Title: City Vision
1City Vision
- Urban Design and Vision in
- The City as a Text
- The Music Garden
- The Street that Got Mislaid
- Architecture in Taipei
Image source ???
2Outline
- Starting Questions
- Metropolis The City as Text (1)
- The Music Garden
- The Street that Got Mislaid
- Conclusion
- Reference
3Starting Questions
What have we learned so far?
- Modern city vs. Postmodern city
- Urbanism as a way of life (impersonal,
transitory, segmental, and mostly utilitarian
human contact) - Organic city vs. planned city (with utilitarian
purposes Paris as an example) - Historical Perspectives
- Taipei in (Taipei, Taipeilt??gt????),
- Montreal (Canvas of Time, No and North),
- Toronto (In the Skin of a Lion)
4Starting Questions
What are we discussing today?
- Different visions or interpretation of a city
(religious divine order, naturalist body,
Foucaultian grid, Marxist dynamic structure) - urban planning social welfare, landscaping and
domicile registration (census) - Vision and reality landscaping, music film and
nature - Garden and green bottle relevance to our
cities?
5Starting Questions on The City as Text
- How do we describe/represent a city? Why is city
an imagined environment (422)? Why can a city
be a text (written with signs, to be
interpreted)? - How do city planners imagine a city? With what
metaphors and charts? What could be their
limitations? What could be the limitations they
place on city-dwellers? (e.g. pedestrian areas) - How about us? What metaphors or images do we
have in mind about a city? Can we map a city?
How do we walk in a city such as Taipei?
6Metropolis The City as Text
- Focus representations of cities from 19th
century till now. (human body, machine, Paris,
Vienna, labyrinth, modern city and mental life,
flows p. 423) - 1.1 Prologue excerpts from Bleak House and The
Asphalt Jungle - Similarities effect of the weather on the
cities the city alien civilization
sophisticated but fragile technologies and
forces constituting the life of a city - Asphalt Jungle city as a machine and a strange
and magical place with awareness of the class
and ethnic differences - 1.2 The city as imagined environment organic
and mechanical - 2.1 Capitalist City Police
- 2.2 Concept vs. Experience
7Metropolis The City as Text
- A. Two paradigms in the 19th century (425-29)
- The divine order the invisible hand of the
market in giving order to a city ? like a body
with the instincts of brute creation. - The medical paradigm ills attributed less to
commercial systems than to urbanization. - Develop social welfare system through both
investigation and administration systems. - Urban government . . . Includes surveillance and
discipline. ? concrete, quantifiable and precise
info. ? ???????. - E.g. lt??gt its view of the citysimilar or
different? - The last SARS epidemic multiple systems of
surveillance
8The police City as a statistical grid of
investigation and surveillance
- B. Grid (surveillance welfare)
- (Michel Foucault) the police
- 1. political, 2. pastoral
- a technology of government which defined the
domains, techniques and targets of state
intervention. It involved - cataloguing the resources of a state, both
material and human, in minute detail. - Identified a new object polulation (429-30)
- e.g. District Offices (domicile registration)
District Health Center
9The City as Text (2) Dynamic structure
- Engels Marxist view relations between the
haves and have-nots as a complex, concrete
totality, and whose parts have meanings that are
only decipherable in relation to all its other
parts. (432) - determined by modes of production
- Summary pp. 433-34
10The City as Text 2.2 Concept vs. Experience
- Michel de Certeau p. 435
- Concept city (435) in utopian or urbanistic
discourse with a perspective both god-like and
voyeuristic that can encompass all the diversity,
randomness and dynamism of urban life in a single
panorama (statistics). ? a proper space, a pure
space, a space of rational organization. ? urban
and human ills repressed
11The City as Text 2.2 Concept vs. Experience (2)
- Michel de Certeau p. 435
- 2. Lived city beneath the discourses, the grids
and combinations of powers or a fixed pattern of
statistical relationships. - The people, who are unpredictable, inventive and
devious. - Who have illegible improvisations of the spaces
on the streets or at home. (435-34)
12The City as Text 2.2 Concept vs. Experience (3)
- Rational city vs. mythic experience Max Weber
vs. Walter Benjamin (436) - Max Weber 18th, 19th centuries abstract,
formal rationality as the organizing principle ?
demythification and disenchantment of the social
world - The new urban-industrial world fully
re-enchanted. --in the new shopping arcades.
13The City as Text 2.2 Concept vs. Experience (2)
- Paris as an example
- ?????
- Houssmanns plans (boulevard, underground sewage,
underground canal, street furniture) - improvement of Chamsee-lysee (quality control
and - Park of Bercy
- ????
- Houssmann vs. Baudelaire (438-39)
- Rational organization vs. flaneur
- e.g. Taipei City Hall and Capitol Hill Washington
DC
14The Music Garden
- What do you think?
- General Intro.
- Music Landscaping
- Efforts Arts, Business and Politics
- General Design
15Toronto Music Garden
- From Bostons City Hall Plaza
- to Torontos Harbor Front
16Music Landscaping Why and How?
- Musical piece-- Ma A document that is visual,
aural and spatial at the same time. it
affects and animates people so much in different
places and times. - The first suite of Bache Ma nature
- Garden nature made simple and readable
- Transferring audio language to spatial language
- Lobbying (film 419900)
- Note? both are 1) abstract art appealing to our
senses 2) pervasive 3) rhythmic (rhythm made
with beats, proportional shape and spatial
arrangement)
17Artistic Efforts Music ? Landscaping
- 1. Landscaper
- Drawing blue prints, making models
- The choice of plants e.g. Ginko (??)
- Understanding music (dancevertical sinking and
rising - 2. Filmmaker
- Filmic visions (900 from the room to Mas
performance to garden scenes 1830 from a model,
to concrete building to garden from the city
hall front to a garden 3900 out in traffic ?
plants growing) - Low point Sarabande
- Visual messages e.g. Images fading, officials
backs
18Music, Film Landscaping and Nature
- To use human languages to shape nature, or create
order out of disorder - Mas intention to create a space for music, or a
concert hall without walls. ? what about
traffic? (e.g. 5100 5330)
19The Practical Concerns
- Privatize the space (1217) income from real
estate ? improves the plaza - Security
- Get corporate support (to massage the
corporate power.) --naming (the movements, the
flower beds) to get support of one movement/area
after another. - Artists have a different vision.
- Deadlines of filmmaking.
20Bach Garden Plan
- Suite1 I Prelude II Allemande III
-Courante, IV Sarabande, V - Menuet I , VI -
Gigue
21Prelude An undulating riverscape with curves and
bends.
- a seascape, a riverscape, a wavelike motion
that carve out space
Response to the environment 343
22Allemande (an ancient German dance) A forest
grove of wandering trails.
Original plan 1200 adjusted in the new plan
Bk 14
23Courante A swirling path through a wildflower
meadow.
- Spiral in and out, twisting and turning
- The film camera pans away from Ma to
butterflies, circles around Ma (- 2900-) ? the
project falls through
2329
24Sarabande A conifer grove (???) in the shape of
an arc
- A glade(??????) in the forest
3000
25Sarabande a poet's corner
- the garden's centerpiece is a huge stone that
acts as a stage for readings, and holds a small
pool with water that reflects the sky.
Bk 13
26Menuette A formal flower parterre (?????).
- Formal garden, symmetrical
4144
27Minuette formal dance
- Julie Messervy (1st movement) To shape nature in
simple forms - Hand-crafted with ornamental steel, a circular
pavilion is designed to shelter small musical
ensembles or dance groups.
28Music and Nature The Gigue (5154)
- Gigue Giant grass steps that dance you down to
the outside world. (steps and exiting and leaving
the piece) - or "jog" is an English dance, whose jaunty,
rollicking music is interpreted here as a series
of giant grass steps that offer views onto the
harbor.
29Administrative perspective "The Street That Got
Mislaid"
- Is it possible for the story to happen in real
life? - Is it possible for a missing person to remain
incognito for all of his/her life? - identity checks employment and education,
customs/immigration office, credit card, drivers
license, ID cards, social security/insurance
card, etc. - If you could choose, would you like to live there?
30Administrative perspective "The Street That Got
Mislaid"
- Marcs life at work vs. his life at home
- total familiarity with and belief in the
bureaucratic system he supports (e.g. his
discussion with his friend re. the truth of his
residence in Oven streetestablished by his
files.) - loneliness neighbors noisy or even violent
- Marcs choice too quick and too radical a
change, accepted too quickly by the woman - Other possible problems of Green Bottle Street
work and money? Procreation and family building?
31Buildings Which of them have humane design?
- ?????????? - ??????
- ?????? ?????
- More
- (modernist 1)
- (postmodernist 1, 2)
Image source
32Conclusion?
- A city can be variously defined, imagined,
desired for, and connected to the past. - Concept City does not just belong to the city
planners. We also develop our concepts of the
city in our use of signs, through our walking and
living, desiring and recollections in a city.
33Reference
- ????? (Examining Architecture). ???. ???,
??????. - Toronto Music Garden Photo Gallery---Inspired by
Bach Yo Yo Ma http//www.nakayoshi.org/musicgard
en/ - Loraine Hunter http//www.garden-time.com/magazine
/03september/article_gotw.php