BLam Thesis Article V04

8/3/2019 BLam Thesis Article V04

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The Fabrications of Architecture | Becky Lam | Thesis Article V.04 | Fall 2011

ABSTRACT:

fabrication

(noun)

1. the action or process of manufacturing or inventing something.The assembly and fabrication of electronic products.

2. an invention; a lie.

The story was a complete fabrication.

(from the Oxford English dictionary)

Architecture is a fabricator that manufactures our built environment, but in doing so, it also invents

the narratives through which we perceive place a socio-spatial construct. While architecture

exercises its prowess in the physical realm of shaping and molding spaces, it is simultaneously

constructing how we engage with place. It is in this way performing narratives that are activelyengaged in the social practice of place-making, serving to both explicitly and implicitly construct

our world. Thus, architecture is a fabrication of place.

However, the concept of place involves more than just a material embodiment of spatial narratives.

Historian and philosopher Edward Casey elucidates on the power of place as a concept, but

problematizes its dilution in contemporary thought due to our obsession with space, such as site

and location. While these concerns carry much weight in the architectural practice, none of them

articulate the social underpinnings of place, or what Casey calls the very elements sheared off in

the planiformity of site: identity, character, nuance, history. 1 Hence, place is socio-spatial.

Furthermore, given its grounding in the social realm, place is constantly being reinvented,

recontextualized, and rewritten. Place is relative, therefore, not static. Doreen Massey emphasizes

that it is neither singular nor bounded, but rooted in multiplicity and movement. She writes of

place, Those identities will be multiple (since the various social groups in a place will be

differently located in relation to the overall complexity of social relations and since their reading

of those relations and what they make of them will also be distinct). 2 This in turn intimates that

the dominant image of any place will change over time and thus, will always be disputed. Under a

state of constant change, place is an elusive narrative.

Given its state of constant change, the attempt to narrate a single reading of place becomes a

fallacy. This thesis critiques architecture as it typically operates to fix a dominant narrative,undermining the dynamism of place. It succeeds in fabricating a unitary reading of place, which in

turn obfuscates places multiplicity. Through the mechanisms representation, such as maps and

renders (which are by their very nature static mediums), architecture fixes and frames how we

1 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997),

xiii.2 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 153.


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singularly read place, thereby reinforcing a false conception of place itself. In order to explore the

ways to subvert the disparity between architecture and place, this thesis explores the design

process as a sentient methodology that is more fully engaged with the dynamic readings of a site

in Honolulu. This will focus on the manipulation of visual and narrative techniques that serve to

counteract the conventions of storytelling (e.g. temporality, linearity, and framing) that control our

readings of place. The goal is to develop a design process that allows unexpected readings of thesite, enabling architecture to dynamically fabricate the narratives of place. Through this lens,

architecture is not just a process that physically manufactures our built environment, but also one

that actively fabricates the narratives that define the places we inhabit.


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THESIS ARTICLE V.04:

The reading of urbanity is constructed out of a series of places manifested as socio-spatial and

multi-scalar processes, producing what we recognize as the city. This notion of place as a process

illustrates the city as a complex network of constantly changing interrelations and dynamics. From

this, what we experience as the urban environment becomes a system of representations that aregenerated by moving processes where the representations bear meanings that are socially derived.

Providing this foundation, the city (as a complex system of representations) is a large-scale place

(or process) in motion. As place moves and changes, it is rife with meanings that are socially

constructed and reconstructed, not pre-given or self-evident. Thus, the city moves as society

moves, continuously re-inscribing meaning back into itself. This is the main premise behind the

critique of architecture as fabrication, but one that statically reinforces a single reading of place. To

this, this thesis asks: how can architecture become a fabrication that is as active and ever changing

as the process of the city itself?

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCT OF PLACE

The framework for the notion of architecture as fabrication lies in understanding place as a socio-

spatial construct. The concept of place is socially grounded, which is unlike space. Pointing out

the foundation of these constructs, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan posits, Space and place are basic

components of the lived world; we take them for granted. When we think about them, however,

they may assume unexpected meanings and raise questions we have not thought to ask. 3 In his

book Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Tuan poses questions about the key differences

between the two concepts and how we engage with and perceive them. As basic components of

the lived world, we may be taking the concepts of space and place for granted. Furthermore, he

argues that though practices such as measuring and mapping space are important to our

understanding of our environment, we lack the same consideration for the experiential data that is

critical to the construct of place. In other words, ample focus has been paid to the physical space

while much less has been paid to the experiential or social aspects that transcend space into place.

Within architecture, the attempt to deal with the space-place dialectic raised by Tuan has been

heavily one-sided. In our efforts to comprehend, confront, and construct our modern world, space

has come to be the dominant mode of thinking that guides how we view and approach the built

environment. This is the critical hegemony in architectural thinking that philosopher Edward Casey

describes as the supremacy of space, or the basis for which place has become obfuscated. He

problematizes the subjugation of place as it relates to architectures distancing from social

motivations. On the re-emergence of place in social theory, Casey writes:

And yet place, despite these auspicious directions in contemporary thought, is rarely named as

such - and even more rarely discussed seriously. Place is still concealed, still veiled, as Heidegger

says specifically of space. To ponder the fate of place at this moment assumes a new urgency and

points to a new promise. The question is, can we bring place out of hiding and expose it to new

3 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1977), 3.


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scrutiny?4

The concealment of place that Casey mentions above suggests that we are losing the value of

place within spatial practices due to the hegemony of space over place. As spatial practitioners, we

have not been taking advantage of the social power of place making, but more importantly, we

have also been neglecting a critical lens with which to approach architecture. Place offers anotherrelevant way to engage with the architectural discourse, which is an approach that has yet to be

exploited.

But how might place be physically embodied and critiqued? The more important question here

might be how we represent these ideas of space and place. In todays practice, architects do not

often describe their designs in terms of place, or social constructs. Rather, they are apt to think

about and represent their ideas through concretized terms of spatiality and the tools that serve

modern, rational thought. Tools like the Cartesian grid are scientific and specific, but there are

limits to what information they convey. For instance, we may conceive of space in relation to the

pinpointing of positions in a coordinate system. However, coordinates and location lack the ability

to express social meaning and relationships in and of themselves. This is the richness of place thatCasey argues is missing in contemporary thought. He states, It has become at best an inert part

(Newton), a mere modification (Locke), of a superintendent and universal Space. 5 In his book, The

Fate of Place, he traces the history of place in philosophical thinking and notes how place has

followed a trajectory of being disempowered and stripped of its inherent dynamism. This

dynamism indicates that place is not fixed or finite, as are points in a coordinate system. Rather,

there is significance to place as a process, which remains suppressed today.

PLACE AS A PROCESS

Uncovering Caseys description of place as dynamic leads to the question of how place can be

conceived, not as a static location, but as a moving entity. As a socially derived construction, the

nature of place renders it elusive in the physical realm. Rather than being a locatable point on a

map, the concept of place shifts and is reinvented due to the social context in which it is derived.

In this manner, it reveals itself as a continuous process, not a position in space. Geographer and

theorist Doreen Massey echoes the views of Casey, analyzing place as an embodiment of a specific

set of social relations, each intrinsic to the identity of that place. Moreover, she posits that a place

produces an identity that is based on its interactions with other places, continuing a progression of

redefinition and thus, establishing itself as a process. Massey writes, There is a specificity of place

which derives from the fact that each place is the focus of a distinct mixture of wider and more

local social relations. 6 This suggests that the amount of input that determines place is endless.

Not only are there many interactions to factor, but also, there are countless combinations of howthese have built up over time. Unlike the ubiquitous existence of space, place subsists on

specificity.

4 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History(Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997),

xiv-xv.5Casey, The Fate of Place, 200-201.

6 Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 156.


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Furthermore, place is not bound by an internalized history, but is in constant flux, moving and

weaving with the different interactions that serve to define and redefine it. Place is dynamic and

relative. Massey posits, Instead, then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around, they

can be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relations and understandings, but

where a large proportion of those relations, experiences and understandings are constructed on afar larger scale than what we happen to define at the moment as the place itself. 7 Key to her

argument here is the dynamism of place as it is actively fabricated. It is a continuous process of

which we can only take a glimpse of in a frozen point in time. Given the relentless animation of

such a process, time is the principal constraint of place.

Tuan best illustrates this process as a relationship of time, space, and place. He speculates, if we

think of space as that which allows movement, then place is pause; each pause in movement

makes it possible for location to be transformed into place. 8 He implies that place provides

specificity to the vacuous medium of space. More importantly, place is differentiated from space by

time. If space can be thought of as a timeline, then ticks in that timeline begin to articulate place.

In this manner, it is through time that place can subvert the dominance of space. This is whereplace can begin to emerge. The problem, however, is that time is subjected to the same volatility

and subjectivity as the concept of place. As an intellectual notion, the Kantian view argues that

time is not an empirical concept and that the representation of time is the foundation for which we

understand it. 9 This further complicates our perception of place. So how is the perception of time

affecting our sense of place in modern society?

As our perception of time is altered, the same will be true of our perception of place. Massey points

to the experience of time-space compression as radicalizing the geography of social relations. She

states, Much of what is written about space, place, and postmodern times emphasizes a new phase

in what Marx once called the annihilation of space by time. 10 This echoes Tuans description of

time, or a pause in time, as being the transformation of space to place. It also points to an

increasing uncertainty about the role of place in modern society. Social theorist and geographer

David Harvey uses the term time-space compression in reference to the phenomenon of

accelerated processes that respond to the conflation of space and time and consequently, the

foreshortening of spatial and temporal distances. He argues that society now requires these

accelerated processes, such as new schemas of representation, which are fixed spatial constructs

that attempt to capture the fluidity of social relations. 11 They are direct outcomes of time-space

compression that not only help us to perceive the world differently, but also force us to reconcile

our foreshortened experience of the world with adapted forms of representation.

7 Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 154.8 Tuan, Space and Place, 6.9 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999), p. 54.10 Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 146.11 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 253.


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For example, our perception of a place could be condensed and simplified into a map that reads as

a single, linear narrative and is illustrated by a small set of visual symbols, such as a topographic

map. But what becomes omitted and confused is the character of the topography is it rugged or

smooth? Also missing are the non-topographic aspects of the location: flora and fauna, scents,

colors, etc, all of which are intentionally left out. Maps are consciously constructed representations

of our environment fabricated to tell a specific story. Commenting on maps as an alteredrepresentation of space, Harvey offers this view:

Consider, as a starting point, de Certeaus contemporary critique of the map as a totalizing device.

The application of mathematical principles produces a formal ensemble of abstract places and

collates on the same plane heterogeneous places, some received from tradition and others produced

by observation. The map is, in effect, a homogenization and reification of the rich diversity of spatial

itineraries and spatial stories.12

This collapse of the diversity and richness of stories into flattened and oversimplified forms of

representation have arguably become both the danger and the norm of the design practice. Not

only can a viewer better digest the information given to him/her through these simplified forms ofrepresentation, but also the producer of these has the power to convey a targeted narrative. The

effectiveness of this narrative is potent both as a shortcut and threat to place. The former is the

ability to quickly read place in an ever-accelerating world. However, the latter is the

misunderstanding that what is represented in form and image is the place, when actually, it is only

a snapshot of a place in time, not the place itself. What we produce through static representations

does not have the capacity to capture the dynamism of place, which is an animated process. Thus,

what the viewer sees as one narrative may become confused as the reading of a place. Such is the

power of architecture as a medium for narratives of place: a fabrication.

NARRATIVES AND THE POWER OF REPRESENTATION

Although fabrication has allowed us to produce forms of representation which (according to

Harvey) adapt to the needs and pressures of time-space compression, there has developed with it a

critical falsehood concerning the modern perception of place: a sense of stability. What is offered

to the viewer through the fabricated image is a static reading of place, which becomes reified as a

false sense of stability. Based on the arguments of Massey and Casey, what the viewer perceives is

actually derived from a dynamically unstable process of making. This process suggests the

coexistence of multitudes of narratives that overlap, intersect, and mingle around a locus, but what

the fabrication suggests is a single, stable interpretation of place. If possible, how can an image

convey this aspect of place as a process?

Before attempting to address that question, we must first examine how the image operates within

the field of architecture today. As our experience of the built environment becomes increasingly

foreshortened, images serve as shortcuts to help us quickly contextualize and read places within

accelerated time. Time is scarce and so are our operations. Kevin Ervin Kelley describes images as

12 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 252-253.


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strategic weapons in our society.13 They are tools that are calibrated and manipulated for our own

purposes, just as any other device could be. But more importantly, these images are fabricated with

the intention of putting forth a specific impression. Similarly, architecture is in the business of

producing images, or fabrications. He comments:

Architects have not been driving home the fact that we are designers of perception through imagemaking. We want to think that images are too shallow and that architecture plumbs deeper matters:

tectonics, space, habitability, art, and so on. But in the days after the agricultural society, the

manufacturing society, and even the information society, we have come to the era of images, and it

is ours to shape. Images can be effective and helpful or ineffective and useless; images save us time

when we are as absurdly busy as we are. 14

As a visual shortcut, the image wields a great amount of power, not only in its ability to propagate

an idea expediently, but also persuasively. In the quote above, Kelley insinuates that architects

should embrace the image as a tool that designs perception an aspect that is inherent to the

practice. Architects engage in a landscape that is image-driven, thus the mechanisms we produce

are also image-based. In the article, Architecture for Sale(s), Kelley goes on to elaborate on the

power of branding as one such mechanism that, when engaged in architecture, generates a

cohesive corpus of imagery that helps sell a project. We can already witness this in contemporary

practice with the production of iconic architecture. For instance, projects such as Herzog and de

Meurons National Stadium in Beijing, or the Birds Nest, are branded by a one-to-one correlation

of concept to form. Through simple formal analogies, we are given a preconceived image and

frame with which to read architecture.

Another example of the power of image to sell architecture is the role of historical preservation. M.

Christine Boyer uses the tourist site as a springboard for her investigation into the power of

representation in generating and reinforcing urban narratives. She examines Manhattans South

Street Seaport as a historical fiction that is deliberately manufactured as a thing to be consumedby the interests of tourism and commercialism. She argues that the selective preservation of the

neighborhood demonstrates the citys ability to both mask its past and glorify its history,

performing a narrative for economic interests. Boyer writes, That peculiar American place, the

historic tableau, proliferating in the centers of these deconstructed cities, is an attempt to arrest

this uprootedness, this sense of nonplace, this decomposition into bits and pieces. 15 Here,

historicism becomes a tool to control and edit the built forms and visual composition of a

neighborhood, heightening its state as a fabricated environment. South Street Seaport is an

example of imagery operating as visual shortcuts for conveying narrative. It is synecdoche where

its sense of place is distinguishable by small optical instruments used to illustrate a larger historic

tableau. Thus, architecture participates in a falsifying of place, enabling its primary reading through

the eyes of tourists.

13 Kevin Ervin Kelley, Architecture for Sale(s), in Commodification and Spectacle in Architecture (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 54.14 Kelley, Architecture for Sale(s), 55.15 M. Christine Boyer, Cities for Sale: Merchandising History at South Street Seaport, in Variations on a

Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, ed. Michael Sorkin (New York: Noonday

Press, 1992), 191.


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Furthermore, as architecture performs narrative through the use of imagery, it also succeeds in

blurring the line between fiction and non-fiction. Boyer espouses, However they may be fused or

confused, there is of course always a distinction between the represented image of a city and its

reality... For those who travel along this imaginary architectural promenade, centers of spectacle

efface the distinctions between the real cityscape and the show.16

She posits that we become thespectators of an architectural performance. This presumes that reality and fabrication are conflated

at urban tourist sites, such as South Street Seaport. While these places are being deliberately

constructed to tell a targeted story, perhaps there are rips or punctures in the urban fabric that

begin to signal to us, the viewers, that what we see is not what we get. That in fact, other

narratives are at play. The opportunity for architecture here is to create discontinuities in the

fabrication, thereby eliciting readings of place other than that of the tableaux (as Boyer describes

it), which is preconceived and neatly presented to us. Where might the fabrication of architecture

fall short? Or is it that these tools have limitations, just as any tool would?

The mechanisms of fabrication that transform sites such as South Street Seaport into commercial

successes are chiefly representational. Perhaps it is through the eyes of the tourist that thesefabrications are most blatant. By embracing both the candor and speciousness of fabrication, it will

allow an understanding of how these mechanisms operate. According to Boyer, tourist sites are

ornamental and consumable landscapes through which the tourists the new public of the late

twentieth century graze, celebrating the consumption of place and architecture. 17 With the

tourist situated as a specific audience, what tactics are operating to fashion these environments?

By closely examining tourist spaces, the lessons learned might serve to extract the instruments and

strategies that are engaged in place making and ultimately help to guide this investigation into

architecture as an active fabrication of the urban experience.

DECONSTRUCTING PLACE: THE FABRICATION OF STABILITY

Taking Boyers example of South Street Seaport, we see that the tool of the tourist image provides

stability in both the representation of the place and the narrative that it evokes. In an interview

with architect Jean Nouvel in 2002, sociologist Jean Baudrillard provocatively stated, Ive never

been interested in architecture. I have no specific feelings about it one way or the other. Im

interested in space, yes, and in anything in so-called constructed objects that enables me to

experience the instability of space. 18 It is this instability of space that the tourist-targeted

narrative seeks to conceal. The meta-narrative, or fabrication, is a highly constructed entity that

serves to dominate the reading of a tourist space. However, if the process of fabrication has the

power to create these meta-narratives, it would also be able to deconstruct and destabilize the

narrative through the use of architectural devices.

16 Boyer, Cities for Sale, 184.17 Boyer, Cities for Sale, 189.18 Jean Baudrillard and Francesco Proto, Mass, Identity, Architecture: Architectural Writings of Jean Baudrillard

(Chichester: Wiley Academy, 2003).


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Related to tourism, Ackbar Abbas speaks of exoticism as being fake or constructed. In the article

Exotic with an X, he furthers David Harveys notion that altered schemas of representation are

adapting to the compression of time and space by positing that architecture in this day and age

engages in the business of generating false realities. He writes, If one brings in the argument that

globalism has meant the disappearance of distance and differentiation, the exotic no longer

becomes an encounter with the strange, the unknown, or the different, but rather an attempt atsynthesizing or faking these vanished qualities of places. 19 This attempt to synthesize or fake a

place hints at our need for the familiar or what Baudrillard might translate as a sense of stability.

From the stance of Baudrillard and Abbas, there is no longer a distinction between real or fake

because our experience of the world is already completely fabricated. Thus, where the subversion

of power lies is not in the stability, but in the instability of place and architecture.

If architecture is a mechanism of fabricating a false sense of stability, then its tools are formal and

representational. Bernard Tschumis Parc de la Villette is one example of a project that attempts to

escape the notion that architecture constructs the reading of place. Rather than building a stable

narrative, Tschumi conceptualized the design of the park using Derridas philosophy of

deconstruction. Contrary to the use of semiotics in architecture, the design aimed to disengagefrom the sign-meaning dialectic by avoiding formal references to the conventions of a park.He

deployed a scheme of abstracted points, lines, and surfaces to organize the park in reference to a

series of follies, circulation, and program, respectfully.20 This series of follies are formal

abstractions and manipulations of a red cube used as landmarks, viewpoints, and/or markers for a

specific program of the park. Key to Tschumis concept was Derridas decoupling of the signifier

from truth in language.With architecture as a language, it set up an argument against the single

reading of the truth of a thing, or meaning of a text. 21 Furthermore, the concept of deconstruction

helped to set up an argument for understanding and experiencing the park as a place through

relationship and context, not through sign or reference. In this regard, Tschumis design sought to

resist the use of architecture to generate stability. Rather, its formal moves and philosophical

underpinnings articulated the instability of place.

Not only did Tschumis scheme for the park resist stability, but also Rem Koolhaas proposal for the

site. It was conceived as a superimposition of layers, the primary being strips of program that

organized the site. Koolhaas description of their proposal was that the park would act as a social

condenser by maximizing the boundaries of one program to the next, hence maximizing the

exposure between programs of people. 22 The premise here was that unexpected relationships

would emerge from the site, serving to redefine what the park was and how it functioned. Not

19

Ackbar Abbas, Exotic with an X, inArchitourism , ed. Joan Ockman and Salomon Frausto (Munich: PrestelVerlag, 2005), 104.20 Isabelle Auricoste and Hubert Tonka, Parc-Ville Villette: Architectures (Seyssel, France: Champ Vallon, 1987),

11.21 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1998), 19.22 Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Jennifer Sigler, and Hans Werlemann, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large: Office for

Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas, and Bruce Mau (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), 212.


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VOLUMES

POINTS

LOGIC OF

THE FOLIES

DISTORTIONR EP ET IT IO N S UP ER IM PO S IT IO N I NT ER RU PT IO N F RA GM E NT AT IO N

LINES

SURFACES

and Galleries Isometrics, AD Architectural Drawing (1986), source: the MoMA Collection Parc de la Villette masterplan drawing, source: Bernard Tschumi Architects photographer

parc de la villette :TSCHUMI

DECONSTRUCTIONthe park is an experiment inform, space, and how theseaect a persons ability to

recognize and interactwithin such a space.

matrix of geometries: interpreting Tschumis Points, Lines, and Surfaces mapping and understanding the parks use of geometric manip


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source: source: S M L XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau

parc de la villette :KOOLHAAS

nitial hypothesis 1. strips of program 2. point grids, or confetti 3. access + circulation 4. final layer

ROGRAMy organizing programmatic needs, O.M.A.s proposalttempts to orchestrate on a metropolitan eld the mostynamic coexistence of activities x, y, and z and to generatehrough their mutual interference a chain reaction of new,nprecedented events; or, how to design a social condenser,ased on horizontal congestion, the size of the park.

rom S M L XL)

programmatic indeterminacy via superimposition and layers of a mathematical logic :

1 2 3 4

BOULEVARD

PR

OMENADE

ORDER LOGIC SEQUENCE IRREGULARITY

A - a

X

A = the available areaa = area of the facility required

X = # of points to be distributed

DESIRED DISTRIBUTION

K I O S K

P I C N I C

p a r a l l e l b a n d s

r u n n i n g e a s t t o w e s t

t o a v o i d c l u s t e r i n g o f p r o g r a m

a n d t o m a x i m i z e t h e b o r d e r s b e t w e e n t h e b a n d s o f p r o g r a m

h e n c e , m a x i m i z i n g e a c h b a n d sp e r m e a b i l i t y

p r o g r a m m a t i c i n t e r f e r e n c eo r m u t a t i o n s

a n d e n c o u r a g i ng p e r p e n d i c u la r


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unlike Tschumis intentions, Koolhaas sought not to fix the meaning of the park by any

conventional means, but instead, to embrace variability and change among the parks users.

Taking the site of Aala Park in Hawaii as a catalyst for investigation, how might the strategies of

both Koolhaas and Tschumis Parc de la Villette be used for reconceptualizing place? The

following series of maps begin to draw on how the park and its surroundings are understooddifferently as it is represented in different ways. This exemplifies how maps operate to fix place. In

this case, Aala Park could easily be re-represented for various agendas. Echoing de Certeaus

description of the map being a totalizing device, it is a tool used to fabricate narratives. They are

powerful representations because they are easily manipulated to underscore specific relationships

while obfuscating others. Used to spatialize what Casey and Harvey call planiform relationships,

mapmaking is a practice that often serves economic or political agendas. 23 In this manner, they

illustrate narratives to be read, written in a visual language.

But what is to happen if these different narratives are conflated? The following diagrams describe

the manipulation of narrative structures as a method through which fabrication could destabilize

the reading of place. They draw upon the essential differences between a linear narrative and anon-linear narrative and also begin to illustrate narratives not in singularity, but in multiplicity. By

weaving together varying points of view from different users of the park, the tendency for a single,

linear narrative reading of place is subverted by the intersections and overlaps of multiple

narratives. This offers a set of alternative readings of place. For example, how might a tourist,

transient, or local inhabitant view and engage with a site differently and, more importantly, how

does the experience change when they are actively engaged with other users of the park?

23Casey, The Fate of Place, 209.


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1871 1900

7 1938

Honolulu [ Oahu, Hawaii ]

1998

honoluluharbor

piers 19 - 21historic

Chinatown

Chinatowncultural district

downtownbusiness district

capitol andhistoric district

high-riseresidences

mid- to residen

publichousingprojects

redevelopedindustrial

zone

park

sector

sector

sector

sector

sector

sector

from the Hawaiian Government Survey / by W.A. Wall from the Hawaiian Territorial Survey from the U.S. G

y lowland on the northern border of Nuuanu Stream

about Aala Park:

- located northwest of thefamous tourist district ofWaikiki and the business districtof downtown Honolulu.

- adjacent to historic Chinatown,which includes a thrivingmarketplace and growing artenclave that is an increasing

draw for tourists

- directly south of a low-incomehousing area (both private andpublic housing projects)

- east of a redeveloped industrialzone with growing commercialinterests

- semi-permanent homelesspopulation recently evicted bystate authorities

the park is an urban nexus

passed onto (U.S.)aii Minister of theior under Kingehameha V

first beautification project to convertthe park from "a barren wastecomposed of harbor dredgings into aresort of beauty."

1969 1980

the Aala Triangle consistedmostly of slum dwellings, dancehalls, and pool rooms generallyoccupied by urban derelicts.

the entire four-acre areawas razed and rebuiltinto a new gateway toHonolulu.

the area was mostlyoccupied by transients,drug dealers, andprostitutes.

$2.3 million renovationpark, including basketbrecreation fields, waterand playground equipm

baseball / site of public rallies skate park / crime hotspot / homeless encampment

eviction of the homeless with new plans to redevelop the park into

family-friendly attraction to support local businesses and tourism

privateaffordable

housing

Aala

Park

1936 1950 2002

the place :AALA PARK [Honolulu, Hawaii]


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[map 0.1] : STREETS


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[map 0.2] : BUILDINGS


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[map 0.3] : URBAN TEXTURE


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IOLANI PALACE

AALA

TRIAGLE

HONOLULU

TOWER

MAUNAKEA

TOWER KUKUI

TOWER

QUEEN EMMA

GARDENS

HONOLULU

COMMUNITY

COLLEGE

KAIULANI

ELEMENTARY

KAULUWELA

ELEMENTARY

OAHU

CEMETARY

LILIHA PUBLIC

LIBRARY

KUAKINI

HOSPITAL

SAM CHOYS

DOLE CANNERY

STADIUM

CENTRAL

MIDDLE

SCHOOL

KUKUI

GARDENS

APTS

MAYOR

WRIGHTS

ST. ANDREWS

PRIORY SCHOOL

BOARD OF

EDUCATION

WASHINGTON

PLACE

QUEENS

MEDICAL

CENTER

HAWAII

STATE

ARTMUSEUM

IZUMO

TAISHA

SHRINE

CHINATOWN

LOWER

KALIHI

KALIHI

SAND

ISLAND

(QUARANTINE

ISLAND)

NUUANU

PAUOA

PUNCHBOW

CRATER

LILIHA

ALOHA TOWER

CENTRALBUSINESS

DISTRICT

[map 1.1] : PLACE NAMES / TOPONYMY


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[map 1.2] : RISK


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[map 1.3] : URBAN IMPRESSIONS


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examining narrative structures :LINEARITY

A B C D Enarratives can be viewed and traced separately

links between events are clear(e.g. clear and logical sequence)

narratives can be broken down into chains thatare linked by a series of events

INEAR STRUCTURE NON - LINEAR STRUCTURE

narratives can be overlapping and read simultanethe links between events are less clear (e.g. jumps between timel


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SHELTER(protected space)

BEAT(surveilled space)

LANDMARK(prominent space)

PARK(autonomous space)

TRANSIENT

USER IMAGE ASSOCIATION : POSTURE SPATIAL DEFINITION : PLACE

ENFORCEMENT

VISITOR

RECREATOR

RECUMBENT

ERECT

POSED

BRACED

translating narratives :FRAMING


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fusing narrative chains :CONFLATIONspecic chains can be foregrounded

and/or obscured to conate moments


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reinforcing narratives :SINGULARITY

the narratives and its structures are legible.


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superimposing narratives :MULTIPLICITY

a dominant narrative is foregrounded/reinforced;others recede or are obfuscated; the single reading is still clear

1] static state [2] dynamic

multiple narratives are at the reading is changing, but becomes mud

the narratives and its structures are illegible and difficult to trace.


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synthesizing narratives

by establishing ahierarchy of overlaps

while tying knots intothe articulation of

multiple narratives ina single space, we can

define specific momentsas opportunities of

intervention.


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codifying narratives

examining the overlapsand intersections of the

narratives as spacesto conflate.


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SUBVERTING SOCIO-SPATIAL FABRICATIONS OF PLACE

These maps and narratives of Aala Park begin to draw on how alternative narratives may be

visualized through forms of representation. They reflect the multivalent narratives of place by

demonstrating how the experience and meaning of a place is derived socio-spatially. In Aala Park,

varying users converge in a single place, yet each user experiences the same place subjectively.Here, representation fails in that it serves to illustrate a single static narrative. But how might

architecture actively address many narratives rather than framing just one? The process of design

requires a development of representations from maps to drawings that ultimately leads to a

project. So the investigation into subverting the fabrication of place must start at the

representations that are used to generate architecture because these representations embed

narratives of place into architecture. It is thus that beyond the literal and material constructs of our

built environment, architecture at the foremost engages in the fabrication of narratives.

By activating the representational mechanisms of fabrication, architecture could reposition itself

counter to being a passive and static embodiment of a single place. Beyond constructing our world

in the physical sense, there is an opportunity for architecture to actively fabricate narratives ofplace by imbuing a singular reading of place with the complication and nuance of multiple

narratives, as in the structure of a non-linear narrative. Because our world is constantly

reconstructed, dynamic in its very nature, architecture as fabrication has the power to resist the

hegemonic narrative that dominates a single reading of place. The goal is not to invalidate the

single, dominant narrative. Rather, the goal is to resist against its dominance by forcing other

narratives to emerge at choreographed moments, contributing to define and redefine the dominant

reading of place. Thus, architecture as fabrication can intervene on how we construct as well as

read our environment. Casey enumerates, Place is not something we come across as something we

are simply in; it is what we precipitate by the conjoint action of directing and desevering thus

something to which our direct intervention gives rise. 24 How architecture intervenes with our

constructed environment is key to generating design strategies that give rise to an active

fabrication of place that produces narratives in multiplicity, not singularity. Perhaps, then, a more

progressive sense of place strives to encapsulate place as a process, not a static representation of

how it stands in a particular point in time. Massey substantiates the theory of place as a dynamic

process, stating, If places can be conceptualized in terms of the social interactions which they tie

together, then it is also the case that these interactions themselves are not motionless things,

frozen in time. They are processes. 25 Architecture as fabrication, too, is a process and one that

deserves a closer critique. By striving to fabricate our world in more than one sense, we can

generate a more dynamic approach to the way we design and experience architecture not just as

a static fabrication, nor an embodiment or representation of a static place, but as an active

fabricator that continually produces and reproduces narratives of place.

24 Casey, The Fate of Place, 250.25 Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 155.


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Documents

BLam Thesis Article V04