Naples - February  2008

In a globalized world Europe is often seen as a homogonous block. Yet within the continent there are amazingly large contrasts and differences. Moreover, this is not just true regarding the newcomers to the ‘European family’. Worlds of difference exist even among the oldest occupants of the European house. Take Naples, Italy’s fourth largest city. Of course it’s an old culture with a Roman and even a Greek past (Neapolis), later ruled by Ostrogoths, Byzantines, Normans, Spaniards, French, you name it! The city has been nodal within a web of historical and political relations; one thinks here of the ‘Kingdom of Naples’. It sees itself as umbilicus mundi [the world’s navel], or at least as the center of the Mediterranean world. But for non-Neopolitans the city lies far off the beaten track, outside the tumult of European politics. The relative isolation of the mezzogiorno [southern Italy] is always present and active. Only in times of disaster, like the 1980 earthquake or Mt. Vesuvius’ threatening rumblings (natural disasters always attract attention and are mediagenic), does Naples claim the center of international attention. The recent garbage scandal made news the world over; it fascinates and is simultaneously played out outside the bounds of what ‘we’ in a Western, regulated society know; recognition is virtually out of the question.

Naples’ high unemployment, relatively low living standard (per capital income lies 30 to 40% below that of the European norm, excluding the informal economy) and very crowded city center mean that there is quite a lot still to be done. Linking up to European networks would constitute appreciable support in this regard. This is why the Euro Corridor 1 (north to south: Berlin, Verona, Rome, Naples, Palermo) and the E8 (west to east: Bari, Sofia, Varna (on the Black Sea), with connections to Naples and Rome) are on the drawing board, although there are no certainties as to their planning and execution. One way or another, the city must attract new business. The space-devouring oil industry (Italy has strategic oil reserves here) on east side of the city and the steel industrial in the west have the city in, as it were, a spatial headlock without substantially contributing to the welfare of the residents. Then there are the airport and shipping ports which take up a great deal of the Neapolitan coastline, although both make a more substantial contribution to the city’s economy.

For all that, Naples’ transformation from a trade and industry city to a service and knowledge-based economy has taken place only in dribs and drabs. It’s no wonder that they are striving to boost touristic and business traffic. Having been awarded the 2013 UNESCO Culture Forum, they are now seeking to set in motion an Olympic Games-style economic impulse directed principally at the western part of the city (where the steel industry is still based). They expect to be able to develop a leisure coast with conference centers and a cultural profile. The prospects for the eastern part of the city, the focus of this journal, is far less clear. They are searching for a future beyond the disparate conditions of oil storage and abandoned industrial complexes interspersed with half-demolished apartments and old villages. These areas could serve to relieve the city center’s overcrowding. The space is there, but for the time being it is occupied by an extensive, polluting, irritating and even dangerous industry. Investing in creative industries, which are always thirsty for unconventional locations and accommodation, is a seductive possibility here in order to stimulate transformation. This is the formula which has been put in place all across old Europe in order to give formerly urban industrial areas a second life. Yet more is needed for this transformation than a few empty factory complexes. One can think of other scenarios: Naples as ’sun city’, Naples as ‘transport hub’ for the Mediterranean.

The necessary massive infrastructural transformations, the revision of water management, and tackling soil and air pollution are assignments which can only be effectively handled centrally. That does not mean that small-scale, local, even personal initiatives – one’s that make a difference – aren’t possible. If something is pressing then show that an idea and initiative can also be actualized, can also have practical effect.

There is an enormous amount of knowledge, insight and experience available locally in municipal services, at the university and among private groups. The urban architectural research and design (Econeapolis) done in the 1980s by professor of architecture Aldo Loris Rossi in cooperation with a number of specialists at his university demonstrates that the ability to come up with an integral vision at the urban and regional levels is not the problem. Likewise, local debate about participatory planning shows that administrative reform and the search for effective implementation strategies is also under discussion in Naples. Where there is a fundamental lack is in the ability to cultivate support and enthusiasm via execution. Doing by making.

In that regard N.EST (Napoli East) is a promising initiative. As a cultural art collective and with the ‘project room’ in the contemporary art museum Madre as its base, N.EST can work on consciousness-raising and creating dialogue as well as develop ideas which by virtue of its non-institutional background and marginality have a chance of succeeding. That also makes N.EST an interesting organization for others.

N.EST’s invitation to Volume and Domus to come to the city for an open editorial meeting has resulted in this journal. It represents perspectives on (principally) the eastern part of Naples by Neapolitans themselves. In addition to the importance of providing insight into current developments in urban space and urban conditions via this kind of exploration, as far as Volume is concerned this makes especially clear that the city is too important to leave to the professionals alone.

- Arjen Oosterman

Archis RSVP event 11: Kabul
October 2007
Drawing from earlier experiences with RSVP events on a global scale, but also from an identified local urgency to think through future urban development in Kabul, we will instigate an event with the main goal to formulate specific projects and actions in the public domain in contemporary Kabul.

The two main goals are:
1. To make an inventory of real needs: that can range from the practical to the intellectual.
2. To rethink public space in a way that opens up fresh ideas and helps to create an agenda on a larger scale.
From this we create an action list to be elaborated on in the follow-up.

Further we would like to create an alternative perspective on Kabul’s contemporary society then is usually conveyed in the media.

Introduction
How do we know Kabul? As a city of warlords, a frontline, a zone of utter destruction caused by modern warfare, a place of religious intolerance, the capital that is painstakingly reconstructed while a war is fought in the south. Kabul is a far-away place, dangerous and hostile - this is our outsider’s point of view. Reality, however, is more complex.

Makeshift Metropolis
Kabul is probably the most heterogeneous territory in the country, perhaps even of Central Asia, obviously greatly scarred by almost three decades of war. Its present situation as an awakening city that faces unprecedented urban growth reveals, however, the potential to become a booming Mega City within short time (it has grown from 500,000 people in 2001 to currently 6 to 7 million people). Its inhabitants are hopeful, energetic and eager to build up their city - strikingly enough they form the main driving force of reconstruction bootstrapping new settlements and economies in all parts of the city and throughout all parts of society.
But is there an overall governance of it all? Are there forces that provide people with infrastructure, water, electricity, security and thus create a setting of fairness and equality? Local authorities and the government along with international and military organizations face tremendous problems in collaboration. And not only do they struggle with their tasks but, as being inhabitants of the city themselves, fashion their direct surrounding according to their own needs, cultural habits and interpretations of security.
The result is the privatization of public space - a city of barb wired spaces and concrete barricades emerging from and simultaneously fostering distrust and the loss of dialogue among citizens. At the same time unregulated occupation of space follows Darwinian rules negating the process of democratization.

How do people assimilate to this fight over public space? How do they respond to violations to their freedom of movement and assembly? How do they shape their environment when the state withdraws? And what kinds of interventions are possible in this context?

Archis RSVP Kabul
RSVP Kabul will focus on the role and function of the public spaces in the city. It will investigate how public space is used in practice, and to what effect it could be used as an instrument of engineering the urban society.

The event will focus on a small number of specific sites. It is on this very local level that we ask participants to Repondez SVP; to formulate observations, witnessing and recommendations.
We intend to pinpoint these sites for the formulation of specific projects in order to foster change. Bringing together local energy of architects, planners, artists and writers will lead to alternative ways of solving practical urban issues regarding planning, restitution, design, identity and memory.

During a period of four days we will explore several sites in Kabul and have on site discussions and fact finding - meetings with the task to create an action list. A few pilot projects will be identified to elaborate on in 2008.

Follow-up
Archis Interventions will advise and monitor the concrete and practical projects from the action list and helps to find partners and financing. Furthermore A.I. seeks to discern the pivotal issues from the local debate that are of interest to a regional and international discourse. These debates will be voiced in Volume magazine and lead to the formation of regional networks.

After destruction through war or any other inhumane deployment of technology, capital and energy, we are left with sites, minds and societies unbuilt. Leveled to the ground. Making room for denial, doubt and a divided society. Understandable but unacceptable. This condition needs those who dare to envision perspectives beyond the ruins…

Short description of the project
The illegal building activities after the war seriously affected the city structure of Prishtina heavily and raised social, infrastructural, and security problems. Because of the specific political situation and the lack of in its responsibility clearly differentiated institutional structures, the local administration as well as the responsible department of the United Nations (UN-HABITAT) are in the moment not able to establish necessary standards in the building process. There is also no public awareness of the fundamental problems of illegal settlement. In this situation the project will mediate between the interests of the private developers and the necessary regulation by the state in regard to the needs of the community. The project Archis Interventions starts in Prishtina will develop solution strategies. The specific problems of regulating illegal building activities in post conflict situations will be theoretically discussed and brought into the international urbanistic debate.

Situation in Prishtina
Prishtina is the capital of the UN protectorate and – as the Albanian majority of the population is hoping – the future independent State of Kosova. The number of inhabitants is rather unknown. Estimations vacillate between 270.000 – 500.000 inhabitants. Definitely Prishtina has doubled its inhabitants in the last 20 years. The last master plan to structure the city development goes back to 1989. At present only a “strategic plan” exists (Strategic Plan – Urban Development of Prishtina 2004-2020). On the basis of this “zoning map” the regulation plans have been drafted and the building permissions are given from 2006 on. Still there is no plan with a binding (law) character on which building permissions could rely on. After the war a vivid building activity took place, driven by the move of rural migrants to the city and the return of migrants staying abroad in exile during the war. The ones who had the financial opportunities, a building plot or real estate could make fast profit out of this situation. There is a massive investment also by returnees into housing, mostly for their own families. The effort of the local administration to regulate this process ended when the former director of the city development department had been shot. Presently the UN administration is focusing on the establishment of solid institutional structures, whereas the local government depending on the municipality is still in the process of tendering out master plans or regulation plans. In the meantime app. 75% of the city structure has been illegally newly built or remodeled. It is estimated that each day 10 new buildings are emerging. Serious is that most parts of the Old Prishtina have been damaged or will be damaged soon, also that basic and normal security standards are ignored (regarding fire and earthquakes) as infrastructures – especially water supply and sewage – are lacking or being overburdened. Also social problems are a result of an unregulated building activity – a common problem is that the building is stretched to the borders of the plot, ignoring the neighbors need. Because of these problems it is relevant to intervene with a professional knowledge into this process and to raise a public awareness either by the persons concerned as by the responsible ones.

The project
In 2005 a local NGO has been founded, together with three architects from Kosova, Visar Ramadani, Florina Jerliu (president of the Associations of Architects of Kosova) and Vlora Navakazi (lecturer at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Architecture, University of Prishtina) with the aim to develop solution strategies for the structuring of the city housing development. Archis Interventions / Prishtina is a local agency, which documents unprofessional (mostly illegal) buildings and looks for opportunities to upgrade these. It will intervene into the ongoing building activities by providing professional advice in the building and planning process – to provide a free support of architectural knowledge to the mostly private developers, so that the most crucial problems can be avoided. This activity will be supported by a media campaign, which will raise a public discussion about the problems which resulted from the unprofessional and mostly illegal building activity. The aim is to develop solution strategies which can mediate between the local administrations, professional developers, and single house builders. The local NGO will be supported by Archis Interventions bringing international expertise and organizing the information exchange to develop a sustainable solution strategy. The results will be published and brought into the international urbanistic discourse as in a special Albanian edition addressing the Kosovar professionals. The focus of the publication is the problems related to the regulation of informal building activities in post conflict situations as the future aspects of architecture and town planning in this context regarding the specific social as political circumstances.

Realization
The project is structured into three phases. In the beginning a workshop with local and international experts will work out a strategic concept. It will be realized in the second phase from 2007 on and contains a public or media campaign (together with the Kosovar Televisions), the provision of architectural advise as necessary planning for house builders, and the mediation between local and international professionals (Archis Foundation/Volume magazine). The aim is to raise a public debate about the city’s future and to give professional support to avoid the most crucial problems. In a second workshop a model project should be worked out, which Projektbüro Berlin can show exemplary, how building can be organized in a way, that social and physical sustainability is guaranteed. The elimination of the most relevant problems due to security and infrastructure will be in the foreground, but also a participation strategy (community building) will be needed, which is aware of the social problems which accompanying informal building activities. In the third phase (2008 – 2010) this strategy should be implemented. Good contacts with Kosovar politicians as with professionals already exist. Ilir Gjinolli, head of the Institute for Spatial Planning, assured his support of the project. The contact to the responsible body of the UN administration (UNHABITAT) will be made soon.

Organization structure
Body responsible for the project is the Archis Foundation in Amsterdam. The project management is headed by Archis Interventions / Berlin (Kai Voeckler). Archis Interventions / Prishtina is registered as a NGO by the United Nations in Kosova and will together with Archis Interventions / Berlin and Archis Interventions / Amsterdam develop and realize the project. Members of the international board of AI Prishtina are Kai Voeckler (Berlin) and Ole Bouman (Amsterdam). Archis Interventions / Amsterdam is part of the Dutch Archis Foundation and will be responsible for the publication.
_ Research of the existing situation in Prishtina regarding the emerging patterns of informal settlements, in Prishstina and in general in Kosova. Elaboration of typologies and a draft for a strategy to qualify the urban development in Prishtina. [Kai Voeckler / Visar Ramadani] _ Funding of Archis Interventions as a Non Government Organization, which addresses urban issues worldwide in collaboration with local branches.

2006 / 2007
Phase 1
Preparation and conceptualization of the project / workshop. Contacts with local agents (UN, Ministry of Building, Municipality) [AI Berlin / AI Prishtina] _ Workshop I (November 2006) Elaboration of a concept for a strategy to legalize the informal settlements and to regulate the future city development in regard to housing (which includes a communication strategy to raise public awareness as a theoretical reflection for professionals, an organization structure for the architectural assistance giving by local professionals to house builders) by integrating international expertise. Result: »Manual« - strategy concept; organization structure, communication concept [AI Berlin / AI Prishtina / AI Amsterdam]

Phase 2
TV production / Kosova TV Result : Weekly distribution at TV for about 2 months [AI Prishtina] _ Architectural support (Advise and planning support by local architects for house builders) Result : Prevention of the most crucial infrastructural and constructive problems; building confidence [AI Prishtina] _ Workshop II Identification of a model project. Development of a legalization concept (catalogue of criteria to judge and to deal with existing problems; flexible building law). Community Building – Development of a participation strategy. Design strategy. Result : Structure of a model project implemented 2008 – 2010. [AI Berlin / AI Prishtina / AI Amsterdam] _ Publication as an issue of Volume magazine (Dutch/English) together with a special edition in Albanian. Theoretical reflection of the project and its strategy by bringing it into the international urbanistic discourse by integrating the local architects and planners. R e sult : Contribution to the international urbanistic debate about regulation [AI Amsterdam] _ Exhibition at Aedes Forum for Architecture Berlin of the results of the research made by Visar Ramadani and Kai Voeckler including the analysis and the strategic concept; including a film by Luise Donschen, Hamburg. English / German publication »Prishtina is everywhere«, edited by Kristin Feireiss and Kai Voeckler. Result: Contribution to the international urban discourse 2008–2010

Phase 3
Guarantee of the sustainability by implementing the developed strategy and its discussion in the public.
2007- Model project: Realization of the concept developed at Workshop II/2006 Guarantee of the workability of AI Prishtina as an independent working NGO as part of the global Archis Interventions network. Further development of the strategy and the project [AI Berlin / AI Prishtina]. 2009 Publication and exhibition of the results in Kosova and Germany.

Introduction
Communism is a theory of the future. Capitalism is a practice of the present. Traditionalism is a longing for the past. We are used to make a choice between these three concepts, according to character and personal interest. But what if it all happens at one place, at one moment? What if we stand still and think about it in contemporary China?

SHANGHAI has VOLUME
Launch of VOLUME in Shanghai at YinYang, 19th May 2005
by KM Tan

It all seemed a brilliant idea: getting Ole Bouman, the Editor-in-Chief of VOLUME to launch the inaugural issue behind a DJ stand in a musty Shanghai basement club filled with a curious audience nursing their bottles of QinDao, with local Shanghai architects limbering at a corner to discuss cogent issues of Time and Heritage in a city that just wouldn’t stop. As the evening unfolded, things got curiouser and curiouser down wonderland, as chaotic as a mad-hatter’s party with questions flying past their targets, comments and remarks jousting at shadows, soliloquys interrupted mid-sentence, and images disappearing into digital dark holes. Just when nobody seemed to be able to impose any abstract structure, by the end of the evening, like a typical Chinese meeting or modern city, some semblance of pattern emerged.

Ole Bouman started by challenging architects to go “beyond architecture”, beyond conventional thinking about what architecture could do; specifically beyond the notion of architecture as the art of making beautiful physical structures.

A panel of practitioners immersed in the day-to-day entanglements of making architecture in Shanghai were invited to present their takes on the themes of Time and Heritage. What if we stand still and think about the phenomenal speed of Shanghai’s urbanisation (towards what future?) and the attendant selective eradication of its pasts? Beyond resurrecting the Bund or cloying Mandarin tunes from the art deco ’30s, what attractions can Shanghai serve up from its recent experiences? What can we learn from contemporary Shanghai?

James Brearley of BAU, a hybrid Australian and Chinese practice, showed projects that tried to strategically incorporate “freedom” into them; how buildings could quickly adapt to fast changes in client’s brief and other situations. Wu Yue, a Harvard-trained professor at Tongji University, pointed to the contradictions and pressures of planning Shanghai’s urban substances with powerful images showing dense modern apartments, razed urban sites, and local everyday life. As diverse as it gets, Vincent Zhang of SWISS LEMAN, a Chinese/Swiss practice, spoke in poetic terms about imbueing his architecture with permanence, and slowness, AND flexibility. Chow I-Shin, an associate from MADA s.p.a.m., a well-known young practice, flashed through many images of their projects with practised seamless speed and presentation, suggesting how speed could be strategically employed to produce interesting architecture.

But somehow, these presentations conveyed the message that TIME or the lack of it, is being thematised as a design strategy to, again, produce beautiful architecture. Not really the “beyond” or redefinition that VOLUME tries to instigate. Of course nothing wrong with that, after all, practitioners produce buildings, that is how architectural practice is still being defined, especially here in China. Occurring at the same time elsewhere in Shanghai, AMO produced another kind of architectural aura with the “Waist Down” Prada show at the Peace Hotel. The “beyond” architects here in Shanghai, one might argue, are the city officials and district governments, with their eye constantly on increasing the city’s perceived aura in the world’s stage.

The floating discussion which followed had some in the audience up in arms. One accused VOLUME of imposing its ideas onto Shanghai’s architectural culture: what’s wrong with what we’re doing? Why tell us what to do?

Differences between Shanghai’s practices and VOLUME’s cultural practice, soon became simplified as differences between “east” and “west” or “Chineseness” and “Eurocentrism”. Nonetheless, this thread enjoyed an impassioned sustained discussion. Is the Chinese architectural practice so entangled with cultural politico-economic aspects that it becomes impossible to have any sensible DIALOGUE with the “west”? Towards the end of the evening, there was a general feeling among the crowd that the twain were on different trajectories, each equally valid.

Introduction
Something of a profound change is going on in this world. Capital, resources, talent and markets are shifting eastwards. China, India and Russia are new tigers on the block. Europe is moving east as well, but not too far. The new borders are stronger than ever. How does it feel to physically cross these borders? What is happening at the edges of the New Europe? Are we facing the new challenges, and further, are we interfacing them?

Moderators Report GOING EAST
A photo from the entrance of a business fair in Beijing. The gates are still locked. Before them, a crowd is waiting. Hundreds of white guys, wearing their power suits, lining up to get in first, to get the best deals with their Chinese partners. The image is iconic. This is the 21st century, with its major economical shifts towards the east. From their faces you read the impatience to get in.
Of course there are many Easts, and not all of them attract the same kind of hunger or the same type of gold rush. Also, these men are not about to settle down, like in the trek to the West, in the pioneering days of the Americas. It is mostly their money that they want to bring there, or their production, benefiting from the cheap labour and the giant growth perspective. Meanwhile, most of them want to stay home in the neat western world, which they consider perfect for retirement and old age.
So, unlike any other major shift to new economical gravities, this time it hasn’t really to do with mass migration. On the contrary, the people from there still migrate to the west for its better standard of living and the status that comes with it. As they have the money for it. Most do not, of course.
What happens with China, also accounts to some extent to Eastern Europe. It never has been hyped like the tiger economies of the Far East, but there is also a growing sense of opportunity if it comes to considering investing in the former Communist world of Europe. Especially with the extension of the European Union, western capital looks for all kind of chances to multiply without delay and after a long period of hesitation, time now seems ripe to make the move and create businesses. And again, like China, this seldom means a full emigration and a shift of life style. And still Eastern European people want to live in the West. Not as the very welcome asylum seekers they once were, but as the most outstanding consumers the western economies could ask for.

Whatever the historical conditions that are underneath these transformations, it is certain that wherever East and West meet, life has changed drastically. Where once borders were unsurpassable, there now are only some old relics of a troubled age. Where once people saw other people at the opposite almost like monsters, they now want to look like them as soon as possible. Where once there was a permanent feeling of threat, there now can be a permanent jealousy. The quality, the character and the modality of the borders is changing everywhere, but what remains is the pervasive awareness that borders still matter. You can change the political meaning of the border, but it is much harder to change the phenomenology, the mentality of the border. At the core of it, the border still constitutes this moment of hesitation, the slowing down of the trajectory between A and B. And if you think of it, this goes much further than the simple line between nation states. Whatever the world historical destiny, whatever the efforts of trade unions, federations, negotiations, protocols and all those tricks to get things smoother, easier and flexible, whatever urge to move beyond borders, there is always hesitation, frustration, waiting. People may move back and forth, trading, exchanging, searching, visiting, and bargaining. They may try to overcome difference. But never they resolve the issue of difference itself. Where difference is negated, it is reproduced. Where it is abolished, it resurrects.

Archis went to Eastern Europe to look for exactly this process. This paradox. Not only did it visit the borders between Europe and already Europe (Austria and Slovakia), between Europe and not-yet-Europe/still Balkan (Slovenia and Croatia), and between Europe and never-to-be-fully-Europe (Lithuania and Russia), to record the change that occurs, but it also tried to read closely how people in these areas are negotiating borders in a much wider sense. Erasing them en reconstructing them, crossing them and defending them. Along the borderlines of Eastern Europe, where anxieties and hopes are going hand in hand, where identities are defended and contested, we tried to investigate the nuclear material from which borders are built anyway. We tried to dance the border shuffle that shows that making yourself a living is like dancing in the dark. Have a look at the photographs and tell us what you think.

Introduction
New and old social antagonisms between individuals and civilizations
reorganize our territories. Houses, cities, countries and continents are
reshaped by strategies of fear and protection. People are in a constant
process of adaptation to the ‘new circumstances’.

Unless they move. But where can we go? To the desert? Not in the Middle East.
If the desert is most commonly a symbol of desolation and solitude, the
Middle East has literally become a surveillance-ridden landscape marked by
borders and mental paralysis.
Is there any chance for the desert to become once again a pivot point for
revelation and cultivation? Can we overcome our paranoia at the new
frontier?
An event about fear and your way to overcome it!

Moderators Report for RSVP Event 6 Paranoia: Amman/Ramallah
New and old social antagonisms between individuals and civilizations
reorganize our territories. Houses, cities, countries and continents are
reshaped by strategies of fear, paranoia, projection and protection. People are in a constant process of adaptation to the ‘new circumstances’. Palestinian poet and recipient of the 2004 Prince Claus Award, Mahmoud Darwish states that the Arab world is divided between heritage and modernity; it uses Western techniques towards progress, but doesn’t investigate the thinking behind it. He describes the Arab World as a consumer, not a producer. The Archis RSVP Amman event inscribed itself in this process, both on a cultural and critical level: How does one deal with the Jordanian reality, one that has shifted from a tribal background into a shopping mall civilization in only one generation? How does one use progress for different purposes? It is under these conditions that we entered the realm of the public domain, in discussion as well as praxis. To put the question of representation and intervention on the agenda-being creative in the era of informality. Discussing paranoia in Amman is discussing a more fundamental issue: the haphazard planning that takes over cities wanting ‘to catch up’. What is the role of decisive criticism in this? Is it visible in the relation between public and private planning in the city of Amman? Does it relate to the idea and reality that Amman does not have urban spaces?

Our discussion on design, urbanism and architecture led us to the Cultural Avenue project on Amman’s Shmeisani, a square designed by the Dutch architect Tom Postma. Public space and architecture becomes also a discussion on the ideology of power. Students from Beirut made the claim for the vicissitudes of public space. In their example, the civil war of Lebanon (1975-1990) was a war fought on and in public space. It has led to a country marked by borders and mental paralysis. In Enki Bilal’s fictitious story, a German guy standing before Picasso’s Guernica asked the artist, “Did you make this?” to which Picasso replied, “No, you did.” Paranoia, in the Beirut case, isn’t about the contemporary erasing of the urban image of the war, but about finding solutions for dealing with its memory. Something that, in the name of progress, doesn’t happen.

Some days later, after experiencing a variety of borders, enclosures, fences, checkpoints and controlled corridors (all concentrated in a line-wise setting) we speculate whether this time lapse and insecurity (one never knows how long it will take to cross a checkpoint) could be translated into a force, a possibility or an opportunity. Our hosts in Ramallah were rather surprised: “We live it, but don’t think about it.” But not thinking about it does not mean it doesn’t touch the memory: “Everybody remembers the place, even when the checkpoint was gone.” Here, creativity and paranoia go hand-in-hand-paranoia as a tactic to stay vital, creativity as a means to find your way out of the current situation. Ramallah, the refugee camps and the wall being built there are for us totally unacceptable conditions-conditions in which territory is the drive but there is no discourse and no theory. But there is a daily changing reality, and this is the point on which to submit your personality. Although no one wants to identify him or herself with this condition, theorizing it can be a tool for people to understand. It creates the notion of a ’some day…’ but it also creates a dark and lucid psychology within the cities around the wall. It re-identifies itself constantly, for better and for worse. What is left open is not a public domain. Space relates to the other. What does freedom mean in a framework that one cannot choose him or herself? Is there rest in time, time for waiting, time around checkpoints, evening time, morning time…? What rests is spontaneous, adaptable events: the emergence of markets and social and economical events around the checkpoints. But simultaneously there is the refusal to see this space as a public space. Can borders be identity builders? Is there an in-between that is neither pragmatic neither elusive? Their point was clear and frightening: finding loopholes in the law and adaptation is exhausting. Ramallah isn’t about paranoia, but about reality, not about a projection of fear, but about the substance of it.

Introduction
It is not difficult to find evidence for the existence of a perverse age. Psychological self-absorption, internal wrangling, unquestioned wealth, pollution and depletion of natural resources, erosion of the public domain, a lack of historical awareness, pointless regulation, excessive policy-making, cultural incest, torture as pornography…
Whatever it is, it can be defined as a ‘liberating’ era. The question is, is there anything more to liberate? Bring your ideas to the cradle of civilization.

An event about perversity and your innocence.

Perversion in our times
In 1933 a boat full of artists and architects crossed the Mediterranean Sea between Marseille and Athens. The vessel carried a decent bunch of intelligence of it¹s time. They were there to draft a definitive solution to the chaos and perversions of the Modern City. But it never came to a final text. It had to wait for another 12 years to develop in what we all know as The Athens Charter. A manifesto, which pretended to be a definitive account of the spatial problems of the contemporary metropolis. The solution was: a sharp distinction between dwelling, working, leisure and transport between them. An act of hygiene to order human life to the parameters of the machine.
Later, the Athens Charter probably became the most successful manifesto in the history of architecture. Perhaps even in universal history. Today, hundreds of millions op people live according to the principles of urban purism according to the main author, LeCorbusier. And we still can ask the ultimate question: did it really solve something?

Two days ago Archis picked up a group of Greek artists and architects to embark again in Athens and travel further east, to Istanbul. Exactly as in the ancient days: by boat and carriage, over the waves of the Aegean Sea, over the bumpy roads of Asia Minor, the Turkish heartland. We left the city that perhaps has been the worst listener ever to what the Athens Charter tried to tell. Athens today can be seen as a total perversion of any urban super-ego. It is known for its famous monuments of Classical Civilization, but these are by no means creating a master plan according to which the rest of the city is laid out. On the contrary, between the underground, with all its precious treasures, waiting to be excavated, and its rooftops, with all the splendid views of the Acropolis, an urban jungle exists that transgresses all accepted codes of law and order, of organization and normality. But is it really a jungle?

At least, it is also the provincial capital of a growing Empire: the European Union. We decided to leave that Empire that doesn¹t want to know itself very well, that sleeps when it should be awake, and that roars when it is irrelevant, and cross its borders at a point where border crossing has been a second nature for several millennia now. We did literally, what in cultural and artistic circles have become the norm since decades: transgression, excess and other forms of putting the world upside down. We slowed down our pace, we went through nature, we spend an awful lot of time talking and discussing with the same people, in sum, what we did was very strange to our contemporary daily lives, where slowness, nature and time are among our strongest enemies. A perversion of perversion, so to speak. We also discovered something. Underneath the regime of the New Fortress Europe, that perverse act of distinction between mine and dine, between in and out, and more and more between two civilizations, there is a zone of blending, an Œharmani¹, a field of mediation between different realms of perceiving and understanding this world, that is not exclusivist. It embraces rather than resists; it is based on curiosity rather than xenophobia. It is perversion that transcends its character of abuse and becomes social. The last few days, we have been witnesses to that kind of perversion, that harmani.

Last night we crossed the Bosporus and landed in Europe again. This time not the territorial Europe of the Fortress, but perhaps the last remaining stronghold of Europe as an idea that has not been moralized to the principles of geo-politics. Or already an Asia that is not seen as a big risk, but as a big chance. Istanbul is in and out, is European and Asian, is Christianity and Islam (and much more). Istanbul is not either/or, but both/and, which perhaps will be it major asset in a world that falls back upon the politics of cultural apartheid. It is also in some way as an Athens, that resists its Charter. (And it¹s Olympics!)

Archis
July 18th, 2004

Introduction
We have always thought that design was driven by growth. New programmes, new tasks, building bigger, higher, denser. Growth is the hidden agenda of our entire society, it’s the vector of our thinking. But suppose we are heading towards an era of shrinking programmes in shrinking cities inhabited by shrinking minds. Or can smaller be smarter?

Shrink in the city
Moment #1: we met in front of the new Time Warner Building. It’s a piece of architecture that resounds with the recent history of New York. Twin Towers, but not really. A shopping mall, but not really. A super expensive building, with the highest priced penthouse ever on top, inhabited by the company that has become identical with the dot-com bubble. And its burst…

Moment #2: we embarked for the Statue of Liberty, leaving all critical and activist ideas behind at the severe security check. The statue was lonely, allowing no visitors to come inside. It used to be a place to go, not an image to look at. There was a black woman with a blond haircut, wanting her husband to take a picture of her with Lady Liberty. “Isn’t she beautiful,” she said, implying “am I not beautiful?” She was, but she didn’t know that it was a black woman who once modelled for the statue, in praise of the abolitionists. No blond hair needed. Most people didn’t know that fact.

Moment #3: we assembled at 16 Beaver Street. After several hours of talking and roaming the streets, we received a final blow of new knowledge. A debate on the relationship between human experience and emerging nanotechnologies, the science of the infinite. Nothing will remain the same.

Introduction
Does Europe really exist? Does it correspond to the area that bears that name? Or is it a mental concept? Is there a European identity? Does a strong Europe automatically lead to diminishing diversity? Whatever the answers, a different outer limit can be drawn for every definition and it is this vagueness that gives rise to the never-ending uncertainty surrounding European integration. The difficulty of attempting to express Europe through its architecture is particularly obvious in Brussels and perhaps exemplifies the difficulty of determining European identities.

An event about an old continent and your renewal.

Brussels
Visiting the capital of Europe, roaming the streets of Brussels, and talking about the continent’s and the city’s shared policies of avoiding anything that could be read as self-confident, coherent and powerful planning and design. Perhaps the metaphor of a sleeping giant is appropriate. Or better still, a very tired giant. And its Ersatz capital, with its architecture and urbanism that has reminiscences of inspiration from an imperial past, but also strong signs of contemporary confusion and lack of ambition, the perfect microcosm of Europe’s fatigue. Or is it something else? Is Brussels the ultimate locus for a truly civilized order: sophisticated, bureaucratic, pacifist, heterogeneous, tolerant, multifaceted, and superbly historical? Is this the lively decadent Europe that is beyond an identity? What happened, on Sunday March 20, 2004? Archis/Amo guided four groups of people to places where most people don’t want to be seen: the Basilique of the Holy Heart; the non-descript terrain vague of European (though unknown) institutions; the World’s Action Day protest march against anything wrong in this world; Mini-Europe from above. Going through the virtual European dimensions of Christianity, Bureaucracy, Engagement and Cliché. And then to Roomade, where 85 of us shared the day’s impressions. And if anything really controversial came up during the debate, it was the question of the supposed necessity to fight back on the global geo-political stage. While some people sense a strong urgency to wake up and once again stand for a just cause, some others see the present historical situation as just the logical and preferable outcome of our intellectual sophistication: the paralytic self-consciousness of a continent that has seen it all.

Introduction
Most of what we say and write about architecture is determined by key concepts that appear to have outlived their meaning.Everyone talks about architecture as if it is clear exactly what it is. Where it begins and where it ends. What you need to know and what not. What it is made of.

But in fact the world is pinned down by formulas and clichés that allow for orderly debate, but limit our ability to renew our insights.

An event about the regime of concepts and your freedom of thought.

Palast der Republik
Event #2 in Berlin, on January 18, turned out to be a funeral, complete with obituaries, of language worn out. The question at stake was the emptiness of dozens of buzz words that still prevail in social and architectural discourse, suggesting deep understandings, but being excuses for hollow newspeak. Around eighty people, bought a ticket to get into the Palast der Republik, the former House of Parliament of the DDR, now completely stripped and ready for final demolishment. After a tour through this derelict building, which has been subject of propaganda’s off all kinds, they were having the right state of mind to terminate some humbug. So, being lit by a late winter sun through the remaining gold brown glass facade, and surrounded by a freezing cold, the crowd attended this ritual of language stripped bare. Away with ‘creativity’, ‘potential’, ‘culture’, ‘transparency’, ‘9/11′, ‘concept’, and many other excuses of mindlessness. After one hour of saying goodbye, all that was left was a display of abused terminology. The soon to be destroyed Palast to be the perfect grave for it. Later, people were able to recover a little bit at the Bikini Haus, the new venue for Urban Drift Berlin.

Introduction
We are for ever talking about globalization and connectivity, but meanwhile we are busy dividing the world up into semi-autonomous zones.

Swamped by good intentions and strategies of fear, the spatial interweave of programme and meaning is being picked apart, divided up, separated into distinct areas. Military islands, refugee islands, floating islands - the list is endless. Zones named according to their function.

This thematization of space is leading to a spatial apartheid, a universal archipelago of ’scripted spaces’ separated by hard boundaries and strict checkpoints.

An event about monocultures and your multiplicity.

Pergamum Museum
Forty people, from very different backgrounds, did sign up for the first Archis rsvp event. Just a few days before January 17, they were invited to come to the Pergamum Museum, right in the centre of one of the most renowned single issue spaces of Berlin: the Museumsinsel (museum island). Here one is supposed to enjoy art and culture and nothing else. A true reserve for heritage.
Under heavy rainfall guests collected their infra red headphones and went inside. They were asked to sit down on the stairway of the immense Pergamon Altar, a piece once taken away from its original site in Asia Minor, todays Turkey. It’s migration was part of Germany’s imperial ambitions under Bismarck and for such an operation the construction of a complete dedicated building was the logical outcome.
And then, the debate started. Whispering in a hidden microphone, the crowd was discussing the issue of the singularization of issues, as being examined in the Archis is Island isse #6,2003, all under the scrutiny of suspicious museum guards. By doing so, the participants imposed their own acoustic single issue space upon the tourist gaze, prevailing in the actual museum program. At some point, people were asked to illustrate the topic with their flash lights that they carried with them, as requested in previous e-mail correspondence. It was the moment when the guards no longer took this event as a legal thing and terminated the meeting.
Debate continued afterwards at exhibition space Kunstwerke.