopping center might be
called shopping city). HITEC City, Ebene Cybercity or King Abdullah
Economic City, among hundreds of others, take on the title of city
as an enthusiastic expression of the zones evolution beyond being
merely a location for warehousing and transshipment. Many countries in South Asia, China and Africa used export processing zones as
a means of announcing their entry into a global market as independent post-colonial contractors of outsourcing and off-shoring. For
example, with Ebene Cybercity, Mauritius has moved beyond EPZ
development to IT campus development with help from the developers of HITEC City in Hyderabad. Dubai has rehearsed the park or
zone with almost every imaginable program beginning with Dubai

Internet City in 2000, the first IT campus as free trade zone. Each
new enclave is called a city: Dubai Health Care City, Dubai Maritime
City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai Techno
Park, Dubai Media City, Dubai Outsourcing Zone, Dubai Humanitarian City, Dubai Industrial City and Dubai Textile City.
The Zone Is a Double
Now major cities and national capitals are engineering their own
zone doppelgngers their own non-national territory within which
to legitimize non-state transactions. World cities like Hong Kong,
Singapore, and Dubai, which have assumed the ethos of free zone
for their entire territory, have become models for newly minted
cities. The world capital and national capital can shadow each other,
alternately exhibiting a regional cultural ethos and a global ambition.

1965

ING ZONE

5, Kaohsiung, 1966, Masan,

972(1st EPZ in Asia),

BIP BORDER INDUSTRIAL PROGRAM

WAREHOUSING AND MANUFACTURING
1965 Border States(1980s through Mexico)

Duplicity is essential to the zone. Both state and non-state actors use
the other as proxy or camouflage to create the most advantageous
political or economic climate. Companies like CIDCO and SKIL
can now be hired, as they were in Navi Mumbai, to deliver infrastructural, legal environments like those in Shenzhen and Pudong
city-states with not only commercial areas but also a full array of
programs. New Songdo City, an expansion of the Incheon free trade
territories near Seoul, is a complete international city based on the
Dubai or Singapore model designed by Kohn Pederson Fox. Here,
aspiring to the cosmopolitan urbanity of New York, Venice, and
Sydney, the zone is filled with residential, cultural, and educational
programs in addition to its commercial programs. While the emotional streaming videos for the smaller cities of developing countries
are often accompanied by tinny fanfares and low production values,
the New Songdo City video messages are accompanied by new age
tunes or heroic strains in the John Williams style the spectacular

33

The Good, the Bad,

and the Utilitarian: Singapores
Schizophrenic Urbanism
Ting-Ting Zhang and William Tan

Deyan Sudjic, Virtual City, in

Blueprint (Feb 1994).
2

William Gibson, Disneyland

with the Death Penalty, in Wired
(Sept 1993).

Singapore Tourism Boards marketing slogan for Singapore.

Rem Koolhaas and Bruce

Mau, S, M, L, XL, (Monacelli
Press 1995).

52

Any attempts to characterize Singapores unique conditions stem from Western oriented appropriations: Virtual
City1 and Disneyland with a Death Penalty2 are simply
tongue-in-cheek punch-lines that do neither the city
nor the critics justice. This city is, as it describes itself,
Uniquely Singapore.3 Singapore lives in fear in fear of the
lack of natural resources, in fear of its infinitely larger
neighboring states, in fear of being the only secular state
in the region, in fear of being forgotten by the potential
investors as international attention focuses on India and
China as the emerging Far East market, and in fear of being seen as a Third World ex-colony. As these fears drive
the state, the state drives the nation with fears. In fact,
it is by this incredibly intense urge to emancipate itself
from its Third World colonial past and to make itself
a First World country that results in the Singaporean
dream of creating a society as a seamless operating system of constant economical growth with a life-long subscription to efficiency hence, Singapore Inc., a Singapore
dream: a truly First World Singapore with all its citizens
as employees. Economic well-being and urban transformation are seen as vital goals of being a part of the First
World; total control is seen as the only way to achieve
these goals. Therefore, a social agreement was accorded
whereby the citizens give up their political participation
in exchange for the governments promise of security
and prosperity. Armed with this Singaporean dream and
an authoritarian power, the state begins master-planning
social upgrades, urban renewal, and economic growth.
Singapore Inc. is in fact a true Taylorist operation with
every aspect of the society having a specific function. Everything that one can or cannot imagine is orchestrated,
planned, and designed, managed by a regime that has
excluded accident and randomness.4

Fig. 1: Toa Payoh housing estate at night: Le Corbusier's dream come true. A blend of tower blocks and flatted blocks. Pitched roof of a Food Court on the left, a public school and the
green land earmarked for further housing construction on the right. The main street cutting across the housing project gives access to the expressway nearby.

Running the Numbers

Chris Jordan

= 10 cm

Page 68/69:

Plastic Bottles, 2007

60 120" (152 cm 304cm)

Page 70:

Partial zoom.

Page 71:

Detail at actual size.

Depicts two million plastic beverage

bottles, the number used in the US
every five minutes.

71

Cityness
Saskia Sassen

The vast urban agglomerations taking

shape across the world are often seen as
lacking the features, quality, and sense
of what we think of as urbanity.
Yet, urbanity is perhaps too charged a
term charged with a Western sense
of cosmopolitanism and of what public
space is or should be. In fact, it may be
part of our current history-in-the-making that we have yet to find a term that
triggers a new interpretation of urbanity.
The term cityness suggests the possibility that there are kinds of urbanity
that do not fit into the definition developed in the West. So cityness, in a way,
could be described as an instrument to
capture something that otherwise might
easily get lost: types of urbanity that are
non-Western or that are novel and depart
from traditional notions in the West.
We need to open up the discussion to
a far broader range of urbanities. In my
work on global cities, I confront a parallel problematic in dealing with globality.
It is often assumed that globality entails
cosmopolitanism. However, I posit that
there are also non-cosmopolitan forms

of the global and, further, that these also

need to be distinguished from familiar
vernacular cosmopolitanisms.1

The architect Ma Qingyun argues that the

Chinese city does not need public space instead,
it makes public spaces: when, for example, at night,
a bus shelter in Shanghai becomes a public space
when people set up tables to play cards. The notion
of public space as developed in a Western European context will be of little help in reading key
aspects of urbanity in Shanghai, or perhaps even
Mexico City. Ergo, our concept of urbanity must be
stripped of its currently overcharged meanings. In
the process, I have identified a couple of categories
that allow us to understand something about alternative kinds of urbanity. In traditionally defined
urbanity, multiple elements come together in the
context of an urban aggregate and produce something that is more than the sum of its individual
parts. The urban agglomerations that proliferate
across the world today vast expanses of urban
built space seem to produce a formula, whereby
the whole is not more than the sum of its parts. If
these urban aggregates actually contain urbanities,
it would be an obstacle to a unified notion of urbanity derived from the European experience. It would
indicate that we need to open up the meaning of
urbanity to a wider range of empirical instances.
1

Saskia Sassen, The Global City (Princeton: Princeton

University Press 1991.) Id., Global Networks, Linked Cities
(New York: Rontledge 2002). Id., ; Cities in a World Economy
(Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publication
2006).

84

 Cityness is a concept that encompasses innumerable types of urbanity, including, indeed,

an intersection of differences that actually produces something new; whether good or bad, this
intersection is consequential. A very practical
and subjective example comes from London, a
city inhabited by many different types of Muslim
groups; the notion of Muslim woman is actually
multifaceted: Muslim women from Bangladesh
intersect with Muslim women from Turkey, from
India, from Pakistan, from Africa or the Middle
East. Something happens in this intersection of
differences even within what we might think of as
a very narrowly defined group. Cityness must accommodate these intersections which constitute
a form of subjectivity and perhaps untranslatable
into an immediate tangible outcome. Cities contain a multitude of such examples.
Another more practical example can be found
in Midtown Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan
architecture sends out signals of neutrality, precision, engineering. But if you are actually there at
lunchtime, the visual experience is conjoined by
the experience of the smell of grilled meat coming from immigrant vendors. A juxtaposition of
two different conditions is taking place but not
necessarily of two autonomous worlds, each existing on its own terms. The people who are eating
at those vendors at noon are not only the tourists and the secretaries but also the professionals
who may not have time for a power lunch every

workday. They inhabit a high-speed work space,

and there will be days when grabbing a sausage
from the vendor on the street is the most efficient
use of time. Here we have, then, the junction of
two high-speed velocities even though each is
produced in enormously diverse settings. The
intersection of two such different worlds which
produces a third space is an instance of cityness,
though it doesnt necessarily register on the conceptual radar of what we define as urbanity. We
could multiply these examples endlessly but what
matters here is the notion of intersection and its
capacity to make a novel condition.
These examples point to an order, albeit not
that which corresponds to the formal logic of
planners. These juxtapositions may be following a
fuzzy logic that enables a type of making not containable in the spaces of the formal plan. In this
juxtaposition, making cityness becomes possible.2 Public space, not as a representation of what
it ought to be, but public space as the activity of
making it such, is one key vector into cityness. An
important distinction must be made between public space and a space with public access; the latter
is not by itself or as a design, a space for poesie.
The publicness of that space needs to be made
through the practices and the usages of people.
This also means that public spaces can seem
chaotic. If there is, in fact, some order underlying chaotic-looking spaces, it is a nebulous order;
this way of looking at such chaos opens up to the
2

The Greek verb poiein translates as

making or creating.

85

between global
and local

The Global-Local Nexus and

the New Urban Order
The quest to elucidate the urban in the context of intensified globalization will have to consider the emerging
realities made visible in the contemporary landscape of
cities and in the globalization-driven new urban order.
The rise in the power and influence of the transnational
with the concomitant decline in the nation-state, has
precipitated significant shifts in the nature, formation,
and experience of cities. The new urban order is characterized by fragmentation, polarization and contradiction
and the city is turned into a stage where the global-local
tension is played out. As such, novel geographies are unfolding and alternative spatialities are flourishing.
88

 The present global regime is shaping, if not

reproducing, the new urban order where untamed capitalism, if at all tamable, capitalism
reins unfettered exacerbating the global-local
polarity. The city as a place of mobility, flows,
and everyday practices will have to be reconfigured to facilitate the needs of this global
regime. As such, globalization tends to promote
homogenization so as to facilitate the efficient
and smooth flows of labor, capital, commodities, ideas, and culture. Global standards and
exchangeable units of transaction are essential
to efficiently sustain such flows. Homogenization is an overarching force that finds manifestation not only in culture (e.g., MacDonaldization, Dinsneyization) but in a host of other
realms for the urban.
As they seek to advance the cause of globalization, international institutions such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) persist in imposing on the local specific standards for financial
practices, transportation and trade operations,
and information and telecommunication technologies. Characterized by hypermobility, global
communications, shortened distance, and neutralized place, the new urban order seeks to
plug the city in the circuit of global networks
and globalized cities appear to increasingly
look alike.
Amidst the seemingly irreversible drive
of globalization and the new urban order it
fosters, the transformation of the local can be
overwhelming. While a total transformation
is a long-term project, a gradual transformation of bits and pieces appears more feasible.
These bits and pieces take the shape of urban
enclaves (zones, a la Keller Esterling) that
emerge as the actualization of a global urban
order that seeks to reproduce the local so as to
synchronize it with the global. Enclave connotes
disconnectedness, rupture with the immediate
context demarcated with physical as well as
symbolic differentiation. Enclaves are privileged
spatial entities that are powerfully connected
with other valued spaces across town as well
as with similar enclaves within the national or
global spheres. They are significant locations

for the perpetual flux of network-mediated

flows, movement, and exchange that mark the
global scene.
At the same time, enclaves tend to disconnect from, even shun, their local context.
Exemplified by exclusive affluent neighborhoods, gated communities, high security office
compounds, theme parks, tourist attractions, and
special function developments (e.g., a college
campus or sports facilities), enclaves intensify
fragmentation and deepen segregation. The rise
of privatization and the simultaneous decline of
the public realm have lent further momentum
to an emerging fortress city that is breaking
up into a sort of militarized urban fragments
(Mike Davis). In Los Angeles, enclaves include
Universal Studios CityWalk, Disney Land, and
the countless gated communities across the
metropolis. In Dubai, urban enclaves take the
form of Internet City, Media City, Healthcare
City, as well as the three Palm Islands, the
World, and Dubailand. As such, Dubai is turning
into a city of cities where, under the new urban
order, privileged enclaves are intended to serve
the needs (and wants) of global entrepreneurs,
investors, tourists, and the local super elite. The
enclaves of Dubai and Los Angeles share common ground with each other as well as with like
places in other global cities. They are detached
from their immediate (local) context in terms of
physical, social, and symbolic dimensions. They
are totally privatized public amenities that are
subject to heavy security and surveillance regime. This detachment from the local, however,
is contrasted with significant connectedness
with other enclaves in other global cities.
In the new urban order, the forces of globalization are contributing to interurban homogeneity (symbolized by urban analogous enclaves) but are, simultaneously and ironically,
differentiating the interurban differentiation.

Amer Moustafa

89

Fig. 3: Transit Tourism.

Fig. 4: Service Worker Housing.

Porto Adriano, 2000

C-print, 3 75 92 cm
Urbanization. Santa Pona, 2001
C-print, 3 75 92 cm

Urban Flux

Mac World

hiromi hosoya
and Markus schfer

Euro

Euro

Mega Mac

2.31

Mega Mac

Chica

1
Mega Mac

Los Angeles

Euro

The size of the burgers indicates

the number of burgers that can
be bought with one hour of work
at average net salary.

Euro

Euro

3.40
Dublin

Euro

3.33

Purchase prize for 1 Big Mac

Euro

6 Burger

Paris

Burger
Burger
Burger
Burger
Burger
1/ Burger
3
Euro

2.46

Mexiko City Euro

Euro

2.75

Bogot
Euro

Euro

3.15
5
4
3
2
1

2.10

Mia

Euro

Euro

Lu

3.

Ba

2.67

Euro

Lisbon

3.04

Euro

Caracas
Euro

Nik

2.4

3.01 2.4
2.99

Rio de Janei

Lima

Euro

So Pau

Euro

Santiago de Chile

Euro

240

Br

London

Mega Mac

Euro

2.

2.24

Buenos Aires

Euro

Toronto

ago
Euro

1.92
c

2.82

Euro

Oslo

3.75
Euro

3.40

russels

Euro

3.50

uxembourg

2.21
1.72
2.20
Prag
Warschau

Munich

.05

Euro

arcelona

2.66

Madrid

Euro

Euro

Zurich

4.00

Euro

Geneva Euro

2.72

Vienna

Euro

Rome

47

iro

Euro

Euro

Euro

1.28

2.28

Nairobi
Euro

Euro

1.28

Euro

Euro

1.08

Shanghai

0.98

Delhi

1.03

Hong Kong
Euro

1.32

Euro

Euro

2.45

Johannesburg

Euro

1.87

Singapore

1.96

Bukarest

Sofia
Euro

2.73

Athens

3.05

Euro

Seoul

1.90
Mega Mac

1.87
Tokyo

1.56

Manila

Euro

1.38

1.50

Taipei
Bangkok
Mumbai Kuala Lumpur
Euro 1.35

Manama

41

ulo

1.92 Dubai

Euro

Euro

2.16

Beijing

Istanbul
Euro

Budapest

2.60 Ljubljana

2.71 Milano

2.88 3.13

kosia

2.83

2.08

Euro

2.43
Euro

Euro

1.58

Jarkarta

1.38

Kiew

Euro

Bratislava

Euro

Moscow
Euro

Euro

Euro

Euro

1.43

Vilnius

Frankfurt

Euro

1.89

Tallinn

Euro

Euro

Euro

3.634.05

Euro

Riga

3.01 2.96
3.12

Amsterdam

Helsinki

Euro 0.93

3.03

Berlin

3.67

Stockholm

Euro

Euro

Copenhagen

New York

Euro

Euro

Montreal

ami

4.32

Euro

Hosoya Schaefer Architects

.48 2.45 2.86

2.24

Sydney
Auckland

City of Commodities
Guangzhou

Export

Expressways

3 Major export
destinations

Foreign direct
investment

International flights

10 million
5 million
2 million
1 million

Population

244

 Hosoya Schaefer Architects / Joakim Dahlqvist

Population 2003: 7.2 Mio.

GDP 2004: 411 bn USD (+15%)
Export and import total 2004: 44.8 bn USD (+64%)
Foreign direct investment 2003: 32.55 bn USD

Tabula Non Rasa.

Toward a Performative Contextualism
Ilka & Andreas Ruby in Conversation with Jean-Philippe Vassal
You once defined your architectural creed as
never demolish, always change, add, reprogram.
Interestingly enough for an architect, this position
excludes the notion of building anew, which is
what most architects would probably see as the
essence of their discipline. Why dont you?
I really think that building anew represents
only a small share of architecture and not its essence. Essentially architecture is adding things to
something existing. Even if you build an entirely
new building, you ultimately add on to a preexisting organization of space be it houses in the
neighborhood, a city quarter, a group of trees
or a landscape. And I think that an addition can
become meaningful when we analyze this protocondition of architecture sincerely, in order to
determine what it might lack for only this should
be added. Emilio Ambasz once said that if nature
were perfect, we would not need houses. Following
this logic, here I would throw in the idea that architecture should only add to reality what it lacks
in perfection.
But how do you define the existing? In the
contextualism of the 1980s, the existing was
understood as the built heritage of the city. This
often led to Postmodernist pastiches of history, a
mimicry of existing building configurations devoid
of any creative surplus: architecture had become
a kind of pre-emptive conservationism. It failed
to produce a vital city just as much as the tabula
rasa thinking of Modernism which contextualism

252

had sought to overcome once and for all. How do

you avoid this pitfall of contextualism?
By identifying those elements, forces, and energies which are genuinely determining the spatial
performance of a given situation. And for us, this
is very often not architecture, but the activities
that take place in or around it, thanks to or despite
architecture. The famous square Djemaa El-Fnaa
in Marrakesh provides the perfect example. It is
one of the most exciting urban spaces I know, but
its quality would be inconceivable if you look at it
from a purely western-European point of view. The
square is essentially a big open space only vaguely
defined by a perimeter of fairly non-descript
buildings. The urban quality of Djemaa El-Fnaa
is not derived from its architecture, but from the
ever-changing sequence of events that take place
here in the course of a day: in the morning, it is
completely flooded with cars driving over it in all
directions. After a while, an acrobat, poet or musician sets up a stage in the middle of the bustling
traffic and begins a performance. Within moments
a circle of passers-by forms to watch him. Soon
thereafter, another acrobat joins him. In this way,
the square is gradually filled with performers and
spectators until it seems to consist entirely of
circles of people around which the traffic must
weave absurd routes. Later on the square will be
transformed into a huge market, and, in the evening, it will be covered by a myriad of fast-food
stands. The place is whatever takes place on it.

When we designed Palais de Tokyo in Paris, we

basically started out with Djemaa El-Fnaaas a
conceptual model.
This leads us to Cedric Price and his definition of architecture as an enabler, which poses
the question of solid and void, and to what degree
they contribute to shaping the space of the city.
Yes, its a question of priorities. Ultimately
architecture is a means to an end, not an end in
itself. The meaning of the walls of a house does
not reside in the walls themselves, but in the space
they define because you can do something within
space, but not within walls. I think there are
architects of the solid, who believe that architecture is an absolute value in itself, and architects of
the void, for whom the value of architecture lies in
what architecture allows to happen though and beyond its own material body. We (Anne Lacaton and
myself) tend to be members of the latter species.
How can you practice such an architecture of
the void given that architects are mostly asked
(and paid) to make solids?
By first and always scrutinizing every commission whether its task makes sense and is necessary.
One should never take this for granted. And architects should not automatically build something
only because someone has asked them to do so;
otherwise, they turn into pure service men. We
were once asked by the city government of Bordeaux to do a project in the context of a public
space program called Embellishment of Places. The

politicians had identified forty or so squares in

Bordeaux which they thought needed embellishment. We were given a small triangular square near
the main railway station called Place Lon Aucoc,
a square like any other in France, certainly not
spectacular, but charming in its modesty. When
we came to see it, we were puzzled. For us, it was
already beautiful the way it was. We could see neither how nor why we should embellish it. In order
to devise a meaningful intervention, we carefully
started to study it. We analyzed the architecture of
the surrounding houses, the surface materials and
urban furnishings of the square, the organization
of traffic, and also interviewed the inhabitants.
In the end, we found only minor misfits, none of
which would have been solved by an architectural
project. Instead we drew up a catalogue of maintenance measures which were strikingly obvious
and yet, completely neglected, including regularly

Fig. 1: Place Leon Aucoc, Bordeaux, 1996 . Before and after

the intervention.

253

as the houses themselves. Interested in this vegetal

quality of space, we noticed that there was a large
quantity of rose trees in the gardens. Hence, we
decided to floralize our university building as well,
placing 600 different rose trees throughout its

Fig. 4: Ple Universitaire de Sciences de Gestion, Bordeaux,

2006. 600 different rose trees form a vertical garden.

256

outdoor spaces, such as the outdoor galleries and

the interior courtyards. It is important to note
that these rose trees are not only decorative, but
performative as well. Since the building was inaugurated in 2006, people who work in the university together with residents from the neighboring
housing quarter have come together and started to
tend to the roses and now they even produce a
jam from the rose leaves!
The sites you spoke about thus far are all
sites with amiable qualities dunes, forests,
gardens, roses spatial assets, which every architect would be happy to relate to and cultivate
architecturally. But what about a context that
lacks any such qualities? How do you relate, for
instance, to those modernist cities built in the periphery of Paris and other big French cities during
the 1960s and 1970s, places that are characterized by a less-than-attractive architecture, urban
spaces that are often problematic and, on top of
it, cursed by the conundrum of hard-to-overcome
social problems?
The worst thing to do is certainly what the
French government is currently doing: in 2003,
the state inaugurated a national program for urban renewal one of the biggest operations of
demolition ever in the history of modern urbanism. 250,000 apartments located in the so-called
Grands Ensembles large mass-produced housing
complexes built in the 1960s and 1970s throughout France are scheduled for demolition (and

a substantial number of them have already been

demolished). Please remember that all of these
apartments are inhabited! Whats more, there is an
unfulfilled demand for social housing: were talking
about numbers between 600,000 and 800,000.
And last winter there were 25,000 homeless people in Paris alone.
Obviously, this program for urban renewal is not
intended to solve a housing problem, but an image
problem. The population of these Grands Ensembles is generally made up of people from lower
income groups, a large proportion of whom are
North African immigrants. The social and ethnic
segregation of today results in high unemployment
levels and criminality. The social tension created by
this situation has given the suburbs a notoriously
bad image that politicians seek to urgently improve
(even more so after the severe riots that sprang up
in some of these neighborhoods in the past years).
Confronted with this problem, politicians have
begun to look for a culprit, and what do they find?
The large-scale Modernist apartment complexes
that represented too visible a monument to the social plight of the suburbs and the failure of French
integration policy. Due to their alledged ideological
contamination, they are poised to disappear out
of sight, out of mind, as it were.
What happens to the residents that are currently living there?
They are temporarily relocated in hotels until
new housing units are built. This is not only highly

troublesome for the residents (a family of four

does not live well in a hotel room for months),
but also entails highly unsustainable urban consequences. Whereas the Grands Ensembles were
based on high-density and small-footprint building typologies, such as towers and slabs, the new
housing units will be low-rise developments occupying a large ground surface that is more typical
of surburban areas. Due to the scarcity of available
building land in city centers, most of these new
housing developments will be located farther out
of town which means longer commuting times for
the residents.
But beyond the dubious social repercussions of
this contrived resettlement policy, the economical
implications of the program are simply unheard of.
The government program provides 167,000 EUR

Fig. 5: PLUS study, apartment-blocks of the 1960s with dormant qualities like transparency, visual openness, height,
park space, land availability, etc. that must be revealed,
developed and transcended.

257

to prepare a substantially enlarged book version

which was published in 2007 (at Gustavo Gili in a
trilingual edition, French, English, Spanish)2. But
in France this book was ignored by the press, architectural or otherwise, as if there were some sort
of silent agreement that it doesn't even exist.
The most tangible reaction we got was from
the Paris Public Housing Agency (lOffice Public
2

Frdric Druot, Anne Lacaton, Jean-Philippe Vassal,

+PLUS, (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2007).
Fig. 14: Apartment building Bois-le-Prtre, Paris, enlarging the existing apartments by adding winter gardens and
balconies.

262

dHabitations Loyer Modr de la Ville de Paris,

OPAC). They were interested in our approach and
launched a small competition for the rehabilitation of one of their apartment towers situated next
to the northern section of the Pripherique, the
peripheral highway of Paris. We won the competition in 2006, and the building is now under construction. The original building was designed and
built by Raymond Lopez in 1959 (who built a similar version of the design at the Interbau in Berlin,
the Hansaviertel). What we are doing is to enlarge
the usable surface of the 96 flats by creating new
floor slabs on the outside of the building, which
enables not only for the living room to be enlarged,
and winter gardens and continuous balconies to
be created, but also the comfort, views, and isolation of the flats are improved. The inhabitants
will either keep their flats or be able to move to a
bigger or smaller flat in the same building. And it
will not be necessary to vacate the flats during the
building work. After feeling a little insecure in the
beginning, the residents soon began to embrace
the project and are now very happy with it. Only
our client is not quite so satisfied they seem to be
under the impression that the newly created common areas such as the proposed lobby are too
generous for a social housing project.
Are there other ways of applying the approach
of the PLUS project to the transformation of the
built environment of France on the whole?
Yes, but its not easy, especially in France,

as the policy of demolishing and rebuilding has

become the preferred modus operandi and often
even an obligatory component of competition
briefs. For instance, we were invited to a housing
competition in St. Nazaire in France. Dubbed
Le Petit Maroc, the site on the estuary of the Loire
River was occupied by a postwar housing settlement containing 36 flats altogether. As these apartments were considered too small, the competition
brief called for demolishing them and replacing
them with 55 new dwellings. We studied the settlement and found it perfectly in order, with a series
of well-kept public spaces with trees, gardens, and
pathways. There was no need to destroy this place.
Also we realized that it was perfectly possible to
increase the number of flats per plot of land and
preserve what already existed. We then proposed
the idea of keeping 27 flats and building 28 new
ones. We expanded the existing houses with
winter-garden constructions, as described above,
and in addition we built one entirely new house.
Interestingly enough, after the jury reviewed the
projects, they informed us that they liked our proposal the most, as they were positively surprised
about the possibility of fulfilling the demand for
housing surface without demolishing the existing buildings. However, as the demolition of the
existing buildings had already been stated in the
competition brief as if it were a nonnegotiable
prerequisite they were now legally bound to this
formulation and could not award our project the

first prize. We had consciously overstepped this

stipulation because we found it wrong. That is to
say, we knew the risk and got caught. It was an act
of civil disobedience that was clearly incompatible
with the legal framework of the competition.
Nevertheless, the effort was not in vain. Unhappy
with the outcome of the competition, the citys social housing director presented our project to the
mayor of St. Nazaire, Joel Bateux, who instantly
understood the general approach of the project,
and that one could apply this approach in a lot of
situations in the city. Ultimately, he entrusted us to
a similar project on a different site, which we are
currently working on.
Your add-on housing strategy allows you to
engage with the existing body of the city, to tune
and improve it. However, there are places in the
world that call for entirely new cities to be built
from scratch, and in a short time. How would you
deal with this type of commission? Would you accept the commission of designing the master plan
of a Chinese city for, say, 500,000 people?
First of all I think there is no such thing as a
tabula rasa. At least I personally have never been
to a place where there was nothing. And even if you
make a city for one million people in China, unless
you erase the land beforehand, you will always have
something to deal with: be it rocks, trees, little rivers, or the existing population of the place.
But even with a tabula-non-rasa condition, I
would not want to make a master plan. When you

263

between
Permanent and
Transitory

The Endless Present

Whether surrendering to the elements, to wars, to the
accelerating cycles of the property market, to changes
in demand, taste, use all built structures are obviously
temporary, existing as long as the need for them. As architectural categories permanence and temporariness are
often merely employed as a form of political semiotics
that reveal more about architects, and their political environment, than about the product of their work.
266

 It was the totalitarian architecture of the

first part of the 20th century that sought to
achieve an a-historical permanence but has
often not lived to see the end of the decade.
On the other hand, the emergency architecture
of humanitarian relief constantly seek to manifest temporariness, because camp residents
would often like to demonstrate the persistence
of their claim to return to places from where
they were expelled. These temporary camps
thereafter often linger for decades in what
George Orwell, in his novel 1984, called a state
of endless present a permanent temporariness without past (history) or hope (future).
If permanence and temporariness are mere
architectural statements articulated in the
materiality and form of shelters and in the
processes of their production, it may be productive to rethink the relation between the two
extremes on the urban scale of duration the
city and the camp.
With over twenty million displaced persons
worldwide and almost one thousand refugee
camps in more than forty states, city-camps
increasingly become a prevalent new sociospatial form of inhabitation, as Manuel Herz
describes in his contribution.
Camps are designed according to principles that intersects architectural knowledge
with that of the medical and the military. A
repetitive grid of shelters is laid out along a
disciplinary geometry of both hygiene and control. Camps fold in a complex relational geography, entire regions from where people were
displaced are spatialized in the layout of its
districts, blocks, and clusters. Camps are cities for non citizens forming parallel universes
that operate according to their own ad hoc
rules populated by humanitarians and victims of
diverse origins. The humanitarian and the victim
meet in an area foreign to both. Camps thus
develop into what Rony Brauman, former president of Mdecins sans frontires called: humanitarian bubbles, non-places which could
be everywhere and which are nowhere."
However with the lingering of their temporary permanence, dwellings and neighbourhoods
become denser, commerce, barter and cultural

exchange develop, and camps acquire a protourban complexity. Embodying an alarmingly

prevalent condition of urbanity, could the camp
provide a vantage point to reflect on the very
nature of contemporary inhabitation? Conversely, could the city and its urban culture provide
a field of references to transform the utilitarian
logic that guides the design of the built environment of refugee camps? Could the camp ever
be considered a political space, a polis?

Eyal Weizman

267

Leisure Nomads
of the New Third Age:
Nomadic Network Urbanism of the
Senior RV Community in the US
1

Recreational Vehicles (RVs) are

defined as vehicles that combine transportation and living
quarters for travel, recreation
and camping and are typically
either towable or motorized. (See
diagram attached.) The majority of RVs are equipped to park
in remote areas without plug-in
infrastructure this requires selfcontained water and waste disposal tanks and a 12-volt electrical
system, which for long-term are
normally powered by either solar
panels or a generator. (Definitions
from the Recreational Vehicle
Industry Association
www.rvia.org).

The Recreational Vehicle

Industry Association anticipates
massive industry growth based on
Baby Boomer ageing.
(www.rvia.org).
3

Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah,

trans. Frans Rosenthal, ed. N.
Dawood (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1967), p. 118.
In the preeminant text on traditional nomadism: The Muqaddimah, medieval Arab social
historian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1408)
described the two fundamentally different environments in
which all human cooperation and
social organization developed.
For Khaldun, the very nature of
their nomadic existence is the
negation of building, which is the
basis of civilization. The nomad,
or the nomadic society, has therefore traditionally been perceived
as anti-urban as mobile other
functioning outside of the construction of the state apparatus
and sedentary society.

268

Deane Simpson

Liberated from the responsibilities of the first and

second phases of life education during childhood and
work/childcare during adulthood and uninhibited by
the physical or mental limitations of the fourth phase
of life (the old-old), the demographic segment known as
the new third age (or young-old) has emerged as the site
of some of the most radical experiments in subjectivity,
collectivity, and urbanism.
The senior Recreational Vehicle (RV) community in
the US is one exemplary case study of this tendency.1
Producing a form of nomadic network urbanism, it
challenges established models of sedentary urbanity,
inasmuch as it is mobile, informal, non-hierarchical, and
network-based. In the US, this community conservatively numbers between two and three million retirees
communicating predominantly via satellite internet.
While nomadic communities are clearly not a new occurrence, one of this size, sophistication, and connectivity is unprecedented. It continues to grow at a rapid
rate with the expectation that it will more than triple
in size over the next two decades as the Baby Boomer
generation reaches retirement age anticipating a future nomadic city greater in population than the largest
city in the US.2 Nomadism, traditionally defined as the
negation of urbanism, in this case produces a sparse
flexible urban field of dense social connectivity.3

RV Urbanism
In 1963, Buckminster Fuller proposed the end of urbanism as it
was understood at the time. In a contemporary age of hyper-mobility,
Fuller deemed the notion of self-contained permanent settlements obsolete. Instead, he outlined an urban strategy termed un-

Fig. 1: RV Urbanism.

settlement, consisting of a network of hyper-mobile nomadic bodies

operating at the scale of the entire world connected through invisible
radio links.4 Here Fuller anticipated a form of urbanism that would
emerge as a reality on an unimagined scale thirty years later.
Between 1990 and 1994, Canadian anthropologists Dorothy
and David Counts conducted field research into an emerging social
formation that would lead to their 1996 publication Over the Next
Hill: An Ethnography of RVing Seniors in North America: While young
people have been spending their energy in sedentary pursuits, buying
homes in the suburbs, working in factories and offices, and raising
kids, a generation of elders have become nomads. () There are literally millions of them. Nobody knows how many because there is no
way to count them, but millions (two or three millions [in 1996] appears to be a conservative estimate) do not just leave home to wander
a few months of the year. These people live in those motor homes or
trailers; they have no other home.5
Leisure Nomads
The senior RV community operates similarly to the conventional
logic of nomadism, but with two important distinctions: the first
concerns the theme of categorization, the second of interaction.
While the three basic categories of nomadism (hunter-gatherers,
pastoral- and peripatetic nomads) rely on nomadic practices for subsistence, the nomadic RVer does not. This would suggest the need
for a fourth term: the leisure nomad, the emergence of which may
be understood in relation to broad demographic, sociological, and
cultural transformations. These include: a) the widespread ageing of
the population and the subsequent emergence of a new third age a
new generation of young-old who no longer work, but enjoy extended
years of good health; b) the process Ulrich Beck calls individualiza-

Buckminster Fuller, Delos 1

Conference 1963, in Mark Wigley, Network Fever, GreyRoom 04,
(Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press
Summer 2001), pp. 121-122.

Dorothy Ayers Counts and David R. Counts, Over the Next Hill :
An Ethnography of RVing Seniors in
North America. (Ontario: Broadview Press 1996), p. 15. Counts
and Counts note that historically
it has been very difficult to quantify the population of RVers in
the US with any level of precision
as the US census has no specific
category for RV or motor home
residences. Estimates are based
upon a combination of industry
sales figures, industry questionnaires and partial censuses.

269

Refugees and Asylum seekers in Germany.

Currently approx. 700.000 recognized refugees
plus 70.000 asylum seekers in Germany. Since
1993 the number of applications for asylum has
dropped from 440.000 to 28.900 (2005). In the
same year 411 (=1.4%) applications for asylum
were approved.
Refugeecamp on Lampedusa, Italy
continouosly approx. 200 refugees, that are
forcibly returned to their country of origin after
few days. Several thousand refugees reach the
small Italian island Lambedusa with boats from
Libya and Tunisia. The camp is publicly not
accessible. According to media reports the
conditions within the camp are catastrophic.
Refugee camp Shatila, Beirut, Lebanon;
established 1949; approx. 8.500 refugees in one
camp.
Displacedment of Palestinians during the Israeli
war of independence. Additional 200.000
refugees in more than 10 further camps.

MINURSO
Mission for the
Referendum in
Western Sahara
(since 1991)

Sahrawi refugee camps, Tindouf, Algeria

established 1975; appr. 165.000 refugees in 4
camps. Occupation of the Western Sahara by
Morocco with the Green March in 1975 and
forced displacement of Sahrawis.

MINUSTAH
United Nations
Stabilization Mission
in Haiti
(since 2004)

CAR refugee camps in southern Chad;

established since 2003; approx. 50.000 refugees in
4 camps. Anarchy in northern parts of the Central
African Republic (CAR) since the coup detat in
2003.

Mauretanian refugee camps in Senegal

established 1990; appr. 20.000 refugees in 4
camps ethnic displacement of black Africans by
islamic Mauretanians.
Refugee camp in Gambia established ca. 1994;
approx. 10.000 refugees in one canp; (4.000
Sierra Leone; 6.000 Senegal) . Refugees from the
civil war in Sierra Leone and the violence in
Caramance, Senegal
Refugee camp in Sierra Leone
established ca. 1990 with approx. 60.000
refugees in 8 camps;
refugees from Libera that have been forcibly
displaced by the two civil wars (1989-1996 /
1999-2003).

Refugee camps in eastern Chad; established since

2003; approx. 250.000 refugees in 12 camps.
additionally approx. 2.000.000 internally displaced
in over 50 camps in Sudan fleeing the Darfur
conflict: civil war and forced displacement in
western Sudan.

UNOCI
United Nations
Operations in
Cote dIvoire
(since 2004/2003)
UNAMSIL
United Nations
Mission to
Sierre Leone
(since 1999)

Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana; established 1990; ca.

40.000 refugees in one camp; refugees from Libera that have
been forcibly displaced by the two civil wars (1989-1996 /
1999-2003).

In Columbia approx. 2.000.000 to 3.000.000 internally

displaced, of whom 260.000 are cared for by UNHCR .
A low intensity conflict is ongoing since 1966
between the guerilla movements FARC and ELN
against the Columbian government troops. More than
62.000 people have since been killed in this conflict.

Refugee housing in Gabon; approx. 12.500 refugees in 26

locations. Refugees from the Republic of Congofleeing the
civil war of 1997-1999.

Refugee camps Viana & Sungi, Angola; established 1977;

approx. 12.500 refugees in 2 camps.
Refugees from Katanga Province in Kongo (DRC); unrest
province with liberation efforts.
Refugee camp Meheba, Zambia; established 1971; approx.
50.000 refugees in one camp.
Angolan refugees fleeing one of Africas longest civil war of
1971 to 2002. About 10.000 refugees have since returned to
Angola.
Orise refugee camp in Namibia; established 1998; approx
24.000 refugees in one camp Refugees fleeing from the civil
war in Angola.

Displaced peoples camp in Aserbaidjan

approx. 600.000 internally displaced, living
in over 70 camps and housing facilities.
Military conflicts and civil unrest since 1991
with Armenia fighting over the Republic
Bergkarabach inhabited by ethnic
Armenians

Palestinian refugees in the West-Bank & Gaza strip established since 1948
Currently approx. 1.700.000 palestinian refugees (1.000.000 in Gaza, 700.000 in
the West-Bank) that have been displaced by the Israeli war of independence are
living in several refugee camps and palestinian towns and villages.
Refugee camp Makhmour in Iraq established
1994, approx. 10.000 Kurdish refugees from
Turkey. Further 2.000 refugees in various
refugee housing facilities. Turkish Kurds have
been fleeing ethnic displacement since the
mid 1990s into Iraq.

Refugee camps in Iran approx. 720.000

refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, living
in approx. 15 refugee camps located in the
respective border regions. Since 2004 more
than 1.000.000 refugees have returned to
Afghanistan.
Refugee camps in Turkmenistan approx.
11.500 refugees from Tajikistan fleeing the
civil war (1992-1997) living in one of more
than 20 refugee housing facilities. In
addition approx. 1.500 refugees from
Afghanistan.

UNOMIG
United Nations
Observer Mission
in Georgia
(since 1993)

UNFICYP
United Nations
Peacekeeping
Force in Cyprus
(since 1964)

UNDOF
United Nations
Disengagement
Observer Force
(since 1974)

UNMIK
United Nations
Interim Administr.
Mission in Kosovo
UNIFIL
(since 1999)
United Nations
Interim Force
in Lebanon
(since 1978)

Refugee camps in Nepal established 1992;

ca. 110.000 refugees in 7 camps. Refugees
from Bhutan that are oppressed as an
ethnic minority.
UNTSO
United Nations
Truce Supervision
Organisation
(since 1948)

UNMIS
United Nations
Mission in
the Sudan
(since 2005)

MONUC
United Nations
Organization Mission
in the Democratic
Republic of the Congo
(since 1999)

Refugee camps in Pakistan approx.

1.100.000 refugees in Afghanistan in more
than 60 camps along the Pakistani-Afghani
border. In addition approx. 1.500.000
refugees in Pakistani towns that are not
treated and served by UNHCR

UNMEE
United Nations
Mission to Ethiopia
and Eritrea
(since 2000)

UNUB
United Nations
Operations in
Burundi
(since 2004)

UNMOGIP
United Nations
Military Observer Group
in India and Pakistan
(since 1949)

Eritrean refugee camps in Sudan.

established since 1967; ca. 150.000
refugee in 12 camps; Eritrean
refugees fleeing the war of
independence from Ethiopia. Partial
return to Eritrea since the late 1990s.
Refugee camp Kakuma in Kenya;
established 1992; approx. 70.000
refugees in one camp. Sudanese
refugees fleeing the
South-Sudanese civil war. Cease fire
in 2003 and peace treaty in 2005.
Refugee camps near Dadaab in
Kenya; established 1991; approx.
160.000 refugees in 3 camps.
Somalian refugees fleeing the
Somalian civil war and several tribal
conflicts since the fall of president
Siad Barr in1991.

Refugee camps Rohingya in Bangladesh;

established since 1992; approx. 25.000
refugees in 3 camps; Refugees from
Birma (Myanmar), that are oppressed as
an ethnic minority since following
cessation attempts. In addition approx.
250.000 unofficial refugees that are not
recognized by by UNHCR.

Refugee camps in the region of the

Great Lakes over 500.000 refugees in
ca. 35 camps in 4 countries: Tanzania:
ca. 260.000 refugees from Burundi:
ca. 150.000 refugees from Congo
(DRC): ca. 2.000 refugees from
Somalia Burundi: ca. 41.000 refugees
from Congo (DRC), ca. 1.000 refugees
from Rwanda: ca. 35.000 refugees
from Congo (DRC), ca. 1.000 refugees
from Burundi Congo (DRC): ca.13.000
refugees from Rwanda, ca. 20.000
refugees from Burundi.

Karen & Karenni refugee camps in Thailand;

established since 1992; approx. 110.000
refugees in 9 camps; Refugees from Birma
(Myanmar), that are oppressed as an ethnic
minority
since
following
cessation
attempts.

Refugee camps Kala & Mwange in

Zambia; established 1998 & 2000;
approx. 50.000 refugees in 2 camps
Refugees from Angola and the
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Baxtor Detention Center in Port Augusta,

Australia established 2002. Since 2002 all
refugees that reach Australia (mostly by
boat) are detained in a detention camp
where they are kept without contact to the
outside world until their asylum
application has been processed.

Refugee camp Malindza in Swaziland; established 1978; approx.

400 Refugees in one camp. Refugees from the Apartheid- Era from
South Africa and Mosambique. Most of the formerly 20,000
inhabitants moved back by now.
Urban refugee camps in South Africa; since 1993
approx 30.000 refugees and 140.000 asylum seekers from several
African cities and townships. South Africa didnt host refugees
during Apartheid.
Refugee camp Dukwi, Botswana. Established 1978; approx 4000
refugees in one camp. Refugees from several african countries like
Angola, Namibia, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda.

West-Papuan refugee camps in Papua New

Guinea established since 1976; approx.
10.000 refugees in various camps and
villages. Refugees coming from the
Indonesian province of West-Papua,
persecuted
because
of
starting
independence movements in Indonesia.

Fig. 3: N'Djamena, capital of Chad, city center.

Fig. 4: Camp Amboko in southern Chad, camp extension.

280

Chad
One of the poorest countries in the world, covering an area
three times the size of Germany and with a population of just eight
million inhabitants speaking 300 different languages i.e., underpopulated and fragmented Chad, a central African, landlocked
country, has probably experienced one of the worst processes of
decolonization in history. Since gaining independence in 1960, this
former French colony has not been able to develop anything remotely reminiscent of what is usually described as a civil society. The level
of development throughout the whole country is extremely low, affecting the local population in terms of education, medical facilities
and availability of cultivable land and food. The whole country has
seven dentists and no bookshops. A network of paved roads hardly
exists. Half of the population never reaches the age of 40 (UNDP,
2006: p. 294) and only 9% of the inhabitants have access to sanitary
facilities (UNDP, 2006: p. 308). Its cities have no functioning water
system, nor a working electricity network. When Morris Forster,
then president of ExxonMobile, opened the oil excavation and pipeline project in October 2003, in his opening speech he stated that he
was very proud to participate in laying the foundation for a better
future for the country and its population.1 In those last four years,
the education level has worsened, the rate of illiteracy has risen,
and the life expectancy has further decreased.2 Because of this
extremely low level of development (and apart from the oil the
general disinvestment of the international community), and because
the country is seen as a blank spot on the map, Chad has become an
ideal situation for refugee camps. The camps and the humanitarian
organizations enable the country to embed itself within an international (economic) network. This network goes beyond the field of
humanitarian action, reaching into areas of a global media network,
international conferences, developmental aid and logistics. The
refugees, therefore, become the countrys means of participating in
this global network and the world economy.
Planning
Approximately 30 million people are currently considered
refugees or internally displaced people in more than 1,000 refugee
camps in over 60 nations.3 Despite these facts, there is only one
single chapter within one single book that describes planning strategies for refugee camps.4 And even though the context within which
these camps develop could not be more political or conflictual,
the planning discourse remains on a purely technical level only. It
ignores the social, political, and collective consequences that any
decision might have in this critical context.
It was a case of unhappy coincidences and sheer bad luck when on
March 16, 2003 the former chief of staff, Franois Bozize, toppled
Flix Patass as Head of State in the Central African Republic. On
the day that the world stood by, watching American and British

As quoted in: ExxonMobile

Corporation: Chad-Cameroon Oil
Project Celebrates Official Project
Inauguration, Press Release,
October 10, 2003.

In the Human Development

Index (HDI) assembled by the
UN Development Program,
Chad fell from place 167 to 171
out of 177 countries (UNDP,
2006: p. 286).

See Fig. 2 for a map of refugee

camps and global migration
movements. Statistics are taken
from current UNHCR data.
4

The UNHCR Handbook for

Emergencies includes one chapter
of 16 pages on planning strategies
for housing refugees and setting up refugee camps. The only
other guidelines, published by the
ICRC and the Norwegian Red
Cross are literal copies of this
original text by UNHCR.

281

between
Standard and
Appropriation

Urban Ninjas
and Pirate Planners
In recent years, a question dominating online debates
within internet and video game communities has been:
Who would win a fight between ninjas and pirates? This
conflict has formed and divided masses and evolved into
a larger cultural phenomenon. What is intriguing is less
the outcome of this debate but the implications of the
conflict itself, as it alludes to modes of transgression
and rebellion against prevailing standards.
332

While both ninjas and pirates are cultural

deviants from established social norms, their
appearance and modes of operation could not
be more different from one another. Adorning
black clothes under the cloak of a larger collective purpose, ninjas are stealthy, disciplined
and more effective working in solitude. Pirates,
on the other hand, are loud and boisterous in
motley clothing and find every opportunity to
express their individuality. Both ruthless and
savage, pirates are most effective when operating en masse. Most hackers tend to identify
themselves with the ninjas while those engaging in piracy and illegal downloads naturally
gravitate towards the pirates.
Beyond cyber culture, this fixation of one
groups supremacy over the other has yielded a
wider cultural theorem of collectivity known as
the Inverse Ninja Law. The theorem asserts that
in movies, the effectiveness of a group of ninjas
is inversely proportional to the number of ninjas
in the group. In other words, the more ninjas
there are the easier they are to defeat. Pirates,
however, represent the converse of the theorem:
they fight better in groups with their effectiveness hinging on amplifying their individuality.
For pirates, it is necessary to simulate a sense
of isolation a state of being marginalized in
order to make room for improvisation and creativity.
Transposing the Inverse Ninja Law and its
converse to theories on urban transformations,
the models represented by ninjas and pirates
offer possibilities that transcend stereotypical anarchist strategies. Ninjas and pirates
disclose alternative ways to practice urbanism as a model of deviation and appropriation
which takes into account the dynamic relationship between the individual and the collective.
Ninja urban strategies operate in the guise of
standardization; they are Trojan horses that
bear appearances of conformity but are most
effective independently. Pirate urban strategies
operate as a collection of incongruent singularities; they seemingly disregard uniformity.
Recent research in urban design has generated a set of theoretical inquiries into new
forms of collectivity and standardization, but

this trajectory is countered by opposing strategies of deviation and appropriation. Characterized by non-conformity and anomalies, these
aberrant ninja and pirate organizations perpetuate spatial segregation to an extreme, a world
of fragmentation where separation triumphs
over combination and difference over standardization. The current state of urbanism no longer
pretends to revolve around a single public, a
single form, or a standard model. This is either
because the normative is outmoded and no
longer exists or because the normative accepts
everything and is instead a culmination of a
culture.
The implications of this view negate the
power of reactionary urbanism, where agents
rail against standard boundaries to create a
revolutionary alternative. Instead, the proliferation of subcultures and their associated urban
forms produces inordinate additional boundaries
that provide fodder for urban transformation.
Now, even more deviations and appropriations
are possible, with concomitant agents, forms
and cultures.
An examination of the strategies of deviation and appropriation within urban transformation presented by the authors in this chapter
reveal that reactionary rebellion itself is illusion and innovation results from absorbing
prevailing norms into an arsenal of tools. At
the dawn of the 21st century, there are no more
avant-garde revolutionaries in urban design.
There are only ninjas and pirates.

Mark Lee

333

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337

Underneath the Highway

Laurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix

368

In the early 1980s, the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region

was transformed into a vast manufacturing hinterland
for Hong Kong, as well as an experimental zone for
Chinas new economy. Massive foreign investments
from the British colony boosted a region that aspired
to become the fifth Asian dragon. Established by entrepreneurs, a politics of laissez-faire was successfully injected into local infrastructural projects. Joint ventures
and private money propelled a leap that responded to
the global economy and accession to the WTO in 1997.
The most visible trace of this more recent development
is a private highway a 120km elevated strip between
Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Owned by the developer
Hopewell Holding and CEO Sir Gordon Wu, the
Guangshen Superhighway is a unique platform which
links cities and transfers merchandise from factories to
container terminals. This suggests that the configuration of this strategic network is no longer determined
by local factors but by a private empire that controls
the economy, the planning, and, ultimately, the culture
of a region. The dual 3-lane toll expressway provides 18
interchanges designed by Sir Gordon Wu (who is also
an architect). Obviously the strategic position of these
junctions has increased the surrounding land value and
encouraged the formation of an urban corridor that
will eventually transform the PRD region into a single
sprawling metropolis (eventually encompassing a population of 40 million and 41,698 km). A commercial
structure was built at each interchange. Inspired by
Le Corbusiers Plan Obus for Algiers, the buildings
were intended to serve an ambitious mixed-use program
commerce, office, factory, and dormitory directly
plugged into the underbelly of the infrastructure. Most
of the 18 buildings were abandoned soon after completion. Today they shelter migrant squatters. Traveling
at 120 km-hour down the highway, careful to avoid
frequent car crashes, stray domestic animals or wreck-

lessly driven buses and container trucks, you become

accustomed to the spectacle of a ravaged landscape
undergoing massive reconstruction. Between factories,
dormitories, and trash areas, streams and ponds of polluted water hint at the amplitude of the disaster, suggesting the future possibility of a dehumanized world.
For now, however, the reality is utterly different. Life
carries on for a floating population of 10 million people
who produce the Made in China label. Living in dormitories attached to the factories, these new migrants have
spontaneously appropriated the only large, sheltered
space available the superhighway. Under the highway,
a massive open market has sprung up, where workers develop new social networks. It is a place where
commodities are sold, services offered, and food and
entertainment consumed. You can take a chair, order
a meal and watch a DVD on TV. Where several chairs
cluster together, entertainment islands are created.
The highway provides a roof and support for lighting
and electricity. Another form of energy comes from the
transitory condition of the land, the people, the flashing
TV screens, digital noise, and neon light. In the shadow
of the highway, innovative economic activities arise and
change according to the social demand. This hidden
urbanity, which thrives on the vitality of a population
almost entirely under the age of 25, represents the motor that powers the PRD region.

369

386

387

Authors
Pablo Allard
Doctor of Design Studies 2003 and Master of Architecture in
Urban Design 1999, Harvard GSD. Architect and Master of Architecture 1996, Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile. Allard
is a researcher and Professor at the Facultad de Arquitectura,
Diseo y Estudios Urbanos of the Universidad Catlica de
Chile UC. In 2005, he was appointed Executive Director of the
Observatorio de Ciudades UC, a consulting unit specialized in
territorial intelligence. Over the last decade Allard has also
lead the SEREX-UC team in charge of the Master Plan for the
urban renovation of the "Zanjn de la Aguada." He is also a
founding member of the ELEMENTAL housing initiative, and has
been a consultant for the Interamerican Development Bank, the
BBVA Group, and the Harvard Center for Design Informatics. He
has been recently appointed as a member of the ministerial
task force to improve the Santiago Transportation System.
Allard has published widely and is a weekly contributor to the
Chilean newspaper La Tercera.

More recently, he was nominated for the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in Paris. Retrospectives of his work have
taken place at Harvard University and the So Paulo Biennale.
His built portfolio includes the Medical, the Architecture and
the Mathematic Schools of UC, and the Siamese Towers in his
native Chile, as well as the new facilities of St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. He has been recently asked to design a
new building for VITRA in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

Donald L. Bates
Donald L. Bates is a Director of LAB Architecture Studio, with
offices in Melbourne, London and Dubai. Since founding the
practice with Peter Davidson in 1994, LAB has been responsible
for the Federation Square project in Melbourne (1997-2002),
Soho Shang-Du in Beijing (2004-2007), and numerous current
projects in China, Dubai, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Tbilisi
and Bristol. The work of LAB is published in numerous international publications. Donald was visiting professor of architecture at The Cooper Union (2004-05), taught at the Architectural
Association (1983-89, 93-95), founded the independent school
of architecture LoPSiA in France (199094) and has lectured in
more than 90 schools of architecture in Asia, Australia, Europe
and North America.

Marc Anglil
Alfredo Brillembourg
Marc Anglil is a professor at the Department of Architecture
of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).
His research at the Institute of Urban Design of the competence center Network City and Landscape (NSL) addresses
recent developments at the periphery of large metropolitan
regions. Emphasis is placed on strategies to support sustainable urban processes with attention given to the forces
involved in the formation and transformation of cities. He is the
author of several books, including Inchoate: An Experiment in
Architectural Education (on methods of teaching) and Indizien
[Evidence] (on the political economy of contemporary urban
territories). He is a board member of the Holcim Foundation for
Sustainable Construction.

Alejandro Aravena
Alejandro Aravena is an architect from the Universidad Catolica de Chile (UC 1992). In 1994, he began to work independently
and became a professor at UC. After teaching as a Visiting Professor at Harvard University between 2000 and 2005, he was
appointed in 2006 as the Elemental Copec Professor at UC and
Executive Director of ELEMENTAL. In 2004, Architectural Record awarded him with the title Design Vanguard architect as
one of the 10 most promising architects in the world. In 2006,
he won the Erich Schelling Medal for Architecture in Germany.

390

Alfredo Brillembourg founded Urban-Think Tank Architects,

a Caracas-based firm, in 1994. Since 1997, he was a regular
guest professor at the Faculty of Architecture at The Central
University of Venezuela; since 2000, at The Graduate School of
Architecture and Planning at Columbia University, New York
where he started SLUM (Sustainable Living Urban Model) LAB
[www.slumlab.com]. Together with Kristin Feireiss and Hubert
Klumpner he published Informal City: Caracas Case in 2005.
Brillembourg is a member of the Venezuelan Architects and
Engineers Association and has traveled extensively to many
countries, including Brazil, Germany, Austria, and Holland. He
and Klumpner collaborated on the CA Metro of Caracas and
are presently overseeing the completion of the construction
of this Metropolitan Cable car system as well as the Lecuna
Avenue Urban Renewal Housing Project in Caracas. In addition,
plans are under way in Venezuela, Brazil, and Holland to build
affordable housing and social centers such as the Vertical
Gym prototype in densely populated and socially conflicted
environments.

Philippe Cabane
Philippe Cabane is now a consultant for urban strategies,
development, and communication in Basel. He works also as

researcher at the Institute of Urban Design, Departement of

Architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich (ETHZ), and is preparing a PhD on informal urbanism.
After his studies in sociology, philosophy, and human geography in Basel and urbanism at the Institut Franais dUrbanise
in Paris, he mainly developed the project nt/Areal in Basel
(www.areal.org, see also Archplus Nr.183) as a long-term
experiment in activity-based development of public space.
He has published in several architectural journals such as
Archithese, Hochparterre, and tec21.

Minsuk Cho
Minsuk Cho studied architecture at the Architectural Engineering Department at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, and at
The Graduate School of Architecture and Planning at Columbia
University in New York. Prior to establishing his own practice,
he gained experience in a wide range of architectural and
urban projects in the USA and the Netherlands. He received
numerous awards: First Prize in the 1994 Shinkenchiku International Residential Architecture Competition for new housing
design; the Young Architects Award 2000 of the Architectural
League, New York; as well as the Progressive Architecture
Award 1999 and 2003, hosted (at the time) by Architecture
magazine. He also participated in various exhibitions, such as
the Biennale di Venezia in 2004, or most recently the traveling
exhibition New Trends of Architecture in Europe and Asia
Pacific 2006-2007. He has been an active lecturer and participant in symposiums worldwide [www.massstudies].

Kees Christiaanse
Kees Christiaanse studied Architecture at Delft University of
Technology. He was a founding member and partner of OMARotterdam from 1980-1989, until he created KCAP Architects
& Planners. In 1996, he was appointed Professor of Urban
Design at Technical University Berlin; in 2003, he became Head
of the Institute for Urban Design at ETH Zurich. Since 2007, he
is also a guest professor at the Cities Program of the London
School of Economics and a member of the Urban Advisory
Board in Dublin. His most important books are Situations
Projects by KCAP and Campus and the City: Urban Design for
the Knowledge Society with Kerstin Hger. He built Hafencity
in Hamburg; several projects in London among them the
Olympic Legacy; waterfront projects in Rotterdam, Amsterdam
and elsewhere. KCAP is led by four partners and has offices
in Rotterdam, London, and Zurich with 75 employees [www.
urbandesign.ethz.ch and www.kcap.eu].

Teddy Cruz
Teddy Cruz was born in Guatemala City. After earning the
Rome Prize in Architecture and obtaining an MDesS-1997 at
the Harvard GSD, he established his practice in San Diego,
California, in 2000. He has been recognized internationally for
his urban research of the Tijuana-San Diego border, and in collaboration with community-based nonprofit organizations such
as Casa Familiar, for his work on housing and its relationship
to an urban policy more inclusive of social and cultural programs for the city. In 2004-05, he was the first recipient of the
James Stirling Memorial Lecture on the City Prize, awarded
jointly by the Canadian Center of Architecture and the London
School of Economics. He is currently an associate professor in
public culture and urbanism in the Visual Arts Department at
University of California, San Diego.

Fernando Diez
Fernando Diez is currently Professor for Urbanism and Director of the History and Theory Department at the Universidad
de Palermo, Argentina. Formerly, he was a professor and
researcher at the Universidad de Belgrano and Universidad de
Buenos Aires, and visiting professor at several universities in
Argentina and abroad. He is the editorial director of Summa+
and Barzn, both publihed in Buenos Aires. Born in Buenos
Aires in 1953, Diez studied architecture at the Universidad de
Belgrano, Argentina and received his Doctorate at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He is author of
Buenos Aires y algunas constantes en las transformaciones
urbanas and Crisis de Autenticidad (on Argentine architecture).
His critical and theoretical work has been widely published
and he is also contributor to the OpEd column of La Nacin
in Buenos Aires. He has been counselor for the CPAU, Buenos
Aires (2002-2006) and adviser on urban development to the
government and various public institutions and to the CONEAU
(National Council for University Evaluation and Accreditation).

Juan Du
Juan Du is currently Assistant Professor in the Department
of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. She is the
founder of IDU Architecture and co-founder of performativeCities. Her research and design projects range from
architectural design to urban research and planning, widely
engaging in the field from the built form to the processes of
the city. Juan Du is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for
research on transformations of the contemporary Chinese city.
Past professional practice experience include working in the
offices of Atelier FCJZ in Beijing, Santiago Calatrava in Paris,
and Mack Scogin Merrill Elam in Atlanta. She has taught at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Graduate Center of Architecture at Peking University. Juan Du received a

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Image Credits
14/15: Fig. 1, Le Corbusier, Buenos Aires : urbanisme 1929;
Plan FLC 30304 FLC/Bildkunst, 2008
25: Fig. 1/2, Studio 8
27-29: All images, Franz Oswald
30-45: The text was previously published in: Visionary Power:
Producing the Contemporary City, Edited by Christine de Baan,
Joachim Declerck (Rotterdam: NAI Publishers, 2007)
30-45: Graphics, Keller Easterling and E. Sean Baile
46-51: All images, Pablo Allard, Jos Rosas
53-65: All images, Ilka & Andreas Ruby
66: Fig. 14, Horst Kiechle, Emporis
68-83: All images, Chris Jordan
91: Fig. 1, All images, Ilka & Andreas Ruby
96-103: All graphics, Wes Jones
111: Fig. 1, Office for Urbanism and Traffic, City of Dordrecht
& Lola Landschapsarchitecten
117-123: All images, Juan Alfonso Zapata
102: Graphics, Supersudaca, 2005
128-137: All images, Marc Rder
140/141: All graphics, Kees Christiaanse
142: Graphics, Research Studio Dbendorf 2007, ETH Zurich
143: Graphics, Albert Pope
149-155: All images, Minsuk Cho
157: Fig. 1, Author unknown; Fig. 2, Ines Weizman
158-162: All images, Ines Weizman
167: All images, Louise Ganz and Ines Linke
168: Fig. 3, Louise Ganz and Ines Linke; Fig. 4, Louise
Ganz and Breno Silva
169: All images, Louise Ganz and Ines Linke
171-175: All images, Omar Arregui
176-189: All images, Laurent Gutierrez and Valrie Portefaix
190-193: The text was previously published in: Hunch No 6/7,
edited by Jennifer Sigler (2003), 497-502.
194-201: All images, Enrique Pealosa
209: Fig. 1, Ron Haviv; Fig. 2, Author unknown; Fig. 3, NAO
211: All images, NAO
212: Fig. 6, Marjetica Potrc
213: Fig. 7, Dubravka Sekulic
215: Fig. 8, Bas Princen
217: Fig. 9, Savo Kovacevi
219: Fig. 1, Google Earth
221: Fig. 2, Google Earth; Fig. 3, Juan Du
222-225: All images, Juan Du
226-239: All images, Teddy Cruz
240/241: Graphic, Hosoya Schaefer Architects 2004,
updated 2008
242-247: Graphics, Hosoya Schaefer Architects 2006
248/249: Graphic, Hosoya Schaefer Architects 2004,
updated 2008
250/251: Graphic, Hosoya Schaefer Architects 2004
253-265: All images, Lacaton Vassal

398

269: Fig. 1, Deane Simpson

270: All images, Winnebago
273-275: All images, Deane Simpson
277: Fig. 1, UNHCR.
278/279: Fig. 2 UNHCR
280-284: All images, Manuel Herz
287: Fig. 09, UNHCR
292-299: All images Haewon Shin
300-307: All Graphics, Pushkaraj Karakat, Snehal Hannurkar
313: Fig. 1, T. Sugiyama, D. Chulunbator, Fig. 2 Google Earth
316/317: Fig. 3, Google Earth
319-325: All images, Florian Lippe
334-342: All images, Dirk Hebel and Jrg Stollmann
346-351: All images, Elemental
353: All images, Google Earth
354-357: All images, Elemental
359-364: All images, Urban-Think Tank, Caracas
370/371: Graphic, Laurent Gutierrez and Valrie Portefaix
372-389: All images, Laurent Gutierrez and Valrie Portefaix

Every effort has been made by the authors and the publishers to
acknowledge all sources and copyright holders. In the event of any
copyright holder being inadvertently omitted, please contact the
publishers directly.

DONOR Acknowledgement
The Swiss-based Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction
promotes and encourages innovative approaches to sustainable
development of the built environment. The objective of the Foundation is to encourage sustainable responses to the technological, environmental, socio-economic and cultural issues affecting
building and construction, regionally as well as globally.
The Foundation is funded by Holcim Ltd but is independent
of its commercial interests. Holcim Ltd is one of the world's
leading suppliers of cement and aggregates (crushed stone,
sand and gravel) as well as further activities such as readymix concrete and asphalt including services. The Holcim Group
holds majority and minority interests in more than 70 countries
on all continents.
The Advisory Board of the Holcim Foundation ensures that
its activities are conducted in accordance with current
interpretations of sustainable construction and shapes its
activities by identifying the architectural, scientific, cultural,
and policy concerns to be integrated into the initiatives. The
Advisory Board includes: Rolf Soiron (Chairman), Chairman,
Holcim Ltd, Switzerland; Yolanda Kakabadse, Member,
World Conservation Union (IUCN), Ecuador; Enrique Norten,
Principal and Founder, TEN Arquitectos, Mexico/USA;
Amory Lovins, CEO, Rocky Mountain Institute, USA;
Klaus Tpfer, former Executive Director of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP), Germany; Simon Upton,
Chairman, OECD Round Table on Sustainable Development,
New Zealand; Muhammad Yunus, Founder, Grameen Bank, and
2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Bangladesh.
The members of the Management Board of the Holcim
Foundation are responsible for managing the Foundation
and appointing individuals to support its activities. The
Management Board includes: Markus Akermann (Chairman),
CEO, Holcim Ltd, Switzerland; Marc Anglil, professor of
urban design, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Urs Bieri, economist,
Switzerland; Alexander Biner, economist, Switzerland; Claude
Fussler, sustainability advisor, France; Hans-Rudolf Schalcher, professor for planning and management in construction, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Roland Walker, Head, Holcim
Corporate Communications, Switzerland.

Holger Wallbaum, assistant professor in sustainable construction, ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Zhiqiang Wu, Dean of the
College of Architecture and Planning, Tongji University, China.
The partner universities of the Holcim Foundation are the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), Switzerland; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA; Tongji University, Shanghai, China; Universidad
Iberoamericana (UIA), Mexico City, Mexico; and University
of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The
Universidade de So Paulo (USP), Brazil, is an associated
university.
The Holcim Awards for Sustainable Construction are an
initiative of the Holcim Foundation. It is a regional and
global competition for future-oriented and tangible sustainable construction projects and visions with prize money of
US$ 2 million per three-year competition cycle. The Awards
competition is conducted in coordination with the partner
universities, who lead the independent juries.
To accelerate progress and promote sustainable construction, the Holcim Foundation provides seed funding for building initiatives and grants for research projects at PhD level.
The Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction is a series
of symposiums for academics and practitioners to encourage discourse on the future of the built environment. The
first Holcim Forum was hosted by ETH Zurich, Switzerland,
in 2004 under the theme Basic Needs. The second Forum
was held in 2007 at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, on
Urban_Trans_Formation, and was the starting point for this
publication. A commemorative book on this Forum is also
available (ISBN 978 3 7266 0080 8).
For additional information on the Holcim Foundation and
its activities, including details of the Awards competition
and its prize winning projects, a global events calendar for
sustainable construction, downloads of all papers presented
at the Holcim Forums as well as the respective publications,
see: www.holcimfoundation.org

As global Technical Competence Center (TCC), the Swiss

Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) coordinates the
collaboration among the partner universities of the Holcim
Foundation. This team forms the technical backbone of the
Foundation and is represented by: Hans-Rudolf Schalcher
(Head) and Marc Anglil (see above); Hansjrg Leibundgut,
professor for building technology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland;
Andrew Scott, associate professor of architecture, MIT, USA;

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