Hybrid Architectural Design and Riverscape
Andrea Oldani
PhD Candidate
Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture and Planning
The adjective "hybrid", used in different disciplinary fields with similar meaning, from genetics to linguistics across biology, chemistry and globalization theory, refers to an uncertain and contradictory nature. In a basic way an hybrid is the result of a process that merging, combining and altering some original characters gives us a variant, too similar to the primitive identity to be considered completely new. (fig.01) Therefore, is quite obvious an "hybrid" nature going to denounce an uncertain identity and the canonical placement of an "hybrid" may be difficult and, as a matter of fact, is usual that the idea of an element made by a process of hybridization gives us a not completely positive impression.
In architecture the term hybrid will be defined at different scales, and it is quite different discuss about the idea of hybrid architecture or hybrid urbanization.
The hypothesis of an "hybrid architecture" can be referred to the complex and impressive urban sets of Baroque Rome. In this works the idea of purity typical of the Renaissance, space shaped according to the canons of perspective, is replaced by a solution based on the simultaneous coexistence of different scales and architectural elements, merged, combined and overlapped . This game is based on the contraposition of different elements, such as the creation of a contrast made of natural and artificial architectonical elements or by the juxtaposition, in the spatial organization and design topography of contrasting figures. The hypothesis of the hybridization at the architectural scale may be addressed also to the idea of "hybrid typologies". In this case the building itself is contaminated and hybridization will refer to the combination of different programs within a single structure. It is possible to consider for example the case of "inhabited bridge" as hybrid architecture for type, origin and conformation. (fig.02)
However the discussion becomes more stimulating if the interest is directed not to a single architecture, but to examine the possible relation between open space, built environment and its connections at the urban scale. In this context the phenomenon of hybridization may be read as a process of combination and superimposition of different systems, previously autonomous, with discordant elements. The turn out are configurations taking part of the process generating new models and relations within contexts. We are ahead of a reality that requires the simultaneous coexistence of contrasting categories, establishing a scenario made by structure ad identities put together in an incoherent and disharmonic body. The dynamics that led to this particular situation is well known and has been discussed for several years. Today is well known that architectural and urban project has to deal with a set of complex spaces, characterized by loss of shape, structure and sense. (fig.03)
It is now a matter of fact that urban sprawl is the "new scenario by which redefine the meaning of the landscapes and the relationship between local environments and circuits of globalization" and that over the past twenty years some thinkers have appointed a new and rich vocabulary illustrating the intricate and doubtful meanings that belong to the genetic code of new territories. The contribution presented here starts from understanding hybridization as complexity, overlapping and coexistence and it intends to investigate the matter in relation to the territories placed between rivers and sprawled cities.
The changes, which invested the city in the space of time elapsed between the industrial revolution and the present day, have changed quickly and deeply the relationship between urban areas and respective river systems. Historically, rivers played an important role in the process that led to the current land use by ensuring conditions which supported the establishment of populations and competing as ordering elements in the definition of primitive territorial orders. In fact the largest settlements arose close by riverways, people used to take benefits from it and to be afraid of strength and unpredictability of water. The development of this primitive urbanized areas has been settled according to some basic notions hanged by the nature of site which depends settlement genesis and shape. Specific research clearly reveal how primitive urbanized areas were directly connected to the river morphology. Even now, looking at the ancient parts of cities, it is clear that instead of alluvial fan it was privileged river terraces for the settlement, which are excluded from the effects of seasonal flooding because of the natural height difference generated by fluvial erosion. It seems also clear that hazardous areas were always kept clear from buildings, and used above all for seasonal agriculture. Technical difficulties, economic factors and operative inability made overpowering of nature really hard and forced to comply with its rules. It is only from the starting of the nineteenth and during the twentieth century that, in the same breath with the changes that shift world economy, these conditions have changed substantially. New requirements and the improvements enabled by technical knowledge have started to modify profoundly the secular relation between human being and river systems. (fig.04) The ways applied for the regulation, the use and control of rivers, extraordinarily advanced in a spreading way, together with the pressing demand for building areas, led to the progressive, increasingly and intensive colonization of the areas placed close to river basins. The strong human pressure, associated with the development of intensive agriculture, the expansion of urban settlement and the infrastructure development led to the progressive simplification and transformation of the natural articulated watercourse in a channelled section, with the aim to free up space for colonization and urbanization . (fig.05) This led to the mutation of the idea of landscape and to the alteration of whole river basin biological equilibrium. Riverscapes underwent a changeover that shifted their infrastructural meaning. We moved from the clear concept of a linear infrastructural system corresponding to an environmental network to a fragmented line "along which are exchanged and intersect the various systems that make up the territory: environmental system and human settlement, productive system and infrastructural network" we paradoxically passed by the idea of "river as infrastructure" to that of "infrastructured river". "Today the landscape of the river is opaque, inaccessible as its banks, there is not narrative there is no continuity, it is dominated by the disorder, the fragmentary, the labyrinthine plot" . However this process of transformation has not yet led to a lasting settlement of riverscapes. Today the relationship between cities and rivers is subject to great changes yet. The transition to the post industrial era and the subsequent processes of dismantling and reuse of productive settlements have introduced new dynamics of replacing and changing that have started to alter once again the controversial relationship between rivers and urban areas. We are facing of a new trend of mutation and reconfiguration of this controversial relationship. (fig.06) This particular condition, in which collide the terms related to the conservation, to the restoration and modification of these territories, is effectively an hybrid field to which we can apply the new vocabulary on contemporary urban dynamics. The notion of palimpsest give us back the idea of a labyrinthine plot, in which we can find overlapped and laminated the residual signs that clearly testify the old and the clear relationship that the space shared with the river. These residual traces may be identified within a deconstructed and altered space recalling the idea of layers; a single complex reality that hold levels of simultaneous coexistence of facts and components independent but interconnected. Landscapes considerable as complex interlaced systems, consisting of built-up areas, open spaces and infrastructure networks coexisting in a one reality, but without a logical relation together, urbanized areas involved in the development dynamics of urban sprawl and therefore liable for the fragmentation of the contemporary landscape . In-between spaces which combine different characters hang in the balance between antithetical pairs as natural/artificial and urban/rural, dominated by the instability caused by the encounter between physical reality morphological conflicting (land/water). Formless landscapes therefore but also, following Gilles Clement's intuition, "third landscape" in which nature tries to repossess spaces that man has ceased to operate.
It's clear that we are facing off contexts in which "hybrid" does not mean "quality", but becomes the adjective expresses the condition of places deprived of forms, identity and landscape value, spaces lacking of meaning that only architectural project, instead of complexity, will rate through the assignment of permanent and stable signs. By this way the transformative hypothesis should start from reading and understanding the nature of involved realities through the application of a proper methodology that allows us to understand and synthesize collected information and observations. This process of knowledge, that we define as oriented to modification, will be carried out through the use of the tools typical of architectural discipline. We agree with the Swiss architect Aurelio Galfetti who underlined that "the architect is able to generate a space synthesis of the possible answers that can arise from different components, such as the various readings of the place, the demand that you should provide or program", arguing that "the architect did not follow a hierarchy of abstract values but the reading of the territorial space, developing a hierarchy that is a directed sum, that include as components as possible, according to a clear idea of space" . This peculiarity, could that be defined as "intentional interpretation", makes really difficult to establish a standard operative methodology to apply in the survey phase, so we cannot try to rule how to develop a knowledge process, but only to establish a series of principles useful to built an ideal way of working which is going to change and to adapt itself in relation to each context and to the required project. The phase of context reading must precede, but partly work together, with the stage of data interpretation that consist in the attempt to arrange collected information and to built the presuppositions for the operative phase of the project. The drawing up of a series of effective graphic synthesis about reading and interpretation can promote the understanding, not only of the physical reality that will change through the architectural design, but also of the dynamics which led to the contemporary structure of territory, of the transformations that are taking place and of the characters of artificialized landscape. If we reach the goal of producing good series of communicative sketches, we will be able to state clearly and immediately the contents of the developed knowledge process that led to specific spatial choices. This operative way meets requirements imposed by the prerogatives of complex infrastructural projects: the need to operate within a multiscalar action, in which the design of each component must appear as part of a complex writing measured on landscape. A possible way to rediscover the idea hidden under this kind of drawing is to recall the manners of a very old tradition of description of the territory that we can learn through numerous ancient documents of various heritage. This is the example of the eighteenth's century cabrei of Ticino, (fig.07) maps "that makes concrete the individuality of places through their drawing, transformed into an image when superimposed by the pictorial practice on the geometric exactness. The operation of painting in watercolours over the maps determines the transition from the pure geometric reproduction of the parcels to the representation of the richness of the landscape, that is its formal qualities". Certainly it is not the only example and this traditions continued to be practiced for centuries, point that similar techniques of drawing, careful with the quality of the landscape, were part of the instruction given, in the late eighteen century, to students of engineering at the Ecole Nationale des Ponts Chausse'es in Paris . The interest lies in the effectiveness of a fully accurate summary of the topographic characteristics of the terrain combined with an attentive description of landscape sense of places. Today this method of representation can be revised in technique and content to outline a possible way to describe the hybrid nature of contexts. Must go back to the descriptive nature of the process: the idea of a stratified system of layers that gradually introduces new data that is going to overlap and relate to those previously exposed. The final outcome may be a simplified scheme introducing the basic information that have been accepted as the founding logic of the architectural project will be dawn. This practice finds similar examples in the works of description of urban contexts which underline a precise way to conceive the project, especially in schools of architecture in Milan. These studies have however focused their attention on the study of urban form omitting some details that become crucial in the design of contemporary contexts, should be necessary revisit this way of operating enriching it with data about diffused city complexity and about perceptual and aesthetic dimension of landscape.
The outcome of this phase will be a series of sketches that summarize the complexity of the physical context and its systems. (fig. 08) However this kind of approach will not lead to good results if not accompanied by an attempt to considering the context as a "geography, whose knowledge and interpretation will provide the base substrate of the project" . In this sense "arises in the foreground not the idea of isolated object but of "relation" that the project sets up and modify, appearing not only as indirect background, but as primary morphologic material for the project itself. Accordingly not only with the methods of a formal mimesis of the existing, but also in the structural principles of settlement and in the definition of architectural works. None of these concepts try to dissolve the idea of architectural project towards an idea of diffused aesthetics but rather to confirm, in accordance with a different perspective, a disciplinary specificity of architecture whose vitality, we believe, is linked to its ability to relate, to understand, criticize and draw architecture on the world of real things" .
Hence the project becomes a transformative tool that allows the operation in the hybrid contexts placed between rivers and cities. The nature of soils and the chaotic land settlements become the background to intervene against. The architectural project has to take enough force to denounce the complexity and to build new relationships able to show the prospective to which are directed the new transformations.
According to this perspective and returning to the initial idea of "hybrid architecture", we can consider that the complex nature of urban riverscapes may justify the necessity of a notion of the infrastructure project, paying attention on focus rivers as infrastructure, which is itself "hybrid". It is interesting, following this idea, to talk about the "plural", "multiple core", of infrastructural architecture; namely to the idea that we can overcome a vision purely functional to show the "hybrid nature" of architecture that history has shown us to be a characteristic that can enrich meaningful artifacts integrating and specifying their nature. "Back in ancient times big walls [...] certainly served a primary purpose (defence), but also other no less significant functions: paths, roads, lookout points, and partly also for housing and storage purposes. As well as playing a major role in the design of a city. [...] It is interesting to note how these infrastructures can be transformed into gates, towers or pathways. And these transformations gradually evolve over time. In Rome, aqueducts have been converted into housing down the centuries through a process of hybridization, which is not just structural but also thermal, environmental, seasonal, etc. So if an infrastructure is created through extrusion and, by its very nature, is multifunctional, then morphogenesis is its most distinctive trait, along with the relation it sets up with other features creating a notion of landscape" .
We face an hypothesis that place the architect as main actor in the centre of a process where he is authorized to employ architectural design starting a process of "invention" that can lead to articulate architectural organisms establishing interesting relation with complex natural and artificial morphologies. We are not so far from the traditional prerogative of the architectural discipline, that of foreshadow, draw and built places. It is the concept of "invention" that is particularly interesting because it become the key to identify a new and creative way of conceiving the design of infrastructure in riverscape, where the technical problem is left to the specialists and the attention turns to the problem of determining the traits of the "hybrid" character that, in line with the best architectural tradition, can help to characterize places, build narrations and enrich the artefacts of significance. In the design of one of the first great hydroelectric establishment of italian architectural history, the hydroelectric complex of Trezzo d'Adda by Gaetano Moretti, for example, where "the problem is completely new, the interest of Moretti, is targeted not to the resolution of technical aspects of fixture, but to the architectural episode to be invented" . It is extremely provocative consider for a moment the infrastructure as "architectural episode to be invented" and it is amazing to notice how the mind runs towards the great examples given us by the history of architecture, the most recent too. We can think of the projects for Rio and Algiers, where "Le Corbusier designed an infrastructure which is certainly a motor way but is also viaduct, even providing housing and other services but it is also, "first and foremost" a vital means of interacting with nature" .
According to this view we are interested to take a look to the work of the French architect and engineer Marc Mimram. Compared to our theme of hybridization in riverscapes is particularly interesting to analyse the demonstrative study recently conducted on the theme "Living Bridges" in partnership with Lafarge, a world leader in building materials. He starts to reconsider the role of the infrastructure in city planning, pointing his attention to rethink "one of the archetype of metropolitan scale", the bridge, examining its habitability. "The new crossing typologies as defined by Marc Mimram associate the two themes in current trends of thought, density and diversity, erected as urban virtues. They will satisfy the three urban, technical and ecological dimensions required of an operational structure or development system, along with sustainable development" . The result of this approach are four types of "living" bridges ideally designed for four different cities with the idea to extend their functions "beyond transit to meet other urban challenges, opening up a dialogue between the city and its surrounding landscape, creating a counterpoint to the high rise urban constructions" . (fig. 09,10) The project thought "as inhabited bridge can achieve a new synthesis between technology, topography and urban care, marking within the infrastructure a particular sequence put in relation to the landscape in which it is placed" .
This provocative and demonstrative efforts serve to highlight the power that can be attributed to architectural design, and should be read in relation to the peculiarities of the work of Marc Mimram that, following the idea of "situated project" always puts the concepts of geography, orientation, landscape value and history as conditions that are decisive in the ideation of the transformation that is going to implement. So we can resume previous considerations emphasizing yet how the peculiarity of urban and architectural design should be used to unveiling the nature of the contexts through of complex artifacts and architectures that establish new relationships clarifying the existing ones.
Critical Notes:
(1) Saggio Antonino, Evolution of Hybrid Space, on line conference: www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/Conferenze/Seul/Seul.htm
(2) Pavia Rosario, (2002), Babele. La citta' della dispersione, Roma, Meltemi. pag. 24. Free traslation from Italian: "e' la citta' diffusa il nuovo scenario attraverso cui ridefinire il senso dei paesaggi e delle relazioni tra i contesti locali e i circuiti della globalizzazione".
(3) The subject is treated in: Panizza M., Piacente S. (2003), Geomorfologia culturale, Bologna. And also in: Tosco Carlo (2008), "Ecostoria dei paesaggi fluviali", in: Motta G., Ravagnati C. (ed.), Alvei Meandri Isole e altre forme urbane, Franco Angeli, Milano.
(4) See for further investigation of these topics: Di Fidio Mario, (1995), I corsi d'acqua: sistemazioni naturalistiche e difesa del territorio, Pirola, Milano.
(5) Pavia Rosario, cit. pag. 75. traslation from Italian: "oggi potremmo dire che lungo il fiume s'incontrano e s'intersecano i diversi sistemi che costituiscono il territorio: il sistema ambientale e quello insediativo, il sistema produttivo e quello infrastrutturale"
(6) Pavia Rosario, cit. pag. 77. traslation from Italian: "oggi il paesaggio del fiume e' opaco, inaccessibile come le sue rive, non c'e' piu' narrazione, non c'e' piu' continuita'; domina il disordine, il frammentario, l'intreccio labirintico"
(7) Vigano' Paola, (ed.), (2001), Territori della nuova modernita', Electa, Napoli.
(8) Cle'ment Gilles,(2005), Manifesto del Terzo paesaggio, Macerata, Quodlibet.
(9) Taken from an interview by Aurelio Galfetti to + xm plusform in June 2006 transcribed in: AA.VV. (2008), Aurelio Galfetti, Oggetti Territoriali, Iiriti editore, Reggio Calabria. pag. 29. traslation from Italian: "per me l'architetto e' colui che riesce a generare una sintesi spaziale tra le possibili risposte che posso nascere dalle varie componenti, come per esempio dalle diverse letture del luogo, dal tema che si deve svolgere o dal programma". "L'architetto non gerarchizza secondo dei valori astratti, ma seguendo una sua lettura dello spazio territoriale, la sua gerarchizzazione e' una sommatoria direzionata che comprende per quanto possibile tutte le componenti, ma le gerarchizza secondo una visione dello spazio".
(10) Cabreo: Old Italian word used to term representation of private lands or estate.
(11) Belloni Francesca, (2008), "Il territorio tra Morimondo e Fallavecchia sulla sponda sinistra del fiume Ticino", in: Motta G. (ed.) cit. pag. 205. traslation from Italian: "la cartografia cabreistica rende concreta tale individualita' dei luoghi, mediante la loro rappresentazione e, nel momento in cui sovrappone la pratica pittorica alla misurazione geometrica, la trasforma in immagine. L'operazione di acquerellare le mappe determina il passaggio dalla riproduzione geometrica della parcellizzazione agricola alla rappresentazione delle della ricchezza del paesaggio, cioe' delle sue qualita' formali".
(12) Compared to these issues, see: Valente Ilaria, (2004), "Il disegno degli spazi aperti tra densita' e rarefazione", in: Territorio, n.28, and: Picon Antoine, (1988), Architects et Ingenieurs au sie'cle des lumiere's, Marseille.
(13) Gregotti Vittorio, (1991), Dentro l'architettura, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino. traslation from Italian: "geografia, il cui culto conoscitivo e la cui interpretazione forniscono il materiale portante del progetto"
(14) Gregotti Vittorio, (1981), "La nozione di contesto", in: Casabella, n. 465 traslation from Italian: "si pone in primo piano che non l'idea di oggetto isolato ma di "relazione", che il progetto istituisce e modifica, si costituisca non solo come uno sfondo indiretto ma come materiale morfologico preminente nei confronti del progetto stesso. Non solo quindi nei modi della mimesi formale dell'esistente ma anche in quello strutturale dei principi di insediamento e di costituzione della cosa architettonica. Tutto cio' non mira a disciogliere la nozione di progettualita' in quella di esteticita' diffusa ma a riaffermare invece, secondo un'ottica diversa, proprio una specificita' disciplinare dell'architettura la cui vitalita' e' legata noi crediamo alla sua capacita' di porsi in relazione per comprendere, criticare e trasformare in architettura proprio il mondo delle cose reali."
(15) Saggio Antonino,(2009), "Plural Infrastructure", in: l'Arca, n.249, pag. 42.
(16) Calzavara Maurizio, "L'architetto Gaetano Moretti", in: Casabella Continuita', n. 218/1958. traslation from Italian: "laddove il problema si presentava completamente nuovo, l'interesse di Moretti, si tese, non sul problema tecnico dell'impianto, ma sull'episodio architettonico da inventare"
(17) Saggio Antonino, cit.
(18) Lamarre Fran¨ois, (2008), "Living within infrastructure: a metropolitan horizon", in: Living Bridges, four projects, Marc Mimram architect-engineer, Lafarge, Paris.
/19) Lamarre Fran¨ois, cit.
(20) Picon Antoine (ed.), (2009), Marc Mimram, architettura ibrida, Electa, Milano. pag.132. traslation from Italian: "Il ponte abitato puo' realizzare una nuova sintesi tra tecnologia, topografia e attenzione urbana, contrassegnando nel percorso dell'infrastruttura una sequenza particolare in relazione al paesaggio in cui e' collocata".
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01
Human Race Hybridization.
02
Florence, inhabited bridge of "Ponte Vecchio".
03
Generic city urban edge.
04
Alexandria, (Virginia, USA), Potomac river's edge in 1945 and in1994.
05
Complexity along river Rhone in Lione.
06
Reconversion of a dismissed industrial platform
over the river Dora Riparia in Tourin.
07
Cabreo of river Ticino.
08
Programmating interpretation of river Lambro context in Milan.
09
Marc Mimram, Shanghai, "The Rooftop Bridge".
Top: the National Art Academy of Sofia. Down: Varoshaza Forum of Budapest.
10
Marc Mimram, New York,
"The Accommodating Structure".
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