7080850 CITY INSIDE OUT SIDE Postmodern Re Presentations City Narratives and Urban Imageries

7/31/2019 7080850 CITY INSIDE OUT SIDE Postmodern Re Presentations City Narratives and Urban Imageries

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Planning Research Conference 2003 Oxford Brookes University 8-10 April

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Dr Wael Salah Fahmi

Associate Professor of Urbanism -Helwan University-Cairo-EgyptHonorary Research Fellow -Manchester University- UKPrincipal- UDERS (Urban Design Experimental Studio)

Address:

34 Abdel Hamid Lotfi StreetMohandessein- Giza/CairoEgypt 12311

E-mail address: [email protected][email protected]

Telephone: +202- 3370485Fax: +202-7619010

This is a draft paper of ongoing research work- (images to be included)-

No part is to be cited without the prior permission of the author-

CITY INSIDE OUT(SIDE)Postmodern (Re)presentations:CityNarratives and Urban ImageriesAbstractDiagnosis of postmodernity (Harvey 1989) emphasizes the blurring boundariesbetween reality and virtuality in terms of the production of a new (glocal) urbanity. Thisindicates a phenomenological experience of the city, whilst re-appropriating the urban interms of our spatial practices and tactics, and sites of exchanges and encounters (Leach

2002). In addition, the city is semiologically represented as a theatrical space, implying amultiplicity of signs (deferred and never fixed), as signified (context and meaning) andsignifiers (forms and urban elements) (Leach 2002), and as imaginary in adeconstructive sense. This challenges the stable institutionalised construction of space,and manipulating our collective memory (Boyer 1994), nothing prevailing but discourses,language games, and flnerie. With the postmodern aesthetic claiming spatio-temporal(extra-territorial) narratives (Soja 1995), the notion of Baudelaires flnerieassumes anurban voyage where the cit(y)(ies) as text can be read through the flneurs lens assyntax and semantics of urban signifiers and imageries (Benjamin 1973).

Through (Urban Experimentation), the paper proposes a conflation of urban images re-mapped and re-presented into fictional terrain (digital images and diagrams). The aim is

to grasp the psychogeography of the postmodern metropolis, composed of (re)sorted,(re)assembled cit(y)(ies) fragments and viewed as an arena for (re)(de)constructingurban metaphors (Fahmi 2001). There is the need to suture elements of the splinteredurban, whilst producing images of the city as aggregations, accumulations of patched-up, overlapping forms of mediascape (Christensen1993). The experiment intends tounsettle established contextualist spatial orders, whilst taking on a disjunctive lens(Tschumi,1996), thus favouring fragmentation over unity, with these representationsbeing products of (contested) postmodern spatiality (Bergum 1990)


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By splashing virtuality onto the real world, the experiment attempts to capture the urban,into a space of ' total flow' , with the juxtaposition of images, thus shifting between realityand mythical spaces, between the screen, and the imagination, between the virtualurbanity of the information machine and the actual urbanity of the city. Such heterotopias(extra-contextualist places ' outside of all places' ), between being and becoming, movingfrom the physical to the epistemological and ontological (Auge 1995, Soja 1995), will call

into play the possibility of a coterminous and dialectic merging of very real city of bricksand a conceptually experienced ' city of bits ' (Mitchell 1996).Key words: postmodernity- representation- deconstruction- urban images diagrams-experimentation- city narratives- flneurie

Re-conceiving the Postmodern

Postmodern discourse presents a vision of the city which abandons the stable co-ordinates of place and which bases itself on fragmentation and decomposition, a collagecity or a simulative city. The emerging fascination with borders and edges of cities is aresponse to the dissolution of traditional markers, with space derived meanings

substituting hierarchy and centrality. The postmodern city is hence viewed as sequenceof overlapping layers of events, mental mapping and cognitive imaging (Fahmi andHowe 2003), whilst Experimenting with metaphors of space and being as manifest in therhetoric of virtuality and materialised in real environments (Fahmi 2000, 2001) .Information technology has nevertheless brought various areas into proximity to oneanother, with spaces constantly juxtaposing themselves one against the other, similar toLefebvre' s (1991) image of interpenetrating spaces with new forms of representation ,new worlds, new social order , and experience of space, time and the self (King 1996).

Therefore with the disintegration of real space in virtuality, contested (postmodern)spaces are transformed by new cultural practices influencing the expression of identityand spatiality and the architectonics of space, with the proliferation of the virtual,transforming the experience of place whilst reconstructing ' habitats of meaning '(Bourdieu1998).

Supermodernity and Place Identity

In late/post modern societies local/global (glocal) tensions, with collision of signs andimages (Sassen 1991), have created a ' transnational imaginary' (Dovey 1999). The idealof boundless and undefined spatiality predominated an age of fragmentedsupermodernity (Ibelings 1998). This has led to a loss of sense of place, with non-placesproliferating transit and informational spaces. With increased mobility andtelecommunications, with the rise of new media, and with the emergence of cyberspace

, the experienceof time, space and place identity has changed (Auge 1995). Culturalidentity has nevertheless experienced the contradictions between increasedplacelessness and reflexivity (in cognitive and aesthetic sense) (Lash and Urry 1994);and increased place-bound identities and tribalism as reactions to globalisation (Castells1989)

Accordingly visions and myths of the city (globalisation, homogenisation, (in)authenticityand universalism) have been instructive in terms of ' other cities' (the embodied, thelearning, the unjust) , thus


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' Begin to provide a sense of a city that is constantly changing, that does not necessarilyhold together' , and the city is regarded as ' a partially connected multiplicity which wecan only ever know partially and from multiple places' . (Thrift 1996, 2000)Postmodern Metaphors: Text and Collage

Postmodernism revealed that the predominant metaphors for the city and culture havebecome the text and the collage, representing meanings rather than functions.Accordingly Harvey (1989) viewed collage/montage as the primary form of post moderndiscourse on spatiality, with the notion of the city as assemblage, bricolage, or pastiche,largely replacing that of the functional city of modernism (Rowe and Koetter, 1978). Inaddition to the collage city advocated by Rowe and Koetter (1978), Postmoderndiscourse (Harvey 1989) regarded the city representation in terms of narratives, andcollective memory (Boyer 1994 ; Barthes 1976) .

With ethical aspects of experiencing cities referring to questions of difference and otherin urban environment, the argument was to abandon the city as a neutral space followingits textual signification (Kymalainen 2000). Boyer (1994) attempted to read the city as a"text", following Barthes' (1976 cited in Harvey 1989) earlier proposition that ' the city is adiscourse and this discourse is truly a language' , and that ' architecture of signifiers withno signifieds, is considered a pure play of language' . This implies a double reading of thecity as a "text" and ' discourse' whilst re-interpreting the meaning of culture (Derrida 1976;Geertz 1964, 1980)

In the postmodern information age boundaries are blurring between reality and virtuality,with urban environments growing hyper-real with prevalent discourses, texts, languagegames, images. This transforms urban design task to collecting and assemblingelements in Foucault' s museum of knowledgeto create legible cities and a sense ofplace (Eillin 1996). For Foucault (1986), contemporary spatial patterns differ from bothmedieval hierarchical space and capitalist extensive space of exchange. Contemporaryspace is characterised by what he calls site (also as sight. -What we see). "Our epoch,"he says, "is one in which space takes for us the form of relations among sites" (Foucault1986: 23). Or our epoch is one in which space takes for us the form of relations amongsights.

Foucault's Discourse as a System of Representation

Foucault (1986) has studied discourse, and not language, as a system ofrepresentation. According to Foucault, we see that ' discourse' (a group of statements) isa way of representing the knowledge about a particular topic at a particular historicalmoment. Discourse constructs the topic it defines and produces the objects of ourknowledge, influencing how ideas are put into practice and are used to regulateinteraction with others. So meaning is constructed through discourse, nothing has anymeaning outside of discourse.


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social subjects, . . . " According to Gottdiener and Lagopoulos (1986) urban space isnot a text but a "pseudo-text," because it is produced by non-semiotic processes as wellas semiotic and socio-semiotic ones.

UrbanImageryThe postmodern phrase ' The presence of the past' (T.S. Eliot, in Venturi 1977: 13),"...tends instead to draw our attention to the contextual and linear relations of newarchitectural forms as they relate to past urban images, rather than stressing thedifferences, the rupture between then and now, here and there, and the memory ofthings and events that have never and can reoccur in the present" (Boyer 1994: 374 )

Urban Images (or architecture of images, Bermudez 1995), with hybrid interface betweenelectronic and built media (Pile 1996).,is considered the natural extension ofmediatecture (Riewoldt 1997, Mitchell 1996) and mediascape (Christensen 1993)offering (un)built forms with virtual layers, challenging concepts of presence, distance,and time. Media culture has nevertheless put people into a space of ' total flow' , with thejuxtapositioning of their mental images calling to attention a line of conflict (Jameson

1991). This is concerned with the nature of those other (unconscious) spaces, whichhave become invisible, with the virtual city being a transmutation of the known, beinginterwoven into real urban life.

"Here we are in Robert Venturi' s [post]modern city, not just Las Vegas but any[post]modern city, a mediascape of office buildings and stores transformed by theircorporate identities into the new language of consciousness: the sign molded in glassand light, splashed over with the insignia or characters of logos. Buildings are no longermass and weight, stone and iron, but an array of sentences spelling out theconsciousness of a city, what a city means when we enter it and use its services,consume its goods. The city' s language of buildings and streets, of glass and light, is adeclaration of ideals . . .which the city achieves by transforming things into words,objects into signs, the dark of nature into neon abstraction and codes. . . the mediascapedevours the literal materiality around it." (Christensen 1993, p.9-10)

The past returns to urban space in its fragmented and imaginary form and creates thecity of deconstructed spaces and images which fractures our sense of urban totality. Thenew features of postmodern urbanism exposes the city of deconstruction full ofinconsistencies, fractures, voids, homogenised historic zones protected for theirarchitectural and scenic values.

Baudrillard (1993) claims:

"There is no real and no imaginary, except at a certain distance. Because ' reality' or theworld now seems to be cybernetically organised continuum of kinetic images,information, and technological artefacts, it appears that value and meaning also havebeen lost in the transformation" (in Boyer 1994: 492).


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Furthermore Urban Semiotics compress space and time under late capitalism (Harvey1989), as representation of urban experience to produce multifunctional hybrid spaces(Jameson 1991). This has called for a new aesthetic of cognitive mapping of a citywith multiple meanings and images (Lynch 1960 and Geertz 1973). Cognitive mappingapproaches arrive at the signification of the city through the perception of its inhabitantsrather than their conception with the urban environment being reduced to a perceptual

knowledge of physical form.

Whilst perception is conceived as passive or receptive, Urban Imagery, being stimulatedby urban structure, generates representational methods and narrative systems (Calvino1979). People perform various roles to (re)construct their urban imageries as conjuringup of various impressions in the mind, which may be visual, as well as auditory,olfactory, verbal, textual, or of a notational, or symbolic score (Liddament,2000) .that this latest mutation in space postmodern hyperspace has finally succeededin transcending the capacities of the human body to locate itself, to organize itsimmediate surroundings perceptually, and cognitively to map its position in a mappableexternal world" (Jameson 1988).

Heterotopia, Chora and Spatial Experience

Heterotopias could nonetheless lead to a more fruitful unpacking of the epistemologicaland logical factors relating to imagery and semiotics. Heterotopias are found in allcultures, within every human group, although they take varied forms with no single onebeing ever universal. Two categories however are identified by Soja (1995); sacred orforbidden spaces and modern heterotopias of deviation which can change in functionand meaning over time. Gennochio' s (1995) interpretation revealed two different kinds ofheterotopias: one is the absolutely Other, ' external' spaces and ' heterogeneous site'capable of juxtaposing in a single real place ( with several spaces that are in themselvesincompatible)- extra-discursive; and the other is the coexistence in an ' impossible space'of a large number of fragmentary, possible, though incommensurable orders or worlds.discursive

This could be noted in Los Angeles regarded as the future postmodern city, aheteropolis, and being an interminable urbanised area with no coherent form, nohierarchical structure, no centre and no unity;, where architecture seems to becharacterized by an absence of distinguishing signs, by neutrality, particularly in relationto its context (Ibelings 1998). Soja (1989) created a re-balanced ' spatio-temporalnarrative' on Los Angeles, where the heterotopias of Paris and Los Angeles (1789/1989)have been displayed/constructed as artworks. He used Foucault' s concept ofheterotopia (places ' outside of all places' ), collapsing modern history into post modern

geography (Soja 1995). This is closely related to Boyer' s (1990) concept of ' Work here,play there, and live elsewhere' , which has given way to a ' work-play, live-work and play-live' heterotopic urban fabric.Similarly Grosz (1995) identified Heterotopia with Plato' s Chora; (space between beingand becoming, or ' space in which place is made possible' , whilst constantly moving fromthe architectural and physical to the epistemological and ontological), thus suggestingways in which people occupy space, denoting the relationship between the determinateand indeterminate (Lechte 1995). Chora is clearly illustrated with reference to La Grande


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Arche at La Defense and (Tschumi' s) follies in the Parc de la Villette, committedintervention into established systems of knowledge and use of writing as an enabling andindeterminate act .

Imaginary Cities

Patton (1995) draws attention to the ways in which imaginary cities are written withrespect to ' reality' . For some writers real conditions of urban existence underlie the signsthey describe, for others there is no distinction between the imaginary and the real(Burgin 1996). What is of concern is the possibility that a reading of cities (the productionof further signs, or urban imaginaries), rather than the excavation of a foundational realcity (the decoding of the urban imaginary), might enhance our capacity to live in urbanrelations which are unoppressive. The experiment of reading and decoding PostmodernCities is based on a number of actual cities, with differing enabling effects andrepresentational methods

Moreover images of the city play a crucial role in accounts of the postmodern conditionand in the description of the experience of contemporary urban life (Patton 1995). We

propose that we are dealing with imaginary cities; not simply the products of memory ordesire, but rather complex objects which include both realities and their description: citiesconfused with the words used to describe them (Calvino 1979: 51). Whilst a city cannotbe created out of nothing. Elements of this city-imaginary have in turn affected thedevelopment of real cities

However many writers have taken over real cities and transformed them into literaryobjects and have thus created imaginary cities with lives of their own. They havereconstructed urban settings from scattered fragments of memory, and have broughtfame to cities that were previously unknown. A stroll through the urban landscapes ofliterature reveals a variety of creations: cities depicted with a high degree of realism,cities in the abstract, cities which merely provide background atmosphere, and citieswhich are themselves protagonists in works of fiction.

Kafakas city (Grau 1999) is seen as if in a dream or through the mists of memory, inblack and white, with the contrasts of light and shadow that appear in Expressionist films.The impression of being in a dream is reinforced by topological distortions and bychanges of scale which make space seem to expand or contract, depending on theauthors state of mind. The vision of reality is phantasmagoric.

Calvino (1979) adopts a different approach to the city, which becomes the protagonist ofhis story. The exoticism of the narrative can be felt in the very names of the cities- whilstdisorientating the reader who has the impression that this is a travel book rather than awork of fiction. In this way the reader is gradually made to understand that these areactually the cities of our everyday lives.

According to Grau (1999) Joyces Dublin, Prousts Paris, Kafkas Prague, and theBuenos Aires of Borges are realistically depicted cities which help to shape the course of


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the fictional events which take place in them. The ostensibly imaginary cities of literatureare actually an amalgam of fragments of cities which the writer has known

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Urban Disjunction

Eisenman (1999), and Tschumi (1988) both dismantle the conventions of architecture byusing concepts derived from cinema, literary criticism, philosophy and psychoanalysis(Fahmi 2001). In Cinegramme Folie at the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi (1988)dislocates, de-regulates the idea of meaning as emerging from built form, as constantlydeferred, differed, rendered irresolute , displaced by superimposition andtransformations. Presence is postponed and closure deferred as each permutation orcombination form shifts the image one step ahead. (Tschumi 1988)

Such Architecture Of Disjunction (Tschumi 1988) rejects the notion of synthesis infavour of juxtaposition of contradictory forces, thus producing dissociation which

Derrida (1982) would call differrance in space and time, with architectural elements onlyfunctioning by colliding with programmatic elements. A Deconstructive procedure furtherre-engages analytically in city imaging and new urban installations in public spaces.Lebbeus Woods' visionary work (Figure ) considered with analogous comparison ofvirtual space and , ' produces daring visual effects, suggests enigmatic purposes, andevokes a new sense of time space,' and suggests that people can create their own worldwith reference to their collective memory, with the ability to draw upon their ownexperiences (Noever 1991).

In conclusion therefore Deconstruction of Architecture or Architecture ofDeconstruction emancipates architectural thinking from the hegemony of functionality,from its traditional elements such as harmony, unity, symmetry..), and reinscribes thesemotifs within new spaces, new forms, to shape new way of building. Deconstructivismovercomes aesthetic borderlines and familiar structural principles, a change in visualhabits, creation of a new aesthetic, experimentation, link between visionary architectureand electronic media of the real and virtual space (Cooke 1989).

Urban Fragments and Virtual Layers

The proposed framework conceptualises different layers of events which constitute the

citys spatial configuration, reading and interpreting spatial and historical transformations,unraveling images , spatial perceptions, experiences and interpretations of everyday life.The combination of material and perceptual (de)constructive images of the city ,displacement of existing established structures and orders suggests multiple imaging ofpublic spaces for (de)construction of identities, relying on dense clustering andoverlapping layers of spatial networks (Fahmi and Howe 2003)

The postmodern Urban Experience is thus being represented as consisting of series ofsuperimposed layers of programmes (functions, geometries, infrastructures, buildings)


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(Tschumi 1988a, b), influencing, modifying, changing city' s structural concept whilstproducing fragmentary urban patterns, with historical and topographical factorsgenerating contradictions and tensions (Fahmi 2000).

Therefore the current work considers proliferation and fragmentation of production andconsumption of post modern urban spaces (Ungers and Veiths, 1997), whilst viewing the

city in a polymorphous way, piecing it together, never losing sight of the ' magical' humanpractices, dancing and flickering over real and virtual space.

An experiment is further proposed which is mainly concerned with visualisation of designdiscourse as representing a set of forces against the stable institutionalised constructionof space through:

invigorating urban imaging whilst exploring people' s cognitive mechanisms withinurban spaces (metaphors of urban semiotics: installations and narrative Imageries(inserting and (re)constructing);

proposing new spatial representations and diagrammatic techniques(superimposition-

layering-fragmentation); and

deconstructing the notion of design programming with more experimentation(architecture of Disjunction: collages and fragments of contested urban landscape(deconstructing- juxtapositioning-assembling)

The current experiment (s) suggests tangible forms for understanding spaces in-between, mediating overlapping images, fields, networks (where built and unbuiltenvironments are revealed). With the need to suture elements of the splinteredpostmodern urban, the experiment acknowledges the conflict between imagination andreality as a driving force for creating and structuring virtual spatial orders, producingimages of the city as collections, aggregations, accumulations of patched-up,extendable, overlapping and developing forms.

Urban Experimentation, by means of texts, photos, and visual signs and images,creates symbolic representations, and fantasies to signify an identifiable or/andimaginary (sense of) place identity, whilst emphasising the use of spatio-temporalmapping, narratives, and people' s cognitive mechanisms within urban spaces

Representation of Postmodern Spaces

Pile and Thrift (2000) reviewed representational techniques such as diagrams (Eisenman1999, and Castells 1989); montage (Benjamin 1979, 1985); screens (Deleuze 1997,Lefebvre, 1991) and clues (Bourdieu 1998). In addition, through the FlaneuriesNarratives, cities are understood as a collection of urban fragments being (re)sorted,(re)assembled and (re)connected. continually unsettling and disturbing establishedspatial orders, whilst implying superimposition and interchange.


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Flaneuries Narratives of the Generic City

Narratives , or stories , have formulated architectural fiction, and on several occasionshave been instrumental to the construction of architectural theory. The term to narratemeans the binding together of stories, myths, and fantasies through plot formation and

characterisation within fictional landscapes that reflect a knowledge of the cultureproducing them. Narratives are formed by both expository statements and responsesthat combine to make fluid interchanges between fiction and, potential architecturalproduction. Narrative inquiry uses stories to describe how people construct the meaningsof their lives (Bruner 1986; Polkinghorne 1995) lead storied lives and tell stories of theirlives, whereas narrative researchers describe such lives, collect and tell stories of themand write narratives of experience (Connelly and Clandinin 1990, pp2-3)

Furthermore the flaneur, though grounded in everyday life, is an analytic form, anarrative device, an attitude towards knowledge and its social context. The flaneur is analternative ' vision' , with its sedentary mannerism: the ' retracing' ; the ' rubbernecking' ; andthe ' taking a turtle for a walk' ; being essentially critical rebuffs to the late-modern politics

of speed . It is an image of movement through the social space of (post)modernity. Theflaneur is a multilayered palimpsest that enables us to move from real products of(post)modernity, like commodification and leisured patriarchy, (through the practicalorganization of space and its negotiation by inhabitants of a city), to a criticalappreciation of the state of modernity and its erosion into the post-, and to a reflexiveunderstanding of the function, and purpose, of realist as opposed to hermeneuticepistemologies

According to Benjamin (1973), the Baudelairean flneuris a figure that embodiesambivalence: one who always borders on leisure and turmoil, joy and melancholy,alienation and familiarity. The melancholy of the flneurresults from the fragmentarynature of city life. The sensual pleasure the flneurderives fromthe phantasmagoria,the dazzling urban spectacle, is both fleeting andtantalizing (Huang) . He can look butnot touch, and what he sees is montage, onesnap shot after another. The dream worldof urban spectacle offers theflneurno complete narrative; he has to make sense of thefragments byhimself. To be precise, the flneuris an urban native, whosediscernment of the subtle pleasures of urban life and detection of the truth of the streetindicate a form of pedestrian connoisseurship and consumption of the urbanenvironment (Shields 1994: 61).

Diagrams between Reality and Virtuality

Drawing upon Eisenmans Romeo and Juliet project for Venice Biennale (1985),methods of diagrammatical layering, scaling, superimposition, is being employed in theexperiment, producing a fractal representation of the built environment, with literarynarratives being used to dramatize the meeting of the fictional and the real.


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Such Image diagrammatic technique lies between spatial and structural analysis andassumes a language founded on the articulation and contradiction of dialectics (centre-periphery, vertical-horizontal, inside-outside, solid-void, point-plane). Such techniquedetaches form from its programmatic concerns, and displaces it from its relationship tofunction, meaning and aesthetics whilst being subjected to functions of (trans)forming,(in)forming and (per)forming (Eisenman 1999).

Diagrams offer experimental interfaces for intervening in complex urban processes withinemerging networked environment, not only to develop advanced tools for the design of(un)built environments, but to refresh ' ways of seeing' through the design (creation) ofimaginative (virtual) environments involving metaphorical (re) (de) construction of space,cognitive codes, and visual elements within urban systems.

Collages and Fragments of Urban Images

A (de)(re)constructive reading is proposed of hypothological (generic) urban imagesconceptualised as intermediary (in-between) spaces, similar to Tschumi' s event city(1994) and Coates' ecstacity (2000), a conflation of existing cities, with urbanspaces

being mapped into fictional terrain of perceptive imagery and virtual reality. Such processpulls together a spatial narrative evoking journeys to the other cities, in accordancewith Benjamin' s (1985) disconnected travel tales. By placing these' urban fragments fromanother place' side by side, the experiment is also alluding to, or digging into, the natureof postmodernity and spatiality. These juxtapositions are a montage of urban images,meant to be read simultaneously, revealing the discontinuous nature of space, with itssouvenirs and its myriad connections to other places. The experiment aims at placingthese images together, at making the connection between them, and at establishing anew relationship which changes their meanings. The experiment attempts to set inmotion a chain of thoughts that would recuperate the ruins and fragments ofpostmodernity, building up from the fragments, a different picture of the city , throughthe flow and distribution of images as being reassembled into reality (Benjamin 1985)This is similar to Tschumi' s follies at Parc de La Villette, where cinematography wasexploited to offer new perspective on the city, by bringing many images into sharpjuxtaposition, by being able to establish connections between apparently disconnectedelements, and by using multi-media to capture the urban experience (Benjamin,1985) .

Urban (Imaginary) Screen Installations within Public SpacesInstallations within urban spaces are introduced, including (un)built environment andimage diagrams as inserted within or superimposed on the fabric of the hypothologicalcity (Figure). These installations or urban interfaces then cast the experiential tools toexplore the city as an individual construct (flaneur), considering the complex centripetal-centrifugal space which everybody experiences physically and perceptually. One looks atspace of the flaneur, as being subjected to contrasts of experience and scale, with theseinstallations regarded as urban icons. They respond to events and initiatives to formulate


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hyper-spatial conditions which are multi-dimensional , multi-physical, flipping andcompressing both virtual and real experiences in the city.(Baudrillard, 1993).Urban installations explore new possibilities of urban life and human experience,weaving into existing fabric of the city and becoming a hidden city of entirely unknownpurpose or meaning. Uncertainty prevails as new post modern spatiality emerges using aseries of collage- images and screen installations. Collage-images investigate the free-

space construction of the newly hidden city through the meeting of both virtual and realworlds (Figure).

Screen installations are seen as indices of possibility, with their proliferation enrichingour imaginative experience of the city, by producing psychic echoes and reverberationsthat enliven the senses. Deleuze' s (1997) screens become a means of expressingaffects of the city by placing images together, mirroring the way in which the cityjuxtaposes many different possibilities, emotions, sensations, and perceptions. Theymake these qualities into dialectical forces which are actualised in determinate space-times, geographical and historical milieus, and individual people' s lives (Smith, 1992).CONCLUSION

Experimentation with deconstructive urbanism has provided potentials for flexibilityand imageability to generate new dynamic forms of spaces, with urban fabric beingopened up,morphology being changed, meanings being developed, and environmentbeing redefined, (re)(de)construction of urban spaces, disrupting its meaning, whilstidentifying the relationship between cognitive imaging and virtual forms. Deconstructiveprocedure created (Fahmi and Howe 2003) transparent, changing and virtual forms;continuous tension within urban fabric; disruptive and indeterminate spatial patterns; andsuperimposed layers of history on the contrary to urban design discourse whichaddresses built forms as fixed and static; defined boundaries and streets; and acontextual fit between urban fabric and built environment

The use of image diagrams, collage sketches and screen installations led to ' de-solidifying' things and dissolving spatial distinctions, to (de)constructing perceptualshifting between figure and ground, near and far, inside and outside, with these

evocative diagrams intensifying the cognitive process. The experiment thereforeintended to unsettle memory and context by rejecting both contextualist andcontinualist approaches, and favouring conflict over synthesis, fragmentation over unity,madness and play over careful management, indicating the change in the notion ofcollage images by the multiplication of screen installations, with these representationsbeing products of particular notions of spatiality.

With navigation into a trans-architecture in terms of turning-inside-out of cyberspace,these experimental diagrams promise to occupy the coterminous territories of the realand the virtual. Zelner (1999) illustrated that in (re)(de) construction of the virtual andthe real, everyday experience is mirrored in another reality, between the virtual urbanityof the information machine and the actual urbanity of the city, calling into play the


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Burgin, V. (1996) In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture, Berkeley: Universityof California Press

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Castells, M. (1989) The Rise of the Network Society. Volume 1: The Information Age; Economy,Society and Culture, Oxford: Blackwell.

Christensen, E. (1993). Mediation and Return: Ambigous Identity of the City' s Edge; inM.Quantrill and B.Webb (eds.): Urban Forms, Suburban Dreams,.College Station: Texas A&MUniversity Press, pp.9-14

Coates, Nigel (2000), Ecstacity,London: RIBA Publication

Connelly, F.M and Clandinin, D.J (1990) Stories Of Experience And Narrative Inquiry,Educational Researcher ,19(5), 2-14

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Fahmi, Wael (2001) ' Reading of Post Modern Public Spaces As Layers Of Virtual Images andReal Events ', published on CD-Rom ISoCaRP 2001- ISBN 90-755 24-290-x, also presented atthe 37th International Planning Congress, "Honey, I Shrunk The Space" Planning in theInformation Age, Utrecht, The Netherlands - 16

th-20

thSeptember 2001

Fahmi, Wael and Howe, Joe (2003) 'Deconstructing the Built Environment: DesignExperimentation within Public Spaces ' , in Andy Thornley and Yvonne Rydin (London School ofEconomics (LSE) (eds), Planning in a Global Era, Ashgate: London, ISBN: 0-7546-1943-5,January 2003 (Chapter Eight, Section Two The contribution of planning theory and the role of theplanning profession)

Fahmi, Wael (2000), Deconstructivism Of The Postmodern City: Architectural ExperimentationWithin Public Spaces , in proceedings of the 2

ndInternational Conference on Quality of Life in

Cities, Volume 2, pp 107-136, School of Building and Real Estate , National University ofSingapore ISBN : 981-04-2363-2, also presented at the 2nd International Conference on Qualityof Life in Cities, Singapore 8

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7080850 CITY INSIDE OUT SIDE Postmodern Re Presentations City Narratives and Urban Imageries