b

Weak Work: Andrea Branzi's "Weak Metropolis" and the Projective Potential of an "Ecological Urbanism" Charles Waldheim

In his introduction to the Ecological Urbanism conference, Mohsen Mostafavi described ecological urbanism as both a critique of and a continuation by other terms of the discourse of landscape urbanism. Ecological urbanism proposes Uust as landscape urbanism proposed over a decade ago) to multi­ply the available lines of thought on the contemporary city to include environmental and ecological concepts, while expand­ing traditional disciplinary and professional frameworks for describing those urban conditions. As a critique of the land­scape urbanist agenda, ecological urbanism promises to ren­der that dated discourse more specific to ecological, economic, and social conditions of the contemporary city.

Mostafavi's introduction suggested that ecological urban­ism implied the projective potential of the design disciplines to render alternative future scenarios. He further indicated that those alternative futures may place us across various

"spaces of disagreement." These spaces of disagreement span the range of disciplinary and professional borders compris­ing the study of the city. Any contemporary examination of those disciplinary frameworks would acknowledge that the challenges of the contemporary city rarely respect tradition­al disciplinary boundaries. This realization recalls Roland Barthes' formulation on the various roles of language and fashion in the production of interdisciplinary knowledge:

Interdisciplinarity is not the calm of an easy security; it begins effec­tively when the solidarity of old disciplines breaks down-perhaps even violently, through the jolts of fashion-in the interests of a new object and a new language. 1

In reading the new language proposed by the ecological ur­banism initiative, the subtitle of the recent Harvard confer­ence on the subject, "Alternative and Sustainable Cities of the Future," is equally telling. This construction indicates the linguistic cul-de-sac that confronts much of contempo­rary urbanism, constructed around a false choice between critical cultural relevance and environmental survival. The conference title and subtitle further signify disciplinary fault lines between the well-established discourse on sustainabil­ity and the long tradition of using urban projections as de­scriptions of the contemporary conditions for urban culture.

ANTICIPATE 114

Andrea Branzi, et al., "Masterplan Strijp Philips, Eindhoven," model view (1999-2000)

This reading suggests that ecological urbanism might re­animate discussions of sustainability with the political. so­cial, cultural. and critical potentials that have been drained from them. This shift would be particularly apt as the design fields presently experience a profound disjunction of realms in which environmental health and design culture are op­posed. This historical opposition has produced a contempo­rary condition in which ecological function, social justice, and cultural literacy are perceived by many as mutually exclusive. This disjunction of concerns has led to a situation in which design culture has been depoliticized, distanced from the empirical and objective conditions of urban life. At the same moment, increased calls for environmental remediation, eco­logical health, and biodiversity suggest the potential for rei­magining urban futures. Among the results of this disjunction of intellectual and practical commitments has been that we are collectively coerced into choosing between alternate ur­ban paradigms, each espousing exclusive access to environ­mental health, social justice, or cultural relevance.

Homi Bhabha used his keynote address at the conference to frame the ecological urbanism project in temporal terms, arguing that "it is always too early, or too late, to talk about cities of the future."In so doing, Bhabha locates the ecological

115

.-~.

Archizoom Associati, "No-Stop City" (1968-71)

urbanism project in a complex intertwined dialectic between the ecologies of the informal and the relentless reach of mod­ernization. Bhabha maintains that one is in effect always working with the problems of the past, but these problems appear differently in new emergent contemporary conditions. Thus the project of ecological urbanism, Bhabha insists, is a "work of projective imagination." 2

It is in those terms, as work of projective imagination, that the urban projects of Andrea Branzi might be found relevant to the emergent discourse on ecological urbanism. Branzi's work reanimates a long tradition of using urban projects as social and cultural critique. This form of urban projection deploys a project not simply as an illustration or "vision­but rather as a demystified distillation and description of our present urban predicaments. In this sense, one might read Branzi's urban projects as less a utopian future possible world than a critically engaged and politically literate delin­eation of the power structures, forces, and flows shaping the contemporary urban condition. Over the past four decades, Branzi's work has articulated a remarkably consistent cri­tique of the social, cultural. and intellectual poverty of much laissez-faire urban devt::lopment and the realpolitik assump­tions of much urban design and planning. As an alternative, Branzi's projects propose urbanism in the form of an envi­ronmental, economic, and aesthetic critique of the failings of the contemporary city.

Born and educated in Florence, Branzi studied architecture in a cultural milieu of the Operaists and a scholarly tradi­tion of Marxist critique, as evidenced through speculative ur­ban proposals as a form of cultural criticism. Branzi first came to international visibility as a member of the collective

ANTICIPATE 116

P.V. Aureli and M. Tattara/Dogma, "Stop City," aerial view (2008)

Typical plan, forest canopy (2008)

Archizoom (mid-1960S), based in Milan but associated with the Florentine Architettura Radicale movement. Archizoom's project and texts for "No-Stop City" (1968- 71) illustrate an I

urbanism of continuous mobility, fluidity, and flux. While -~ -- { "N o-Stop City" was received on one level as a satire of the Brit- 1-

ish technophilia of Archigram, it was also viewed as an illus­tration of an urbanism without qualities, a representation of the "degree-zero" conditions for urbanization.3

Archizoom's use of typewriter keystrokes on A4 paper to represent a nonfigural planning study for "No-Stop City" an~ --_ ticipated contemporary interest in indexical and parametric representations of the city. Their work prefigured current at­tention to describing the relentlessly horizontal field condi­tions of the modern metropolis as a surface shaped by the strong forces of economic and ecological flows. Equally, these drawings and their texts pointed toward today's investiga­tions of infrastructure and ecology as nonfigurative drivers '

\

of urban form. As such, a generation of contemporary urban- '-~ , ists have drawn from Branzi's intellectual commitments. This " diverse list of influence ranges from Stan Allen and James Corner's interest in field conditions to Alex Wall and Alejandro Zaera Polo's concern with logistics.4 More recently, Pier Vit- ~­

torio Aureli and Martino Tattara's project "Stop-City" directly references Branzi's use of nonfigurative urban projection as -a form of social and political critique.s Branzi's urban proj­ects are equally available to inform contemporary interef ts within architectural culture and urbanism on an array oC·-­topics as diverse as animalia, indeterminacy, and genericity,

among others. As a deliberately "nonfigurative" urbanism, "No-Stop City" --­

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Ludwig Hilberseimer (with Alfred Caldwell), bird's-eye view of commercial area and settlement unit (c. 1943)

Ludwig Hilberseimer, ''The City in the Landscape" (1949)

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rative urban projection as socialist critique. In this regard, Branzi's "No-Stop City" draws on the urban planning projects and theories of Ludwig Hilberseimer, particularly Hilber­seimer's "New Regional Pattern" and that project's illustration of a proto-ecological urbanism.6

Not coincidentally, both Branzi and Hilberseimer chose to illustrate the city as a continuous system of relational forces and flows, as opposed to a collection of objects. In this sense the ongoing recuperation of Hilberseimer, and Branzi's re~ newed relevance for discussions of contemporary urbanism renders their work particularly meaningful to discussions' of ecological urbanism. Andrea Branzi occupies a singular historical position as a hinge figure between the social and environmental aspirations of modernist planning of the post­war era and the politics of 1968 in which his work first emerged for English-language audiences. As such, his work is particu­larly well suited to shed light on the emergent discussion around ecological urbanism.

Branzi's 1993/94 project Agronica returns to his interest in the relentlessly horizontal spread of capital across thin tissues of territory, and the resultant "weak urbanization" that the neoliberal economic paradigm affords . Agronica repre­sents the potential parallelism between agricultural and energy production, new modalities ofpost-Fordist industrial economy, and the cultures of consumption that they con­struct,? More recently in 2000/01, Branzi (with the Domus Academy, a postgraduate research institute founded in 1980s) executed a project for Philips in Eindhoven. These projects returned to the recurring themes in Branzi's oeuvre with typical wit and pith, illustrating a "Territory for the New Economy."s

Andrea Branzi's intervention in the ecological urbanism conference was timely in that it followed a presentation by Andres Duany. That the ecological urbanism agenda could be found relevant to a cultural and professional breadth of urban

ANTICIPATE 118

Andrea Branzi, et aI., "Agronica," model view (1993-94)

thought spanning from Andrea to Andres is accomplishment enough, considering the relatively narrow confines within which debates in contemporary urbanism are often described. Branzi's primary contribution to the proceedings consisted of a keynote lecture featuring a surreal video anthology of his greatest hits of "weak urbanism," accompanied by a Patti Smith soundtrack. This montage of four decades of urban pro­jection offered a visual manifesto of sorts, proclaiming "weak urbanization" as a medium of environmental and cultural rel­evance. Branzi prefaced his prepackaged multimedia mashup with a brief introductory text prepared for the event (read in Italian with simultaneous translation by Nicoletta Morozzi) proposing seven suggestions toward a "post-environmental­ism."9 These points succinctly framed Branzi's longstanding call for a conception of contemporary urbanism as a field of potentials, shaped by weak forces and spontaneous pro­grammatic eruptions. Branzi's seven "suggestions" (reprinted in this volume as a "New Athens Charter") offer a surreal and nonlinear set of propositions simultaneously accounting for and celebrating the failings of the contemporary city.

Branzi's "weak work" maintains its relevance for genera­tions of urbanists. His longstanding call for the development of weak urban forms and nonfigural fields has already influ­enced the thinking of those who articulated landscape ur­banism over a decade ago. Equally, Branzi's projective and polemical urban propositions promise to shed light on the evolving understanding of ecological urbanism and its poten­tial for reconfiguring the disciplines and professions respon­sible for describing the contemporary city.

_"V_

119

> Archizoom Associati, "No-Stop City" (1968- 71)

Andrea Branzi, et al., "Masterplan Strijp Philips, Eindhoven," model view (1999-2000)

1 Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," Image Music Text, translated by Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 155.

2 Homi Bhabha, " Keynote (Footnote)," with Rem Koolhaas and Sanford Kwinter, Ecological Urbanism Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design, April 3, 2009. 3 Archizoom Associates, "No-Stop City. Residential Parkings. Climatic Universal Sistem," Domus 496 (March 1971): 49-55.

For Branzi's refiections on the project, see Andrea Branzi, "Notes on No-Stop City: Archizoom Associates 1969-1972," Exit Utopia: Architectural Provocations 1956- 1976, edited by Martin van Schaik and Otakar Macel (Munich: Prestel, 2005),

177-182. For more recent scholarship on the project and its relation to contem­porary architectural culture and urban theory, see Kazys Varnelis, "Programming after Program : Archizoom's No-Stop City," Praxis, no. 8 (May 2006): 82-91.

4 On field conditions and contemporary urbanism, see James Corner, "The Agency of Mapping : Speculation, Critique and Invention," Mappings, edited by Denis Cosgrove (London: Reaiction Books, 1999), 213 - 300; and Stan Allen, "Mat Urbanism: The Thick 2-D," CASE: Le Corbusier's Venice Hospital and the Mat Building

ANTICIPATE

Revival, edited by Hashim Sarkis (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 118-126. On logistics and contemporary urbanism, see Susan Nigra Snyder and Alex Wall, "Emerging Landscape of Movement and Logistics," Architectural Design Profile, no. 134 (1998): 16-21 ; and Alejandro Zaera Polo, "Order Out of Chaos: The Material Organization of Advanced Capitalism," Architectural Design Profile , no. 108 (1994) : 24-29.

5 See Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara, "Architecture as Framework: The Project of the City and the Crisis of Neoliberalism," New Geographies, vol. 1 (2009): 38- 51 .

6 Ludwig Hilberseimer, The New Regional Pattern : Industries and Gardens, Work­shops and Farms (Chicago: Paul Theobald, 1949).

7 Andrea Branzi, D. Donegani, A. Petri llo, and C. Raimondo, "Symbiotic Metropolis: Agronica," The Solid Side, edited by Ezio Manzini and Marco Susani (Netherlands: V+K Publishing/ Phil ips, 1995), 101 - 120.

8 Andrea Branzi, "Preliminary Notes for a Master Plan," and "Master Plan Strijp Philips, Eindhoven 1999," Lotus, no. 107 (2000): 110-123.

9 Andrea Branzi, "The Weak Metropolis," Ecological Urbanism Conference, Harvard Graduate School of Design, April 4, 2009.

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