and the infinite slope
Manifesto for urban theatrical space
Public spaces have contributed for public to experience various events yet there is only few spaces to make people to be creative for free in modern city. My project will discover urban theatrical space for greater public involvement.
RE-Context of Centre Pompidou
After corrupt of Chale de Gaule government, President Pompidou was compelled to initiate 'Pompidou Centre' to suppress riots of May in France in 1968 as the serious strike almost collapsed French state.
The competition for Centre Art and culture in Paris, therefore, chose the scheme, 'ever-changing frame work with a university of the street' by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers from the competition entries. The two concepts proposed the new policy of the government, balances between authority and public.The 'ever-changing framework' would propose radical change from the old society and the university of the street, the public space for street culture implies a respect for youth culture as the main protestants of the strike were students.
Thus this layout of Center Pompidou and the public square indicates the equal relationship between official and subculture, paid and free space and authorized system and artistic free speech.
Manhattan Transcript
While the riots in Paris was directed by a group called Situationist International, Bernard Tschumi was inspired by the philsophy of situationist and conceived the canonical achivement, Manhattan Transcripts. The drawings architectually depict the relationship between the events and the city and it utilizes a technique of montage from filming. the story-based drawing attempts to analyze the system of points, lines, and surfaces of relationships between the protagonists, the victim, the muder and the hunt's activities and Manhattan through the event, murdering.
Paris Transcripts
An event like fire juggling in Centre Pompidou can be reconfigured and drawn by using this montage technique. My protagonists are the tourist, the performer and the security guard.
The tourist attracted by the fire juggling in the public square, is as a only person who has viewpoints as she is a visitor. Her experience of Paris contains full of pictures. Her mind map, therefore, compressed by tube station as she used only subway system and all the iconic building she visited gathered into one place. She paid attention to icons, signposts, and advertisements but she does not memorize the whole things. Her experience of Paris can be drown as a compressed and fragmental picture.
The performer, concentrating on fire juggling, by contrast, has information about public events in Paris such as date and place of the events. In his mind, the diagram of juggling is haunting.
As for the security guard, who observes the two protagonists, senses the city rather than seeing the city. His mind map has data where are the dangerous areas CCTV cameras set up.. The areas are where strikes and protests happen. He captures the pattern of the crowd by time.
The Southbank Transcripts
The tourist, next visited London and she went to 12 sight seeing spots such as Marble Arch, Hyde Park, British Museum, National Gallery, Covent Garden and so on and she spent 4 days.
>show the section of the 4 route
The section of routes for 4 days are incredibly lond, even though she used lots of public stansports. The length in tube and river bus is compressed in this. However, her experience of London is not so long. The boring parts are now compressed.
>show the compressed section with time
She saw many things from daily tings and dramatic moments and the time and spaces are compressed.
>show the drawing of tourist
While the tourist was seeking dramatic moments, the another protagonist, a stage set designer carefully looks at how street theatre can be configured in that she is going to design an urban street theatre for public and free.
>show the process of the configuration of the street theatre
The street theatre in Covent Garden has small steps and slopes and people visited there gathered in the unprogrammed seats. A street performer started to prepare his performing and people started to pay attention to him. When he begun to talk, some people stopped and circled around him. As the performar attracted the people walked through there, they naturally created a stage and the places people had a rest, drunk and ate became the auditoriums, including the balconies upstairs.
The performer senses the city as a theatre as he is always looking for a theatrical space for attracting people and gaining exchange. The routes of the tourist can be read as full of theatrical qualities.
>show the theatrical drawings
The plant bed and the wall of the Marble Arch for him are an auditorium and a stage set. The micro theatrical spaces in the 4 routes can be marged and creates microcosmos.
>connext the drawings of the four routes
Although the general condition of the spaces are a wall, a picket fence, and a barrier, these elements for the perfomar are an auditorium, a stage set where people to sit, to lean on, to gain a sight line.
My project wiil be located in South Bank, Jubilee Garden, where people gather for cultural activities. In Royal Festival Hall, The film Museum in London, Hayward Gallery, the visitors enjoy and study and some people have already commited the cultural acitivities as an amateur artist. As opposed to only a university of the street, i would like to propose an infinite university of the street where the learners, visitors involve the free and amateur art by using a mobius ring.
>show the image of a showcase
The infinite slope can be a market with theatrical spaces which were conceived by the performers. The part of Marble arch, and Hyde Park, can be a street theatre to see and wait the street performing and great scenery from inside and outside, or one day they will perform there. The twisted slope becomes now a dynamic showcase which has various angles.
In conclusion, our urban city can be a nature where we can conceive theatrical qualities and the applying the elements can be stated as a vernacular architecture. Thus my urban theatre will make a conversation between city, public, and peoples behaviour, including the visitors.
a street theatre next to the Marble Arch
the general condition of the space next to Marble Arch
the architectural drawing which extracted the theatrical spatial quality
the connection of the theatrical parts of the city(the red circle will be a market)
From this point of view, I collected quality of spaces from the city as a nature of humans' activities such as a part of Hyde Parc, public square, a street and room of British Museum.
The street performance's generator is in this way different from Parc de la Villette by Bernard Tschumi which triggers its visitors activities and connects to the context of the city of Paris.
Thus my contextualism will aim to be vernacularism as opposed to Parc de la Villette's utterly abstracted event generators with mixing the functions of it, hollies which the visitors can realize the context of the city by experiencing the hollies.
(I'd like to criticize hollies as particularly unsuccessful as the actual hollies have low quality as an event generator in that it does not stimulate its visitors' curiosity to play with that.
What is the successful mean of placing the fragments of the city?
My fragments are not created by relationships with axis, point, line and surfaces of the city yet without considering about the context of the site, my project cannot be convincing.
In addition, placing fragments may change the meaning of each fragment as a critic in my jury said.
My solution to this is placing the theatrical spaces completely open for outside to attract the people walk through there.
it is for drawing
3d model for model, CNC
As I have considered about the meaning of method of my project, I'd like to look at some theories for my projects.Reconsidering what is the transsexualism, I will revise what Bernard Tschumi attempted to do in Parc de la villette.
- the reason why Tschumi registered contexualism and the method of montage
- the meaning of collage city - its utopia thoughts
- the way, sampling the city- city as our nature environment
1-Tschumi's application of montage technique focuses on a context of experience. The experience of the city can be different from each protagonist.
2-"Habitually utopia, whether platonic or Marxian, has been conceived of as axis mundi or as axis istoriae: but, if in this way it has operated like all totemic, traditionalist and uncriticized aggregations of ideas, if its existence has been poetically necessary and politically deplorable, then this is only to assert the idea that a collage technique by accommodating a whole range of axes mundi(all of them vest pocket utopias- Swiss canton, New England village"[02].
3-once we think city as part of our nature, environment which humans created, there exists a number of samples how people interact the environment.
The park for the 21st century is integrated within the functions of the city, and it needs to complement the vision of the city so that the city will exist within the park and embrace urban reality[03].
While collage city is written as patchwork of the city mostly, geographical point of view, my project will utilize not the patchwork yet compression of a sense of the city.
In sum, my project will discover a little city for street performers with a utopian perspective yet my project inverse the role of grid...;;).
[01]J. Daniel Pugh LARC 263, November 16, 2004, The Context Paper
[02]Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City, The MIT press 1978,149
[03]Lissarrague, Jacques. La Cite' des sciences et de l'industrie, Paris-La Villette. Paris:
Electra Moniteur, 1988.
Covent Garden attempted to make scale of street performance there to make the area less noisy to sell their property and there were campaign by the street performers and its lovers.
*source from http://promovideo.co.uk/save-our-shows-documentary/
