Tirana Design Week 2019 - Foreseeing Uncertainty: Design in times of Non-Normativity, from Tirana
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
Tirana Design Week 2019
Foreseeing Uncertainty: Design in times of Non-Normativity, from
Tirana
Tirana Design Week (TDW) this year, in 2019, approaches Tirana’s 100th anniversary as the
capital of Albania. Comparing photos of a bucolic Tirana in 1920 with what one sees from Polis
University’s fourth floor today, inevitably raises doubts about the endurance and certainty of design,
planning, and development as well as the unpredictable fluctuating tendency of what constitutes a
norm. TDW this year also coincides with an important event for architecture and design: the
founding of Bauhaus by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919. More than just calendric, perhaps such
coincidence emerges as a looming yet menacingly real affinity between what followed the demise of
Bauhaus and the threateningly uncertain horizons we see today. The objective of Tirana Design
Week is to draw current research and design practices, as well as theoretical speculations on the
topic of uncertainty and non-normativity in and from the context of the city of Tirana.
The main aim for this event is to set a common research framework - for either architects and
designers - to deal with contemporary issues and start a debate concerning the upcoming future
years of holistic investigation and speculation in – and outside - Albania. Through this lens, Tirana
will picture itself as a catalyst where critical global scenarios can be implemented, tested, and
discussed - in a peculiar reality like the Balkan one - to foster solutions that can be then projected
and verified in a broader dimension. Moreover, the significance of addressing such topic from Tirana
is precisely that this city in particular, and Albania in general are harsh and unmediated examples of
what is already a global symptom: a strong contrast between an ideology of normativity on the one
hand, and its actual impossibility on the other; between self-complacent and so-called ethical design
imperatives and narratives on the one hand and irresponsible political decision making on the other;
between expensive normativity affordable only by few, and not-so-cheap under-normativity for the
many; between frenzied building development and the degradation - and in many cases even
destruction - of urban artifacts; between ’beautiful’ star-architecture facades in the city center and
chaotic suburban sprawl in the periphery; between nightlife in the center and night misery at the
edges; between style and non-style. What happens in-between is, or rather excluded as ‘uncertain’.
The objective of TDW this year is precisely to address such uncertainty from the perspective of
different practices such as architecture, planning, environment, technology, communication, history,
memory, culture, and pedagogy. The objective is not so much to plan or propose a new agenda,
narrative or meaning for the future of these practices - we already have plenty of those - but instead
investigate, register and draw what is already happening within these particular practices, and the
potential of these tendencies to inflect positively or negatively on the un-reason of non-normativity
and the commodification of normativity.
Approximate dates: 19th-28th September 2019
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008SWorkshop proposal
Workshop Title: Shaping the city: cartography of an action
Proponent: Julio Gotor Valcárcel
1. General overview of the workshop
1. The general structure of the course during the Tirana Design Week
1. Territory and landscape revealed
1.1 Theoretical aspects (Robert Smithon. Deleuze-Guattari, Stan Allen)
1.2 Example (own research in territory t.b.d.)
1.3 Uncertainty potential
1.3.1 Tirana through its layers
1.3.1.1 The collection of interstitial urban spaces in Tirana
(unruled space)
1.3.1.2 Historic infrastructure
1.3.1.3 Catalogue of smooth spaces – striated space
(formal – informal)
2. Action in the territory
2.1 Analysis – and site proposal. The smooth space, informal yet residual. To put into
practice the topics we have been talking about.
2.2 Development of the action on site.
3. Cartography and Corpus of actions
2.1 To map the action. Cartography that represents the revealed reality. Not a
conventional but an expressive one.
2.2 General compendium. Corpus, catalogue and compilation of the cartographies.
4. The place and type of the course in the general framework of the study
program (architecture and urban design, art and design, etc)
The workshop will be place:
-1. Theoretical input – Universiteti POLIS, first talk
-2. Action on site, development of the intervention – Tirana (selected urban spaces /
landscape)
-3. Cartography work – Universiteti POLIS
-4. Final exhibition Corpus of actions
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008SThe framework of the study program will be urban design / landscape / land art
5. The general content and the motivation for the composition of this proposal
The city has grown in a superimposition of layers as a collage. I am very interested about
one of them, the layer of what Deleuze-Guattari called smooth space, the informal urban
space, the landscape.
That mantra is present in every modern city but it is especially interesting in the city of
Tirana. The aim is to activate an claim that space as a generator of the city, as something
latent in the city, to go through from latent to patent by a series of actions in the territory,
‘freedom space, unruled space’ as Kevin Lynch wrote in his book Wasting Away.
I am an alumni of ETSAM, Madrid. There, with my teacher Concha Lapayese (member of the
research group GPIC, focused on landscape and territory) I developed a research about
territory and landscape. The methodology that is developed in that research group, Hybrid
Actions, is applied in this workshop. She would also be interested to help in the
development of this workshop.
As I said, and I will be develop later the workshop will be focused on the informal urban
space of Tirana: “In the end, it is a methodology to research in a phenomenological way
creating create links with the city by means of actions developed in the territory. The
proposal is a way to observe and analyze the city through a critical and proactive look. To
define that layer of the city, and in the end to discover how it is related with the activity and
life of the city”.
6. The objectives of the workshop
-To research about the layers that constitutes the city
- To put in value the smooth space, to claim it as a way to understand the city and a scape
form. To understand that landscape trough the action in the territory, in a phenomenological
way.
-To propose a research to identify the latent reality of that layer of the city. It will be
developed using the cartography and the action in the territory as a tool to reveal the
reality. It is the development of a set of actions and cartographies to understand the
existing city and the dichotomy between the planed and the existing city.
-The most important aspect is to teach a methodology as something abstract, a way to face
the reality. From the theoretical aspects to the practical ones. And finally, back to the
theoretical again, learning how to create an abstract cartography yet expressive and
illustrative of the reality and the links experienced. It is a tool to understand the reality.
2. The outcomes of the course
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008SThe objectives of the workshop and their fulfillment within the Tirana Design Week
As architects, I think that the cartography is an extremely powerful to render the reality. I want
to understand the links between the abstraction of the reality, the cartography and the physical
action and intervention in the territory. Instead of proposing a solution to the urban scene the
aim is to render the reality of the city through one of its layers. The aim is to act in the urban
space and to map that action as a tool to understand the city.
As I wrote before, the city has grown in a superimposition of layers, a collage. What layers are
shaping the real city and how those layers are interrelated and where, that is the frame of this
workshop. There is a certain layer which is quite relevant in the city, the layer of what Deleuze-
Guattari called smooth space, the informal urban space, the landscape. The workshop proposes a
research to identify the latent reality of that layer of the city. It will be developed using the
cartography and the action in the territory as a tool to reveal the reality. It is the development of
a set of actions and cartographies to understand the existing city and the dichotomy between the
planed and the existing city.
The workshop will propose how to face the existing urban spaces (the informal, the smooth).
Creating new links trough actions in landscape, a new way of seeing, of thinking, of constructing
the reality. Therefore, it is a strategy to understand what is given before proposing something
new.
The last outcome is to create a Corpus of actions, a catalogue, trough the phenomenology of the
actions, to unveil what was there, what was latent, to bring it back to the reality. Consequently, it
is about to claim those intersecting spaces of the city in a new and holistic way, actions that
creates a link between the individual and the site. It proposes a way to interact with it, an action
that can reveal a lost reality of the site, a way to unveil the forgotten.
In the end, the proposal is a methodology of how to understand the city and its landscape.
It will teach a methodology as something abstract, a way to face the reality, a tool, from the
theoretical aspects to the practical ones. And finally, back to the theoretical again, learning how
to create an abstract cartography yet expressive and illustrative of the reality and the links
experienced. To define that layer of the city, the layer of the informal ‘unruled’ urban space, and
in the end to discover how it is related with the activity and life of the city.
3. The content of the course
The proposal of the course is a new way to understand and to study the existing city, what is
given and what is latent. The workshop will be focused on the informal urban space of Tirana.
The city has a collection of small informal (maybe residual) urban spaces. It is an urban space
that is not subject to regulations. ‘Freedom space, unruled space’ (Lynch, 1990. Wasting Away).
It is related with the so-called smooth space defined by Deleuze and Guattari. The proposal is a
methodology to research in a phenomenological way. To create links with the city by means of
actions developed in the territory. It ¡s a landscape way to observe and analyze the city through
a critical and proactive look. To define that layer of the city, and in the end to discover how it is
related with the activity and life of the city.
That will reach following these contents:
-Theoretical aspects: to present a series of authors, thinkers, artist that have worked in that topic
(land art, infrastructure, etc.)
It is understood as an input to establish a theoretical framework.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008S-Action workshop: development of the action in the territory, creating a connection between the
individual and the site. Revealing a lost reality of the site, a way to unveil the forgotten
Brief:
Informal urban space and territory (layers of the city, unruled space, phenomenology,
reveal the latent reality, etc)
4. Assignments/Projects and other requirements
1. Theoretical part. It could be developed in a standard teaching/talk space. Just a way to
introduce the theoretical aspects of the workshop. It should be developed in one day
and a half.
2. The participants of the workshop should work in groups of 2 or 3 people, researching
together about the ideas. Proposing spaces of the city that fit the reality of the urban
space we are talking about, the smooth space, the informal and ‘residual’ space as
Lynch name. An urban space that is not subject to regulations. ‘Freedom space, unruled
space’ (Lynch, 1990. Wasting Away) (1-2 days). It should be developed in one or two
days.
3. The action proposed must be developed on the proposed site. It should be an action that
creates a link between the individual and the site. A way to interact with it. An action
that can reveal a lost reality of the site, a way to unveil the forgotten. Each group has to
decide how they want to develop it. It should be developed in one day.
4. The forth objective is to go back to the abstract work. To develop cartography that can
speak about this process of reveal. A cartography local yet general. It should be
developed in two days.
5. Final compile of the cartographies to create a Corpus of actions. It should be developed
in one day.
5. The methodology and didactic aspect
The methodology of the workshop will be developed following these aspects:
-1. To introduce the theoretical framework of the workshop:
-Interrelation between art / landscape / architecture
-Robert Smithson – entropy – land art
-Stan Allen – infrastructural urbanism
-Gilles Deleuze / Félix Guattari -smooth / striated space
-GIPC – ETSAM – Madrid – Concha Lapayese – Hybrid actions in the landscape
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008S-2. Analysis – and site proposal (groups of 2-3 people)
-Selection of the site to develop the action. The smooth space, informal yet residual. To
put into practice the topics we have been talking about. To claim the space from a
phenomenological point of view.
-3. Development of the action (groups of 2-3 people).
She would be totally interested to participate in the development of the workshop.
-4. To map the action, to create. It should be a cartography that represents the links that
have been created. Not a conventional but an expressive one.
-5. General compendium. It is a Corpus, a catalogue and compilation of the cartographies.
In the end, the most important aspect is to teach a methodology as something abstract, a
way to face the reality. From the theoretical aspects to the practical ones. And finally, back
to the theoretical again, learning how to create an abstract cartography yet expressive and
illustrative of the reality and the links experienced. It is a tool to understand the reality.
From latent to patent.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rr. Bylis 12, Autostrada Tiranë-Durrës, Km 5 Kashar, Tiranë, Shqipëri, Tel: +355 (4) 2407420 / 2407421, Fax: +355 (4) 2407422, Cel: +355 (0) 694088111
www.universitetipolis.edu.al; info@universitetipolis.edu.al
NUIS K62308008SYou can also read
