Pegs in the sky
The site of this project is the Bellechasse area near metro Rosemont, north of the Plateau, east of Mile-End and Outremont and south of Petite Italie. Like these surrounding neighbourhoods, the site was once popular and vibrant, containing active industry which supported a lively community. However, post-industrialisation has removed much of the spirit of the place as vacant lots and a deteriorating urban landscape have begun to characterise the area. Although traces of a caring and engaged community still exist, the pedestrian environment has been greatly negotiated as vehicular traffic dominates.
Marta Ferrari, Joelle Khoury, Sanjeevan Tharmaratnam & Benjamin Wareing
The existing heavy transport infrastructure of the site creates a barrier of impenetrability and dead space which isolates the site from the surrounding neighbourhoods. By transforming the area in and around these elements into an active event space, this threshold may be transformed into a porous boundary, a vibrant area of connectivity and exchange. It is in these periphery spaces where diversity and activity are at their height, making for a more open and vibrant city.[1] In these ‘loose’ spaces, hierarchies dissolve and freedom is celebrated, providing the conditions for appropriable. As explained by Karen Franck, “Through the diversity of actions and actors it invites, loose space nurtures particularity in the urban public realm, sustaining local practices and allowing the identity of place and culture to flourish. These practices may change over time as cultures change or as immigrants bring their customs with them, but in all cases differences between places arise from the actions of the occupants themselves.”[2]
In order to address the site conditions and encourage activity and appropriation of the environment, it was important for us not to preconceive how the space should be used and to act deterministically. Our role was to design the conditions, not to condition the design. By introducing an independent program, we are offering the public a reinterpretation of the environment, from where they are able to overlay their own meanings and functions to appropriate the space. This approach of cross-programming was inspired by the event theory of Bernard Tschumi, ideas he exercised in the design of Parc de la Villette. This theory supports the development of identity and vibrant city life through “a new 21st century culture of crossovers”.[3]
Our program is inspired by the compromised nature of the pedestrian environment and the contested ground line, as well as by the trace elements discovered on site. By providing a series of new vantage points, we allow a re-reading of the environment in and around the Rosemont-Van Horne viaduct and this section of the CP railway line. This privileged gaze empowers the public, encouraging appropriation to link, enliven and consolidate the areas already being contested. These include the DIY skate park beneath a bay of the viaduct constructed from wooden crates, steel rails and cast-in-place concrete, the “Quartier général” urban agriculture project taking place in the green space adjacent to the viaduct, the graffiti and photos exhibited on the facade of the artists’ studios, the structures on the roof of the artist’s studios, the sculpture garden and urban bee-keeping at the Van Horne end of the viaduct and the penetrations made in the fences following the railway line. Each of our interventions addresses these points in different ways, each revealing something new about the context.
This privileging of the vertical dimension offers a reinterpretation of the environment and opens up a new space for appropriation by the public. According to architect and ecologist Ken Yeang, “we need to take all those aspects of urban design that are conventionally crucial at the horizontal plane, and now reconnect and transpose these onto the vertical dimension; as a vertical framework of urbanity ‘in the sky’ rather than ‘on the ground’”.[4] In line with Yeang’s theory, our interventions provide linkages and vistas, interrogate figure ground relationships, appropriate interstitial space around transportation hubs and employ readily dismountable construction systems to allow for future reorganisation or recycling.
By employing a consistent light, dynamic and diverse architectural language and including various lighting and projection technologies, the users may orient themselves within the space and explore and discover the spaces between the interventions. The steel frames and modular forms are relatively devoid of historic reference, emphasising the age and character of the heavy infrastructure around whilst remaining neutral to interpretation and use themselves. These ‘beacons’ of light and activity will activate the environment and loosen formal constraints, creating a space of liminality and chance. Their meaning will be derived from their context and by the appropriation of the public.
The ephemerality and flexible nature of the interventions was inspired by the vibrant instant city designs of Archigram as well as by the Fun Palace and Potteries Thinkbelt designs of Cedric Price. These visionaries of the 1960s English avant-garde emphasised “such humanizing ingredients in architecture as humour, irony, and fantasy (as opposed to the usual solemnity) and the restoration of buildings to their rightful status as art and as reflections of diverse social values.”[5]
These interventions are designed to activate and enliven the site and to instigate further use and appropriation by the public. Their use will evolve with time and change according to season, remaining open to play in winter whilst also having the potential to act as spaces of shelter from snow and cold winds along a new and intriguing pedestrian route. The modular construction of the interventions also allows them to be moved and rearranged according to use and conditions, perhaps seasonally or for special events.
The interventions are designed to offer a reinterpretation of the site and city to its people to create a true and free public space. As people “both produce the environment and are reproduced by it”,[6] we hope to free the public from the habits and restrictions normally imposed upon them by over programmed and conditioned built form. The ephemeral and informal nature of the interventions will initiate and formalise a space of the people which will direct future development. As attested by Prema Katari Gupta, director of planning and economic development at the University City District of Philadelphia, “That’s the beauty of lighter, quicker, cheaper. It’s flexible and allows for layering and a gradual transition to permanence”.[7]
Whilst activating the specific Bellechasse site, the city itself becomes a more open network. The interventions could thus “concretize the spatiality of a public culture of mutually aware, independent and involved identities.”[8] This porosity and vibrancy could encourage a move towards a more engaged and diverse Montréal, where the city is inhabited freely and creatively.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Albrecht, Donald “New Hotels for Global Nomads”, Merrell and Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York, 2002.
Franck, Karen and Quentin Stevens “Tying Down Loose Space” in Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, ed. Franck and Stevens, Routledge, New York, pp 1-34, 2006.
Greco, J “From Pop-Up to Permanent”, in Planning, APA American Planning Association, November 2012
Merker, B “Taking Place : Rebar’s absurd tactics in generous urbanism”, pp 45-58 in Jeffrey Hou, Ed. Insurgent Public Space. New York: Routledge. 2010.
Sennett, Richard “Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life”, Allen Lane/the Penguin Press, London, 1971.
Stavrides, Stavros “Heterotopias and the Experience of Porous Urban Space” in Loose Space: Possibility and Diversity in Urban Life, ed. Karen Franck and Quentin Stevens, Routledge, New York, pp 174-192, 2006.
Tschumi, Bernard “Event Cities 3. Concept vs Context vs Content,” MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004.
Yeang, K “A Vertical Theory of Urban Design”, Academy Press, 2012.
[1] See Sennett, R “The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life”, 1971.
[2] Franck, K and Q Stevens “Tying Down Loose Space”, 2006, pp 20-21.
[3] Tschumi, B “Event Cities 3. Concept vs Context vs Content,” 2004, p. 523.
[4] Yeang, K “A Vertical Theory of Urban Design”, 2012, p. 1.
[5] Albrecht, D “New Hotels for Global Nomads”, 2002, p.26.
[6] Merker, B “Taking Place : Rebar’s absurd tactics in generous urbanism”, pp 45-58 in Jeffrey Hou, Ed. Insurgent Public Space. New York: Routledge. 2010.
[7] Greco, J “From Pop-Up to Permanent”, APA American Planning Association, P2012.
[8] Stavrides, Stavros “Heterotopias and the Experience of Porous Urban Space”, 2006, p. 174.
DESIGNING THE CONDITIONS WITHOUT CONDITIONING THE DESIGN