A critical autoethnographic approach to the current state of urban development
FARZAD GOLGHASEMI
intro ❯❯
Wayfinding and Getting Lost
From our earliest moments we are taught to begin each endeavor, including grieving, with an aim, a project, a plan. What we don’t teach ourselves, or others, is how easily these aims, projects, and plans can change, can evaporate, can create a suddenly present absence. How easily we are frustrated, felled. How we are suddenly exhausted but do not know why.
In my new city, I used Google Maps to find my way. To find new routes to reach the school, work—if lucky to find one—and home. The more I was getting to know about that city, the fewer attractions I found in it. It contained repetitive commutes and offerings of spaces that I needed to spend money which was in scarcity. As the pile of new coffee shops, restaurants, boutiques, and local businesses was coming on my way, I started to question Google's agency—hence the ones associated with algorithms and tech monopolies. While passing through iterated look-alike structures, streets, spaces, and people, I got to think about the planner's agency. I started to examine how I moved my body and what I felt after spending a while with a companion who grew up in that city. A person who knew every corner of that terrain before those corporations and their sensors. I noticed that there are tens of different ways to reach destinations while experiencing the familiar feeling of getting lost. I questioned the necessity and urgency of arriving home, work, and/or other spaces that I took their functions for granted.
I also questioned my own agency as a person who studied architecture and designed spaces for others in the past, and a stranger wanderer who is in the process of wayfinding in the present. A former architectural agency that repeatedly neglected the bodies, memories, and senses of the ones who would live in the designed spaces that I, the architect imagined.2 And, a current way that involves personal memories evoked by the Neoliberalist urban renewal and architecture of my new city in transformation.3
Modernist design at large has housed the intellect and the eye, but it has left the body and the other senses, as well as our memories, imaginations and dreams, homeless.
—Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin
The following is a narration that reflects my own memories within the built environments I've been living in, through my own wayfinding and disorientations. I intend to read the transient nature of the cities I lived in, in conjunction with their spatial productions. I intend to have a critical perspective towards social and political issues within the promised spaces—of the future—through my own psycho-somatic experiences that are not specific to my case, yet for generations that for the hope of a better life have been deciding to migrate to the "west". From the Middle East to the Near East and from there to Europe. A transformation that involved education and practices related to architecture and designing new homes and offices—with a longing for similar spaces for self—to digital media and technology-adjacent studies. All lining up to fulfill the desires that are there to be questioned and cheered now and then. The temporality and transformation of this area remind me of my own. From handmade sketches to hand-typed scripts. And this part of my new city—with a long maritime and colonialist history—from storage houses to tech companies. From houses dedicated to harbor workers to cubic and repeating square-shaped buildings that pop up everywhere on this planet.
Within the direction of the late capitalist agencies of human and and more than human actors, it is relevant to compare the co-called notions local and global. While local is related to corporeal proximity, intimacy, slowness, and relational multi-sensorial connections, global is craving for speed, precision, convenience, interest rate, and marketing. Conglomerates such as Google use local resources in its way for their own sake. They use notions such as maps and mapping to establish local dependencies, and eventually financial dominance.4 The same is with local construction companies and urban development industries as a part global free-market constitution, appropriating water and land for marketing the spaces they construct. In this feedback loop of spatial appropriation, Google Maps services incorporate the absence of bodies and places while accumulating data regarding our cities and their existence. It is just a matter of perspective, how to extract that data, and how to read and narrate it. Is it possible to use it against its constitution?5
Anyhow, it is inevitable to ignore the effects of neoliberalist structures and power relations on my surroundings which reflects on the local economy of growth. In Google's case, this operates through offering free services and products to manyfold of users whether startups or novice programmers such as myself. Interestingly enough, another local reflection is the peculiar entanglement of the tech industry and urban development reinforcing normative structures for the sake of profitability. After all, the Gig Economy needs new offices, workers, gyms, shops, restaurants, balconies, and houses. And in my new city, there is no better location than the old, retired harbor area to achieve those.
Let's renew and rebrand it!
I wonder how it feels to line up with the features of the grounds I inhabit, the sky that surrounds me, or the imaginary lines that cut through maps? 6
It doesn't feel like home.
It has a distinct architecture though.
How do I know which way to turn [to reach my destination]? Turn left, or the second right!
Reminds me of times I studied architecture, far from here, far from home.
See Stacy Holman Jones "Living Bodies of Thought: The “Critical” in Critical Autoethnography." Qualitative Inquiry, Vol. 22(4) (2016), 228-237. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800415622509
A neglection that operated thorough reducing unlimited modes of living and experience to a few presumed modernist models. By this I refer to architectural categorization as the architectural program. In this context I also refer to Pallasmaa asserting that "The inhumanity of contemporary architecture and cities can be understood as the consequence of the negligence of the body and the senses, and an imbalance in our sensory system." See Juhani Pallasma, The Eyes of the Skin (John Wiley & Sons, 2005), 17.
Here I refer to my memories—regarding the period of studying and practicing architecture in Turkey from 2009 until 2018—that were constantly being evoked by the construction sites and projects of Überseestadt district of Bremen. (https://www.ueberseestadt-bremen.de/) This old harbor area has been undergone a major urban renewal since the early 2000s springing from a "Re-urbanization" strategy that is "boosting a post-Fordist orientation towards sophisticated lifestyle and conspicuous consumption". Holm argues that "the current phase of urban renewal represent a passage into a neoliberal strategy that renounces the prior orientation toward welfare. There is a stronger involvement of private investors and interests in the urban development and its characterized by a new kind of urban governance." See Andrej Holm "Urban Renewal and the End of Social Housing: The Roll Out of Neoliberalism in East Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg." Social Justice, Vol. 33, no. 3 (2006) 114–128. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29768389, 114.
According to Gentzel, Wimmer, and Schlagowski Google Maps—"[...] what is probably the most widely used map in human history, which has achieved a 'structural dominance in the maps sector' (McQuire 2019)"—"is committed to the production logic of platform or surveillance capitalism, insofar as the collected user data are utilised both to maintain Google Maps as a 'cartographic infrastructure' (Plantin 2018)". In their thesis, they "focus on the one hand on the production, i.e., the technical and economic functioning of Google Maps, and on the other hand on the product – the map in the sense of an image of the world that is routinely used in everyday life." See Peter Gentzel, Jeffrey Wimmer, Ruben Schlagowski "Doing Google Maps. Everyday Use and the Image of Space in a Surveillance Capitalism Centrepiece" Digital Culture & Society, vol. 7, no. 2 (2021) 159-184. https://doi.org/10.14361/dcs-2021-070208
I question if there are ways to subvert the widely used products of such corporations in order to oppose the status quo by alienating them from their intended purpose. By alienation I refer to Zanetti's Zweckentfremdung by which is referred to the Situationist concept of détournement: "With the aspect of alienation or, more precisely, of the reversal of purposes presupposed as known, the situationist détournement is, however, much more directly and critically related—through the power of negation—to very specific and purposeful determinations. [...] In any case, it will be said that détournement, understood as the alienation of an object or a process from a certain purpose that can be presupposed as known, creates an irritation that in turn stimulates, if not compels, improvisation (and possibly also invention)." See Sandro Zanetti "1957. Situationistische Interventionen mittels Zweckentfremdung." Improvisation und Invention: Momente, Modelle, Medien (Zürich: Diaphanes, 2014), 233-243. https://www.diaphanes.net/titel/1957-3021 236-237. (Translated with the help of the online translator deepL: https://deepl.com)
Here I borrow from Ahmed that mentions: "It is in this mode of disorientation that one might begin to wonder: What does it mean to be oriented? How do we begin to know or to feel where we are, or even where we are going, by lining up ourselves up with the features of the grounds we inhabit, the sky that surrounds us, or the imaginary lines that cut through maps? How do we know which way to turn to reach our destination?" (p. 6) Ahmed continues that "The question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only about how we 'find our way' but how we come to 'feel at home.'" (p. 7) See Sarah Ahmed “INTRODUCTION: Find Your Way.” Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, (Duke University Press, 2006), 1–24.
Head West ❯❯ along the repository
800 Kilometers away from where I grew up, once a young award-winning professor advised me to keep moving toward the West. He wondered what kept me there! "just keep moving on..." While the question of "how much West" stayed unanswered, once again education seemed to be the best way to do so. Now, I am here, thousands of kilometers away from where I used to call home, realizing that to find my way I need to get lost. I need to orient myself through this artificial inhabitance. Since following its alluring directions took me further away, perhaps I should turn the other ways.
Ahead1 stands this 406-meter-long brick structure constructed over a hundred years ago as a container for colonial goods arriving from overseas.2 At the present time, along with a public school, it contains several other commercial spaces.3 Not profit-oriented entirely though, it is one of the first buildings to get re-inhabited after a long retirement period, on account of its encompassing harbor.4 Compelled to wear the captain suit of the new urban regeneration ship.5
The Purifier
Walking down towards the vanishing point an architecture firm comes into view.6 There must be a handful of them around. Offices that are hand in hand with urban developers who desire "spacious, barrier-free condominiums that leave nothing to be desired for their future residents. High ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows, and modern equipment to ensure, you immediately feel at home."7
Offices that to satisfy the master's desires should utilize digital tools.8 Three-dimensional software that ensure abstract geometries within the limited Cartesian coordinates, ending up with analogic forms and hierarchies. A homogenizer and purifier that makes the windows, doors, stairs, walls, desks, people, animals, work, sport, food, and feelings look the same, become the same.
Moving on toward the horizon, a museum manifests itself.9 Seemingly devoted to this old harbor, it narrates the past proudly. A history of several shipyards and traffic. It speaks of cotton and coffee with no signs of modesty on its constitutional greed.10 A history of constructions and watercourses. Fancying the paradise somewhere else out there, it glorifies an extinct maritime phantasm. It renders the tale of a city striving to become a portal, by washing out a world of sand from its river's banks.11
The institution is intertwined with an entity dedicated to inform the public regarding the new constructions. About transforming the past into the future, and perhaps the future into the past.12 The information flows through a gigantic illuminated model, commercial development plans, and postcards, depicting the area under the capitalist siege.13
Below, Photograph of a part of the gigantic model (located at Infocenter) mapping the Überseestadt Masterplan.
The profit-oriented agenda of this constellation obeys the master's master plan.14 An apparatus that blends the local with global models of growth.15 A dynamic long-term document that provides concepts for the future, appropriating the past in collaboration with a museum. The master with a plan is the private owner of the city, flying high over the terrain and parceling land and water. He has the upper hand over the architects, ordering them to visualize future perspectives for the postcards, establishing a weird association of non-existence and visited, between old, new, use, and re-use.
Selected postcards obtained form Hafenmuseum Bremen. The handouts are created in the context of the urban renewal project and city marketing agenda. The contents are mixture of photography from various old and new buildings from Überseestadt as well as architectural visualizations of the imagined futures.
This immense texturology spread out before one's eyes is nothing but a representation, an optical artifact. It is analogue of the facsimile procedure, through a projection that is a way of keeping aloof by the space planner urbanist, city planner [and architect] or cartographer. The panorama city is a "theoretical", (thus visual) simulacrum, in short a picture, whose condition of possibility is an oblivion (unconsciousness) and a misunderstanding of practices.
This way makes it more vivid that these agencies and collaborations between designers, architects, journalists, planners, and politicians, are in favor of private ownerships and aristocratic businesses, that have been twisting through a variety of spectacles, adding up value, to what they hold.17
A way that passes through construction sites—for material and immaterial, cities and ports, software and topology—equipped with technologies since 50s and 60s that have been developing under favor of industries and economical agenda of their times. In this terms, it is possible to follow a shift from techno-futuristic modern ideologies (modernist architecture and productions) to a Neoliberalist drive for the contemporary constructions with an specific taste (aesthetics). Constructions that give priority to private ownership and a profitability that uses self-image and appropriates already expired technologies and narratives to establish more power and profit in the name of reuse, or culture, or user-friendly, or Apple, or postmodern architecture, or algorithmic design.
I start my drift from this building Speicher XI that includes the university of the arts I am involved with, where I call home at the moment.
In 1908 the two neighboring buildings Speicher XI and Speicher XIII (Speicher means storehouse) were planned for cotton handling at Überseehafen (the overseas port). Their construction started in 1910 according to the plans of architects Hermann Bücking and Eduard Suling, and put into operation by the Bremer Lagerhausgesellschaft in 1912. The two buildings received a connecting building (Segment 8) in 1947-49 and in 1994 the building went under preservation order (Denkmalschutz). See "Speicher XI Bremen" Das Architektur-Bildarchiv, https://www.architektur-bildarchiv.de/image/Speicher-XI-Bremen-34300.html and "Chronik Speicher XI" Hafenmuseum Bremen, https://hafenmuseum-bremen.de/museum-speicher-xi-chronik/ and "Speicher XI, OBJ-Dok-nr.: 00000324" Das Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Bremen, https://www.denkmalpflege.bremen.de/denkmaeler/speicher-xi-51559 Accessed 6 Nov. 2023.
In "Development concept for the restructuring of the old port districts in Bremen" which was approved by the Senate and Parliament of Bremen in June 2000, cultural and commercial program was assigned to the building: "There are ideas for a future - at least partial - cultural use for Weserbahnhof II and Speicher XI. [...] A utilization and operating concept for the historic Speicher XI is available for mixed use as a warehouse, for retail and as a cultural location." See "Entwicklungskonzeption zur Umstrukturierung der Alten Hafenreviere in Bremen" Bremische Bürgerschafthttps://www.bremische-buergerschaft.de/dokumente/wp15/stadt/drucksache/D15S0186.pdf p. 18. In 2001 the building was purchased by Klaus Hübotter (Dr. Hübotter Gruppe) and renovated according to designs by Manfred Schomers and Rainer Schürmann. "The first new users, the University of the Arts, were able to move in in the winter semester of 2003/2004." See "Speicher XI" as2architekturhttps://www.as2-bremen.de/projekt/SP%20XI/sp.XI.htm and "Hafenmuseum Speicher XI" https://www.huewo.de/portfolio_page/hafenmuseum-speicher-xi/ According to the first development report: "Another presentable project is the conversion of Speicher XI and the establishment of the University of the Arts, the Kulturforum, the Überseestadt GmbH information center and around 24 other companies in the building." See "1. Entwicklungsbericht Überseestadt 2004" Bremer Investitions-Gesellschaft mbH (BIG) (currently Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH) https://www.ueberseestadt-bremen.de/de/page/downloads-videos p. 19.
I refer to the period of inactivity associated with Bremen's old ports of Europahafen (formerly knows as Freihafen) and no longer existing Überseehafen (formerly knows as Freihafen II). For more on structural changes and respective economical recession see Sebastian Möller Lerneinheit 6: Regionalwirtschafthttps://blogs.uni-bremen.de/hafenblog/2020/05/26/lerneinheit-6-hafen-regionalwirtschaft/ Furthermore, drawing on Dirk Schubert work (Transformation Processes on Waterfronts in Seaport Cities) Möller mentions that "ports changed in the course of globalization" and in cities such as Bremen "there was a deindustrialization of the areas and districts that were particularly responsible for shipping, new financial structures and the transformation of the port areas as such. [...] In many port cities, the port as such hardly played a role anymore, the ships and harbor basins became larger and larger, which meant that cities like Bremen could no longer simply keep up with their competitors. Ports were relocated further out to sea, former industries collapsed and unemployment in the port sector increased." Changes that resulted in Bremen's new urban policies and development plan for mentioned area called Überseestadt. See Sebastian Möller HafenCity vs. Überseestadt – urban planning changes in port citieshttps://blogs.uni-bremen.de/hafenblog/2020/06/20/hafencity-vs-ueberseestadt-stadtplanerische-veraenderungen-von-hafenstaedten/
"Speicher XI is more than a storage location for goods from overseas. Negotiations are held here, contracts are made and there is a big celebration when the work is done." See "Am Speicher XI" WFB Bremen GmbH, https://www.ueberseestadt-bremen.de/de/page/company/51506. Moreover Manfred Sack mentions, "We need only look at the building in which we find ourselves, inside and out, together with its surroundings, with the place it once shaped. With its 406 meters in length, it is at the same time a symbol of this entire district and its challenging revitalization." See Klaus Hübotter Du baust wie du bist.(4) (Druckerpresse-Verlag, Lilienthal, 2014) p. 28.
"GSP is a classical architectural office located in the historic Speicher XI in Bremen's Überseestadt. The roots of the office point to a time 100 years ago, when Ernst Kopp began his architectural work in Berlin." See "GS P Architekten mbB" Architektenkammer der Freien Hansestadt Bremen, https://www.akhb.de/node/123638
Here I cite from a local newspaper that advertises private urban and architectural waterfront projects via reports: "A clear, timeless architecture, interesting floor plans and a first-class property location in a unique maritime ambience. Under the project development of Justus Grosse Immobilien GmbH 24 stylish [...] condominiums [...] to be constructed [...] directly at the New Harbor. The project should be completed by autumn 2024. Sales have now started. The apartments are ideal for self-use or as a capital investment with the intention to rent them out." See "Wohnen zwischen Weser und Neuem Hafen" kreiszeitung.de, 22 July 2022, https://www.kreiszeitung.de/lokales/bremen/wohnen-direkt-am-neuen-hafen-das-neubauprojekt-panorama-2-in-bremerhaven-91679955.html Accessed 06.11.2023.
The contemporary practice of architecture and design, unlike more traditional ways of hand drafting and sketching, uses different software for construction and other reasons. BIM and CAD for drafting, shop/detail drawings, and accurate estimations and calculations. Three-dimensional modeling software for renderings proceeding to raster and vector graphics software for visualizations and diagrams. For more on Pre-CAD instances of technical drawing and drafting see "Life before the invention of AutoCAD, 1950-1980" Rare Historical Photoshttps://rarehistoricalphotos.com/life-before-autocad-1950-1980 Accessed 06.11.2023.
As mentioned before the to be renovated iconic building was aimed to contain a mix-use of culture and commerce. "At the beginning of 2004, the tenants in the front segments followed and on February 28, 2004, the Hafenmuseum Speicher XI celebrated its opening." See "Hafenmuseum Speicher XI" Dr. Hübotter Gruppehttps://www.huewo.de/portfolio_page/hafenmuseum-speicher-xi/ Accessed 06.11.2023.
Here I refer to the way this "privately run" museum narrates Bremen's port history. (see notes 3, 9, 12) Around manifold of objects, models, depictions, and citations related to oversea trade (cotton and coffee in particular) associated with shipping and ship-building, there are almost no signs of reflections on the extractivist and colonialist actions of the city's past. According to Müller "In the historiography of the Bremen ports (as in regional history in general), the immediate stages of development of the ports are reconstructed in great detail, but other important questions are often ignored. The experiences of women, migrant workers and ordinary employees in the port industry often remain invisible, while merchants, shipowners, mayors and senators are the focus (they are also the ones after whom many Bremen streets are named). [...] The same applies to colonial exploitation relationships, ecological consequences of shipping, other costs of concentrating resources on the ports, unequal power structures and port political conflicts. All of this often takes a back seat to an almost local-patriotic exaggeration of one's own importance and a relatively uncritical acceptance of the perspective of power." See Sebastian Möller Lerneinheit 2: Hafengeschichte(n)https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/hafenblog/2020/04/26/lerneinheit-2-hafengeschichten/
"When construction director Franzius was brought to Bremen in 1876, he was supposed to ensure the survival of the port of Bremen. His 'Weser correction' was the beginning of the fight for an ever-increasing deepening of the Weser. His plan: he wanted to eliminate all the bends, loops, bottlenecks and shallows of the Weser all the way to the open North Sea. The Weser was to flow with a stronger current and thus create a deep bed for itself. The 'overgrown' river, as contemporaries called it, was to be reshaped according to Bremen's wishes. Franziu's idea was impressively simple, but its realization required a huge effort: 52 million cubic metres of earth were to be moved, and 30 million Reichsmarks were budgeted for this." See Achim Saur "Die Schiffe, der Hafen und die Stadt" Digitales Heimatmuseum Bremen,https://digitales-heimatmuseum.de/die-schiffe-der-hafen-und-die-stadt/ Accessed 06.11.2023.
"The Hafenmuseum Speicher XI shows history with a view - it is committed to the port, its history, present and future. The privately run Hafenmuseum Speicher XI is part of the non-profit Kulturforum Speicher XI GmbH" See "Hafenmuseum Speicher XI" Dr. Hübotter Gruppe, https://www.huewo.de/portfolio_page/hafenmuseum-speicher-xi/ Accessed 06.11.2023.
"An important project within the scope of the communication strategy is the Überseestadt Infocenter in Speicher XI. The Infocenter is located in the immediate vicinity of the Hafenmuseum. The future of Überseestadt is presented to the general public here on over 450 m². Companies from Überseestadt also have the opportunity to present themselves in the Infocenter. One focus of the Infocenter is the so-called 'time machine' (Zeitmaschine) with an integrated 3D visualization. The 'time machine' is intended to give visitors an understanding of the past, present and future of Überseestadt using film material. The visualization consisting of 3D animations and real film sequences was created on the basis of the master plan concept. In addition to the presentation of the 3D visualization in the Infocenter, the film serves as an important tool in acquisition discussions." See "1. Entwicklungsbericht Überseestadt 2004" Bremer Investitions-Gesellschaft mbH (BIG) (currently Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH) https://www.ueberseestadt-bremen.de/de/page/downloads-videos p. 39.
Near a decade before the approval of "Development concept for the restructuring of the old port districts in Bremen" in June 2000, a series of discussions and scrambles about control over the old harbor had ignited in 1992 by a national architecture symposium called Stadt am Strom (City on the River). See U. Süchting, "Überseestadt: Ein Rückblick" taz.de, 6 March 2004, https://taz.de/Ueberseestadt-Ein-Rueckblick/!779486/. Based on the winning "Public-Private Partnership" model, the new policies resulted in a Masterplan in 2003 designed by two architects Manfred Schomers and Rainer Schürmann (See "Überseestadt Masterplan" as2architekturhttps://www.as2-bremen.de/projekt/ueberseestadt/ueberseestadt.htm) who had been working with the new owner of Speicher XI and Hafenmuseum since before. For more on the initial investment history of Überseestadt See Till Briegleb, "Das Richtige im Falschen" brand eins Neuland: Land Bremen, April 2013, https://www.brandeins.de/magazine/brand-eins-neuland/land-bremen-mut-macht-erfinderisch/das-richtige-im-falschen
"At the beginning of the new millennium, a new generation of projects emerged. Private-public-partnerships and professional planning management dominated the global competition between waterfront revitalisation projects. These projects were used in new city-marketing strategies based on the unique seaport heritage. At that time (luxury) housing and mixed-use developments became more widespread."
See Dirk Schubert "Transformation Processes on Waterfronts in Seaport Cities – Causes and Trends between Divergence and Convergence" Port Cities as Areas of Transition: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Kokot, Gandelsman-Trier, Wildner, and Wonneberger, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2008, pp. 25-46. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839409497-002 36.
See Michel de Certeau “Walking in the City” The Practice of Everyday Life, p. 93.
Translated by Steven F. Rendall (University of California Press, 1984). 91-110.
It is possible to extend the "historiography" regarding the ports of Bremen to one that is about a the narration regarding the current urban development and its image in the future (possibly through capitalist modes of museography and neoliberalist cultural programs). In this regard Möller mentions "All of this often takes a back seat to an almost local-patriotic exaggeration of one's own importance and a relatively uncritical acceptance of the perspective of power." See Sebastian Möller Lerneinheit 2: Hafengeschichte(n)https://blogs.uni-bremen.de/hafenblog/2020/04/26/lerneinheit-2-hafengeschichten/
Turn Right ❯❯ into the nowness
Topological Space
The spectacle mutates itself through production of spaces, constructing and re-constructing spectacular again and again in an endless twist. A wicked process that brands fresh products, the same as neighboring ancients with small alteration of attaching the letter "A",1 that represents a present "haunted by the ghosts of lost futures".2 The construction as a recipe to fix a future that is already expired. An era that seemingly dwells through renderings. It's not so hard to feel the desperate effort of the fabric to look alike architect's deceptious imagination.
A fabrication that not only animates the ideals on a surface, but incorporates a manifold of material and labor. An excavation that reveals a topological space under continuous deformations; stretching, twisting, crumpling, and bending land, and water. Water becomes the captive of the master's plan, committed to distract and entertain spectators, from the temporality of the transformation. A muddy water indeed, that not only blurs the liminality of the space, but also makes it possible for the opportunist to fish in.
Construction Site
Committed to formal repetition and patterns of living, the flowchart replaced the missing language of modern architecture that recursively appeared as program to Summerson.3 Consequently, Computer-Aided Design or CAD software as a reproductive tool for the flowchart—by courtesy of progress in computer science and algorithmic ramifications—outgrew the boundaries of non-specialist comprehension and offered various interfaces for architects to design and think with. In this context, hiding its syntactic architecture from the designers, CAD and modeling software lay out a wide range of tools for architectural practitioners to construct within a three-dimensional space. A maker and world-maker, modifier and modified dualistic space that subjects the architecture to the architect through an algorithmic reductivism. Is it possible to detoxicate from this contagious dualism? To exercise an emancipatory perspective, we might evaluate this dualistic space through two sets of spatial notions; surface operation and navigation.
Wide use of 3D modeling software in architecture due to their specific algorithm and economic model entails a specific situatedness that can be traced back in the built environment through many spaces that we design as architects. Since their introduction in the 1960s, CAD Software have been developing into agents creating and modifying curves and surfaces that are not for mere representations, but providing a set of information for constructing material bodies. An ecosystem rooted in modern technological achievement of aircraft and automotive industries in the field of three-dimensional surface construction.4
The invention of CAD is attributed to the French engineer Pierre Bezier who conducted a mathematical work regarding parametric curves and surface based on Bernstein polynomial during late sixties (UNISURF),5 and an earlier software with a graphical interface for drafting (SKETCHPAD) introduced by Ivan Sutherland at MIT as the ancestors of modern CAD software.6 It is important to mention that the initial intention of such software was not to help the designer to think and imagine with, but precisely reproduce drawings that were necessary for machine communication hence fabrication and construction.7
Nevertheless, after so many years of a shared agency, it is impossible to detach the algorithmically engendered modes of imagination from the minds and the hands of designers. Then again, three-dimensional modeling software have been administrating construction sites for the ones who dreamed of building what they imagine. An imagination that is entangled with the methods of surface construction and spatial navigation that a particular software is offering. The same is with my own experiences with SketchUp as the sprawling software of the years I studies and practices architecture and urban design for about a decade in Turkey from 2009 to 2018. I grew up with it while witnessing its expansion from a naive enterprise to a contagious patent. With it, I stayed up all night, dreamed, inhaled, swallowed, had dreams, and got lost in details.
As SketchUp was getting more popular, the architectural designs produced in schools, the ones which were winning prizes in competitions, and even proposed by many practicing architects were becoming as plain, simplistic, rudimentary cubic forms as the software could do the best. All isomorphism of a space that one may call as SketchUp architecture. An architectural homotopy, resulting from its simplistic functions and effortless constructions methodologies. It is somewhat hard to ignore the reductivism bursting out from every corner of its patented invention registered by its far-sighted patron Google.8
Under the name of "intuition" this benefit-oriented document made an analogy between sketching with pen and paper to three-dimensional modeling.9 Is it possible to simply compare the flat surface of a paper and pen with its specific sensory dynamics to a mathematical three-dimensional representational space with topological aspects to it such as faces and vertices? Another reduction was related to the knowledge once necessary for the human that constructed the algorithm in the first place. A continuous transformation from the former scientist to the later "non-technical user".10 A reduction that by praising "non-precise modifications" positioned engineers and architects at the center of the user-centered spectrum, subjecting them to conceptualize, model, hence build rapidly. An intended product of the protected invention that manifested itself precisely in the rapid constructions of building blocks back then in Turkey.11
As a software, SketchUp does not only inherit a soft regime by favor of topological space that incorporates surface operations and navigation,12 but also an interrelated hard regime that operates in specific geographic locations more rigorously.13 In countries such as Turkey, where I studied and practiced architecture, neoliberalist urban development is hand in hand with rapid constructions, shorter design periods, and brutal enforcement of urban renewal. A software such as SketchUp with its lower costs of acquiring and operating becomes the golden preference of modeling software within the conventional drafting ecosystem.14 It produces the most efficient result in kitschy renderings of mediocre architecture of repetition. Here is the aesthetical regime of this software as product of an imprudent dependency, backed by algorithmic addiction (through reductivism construction) and the patent economy.15
But how does this soft regime of SketchUp function as an apparatus that resonates from myself to the other architects of my generation, from urban transformation to production of space, and from ubiquitous architecture to material and labor? A regime that operates through continues functions that reduces the space of world-making to a dualism of world and world-maker. A reduction that hinders designer from an inference that he might be a product of an economic regime that constitutes the software in the first place. That such a model and its agency is not shared with the architect but mimicked. To understand those functions and their effects, we might investigate their containing topology by virtue of surface operations and navigation.
Surface operations
Unlike a 3D model that is static, modeling is a process that involves temporality and methodology, thus thinking. Particularly, where modeling process operates through topological operations that translates into creating and modifying surfaces in a three-dimensional space, the designer may encounter a particular situatedness that entails an illusion of physical materiality. Considering proliferation of this illusion backed by a pure dualistic fantasy of full control over the object, it becomes crucial to understand what kind of abstractions take place in the process of creating and modifying objects. Objects that are composed of flat polygonal faces, edges, and vertices [rendering surfaces].
Pencil and paper > drawing > drawing aids > closed polygon > Push/Pull
Similar to effortless multiplications, a reductive translations between material and immaterial,16 deteriorates that illusion and it entangled dualism. In the name of intuition, SketchUp oversimplifies this translation through mundane analogies borrowed from material space. A pencil icon for the line tool by which after drawing (simply create line with start and end points) one may use an eraser to delete. What happened to the stroke of a pencil and adherences of its core material on a paper? What about the uneven and broken scribbles by the agency of the hand and its frictional movement on the paper? Nevertheless, SketchUp's pencil can only "draw" straight lines.
Lines that in SketchUp's rudimentary space in the name of "drawing aids" are being forced to get parallel to some "invented" color-coded axis.17 A situation that unveils the software's desperation in escaping from mathematical notions such as Cartesian coordinate system and its abstractions (X,Y,Z). Quick fix: appropriating red, green and blue as a hideout in the name of low-precision conceptual tool. How can a so-called CAD software praise non-precision where every vertex of its lines and faces (objects) has a precise spatial location (coordinates)? Just by assigning a pencil icon to its line tool? A tool that is obliged to construct (calculate) any lines with a start and an end point.
Denial of NURBs while oversimplifying polygonal/mesh modeling
When it comes to Freehand drawing or even curves such as circles or arcs, SketchUp discloses its reductivist exploitation. As it refuses to employ Bézier curves (splines) and surfaces based on control points,18 the existence (hence construction) of the objects shrinks to polygonal chains (composed of straight line segments) and polygonal planar surfaces.19 This rejection of calculability hence complexity, in spite of computation possibilities, results in a denial of possible constructable spaces. A denial that reduces a manifold of already existing CAD modifiers such as extrusion and offset to a single tool so called Push/Pull.20 A modifier that only works with a limited planar surface and its extrusion only towards its normals. Assigning a box and an arrow on top as its icon, this allegorically named tool precisely represents the software's agenda in sustaining cubic volumes over physical bodies, hence surface over territory.
Navigation
Another technique that SketchUp conducts which reinforces forementioned dualistic space of world-maker and world, concerns the notion of navigation. This is precisely connected to the software's choice in offering a single viewport over conventional 4-view mode that has roots in orthographic projection and descriptive geometry. CAD's multi-viewport--usually Axonometric and Multiview (e.g. top, front, side)--was the modernist extension of Multiview orthographic projection which played a crucial in architecture and engineering hence constructability of objects and spaces.
Eliminating the possibility of viewing and analyzing objects from different angles, from the programming point of view means to have a single camera. This fits well in SketchUp's case of reducing the architect to a single non-technical user with a primary perspective camera. A camera operates as an apparatus for the contemporary revival of Western anthropocentric representation.21A camera that constitutes an specific situatedness in SketchUp's dualistic space for us architect to navigate inside our constructions. A seductive self-centered process indeed, that by sustaining the user within the boundaries of its surface operations, it hinders the possibilities of many other worlds.
Here I refer to the new building assigned to the University of the Arts Bremen that is adjacent to the mentioned Speicher X1. Constructed by the landlord of the former it is named Speicher XI A.
Here I refer to the idea of Hauntology, and specifically drawing on the concepts asserted by Mark Fisher who "argues that we are haunted by futures that failed to happen". See "Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures", goodread.com. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/20863042
Here I draw on Allen's quote from John Summerson (as "the keenest observer of modern architecture" through its prominent architects from 1930s to 1960s): "Although Summerson found [modern architecture's] theories far from coherent, at their base was something quite different from form: They always referred to "some rhythmically repetitive pattern--whether it is a manufacturing process, the curriculum of a school, the domestic routine of a house, or simply the sense of repeated movement in a circulation system." (Summerson, 1957) See Allen Matthew, Flowcharting: From Abstractionism to Algorithmics in Art and Architecture (Zürich: gta Verlag, 2023) 13. https://doi.org/10.54872/gta/4616
The construction that software was build on was translated directly to the material construction. If one could construct and calculate the curves or surfaces mathematically, then the fabrication would be possible.
From Sutherland's PhD thesis: “For drawings where motion of the drawing, or analysis of a drawn problem is of value to the user, Sketchpad excels. For highly repetitive drawings or drawings where accuracy is required, Sketchpad is sufficiently faster than conventional techniques to be worthwhile. For drawings which merely communicate with shops, it is probably better to use conventional paper and pencil.” (A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, 1963) See David Weisberg, "Computer-Aided Design’s strong roots at MIT," History of CAD, 27 March 2023, https://www.shapr3d.com/history-of-cad/computer-aided-designs-strong-roots-at-mit
"A three-dimensional design and modeling environment allows users to draw the outlines, or perimeters, of objects in a two-dimensional manner, similar to pencil and paper, already familiar to them. The two-dimensional, planar faces created by a user can then be pushed and pulled by editing tools within the environment to easily and intuitively model three-dimensional volumes and geometries." This invention patent's first assignment to Google Inc. was on Aug. 29, 2006. Google LLC and Trimble Inc. are assignees of this US patent until today, however, the document has expired in May 2021. See "Abstract" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling, Patent No. US6628279B1, Sep. 30, 2003. Accessed on Google Patentshttps://patents.google.com/patent/US6628279B1/en
"[...] the invention provides an intuitive three-dimensional modeling environment, in part, by adopting an approach similar to the two-dimensional pen-and-paper drawing method that most people are familiar with." See "SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent).
"Even though several different approaches to modeling have been introduced over the years, many of which are very powerful, they traditionally have been difficult for design professionals to master. This is because they often require a technical /mathematical aptitude and an understanding of an extensive amount of tools, terminology and modeling paradigms that are unfamiliar to non-technical users." The preference of some sort of convenience over grasping complexities of tools which could lead to development of techniques and situated knowledge, is clear. Moreover, there is a praise for "creativity" by virtue of limited engagement: "[...] As a general rule, the quick, 'what if' types of modifications a designer would like to play with are very difficult, or awkward, to implement with most 3D applications. This stifles creativity because the user must devote a comparatively large amount of energy and time driving the technology as compared to focusing on the creative design task." See "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent).
"The approaches being offered on the market today traditionally have steep learning curves that do not enable the casual or less-technical users to realize the advantages of 3D computer modeling. In addition, most 3D applications do not lend themselves to quick, non-precise modifications of the model that makes them poor conceptual design tools." See "BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent). The efficient economic model behind rapid construction of building blocks, is hand in hand with SketchUp which was "easy to master". As an add-on to conventional drafting system, SketchUp encouraged the launch of other trivial game-like application called Lumion. Altogether presenting a mediocre and quick visualization package for architectural design, starting from rusty shop drawings to SketchUp and kitschy real-time rendering of Lumion (which contained hundreds of ready 3D models such as trees, plants, cars, "happy" humans, etc. to use for architectural rendering).
Here I draw on the phrase "soft regime of software" by Metaheven, through which I refers to software's effortless constructions and navigation in contrast to physical manufacturing and territorial limitations: "Software does precisely what its name spells out: it softens the relationship between man and manufacture. Writing, visiting friends, searching, finding, saving: what once required at least some physical activity becomes extremely light, pleasant and effortless. Such a soft regime presents itself as unconstrained and plural. While it seems to cross all territorial boundaries, software rather functions as escapism and synchronizes employment and pleasure over, and against, labour and life. It is because software presents itself as a neutral matter, as a non-directed and infinite open space, that the question of access and circulation in such an infinite void of potentiality arises." (p. 16) See Metahaven, "White night before a manifesto," in The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design, ed. Peggy Deamer, (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015) 13-29.
During the years we used SketchUp in architecture schools and firms in Turkey, the software shared a manifold of agencies with many architects in producing spaces of living that entailed a direct connection to the software's entrepreneurial constitution backed by multinational corporations interested in private ownership and neoliberalist agenda. An agenda that prioritizes popularity, dependency, and profitability over anything that could hinder its digital colonialism.
SketchUp was being used on top of a CAD-based ecosystem that was required by constructors and consultants. Indeed, in the context I was studying and practicing, no one considered SketchUp as CAD software as it could never be used for plan, detail, and shop drawings. However, it is interesting to know that SketchUp was very compatible with scaling and lengths (referring to the “low-precise and conceptual tool” claim), it could get the model started based on cleaned-up plans produced by the architects.
Here I draw on the term regime to refer to such software/gig economy’s effect on “growing countries” such as Turkey. I also intend to refer to an aesthetic notion related to some software patents despite their abundance and sometimes out of charge. In this context, Kang mentions that aesthetical aspect to patents is not exactly "the recognition that a patent turns an invention (or knowledge) into a private or market commodity, which is the mainstream liberal critique of patent law". By referring to Guy Debord, Kang asserts that in this context "abstract ‘patent’ itself has become a commodity through its re-materialization into an image." See Hyo Yoon Kang "Patents as Capitalist Aesthetic Forms", Law Critique (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-023-09349-2
On the connection between territory and surface: "Surface is not territory. Territory, which is actual and geographical (for that reason limited in supply), can be contested and may become the site of an actual conflict, a physical confrontation. This cannot happen on, or to, a surface. [...] Surface may be multiplied without encountering the physical limitations imposed by someone else’s terrain, opinion, presence or personality. " See Metahaven, "White night before a manifesto," 13.
Mathematically abstracted Cartesian axis knows as X,Y,Z were color coded which I think rigidified the already limited spatiality. "Color-coded axis (red, green, blue) are used to indicate the X,Y, Z directions in 3D space. When constructing an edge, if drawn parallel to one of the primary axis, the edge will be displayed with the color of the parallel axis." See "Drawing Aids" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent).
NURBS (Non-uniform rational B-spline) is a mathematical model used in computer graphics (CAD in particular) for representing curves and surfaces. It is a type of curve modeling, as opposed to polygonal modeling, which SketchUp holds on precariously. Many CAD software such as Rhinoceros utilize this model which "offers great flexibility and precision for handling both analytic and modeled shapes". For more on NURBS see "What are NURBS?" Rhino3d.com, https://www.rhino3d.com/en/features/nurbs/ and "Non-uniform rational B-spline." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline. Unlike SketchUp's imprudent and careless ideology, this model may require more complex mathematical calculations and computations, therefore, offering other modes of construction.
"In order to make the invention more intuitive the software enables the user to simply define the edges of the desired form in 3D space to create a 3D surface model. The software recognizes when these edges form a closed planer shape and will construct, a two-dimensional “face” based upon and bounded by these edges. A 'face' can be thought of as the mathematical equivalent of skin filling the area between the defining edges. The edges can be drawn in any order or orientation. This basic ability to just draw the edges of the desired model is a process that is very similar to drawing with pen and paper and substantially reduces the learning curve." See "Create Edges in 3D Space to Form 3D Model" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent).
Here another mundane analogy from the same patent: "Another aspect of the invention allows a designer to manipulate a model by pushing and pulling on faces of the model. Using the push/pull operation, a designer can extrude 2D geometry into 3D , change the size of existing 3D geometry, or introduce new faces to change the shape of existing 3D geometry." See "Push/Pull" in System and method for three-dimensional modeling (SketchUp's Patent).
Drawing on Oscolari, I refer to the post-renascence export of perspective by Italian artists (initially Matteo Ricci) to non-western contexts (in Ricci's case to China). Ignoring their parallel projections drawings and descriptive rules (hence world view) they aimed to convince that "perspective was the right way to see and therefore to represent". See Massimo Oscolari, "The Jesuit Perspective in China." Oblique drawing: a history of anti-perspective, ( MIT Press 2012), 344.
outro ❯❯
Non–orientable surface
The metaphysical scandal of capital brings us to the border question of agency of immaterial and inanimate: [...] the way that "we" "ourselves" are caught up in the rhythms, pulsions and patternings of non-human forces. There is no inside except as a folding of the outside; the mirror cracks, I am an other, and I always was.
In the first year of architecture education, we were supposed to design a structure on a Mobius strip for an android. The android would continuously run on the surface and the structure would guarantee the automaton to receive sunlight all the time. There are many questions that we should have asked the professors, yet we obeyed to design what was asked. Why design for an android? Where are the other androids? Why is a human asked to design an architecture of a non-human? What happened to the other humans? Who could possibly ask an architect to design such a space for an entity with no agency? Or wait, maybe the android could build its own space to inhabit.
The relationship between the agents was not defined at all. The scenario was charged with obscurities, yet the task was striving to present itself as clearly as possible, obliging us to perform and calling us to compete.2 On top of the shock and the eerie encountering such an assignment, the new topological concept of Mobius strip was brough up. Mobius strip is a non-orientable surface that with a 180 degrees twist on its body results in an infinite loop.3 The enclosure makes it possible not only to dismantle the notions of inside and outside but also back, and forward, and up, or left, or right, and down, or back.
What is this place?
Where are the people?
What was here before? and before?
Are those postcard buildings real?
Who designed them and for whom?
Why do they look so similar?
"Why is there something here when there should be nothing?
Why is there nothing here when there should be something?" 4
This area is like that assignment, with many unanswered questions and ambiguities. To drift here is like to move self in one direction and experience it all at once as everything repeats and doubles itself. The time passes and the ground moves under my feet. While inside becomes outside, outside become inside.5 The space loses its identity as it could be everywhere, and the agency of the maker, designer, owner, and user emulates and fades away.
See Mark Fisher, The weird and the eerie (London: Repeater Books, 2016), 11.
Regarding the notion of competition between designers, Metahaven mention: "Designers – either by marketing or by fiction – perpetually innovate the seductive regime of surface, which stimulates other designers to do the same thing, disconnected from the non-negotiability of the brutal material ground, historical structure and political struggles on which, originally, surface itself was premised." See Metahaven, White night before a manifesto, 18.
Other than navigational and orientational properties of such urban spaces, I refer to the speculative value of properties that play a big role in before mentioned neoliberal models such as "public-private partnership". In this context, Metahaven asserts: "We embrace the realm of added or speculative value that is attached to objects. It is not the objects themselves, but the values inhabiting them that are fundamentally reshaped or reinvented. Objects are inhabited by values, and are at the same time, plastered or covered by them. [...] Compare a laptop or mobile phone that is made in China, which is inhabited with transgression and plastered with an impeccable surface, to the outer shell of the Guggenheim Bilbao—a surface inscribed with all kinds of values but inhabited by a conventional museum program. The categories of inside and outside have become completely disconnected; like the arrival and departure gates of an airport, they register the global flows that design is now part of. The difference between outside and inside, and between form and content, administers these flows. There is little coherence in the insides and outsides of design objects and the ways in which they are programmed. As with the templates and placeholders for web 2.0-style internet pages, they may be inhabited by all kinds of values that account for the endless transformation of surface." See Metahaven, White night before a manifesto, 19.
Annex
Bibliography
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Metahaven, (van der Velden, D. and Kruk, V.) "White night before a manifesto," in The Architect as Worker: Immaterial Labor, the Creative Class, and the Politics of Design, ed. Deamer, Peggy. (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015) 13-29.
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Pallasma, Juhani. The Eyes of the Skin, (John Wiley & Sons, 2005)
Schubert, Dirk. "Transformation Processes on Waterfronts in Seaport Cities – Causes and Trends between Divergence and Convergence" Port Cities as Areas of Transition: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. Kokot, Gandelsman-Trier, Wildner, and Wonneberger, (Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2008), 25-46. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839409497-002
cover. Screen captures from website endlesstwist.xyz. The interactive and curated website is part of this research that is constructed/programmed by text, 3D models, and audio/visual media.
p. 21 Below The sandy Weser full of shallows. From a map of Bremen and its river Weser by C.A. Heineken, See "Weser von Oslebshausen bis Mohrlosenkirchen (1805)", Häfen (Bremen) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Häfen_(Bremen) Accessed 06.11.2023.
p. 23 Photograph of a part of the Überseestadt Masterplan's gigantic model located at Infocenter. Photo taken Farzad Golghasemi in January 2022.
p. 24 Selected photos of the postcard obtained by the author at Hafenmuseum Bremen. The handouts are created by the company responsible for the urban renewal project and Bremen's marketing agenda (WFB Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen GmbH). The contents are mixture of photography from various old and new buildings from Überseestadt as well as architectural visualizations of the imagined futures
I would like to thank the following people for their valuable support and input for this research and production of this work:
Gabriela Valdespino ·
Prof. Dr. Andrea Sick ·
Prof. Dennis Paul ·
Abd Tammaa ·
Noëlle BuAbbud ·
Apo Teke ·
Guida Ribeiro ·
Lucas Kalmus ·
Victor Artiga Rodriguez ·
Prof. Natascha Sadr Haghighian ·
Markus Walthert ·
Saba Innab ·
Prof. Asli Serbest ·
Jukka Boehm ·
Peira collective (Tender Absence) ·
Schwankhalle ·
Prof. Ralf Baecker ·
Neus Ledesma Vidal ·
Thealit F.K.L. ·
Aurora Kellermann ·
Farkhondeh Ardabili ·
Nader Golghasemi
Endless Twist: A critical autoethnographic approach to the current state of urban development.
Farzad Golghasemi
A thesis submitted in partial fullfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Digital Media (M.A.) at the University of the Arts Bremen.
