Joel Gomes
Resumo: A abordagem conceptual recente de projectos arquitectónicos considera acções radicais sobre a topografia das paisagens, exacerbando o confront o entre ‘preenchido ou cheio’ versus ‘esvaziado ou vazio’, presença versus ausência, mudando o estado de uma certa paisagem, por adição ou subtracção, pelo que foi aumentado ou retirado. Esta última forma de atuação sob a paisagem ganhou terreno e tem sido favorecida apesar da exigência de grandes movimentos de terra e reconstituição topográfica, enganada pelo equívoco de esconder a ‘fealdade’ ao confiar na estratégia da invisibilidade. O artigo propõe apresentar casos nacionais e internacionais nos quais há uma relação intrínseca entre edifícios e paisagens e onde a qualidade dos objetos arquitectónicos ‘per se’ não está em questão, mas sim a operação subjacente à sua construção. Em qualquer caso, existe o perigo eminente de um sucesso imediato que os pode transformar em ‘receitas’ replicáveis, produzindo rupturas e descontinuidades que diminuam a qualidade das paisagens. Aparte a escala da intervenção, que considera simplisticamente o maior como pior’ e o ‘menor como melhor’, a questão permanece quanto à possível explicação recair em categorias binárias de encomendas privadas versus públicas, promoção económica versus cultural, ou mesmo consideração estética versus ética.
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BUILDING OVER-ON-UNDER LANDSCAPE:
AN [AESTH]ETICAL PROBLEM
Joel Gomes
<< ‘Heavy’ and ‘light ’ can be most easily explained in the context of an examinat ion of the meaning of ‘above’ and ‘below’. For it is quit e wrong t o suppose t hat the universe is divided by nature into t wo opposite regions, one ‘below’, to which sink all bodies wit h weight , and one ‘above’, t o which no body rises of its own accord. For since the universe is spherical all point s at ext reme dist ance from the cent re are equidist ant from it , and so all equally ‘ext remes’; […] t here is no sense in referring t o any region of it as ‘above’ or ‘below’ […]; for when t wo masses are lifted by t he same force t he resist ance of t he larger t o t he lift ing force must be great er than that of t he smaller; and t he larger will be said t o be ‘heavy’ and t o t end ‘downwards’, t he smaller to be ‘light ’ and to t end ‘upwards’. This is precisely what we ought t o detect ourselves doing in our own region. When we st and on t he eart h and t ry to weigh eart hly subst ances, or sometimes pure eart h, we lift t hem into t he alien air by force and against t heir nat ural t endency, as they cling to t he matt er kindred t o t hem. So the smaller mass yields more readily t han the larger t o the force applied t o it […] and we call it ‘light ’ and the region int o which it is forced ‘above’, and use ‘heavy’ and ‘below’ in t he opposite sense. […] The general principle in all cases is that t he tendency of any body to move towards its kindred aggregat e makes it ‘heavy’, and t hat the region t o which it moves is ‘below’, and vice versa. >>
Plat o, Timaeus and Crit ias, 87-90.
Recent conceptual approach of architectonic projects consider radical actions over the topographical profiles of landscapes, exacerbating the hypothesis of extreme confrontation between ‘filled or full’ versus ‘voided or empty’, presence versus absence, submerging to disguise or emerging to clarify but, nonetheless, remaining evident the act of merging with the terrain, whether in more or less evidently established interventions that undoubtedly change the state of a given landscape, by addition or subtraction, which is the same as to say that new operations could be noticed by what was added or retrieved, a choice that balances between
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the same polarities mentioned in the excerpt of Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, in the epigraph above.
As it cannot be fully disregarded due to the architects’ seduction and fascination over the conceptual possibilities, the focus on this issue reveals some inherent problems mainly concerning the way it affects landscapes, as it is clear there are consequences in both kinds of intervention: ‘adding’ require subtraction that must occur prior to anything else in order to establish the needed foundations and other infra-structures; ‘subtracting’ demand addition of extra space that elaborate living areas corresponding to the useful part of a building program in order to enlarge the strict basic establishment of infra-structure. If the first kind of action - ‘addition’ - cannot be considered anew, as all construction necessarily means the making or remaking of something in somewhere that had not hing before or needed to change what was already there, the second kind of action - ‘subtraction’ - used to be less common and seems, somehow, un-natural: to transform a place conveying a new layer of purpose by retrieving instead of providing, by reducing instead of introducing. Still, this later form of acting under the landscape has gained some ground and has been favoured despite its obvious demands of major earth movements and topographic modelling, especially when considered as a corrective or cosmetic strategy that trusts invisibility to hide problematic or ugly interventions, a blinded misconception that created some severe cases that are real mistakes in any kind of territory. The paper proposed under the title of Building Over-On-Under Landscapes: an [aesth]etical
problem considers, in general, the divergence of intervention in distinct territories charged with a landscape component and observe, in particular, nat ional and international cases that bear a connection between building and landsite, exacerbating the relation between the constructive’ kind and the location’ nature, from the more ‘tectonical’ to the more ‘estereotomical’ types or from behaving to compression to working to traction, where the quality of the architectonic objects ‘per se’ is less questionable but its placement and establishment, denoting undeniable links towards the surrounding ambient to fulfil more than their programmatic objectives and gain an effective presence.
Four examples shall be at the core of the research: a ‘perverse’ case of a sudden necessity to involve an architect t o operate as a corrective measurement to solve the problem of the excessive impact, meaning the visibility, of an hydroelectric station next to a dam in classified and protected landscape; a ‘less-worse’ case of combined factors to insert a football stadium on a quarry as a striking proposal of an architect to join the extraordinary scale of a new equipment
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and a large are already considered as an ‘open-wound’ on the periphery of the city, avoiding the interference in a new place by selecting to ‘heal’ an unsolved site; a ‘linear’ but topographically adapted proposal of a municipal council to install a continuous elemental structure to confer access and cover a large extension of a territory, profiting from its natural landscape, and the consequence of its instantaneous success: resisting the temptation of expanding the initial proposal; and a ‘punctual’ but strategically distributed proposal of a architect ’s studio t o establish a network of isolated and relatively contained programs to serve as a support and consolidate a national cultural route, benefiting from its natural landscape, and t he consequence of its usage learning: remaining persuasive about the necessity to establish boundaries in what concerns spreading the intervention. If the first case might resemble an operation similar to a ‘plastic surgery’, the second is closer to a ‘corrective surgery’, and both third and fourth could be taken as ‘acupuncture’ as they become new settlements, stretched or spaced, hence, the importance to prevent excessive dazzle about the possibility for extension or proliferation.
In any case, there is the eminent danger of an immediate success, an illusion conveyed by the attribution of prizes or a sudden burst of public attention, and the consequent danger of turning them into ‘replicable recipes’, driven by less reasonable motifs, forgetting the specificity of contexts or the characteristics of places, producing breaks, ruptures and discontinuities in the territories, losing the respect towards the qualities of landscapes. Apart from the most obvious distinctive aspect of the problem that regards the scale of an intervention, in a simplistic way, the bigger as ‘worse’ and the smaller as ‘better’, the question remains as whether the explanation lies on binary categories of privately versus publicly commissioned, economically versus culturally driven, or even aesthetically versus ethically considered?
The methodological problem concerning the issue of landscape is related with heritage, two concepts that have often been treated together for what they correlate in the economical implications, determining the possibility to advance, cultivate, develop, expand or improve both landscape and heritage. The general feeling is that heritage appeared as a ‘parasite’ living from the potentiality of landscape as host, conditioning its direction at the ultimate level of administrative decisions, taken in offices far away and out of sight of those landscapes. When the cultural improvement is boosted by an economical interest, and some unfortunate inherent
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lobby activities, then, it is no surprise the growth and dispersion of the attribution of the term
landscape, having by now a wide range of application43.
Natural but not ‘virgin’ or transformed but ‘unbuilt’ landscape has traditionally been in the centre of the discussion. The unstable and mutable character of landscape have produced an excessive polysemy that invented all sorts of intermediate states, making it difficult to classify; or, the contrary, the human necessity to classify everything in order to make it understandable, trusting in labels to interpret and signify, has generated the mis-representations of landscape. Whatever prevails, the amount of unclear terms strangely translate the mess that also occurs in built landscapes which, if seen correlatively, also contributes t o increase further confusion towards building landscapes, accelerating the disfiguration or emphasizing the feeling of lost identity, gathered under the idea of “ transgenic”44.
The conceptual approach to architectonic projects carry the particular distinctive feature of the scenarios in which they are located, either by being rooted in or rather standing out : special landscapes. The strength of t he surrounding landscape becomes the main theme to which several projects immediately attempt to establish a relationship. Its undeniable presence demands from the projects an extra level of commitment to conceive new ‘species of spaces’, according to the particularities of the surroundings in order to avoid the fall to banal solutions that would, a condition of “ genericity”45.
Therefore and again, either by ‘accepting’ or ‘refusing’ the landscape around, projects have been selecting to detach from the surface level lifting up or penetrating down, at several degrees. On one side, there are those cantilevered, suspended, hanging or lifted structures, all of which present a physical challenge: gravity. On the other side, there are those hidden, covered, sunken or buried bunkers, all of which present another physical challenge: pressure.
Let’s start with t he first instance: gravity.
43 “ [...] The not ion t hat 'everyt hing is herit age', around which an import ant sect or of t he economy based on cult ural t ourism has since been built , finds it s equivalent in t he 'omnlandscape' described by Swiss landscape specialist M ichael Jakob.” In Isabel Lopes Cardoso, Paisagem e Pat rimónio: Aproximações Pluridisciplinares [Port o: Dafne Edit ora | CHAIA UE], 7.
44 “ [...] By excess of polysemy, 'landscape' has become a float ing concept , vague, unst able, proper t o be colonized by an enorm ous diversit y of senses. [...] 'Transgenic Landscapes' was a t erm coined by t he need t o overcome biases, blockages and illusions of knowledge around landscape 'vague concept s' [...] t rying t o reduce t he background noise and t he exist ing cacophony t o bet t er underst and what it is, in fact , more import ant in social malaise, malaise expressed in discourse and in represent at ions about t he landscape made public subject and good, an element of ident it y and dist inct ion in t he face of t he accelerat ed processes of globalizat ion-massificat ion and t he feeling of loss of ident it y. [...] The concept of ‘Transgenic Landscape’ addresses exact ly t his 'dispersive rest lessness of form s'.” In Álvaro Domingues, “ Transgenic Landscapes” , Paisagem e Pat rimónio: Aproximações Pluridisciplinares [Port o: Dafne Edit ora | CHAIA UE], 223-245. [Translat ion by t he Aut hor.]
45 “ […] Perec collect ed and designat ed what makes t he oneness of every fact , person and t hing. There is no one more immune t han Perec t o t he worst plague of writ ing t oday: genericit y.” In It alo Calvino, Seis Propost as para o Próximo M ilénio (Lições Americanas) [Lisbon: Edit orial Teorema], 144. [Translat ion by t he Aut hor.]
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In a general way, the success of lighter structures, built above ground, might be due to comprising lower costs, moneywise, and fast assemblage, constructively speaking. The global economical crisis, although not so recent anymore since it happened almost a decade ago, has had many effects among which the demand for creative solutions of less complex ways of building. Once t here were new opportunities to invest in the construction sector, many proposals have presented what could be recognized as a shift of paradigm. Forced by the emergence to present viable alternatives, those solutions have focused on lighter solutions, reduced in scale and impact, but with renewed ambition and presence.
Two examples will serve as illustrative cases that have been recently realized, one in national and other in international contexts t o cover the ‘local’ and ‘global’ settings.
First case, the ‘Paiva Walkways’ [Passadiços do Paiva] (Fig. 1) are an extensive set of pathways essentially built in wood and taking the shape of a continuous element strictly reduced to follow an efficient resolution to introduce accessibility over the geological accidents on the West slopes of the mountains alongside the Paiva River, an affluent of the Douro River, the major in the North of Portugal. The first phase was accomplished and opened to t he public in June 2015, making available about 8,7km of geometrically meandering catwalks for naturalists, walkers or joggers to experience at their individual pace. Three months later some news already suggested the will to advance for the second planed phase of t he project, increasing an extra 12km of paths, including a bridge, and adding a suspended bar and two museums, to be inaugurated by
2017.46 The confidence of its triumphant achievement seemed to be precocious and evident of
some usual rush to make things profitable as quickly as possible. About one year later the project won the 2016 World Travel Award as “ the most innovative in Europe” in the category of Europe’s
Leading Tourism Project.47 This recognition could be seen under two possibilities: underlining
the fact that it is a good project precisely because it does not overload or overexploit, or, on the contrary, perverting the more reasonable previous consideration and propel even more the urgency of a quick expansion by effectively adding more construction. In the meanwhile, two unfortunate fires have affected several sections, already rebuilt, revealing the necessity of improvement and correction of ‘weak spots’ and proving the easiness of its replacement in terms of financial and temporal cost, which also has to be seen in both ways: confirming its initial bet and proving the easiness for further expansion.
46 Fugas, Lusa / Público. “Passadiços do Paiva vão t er mais 12 km, um bar suspenso e dois museus.”
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Fig. 1: Paiva Walkways, Arouca, Aveiro, Portugal. Construct or: DST - Domingos Silva Teixeira, S.A. © Photography: Nelson Garrido
Second case, the ‘Allmannajuvet Zinc M ine M useum’ [M useu das M inas de Zinco de
Allmannajuvet] (Fig. 2) is a specific program to house and promote the memory of a centennial activity that was quickly falling into oblivion, in the particular setting of the fjords landscape of Sauda, Ryfylke, Norway. Concurring to t his main objective, the project departs from the traces of the mining during the last two decades of the ninet eenth century and takes its remains, “ the
spot where the ore used to be washed and a miner’s barracks once stood”48, as pivotal to realign
with the National Highway 520, part of the Norwegian touristic routes network with 1800km, in order to work as a cultural spot that supports an already established infra-structure that needed to be consolidated. Straight away, it is remarkable the joint of forces proposed by the selected project to accomplish bot h objectives without exploring a major construction over the landscape. On the contrary, it selects to unfold a single program into smaller units essentially built in wood to be discovered while traveling along the meandering valley and establishing signalling referential points, thus, “ lending the original location renewed life”49. This aspect of
an ‘architectural acupuncture’ happens not only by the fact that small buildings dialogue among themselves, developing an interesting interplay of geographical discovery by their visitors as they truly ‘find’ the landscape, but specially because of the particular way each volume is sustained in mid-air, through very thin pillars that mostly resemble fine needles at a distance.
48 Pet er Zumt hor, “ Almannajuvet Zinc M ine M useum , Sauda, Norway” [project ’s descript ion]. Pet er Zumt hor Buildings and Project s Volume 4 2002- 2007.77.
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Of the ‘family of four structures’, only three have been accomplished; yet to be realized, the last one could be seen as the ‘bad seed’ that , instead of concluding the initial project, could cause the desire to spread loose elements throughout the landscape?
Fig. 2: Allmannajuvet Nat ional Tourist Route Sauda, Ryfylke, Norway. Archit ect : At elier Pet er Zumt hor & Part ner. © Photography: Per Bernt sen
The first example was a product of a municipality, Arouca, hence, being the invention of a collective determination; the second example was a creation of an architect, Peter Zumthor, and his studio team, being the artefact of an individual motivation. How much this fact could separate the procedures undertaken in each project, besides the different geographic locations, does not invalidate, nevertheless, that something could be said about the proximity of the overall goal in both strategies, besides the different programmatic definition: structures that leave a remarkable margin for the landscapes to play their natural role instead of succumbing to the excesses of heavier ordinary buildings.
Having elaborated this comparison, let’s pass to t he lat er instance: pressure.
In some particular contexts, the choice for lighter structures is simply not possible to be considered due to the programmatic complexity, technical requirements or the sites restrictions, either its topographical profile or the legislative classification, both, circumstantial. For those projects, the imposition of heavier structures immediately establishes the challenge
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of ‘vanishing’50 its presence. Simultaneously, the assertiveness of that out come acquires an
importance almost proportional to the scale of the int ervention, main reason of the scrutiny of heavier building processes and the critical aftermath that is consequence of some bad decisions. Two different examples will act as demonstrative cases, one as the ‘ideal’ situation of a cultural equipment built prior to the economical crisis and other as ‘non-ideal’ situation of a technical equipment built after it, by the same Portuguese architect, Eduardo Sout o de M oura.
First case, t he paradigmatic Braga M unicipal Stadium [Estádio M unicipal de Braga] (Fig. 3) has been already acclaimed as a masterpiece of architect ure, for which it was attributed the 2003 Secil Prize, highest national prize in architecture granted the year of its conclusion, and for what