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Figure de la ville et construction des savoirs

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Frédéric Pousin

Partie III. Architecture, communication et culture visuelle

Chapitre XII. In between: representing the urban environment and the self

Rachel Kallus e Tali Hatuka

Testo integrale

  • 1 J. Wolff, «The Real City, the Discursive City and the Disappearing City: Postmodernism and Urban S (...)

1Since the 1970’s urban environments are no longer perceived as neutral, and the boundaries between reality and its representation have blurred, or, in post-structural terms, «the real city, the discursive city (and) the disappearing city»1 have become one. Although the abstract and universal methods traditionally used by architects are still viable, the hegemony of the positivistic discourse has disintegrated. Cultural studies, based in feminist, post-structural, and post-colonial debates, have further facilitated escape from the universal model of the city, to a more subjective approach, and an awareness of the potential of urban representation in the production of urban environments.

  • 2 M.C. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1994; M. Castells, The Informa (...)
  • 3 R. Fincher and J. Jacobs (eds.), Cities of Difference, New York, The Guilford Press, 1998; L. Sand (...)

2In contrast to the rational city, which stresses the importance of the physical fabric, urban representations are discussed in this paper from their socio-cultural aspect. This is based on the understanding that the urban environment and its narratives are not merely constructed by physical manipulations, but are based on capital flow, financial investment, transportation links, and information and telecommunication systems2. National identity, ethnicity, religious orientation and class antagonism are all recognized as shaping forces of the urban environment3. This paper investigates the fundamental relationships between space and socio-cultural processes, challenging not only urban designers’ interest in the formal-morphological attributes of the urban space, but also the professional practice of urban analysis and representation.

  • 4 D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000.
  • 5 N. Alsayyad (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism. On Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, London, Praeg (...)

3The Kassel urbanscape and its representation are observed and explored, not by deconstructing the urban experience, but by considering its full complexity. Thus, continuing Harvey’s analysis of the polarized views of «globalization» and «body»4, we argue that the two are related, and that one cannot comprehend Kassel’s urban environment by addressing each concept individually. We suggest that this environment be seen as occurring in-between such notions as objective/subjective, communal/individual, private/ public, institutional/personal, order/disorder. In-between implies that, in the postmodern city, representations are produced by partial cultures that generate fluid borderlines, dynamic situations and new identifications, thus modifying the canonical discourse concerning the city within urban design and proposing a cultural hybridity5.

  • 6 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, Univer (...)
  • 7 The term has been used by Deleuze and Guattari (1988) to challenge the determinist power model sug (...)

4In-between allows us to re-conceptualize basic architectural terms such as time, space, image, and place. However, the intention is not to further fragment what is already complex, but, by means of a different approach, to better understand the urban environment, to comprehend the contexts within which individuals and groups construct their identities. We assert that, in order to make architectural discourse applicable to contemporary urban environments, it must be based on awareness of what Deleuze and Guattari6 call assemblage7. Conversely, we look at what we call discord assemblage, i.e. the juxtaposition of urban powers, groups, and materials, in the hope that this will permit incorporation of views that are essential to the production of democratic and pluralistic public spaces in architectural discourse and practice.

Background: representing in-between

5Donald argues that:

  • 8 J. Donald, «Metropolis: The City as Text», in R. BOCOCK and K. Thompson (eds), Social and Cultural (...)

there is no such thing as a city. Rather, the city designates the space produced by the interaction of historically and geographically specific institutions, social relations of production and reproduction, practices of government, forms and media of communications, and so forth8.

  • 9 Ibid.
  • 10 DA. King (ed.), Re-Presenting the City, op. cit., p. 218-219.
  • 11 R. Shields, «A Guide to Urban Representation and What to Do About It: Alternative Traditions of Ur (...)
  • 12 C.W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, New York, Oxford University Press, 1959.
  • 13 J. Donald, «This, Here, Now: Imagining the Modern City», in S. Westwood and J. Williams (eds), Ima (...)

6It is, above all, a representation9 and by calling its diversity «city», we ascribe to it coherence and integrity. According to King10 there are three levels of representation. The first refers to the physical environment, the economic, social, political, and cultural effects, that create hierarchies and daily social routines. The second is related to the visual symbols of the space. The third level, a product of the first two, is the mental representation. This is the imagined environment which, as argued by Shields11, is based on Mills’ Social Imagination12, according to which the individual, through imagination, understands him/herself and his/her conduct as related to the environment and to others. Every individual has a personal biography in the historical continuum of a specific society. The individual thus contributes to the shaping of society and to its history while, in turn, being constructed by that society and history. According to Donald13, there are three ways to imagine the city: through autobiographical memory, through literary accounts, and through architecture. However Donald objects to the Utopian notion, and suggests imagining the city in terms of love and care, realizing at the same time that these do not exist.

  • 14 Cf. op. cit., note 11.
  • 15 M. de Certeau, The Practice of the Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley, University of C (...)
  • 16 Cf. op. cit., note 6.
  • 17 M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, C. Gordon (ed.), (...)
  • 18 Cf. op. cit., note 6.

7The link between the actual and the represented is another important notion14. Representation derives from complex formal material, ideological technique, and social action, all related to thought and imagination. Hence, the city is not only the subject of representation, but is also its object - a portrait constructed by plans, statistics, maps, models, and day-to-day life15. Since people use signs, language, and cultural codes, what is of interest here is the distance between myths and stories on one hand, and objective methods, such as statistics, on the other, so that essentially the distance between the exposed and the hidden is what is represented. Shields sees the physicality of the city as a sign language, where the meaning of the signs, as representing normative behaviour, is political. Thus, space and society, through which the city is constructed and produced, are defined by representation. Deleuze and Guattari16 argued that attempting to analyse the city is in itself a form of control. The exposure represents desire, a positive force, similar to Foucault’s17 «constructiveness of power». Under the title «Body without Organs», Deleuze and Guattari suggest analysing urbanism as a representation of recurring movements. They propose viewing the city as a system of complex surfaces operating as a single unit. The relationship between the constructed city and its socio-economic forces are seen as the relationship between text and sub-text, and the city is perceived as an expression of its economic and social relations. But, according to Deleuze and Guattari, the seen - the architecture and the urban elements - and the unseen - social and economic interactions - are equally important. Shields’ recommendation, following Deleuze and Guattari18, is to view the city as areas of activities and interactions, of conflicts and contradictions. Any critical investigation of urban representations will expose power relations between social groups and environmental hierarchies.

  • 19 S. Sadler, The Situationist City, op. cit., and Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998.
  • 20 H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, op. cit., and The Production of Space, op. cit., note 15.
  • 21 Cf. op. cit., note 15; M. de Certeau, «Walking in the City», in S. During (ed.), The Cultural Stud (...)

8The Situationists psycho-geography is another critique of the rational city that emphasizes personal desires and subjective understanding19. Their concept of «emotional drifting» embodies the attractiveness of unique urban places, which is not exclusively due to physical attributes, but is also based on their place in memory and imagination. Lefebvre’s20 moment is a similar concept, although it has been fiercely attacked by the Situationists. De Certeau21 developed this concept in his narrative of the everyday, using imagination and semiotic analysis to demonstrate the values of daily life.

  • 22 W. Benjamin, Illumination, London, Fontana/Collins, 1973.
  • 23 Z. Bauman, «From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a Short History of Identity», in S. Hall and P. du Gay (e (...)
  • 24 E. Wilson, The Sphinx in the City: Urban life, the Control of Disorder, and Women, Berkeley, Unive (...)
  • 25 Cf. op. cit., note 24.
  • 26 Cf. op. cit., note 24.

9Several approaches have highlighted representation in urban design and have dealt with the aestheticization of a space by blurring the boundaries between virtual reality and actual existence, between public and private. Walter Benjamin’s work22, and that of others relating to the flâneur23 have contributed to the emphasis on representation in urban design, although recent feminist debates question the validity of the male perspective in constructing urban representation24. This critique noted the complex relationships between investigator/viewer/participant and the urban environment. It addressed the problematic traditional position of women associated with the home, which, through diversion and deviation, excludes them from the public realm25. However, as noted by Wilson26, the city does not only exclude women, it also grants them liberation and freedom, qualities which have become the subject of social and planning control exercised by sociologists, architects and urban planners.

  • 27 H. Bhabha, «Culture’s In-Between», in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, (...)
  • 28 T.S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.
  • 29 C.f. op. cit., note 27.
  • 30 K. Mitchell, «Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity», Environment and Planning D: Society (...)
  • 31 A. Roy, «“The Reverse Side of the World”: Identity, Space and Power», in N. Alsayyad (ed.), Hybrid (...)
  • 32 Cf. ibid.

10We explore the concept of the in-between in architectural culture and practice, using these notions of representation as applied to the definition of the urban experience. This concept has already been employed by Bhabha27, in his cross-cultural study (inspired by Eliot28), discussing migration. Bhabha29 argues that when people move they take only part of their culture with them. This «partial» culture then becomes the «container» and the «connective» between cultures, i.e. the in-between, both similar to and different from the parent culture. According to Bhabha, this in-between demarcates norms that function as limits or boundaries. While following Bhabha’s thesis, this paper also acknowledges the critiques of Mitchell30, Roy31 and others, who argue that the in-between is not necessarily a liberating concept, but has often involved dissident cultures that may be as reactionary as they are progressive32.

In-between Representations

11The idea of the in-between has been tested in an experimental project, conducted as part of the City Project Area of IFU (International Women’s University) (Kassel, 2000). The project, aiming to investigate the city from a feminist perspective, attempted to piece together an alternative understanding of the city and its complex meanings. It identified major in-between categories such as: objective/subjective, communal/individual, private/public, institutional/personal, order/ disorder, in an effort to investigate the city of Kassel from an interdisciplinary and multi-cultural perspective. Participants, from different cultures and diverse professional backgrounds, explored the various ways in which the city is looked at, read, experienced, framed, and positioned.

  • 33 Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.
  • 34 R. Kallus and T. Hatuka (eds.), Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU (City Area Project), 2000.

12This paper, based on the experience of the Kassel project, introduces these categories in order to discuss various themes and concepts that were developed there, both textually and through the presentation and analysis of visual images. Three different sources are used to present the project: 1) material from Fascinating Kassel33, a tourist guide published by the Kassel municipality (fig. 1) and material from other tourist brochures, pamphlets, official information and maps, given to all IFU City Project Area participants upon arriving in Kassel; 2) material from a publication entitled Re: Fascinating Kassel, the City and its Complex Meaning34, an edited collection of the Kassel project’s work, in which participants explore their ideas (fig. 2); 3) other relevant sources exploring theoretical concepts of urban representations questioning sociological and philosophical notions.

Institutional/Personal

  • 35 R. Kallus, «From the Abstract to the Concrete: Subjective Reading of the Urban Space», Journal of (...)

13A problematic gap between institutional and personal practices of the urban environment is the contrast between two contradictory perspectives: a formal «top-down» view, stressing professional abstraction for the sake of comprehension of the complexity and continuity of the urban space, contrasted with an informal «bottom-up» view, stressing the lived experience of everyday life. However, despite the merits of each of these perspectives (Kallus, 200135), urban living is often wedged in-between, giving rise to two key concepts, image and place, both playing an essential role in architecture theory and practice, attempting to integrate meaning into built environments.

  • 36 K. Lynch, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.
  • 37 J. Baudrillard, Simulations, New York, Semiotext, 1983; M.C. Boyer, Cybercities, New York, Princet (...)

14The search for place has guided city building, particularly through the challenge of modernist urbanism and the ongoing confrontation with its placelessness. Searching for the image of the city36 has preoccupied much of the architectural discourse since the 1960s, resulting in both theoretical and practical/operational models. However, in the face of advancing technological developments and the dialectical reality of global-local tensions, a critical re-evaluation of the image of place is in order37. Furthermore, with space being constantly abstracted and dematerialized, the architect’s role in its production is at stake. In what should architecture be engaged, for whom and for what reason? Can architecture, attempting to make the everyday environment, consider the «fractured logic of the everyday»? Can it realize the city as a lived experience? Being, by its nature, associated with power, what should be the forces depicted and represented by architecture? Can architecture be forever aligned with institutional forces and «big money», or can it actually become an arena for groups in need of a voice? If architecture is to be a legitimate practice in today’s city, where does it derive its legitimization from, and what new roles can it take upon itself?

Figure 1. Images of Kassel, as appeared in: Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.

Figure 2. Front cover and back cover of: Kallus, R., and Hatuka, T. eds., Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.

15In questioning the current meaning of the image of place, the Kassel project attempted to uncover its use in structuring the city. It revealed that the predominant images presented in Kassel are those of monuments, and central urban public spaces. Most notable is the Hercules monument (fig. 3), presented as the identifying geographic and symbolic image of Kassel, the city identified with a symbol of masculine strength reinforced by other statues of men in the main public spaces (Holmes, in Re: Fascinating Kassel). Photographs of Kassel (fig. 4) reveal different spaces within the city. Personal paths traced in the city demonstrate its diverse interpretations. This analysis of images and texts, added to the official Kassel material, uncovers a constructed urban continuity based on old and new, past and present, memory and reality. A distinctive example is the re-use of the Hercules monument to suggest a critical assessment of the city’s most celebrated image (fig. 2). Turning Hercules into flesh and blood, making the statue an ordinary human being and setting him in the street, allows re-evaluation of the symbolic conquests of the physical and mental perceptions of the city.

Figure 3. Hercules in: Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.

Figure 4. City Images in: Jennifer Holmes, Kallus, R., and Hatuka, J. eds, Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.

16These reflections give rise to important criticisms about the architectural use of place to construct an urban image, and the construction of that image, asking: for whom and for what? Can conscious deliberation produce a place? Is it possible to revise place and image as dynamic forces working in the in-between space?

Objective/Subjective

  • 38 M. McLeod, «Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Post-Modernism to Deconstructivism», (...)
  • 39 Cf. op. cit., note 35.

17Architecture discourse seldom considers how urban spaces are actually used, thereby ignoring everyday reality and leaving the links between space and power unexplored38. Emphasizing the abstract notion of the spatial dimension, rather than concrete day-to-day life, overlooks the users of the space and their functional, socio-cultural, and emotional needs39. Trying to broaden the scope of urban design practice, the Kassel project attempted to go beyond the abstract notion of the urban space in order to express fundamental relationships between space and socio-cultural processes. This was a challenge to the theoretical and a-political interest in the formal-morphological attributes of the urban space. The goal was to find ways to read the city in-between, to enable a personal (subjective) understanding, but at the same time to include the formal (objective) urban perception. These concepts were discussed mainly in light of physical and mental mobility in the city.

  • 40 E. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London, Verso (...)

18Mobility, being the corner stone of the modern metropolis, has often been challenged, with the realization that fast traffic and advanced transportation systems, developed for the sake of accessibility, are often used to enhance the production and consumption of urban space40. When viewed from a socio-cultural perspective, both mobility and movement are perceived as defined and delineated boundaries, but also as the means of overcoming these boundaries. Considering mobility in relation to the accessibility of temporary inhabitants in the city allows visualizing Kassel’s railway station as a city gate (Sysoyeva, in Re: Fascinating Kassel). Assorted images assembled in a collage offer a subjective and objective interpretations of the meaning of railway stations, contrasting Kassel’s station with the familiar terminal at home (ibid.).

  • 41 Cf. op. cit., note 24.

19The feminist critique of the city has exposed the liberating and emancipating forces embedded in the urban experience41. This subjective understanding of the urban environment implies a defeat of the homogeneous, dangerously overpowering city, by indicating the prospective future urban experience and the active role of the user in producing the urban space. Impressions of a visitor in the city constructed by the use of public transport, confronts the memories and desires of a city’s inhabitants. From this standpoint, well-maintained and controlled public transportation is seen as the basis for freedom and opportunity, exposing the urban inhabitants to democratic spaces. Furthermore, the different tram routes enable both residents and visitors to view life away from the framed and packaged attractions of the city center. Thus, the tram becomes a route to freedom and independence, offering pleasure, choice and stimulation (Prado, in Re: Fascinating Kassel).

  • 42 R.J. King, «Urban Design in Capitalist Society», Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6, (...)

20Since the relation of users to urban space is dynamic and not static, inhabitants taking possession of space and shaping their own urban realities must be the motivation for architecture practice. This active appropriation of the urban environment demands new working methods based on a different understanding of space and its production. It requires getting away from overly-emphasized escapist aesthetics, symbolism, and the negation of social and political responsibility42. But, whose politics should architecture practice express and how is it to integrate conflicting views of the environment?

Individual/Communal

21One of the most interesting questions in the discussion of urban representation refers to the presence of the city as a collective body, as opposed to the appropriation of urban space through individual agency. The publicness of the public space is especially controversial when lived by the individual experience. Representation of, as well as participation and performance in, the urban environment refocuses the attention on the specificity of the urban experience, as related to how individuals form up their collective identity in the city. This acknowledgement of the differences between groups of individuals, based on life-cycle stages, ethnic distinctions, religious orientation, gender, and income differences, no longer sees the city as a neutral spatial system, but as a socio-cultural structure. It deviates from the proactive social view of the city as a form of community building whose purpose in architecture culture and practice has been to frame the urban environment socially.

  • 43 Most notable in the development of the urban community is the concept of neighborhood as used by C (...)
  • 44 R. Kallus and H. Law-Yone, «Neighborhood - The Metamorphosis of an Idea», Journal of Architectural (...)
  • 45 R. Kallus and H. Law-Yone, «What is a Neighborhood? The Structure and Function of an Idea», Enviro (...)

22Two polar notions are relevant to urban representation: individuality and community. While traditionally much of the effort of city-making has been invested in construction of the urban community, perceived as guarding against modern isolation and alienation43, it is clear that the notion of community has changed44. Globalization, privatization, and mass worker migration have increased the power struggle, redefining urban environments as contested spaces. Since large-scale efforts to construct cohesiveness and unity through socially organized sub-urban units have proven irrelevant45, it is time to change urban strategies, which requires working from inside the urban environment rather then enforcing imported models. But what matters here are the types of communities that do exist in cities, and how they are constructed in urban environments governed by globalization and privatization. What is the meaning of community in a city that is constantly changing? Where is the place of the individual in these communities? How are these communities being represented, by whom, for whom, and for what purposes?

  • 46 Senol, in Re: Fascinating Kassel, p. 26.

23Reflection on the everyday life of minority groups in Kassel tries to grasp the changing sense of urban community. From the Turkish community emerge the narratives of three Turkish women, contrasting the differences in their personal circumstances with their different urban experiences, investigating «[...] the pleasures and burdens of these differences and the way they are distributed unevenly’46». These Turkish women, already belonging to a well-defined community, are all fighting for their identity as individuals, using the urban environment as a testing ground for their newly-acquired autonomy (see fig. 5). The very basis of contemporary community is at stake here, since it is unclear whether the community is defined by the individuals as a minority group, or constructed by the groups differing from each other. What then defines the “other” and how is its centrifugal position being established?

Figure 5. Ordinary and Exciting Everyday Spaces, Fatma Senol, in: Kallus, R., and Hatuka, 1. eds,. Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.

Public/ Private

24The polarity of private-public relations is one of the fundamental concepts in architecture theory and practice, defining its professional task. However, when assuming definitions from the location of structural boundaries, these terms are constantly challenged by institutional forces and by everyday practice, especially since globalization and the collapse of the welfare state, realizing economic forces that further demarcate public-private polarities. Although architects assume that public-private dialectics can be defined by structural boundaries, they are, in fact, relative terms. Furthermore, the dichotomy of public-private is constantly obscured by commercially enhanced privatization processes, in which economic forces arising from globalization and the «shrinking welfare state» repeatedly redefine public and private territories. The concept of private and public as cultural boundaries raises the notion of the «other», as center versus periphery, segregation versus integration, exclusion versus inclusion, stability versus change, and domination versus submission.

  • 47 G. Deleuze and E Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus..., op. cit., cf. op. cit., note 11.

25Relating the personal experience of living between two cities to the notion of the «other» presents private and public as cultural boundaries. This is also expressed in the built environment, reflecting power structure, and again demonstrating segregation versus access, stability versus change, and dominance versus submission (Sharma, in Re: Fascinating Kassel, see fig. 6). This public-private urban polarity belongs to the debate over social identity and expectations, and the dispute over the normative rights of the individual and his/her institutional obligations. The deliberation over public and private space also invokes the complex relationships and their cultural context of subject and object. The universal approach to the public-private polarity thus overlooks the cultural dimension of the city, which operates as a living, dynamic organism47.

Closing remarks

  • 48 See M. Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998; K. Nesbitt (ed. (...)
  • 49 See G. Broadbent, Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design, London, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990; A. (...)

26Surprisingly, the dilemmas and complexities of urban representations have been only minimally acknowledged by architecture culture and practice. Though a review of the architectural paradigm shifts that have been taking place since the 1960’s448, and a more specific account of emerging urban design discourse49, reveal substantial transformations in professional focus and interests, these changes have only minimally altered the way architects work in the city. The abstract and universal methods traditionally used by architects are still valuable but the hegemony of the positivistic discourse must be questioned. In order to confront the universal model of the global city this discourse should be challenged by a subjective approach enlightened by awareness of the strength of urban representation in the production of urban environments. Hence, in contrast to the rational city, which stresses the importance of the physical fabric, urban representations have been discussed in this paper as related to the urban socio-culture.

As An Architect

As An Architect

Figure 6. Shifting in: Urban Experiences from Tulshibaug to Konigs Platz, Aparna Sharma. Kallus, R., and Hatuka, T. eds., Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.

  • 50 D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, California, University of California Press, 2000.
  • 51 Cf. op. cit., note 49, p. 15.

27Urban representation is examined here in the context of theoretical and discursive shifts that have been taking place since the 1970’s, and which have dramatically changed the way cities are perceived. Harvey has suggested that these shifts can be best captured through the terms «globalization» and «body»50. In Harvey’s words, «“globalization” is the most macro of all [the] discourses that we have available to us, while that of the “body” is surely the most micro51«. In an effort to connect these concepts to architecture, we have tried to show that they are, in fact, inter-related, and that it is impossible to understand the urban environment by referring to only one of them at a time.

28The aim of the Kassel project was to produce a complex understanding of the city, to which the notion of the in-between can introduce a new meaning. Within an interdisciplinary and inter-cultural setting, the in-between acquires extra meaning, setting up a framework for investigation. Some fundamental concepts often used by architects were investigated, and attention was drawn to the relative meanings of the terms and their political, social, and cultural implications. It was suggested that reference to popular culture within the urban debate is a meaningful expression of the political setting of the city, the arena in which groups define and defend their identity.

  • 52 D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Cambridge MA, Blackwell, 1990, p. 225.
  • 53 R.V. George, «A Procedural Explanation for Contemporary Urban Design» Journal of Urban Design, 2(2 (...)
  • 54 Cf. op. cit., note 43.
  • 55 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: The Will to Truth, London, Penguin Lane, 1979, éd. (...)

29The notion of the in-between encourages a view of the city as a multi-cultural democracy set up by its citizens, and the urban space as a «framework through which social power is expressed52«. While acknowledging the collective strength of the city, the need of individuals to construct their own identity within specific communities is equally recognized. City building practices cannot allow impartiality with respect to cultural preferences. It requires the promotion of various communities in need of different spaces, rather than the creation of a homogeneous and universal collective, space. This opposes promoting undifferentiated spaces envisioned by assuming professional neutrality. The notion of the in-between, as developed in this paper, focuses the debate on the role of the architect and his/her ethics53. The issue is whether architects have any political obligation. As professionals responsible for the production of the urban environment, can they promote and support these environments by making a critical assessment of the forces that operate within them54? The experience of the Kassel project has suggested that agency (as defined by Foucault)55 translated into architecture practice, can promote change. This could be practiced not only in the pragmatic productive professional modes of operation, but also expressed in the way the urban environment is represented and discussed. Hence, action-oriented representation is another means by which urban transformations can be promoted.

Note

1 J. Wolff, «The Real City, the Discursive City and the Disappearing City: Postmodernism and Urban Sociology», Theory and Society, 21, 1992, p. 553-560.

2 M.C. Boyer, The City of Collective Memory, Cambridge MA, MIT Press, 1994; M. Castells, The Informational City, Cambridge MA, Blackwell, 1989; D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Cambridge MA, Blackwell, 1990; D.A. King, (ed.), Re-Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital, and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis, London, Macmillan Press, 1996; S. Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991.

3 R. Fincher and J. Jacobs (eds.), Cities of Difference, New York, The Guilford Press, 1998; L. Sandercock, Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, Chichester, John Wiley, 1998; J. Holston and A. Appadurai, «Cities and Citizenship», in J. Holston (ed.), Cities and Citizenship, Durham, Duke University Press, 1999, p. 1-18.

4 D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2000.

5 N. Alsayyad (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism. On Identity Discourse and the Built Environment, London, Praega, 2001.

6 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1988; éd. orig., Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie, Paris, éd. de Minuit, 1989.

7 The term has been used by Deleuze and Guattari (1988) to challenge the determinist power model suggested by Foucault.

8 J. Donald, «Metropolis: The City as Text», in R. BOCOCK and K. Thompson (eds), Social and Cultural Forms of Modernity, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, p. 417-461.

9 Ibid.

10 DA. King (ed.), Re-Presenting the City, op. cit., p. 218-219.

11 R. Shields, «A Guide to Urban Representation and What to Do About It: Alternative Traditions of Urban Theory», chapter 11, in D.A. King (ed.), Re-Presenting the City, op. cit.

12 C.W. Mills, The Sociological Imagination, New York, Oxford University Press, 1959.

13 J. Donald, «This, Here, Now: Imagining the Modern City», in S. Westwood and J. Williams (eds), Imagining Cities, London, Routledge, 1997.

14 Cf. op. cit., note 11.

15 M. de Certeau, The Practice of the Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984; éd. orig. L’invention du quotidien, t. I, Arts de faire, Paris, Union générale d’éditions, coll. 10/18, 1980. H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, selected, translated and introduced by E. Kofman and E. Lebas, London, Blackwell, 1991. H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1991; éd. orig. La production de l’espace, Paris, Anthropos, coll. «Société et urbanisme», 1974.

16 Cf. op. cit., note 6.

17 M. Foucault, Power/Knowledge. Selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977, C. Gordon (ed.), New York, Pantheon, 1980.

18 Cf. op. cit., note 6.

19 S. Sadler, The Situationist City, op. cit., and Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998.

20 H. Lefebvre, Writings on Cities, op. cit., and The Production of Space, op. cit., note 15.

21 Cf. op. cit., note 15; M. de Certeau, «Walking in the City», in S. During (ed.), The Cultural Studies Readers, London, Routledge, 1993, p. 126-133.

22 W. Benjamin, Illumination, London, Fontana/Collins, 1973.

23 Z. Bauman, «From Pilgrim to Tourist - or a Short History of Identity», in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity, London, Sage Publication, 1996; cf. op. cit., note 11.

24 E. Wilson, The Sphinx in the City: Urban life, the Control of Disorder, and Women, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991; D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994.

25 Cf. op. cit., note 24.

26 Cf. op. cit., note 24.

27 H. Bhabha, «Culture’s In-Between», in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity, London, Sage Publications, 1996.

28 T.S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1949.

29 C.f. op. cit., note 27.

30 K. Mitchell, «Different Diasporas and the Hype of Hybridity», Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 15(5), 1997, p. 533-553.

31 A. Roy, «“The Reverse Side of the World”: Identity, Space and Power», in N. Alsayyad (ed.), Hybrid Urbanism, op.cit., p. 229-245.

32 Cf. ibid.

33 Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.

34 R. Kallus and T. Hatuka (eds.), Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU (City Area Project), 2000.

35 R. Kallus, «From the Abstract to the Concrete: Subjective Reading of the Urban Space», Journal of Urban Design, 2001, 6(2), p. 129-150.

36 K. Lynch, The Image of the City, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1960.

37 J. Baudrillard, Simulations, New York, Semiotext, 1983; M.C. Boyer, Cybercities, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

38 M. McLeod, «Architecture and Politics in the Reagan Era: From Post-Modernism to Deconstructivism», Assemblage, 8, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1989; M. McLeod, «“Other” Spaces and “Others”«, in D. Agrest, P. Conway and L. Weisman (eds.), The Sex of Architecture, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1996.

39 Cf. op. cit., note 35.

40 E. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, London, Verso, 1989.

41 Cf. op. cit., note 24.

42 R.J. King, «Urban Design in Capitalist Society», Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6, 1988, p. 445-474; Cf. op.cit, note 39; K. Dovey, Framing Places, Mediating Power in Built Form, London and New York, Routledge, 1999.

43 Most notable in the development of the urban community is the concept of neighborhood as used by C. Perry in the development of the Neighborhood Unit (see: C. Perry, «The Neighborhood Unit, a Scheme of Arrangement for the Family-Life Community», in Neighborhood and Community Planning, New York, Regional Plan of New York and its Environs, vol. VII, New York, Arno Press, 1929 [reprint in 1974]. This idea has been transformed lately into concepts and models of New Urbanism, couched within neo-traditional approaches to the city (e.g. the work of E Calthorpe, 1993, The Next American Metropolis: Ecology, Community and the American Dream, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, and A. Dwany and E. Plater-Zyberk, «The Neighborhood, the District, the Corridor», in P. Katz [ed.], The New Urbanism: Toward Architecture of Community, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1994).

44 R. Kallus and H. Law-Yone, «Neighborhood - The Metamorphosis of an Idea», Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 14(2), 1997, 107-125.

45 R. Kallus and H. Law-Yone, «What is a Neighborhood? The Structure and Function of an Idea», Environment and Behavior B: Planning and Design, 27, 2000, 815-826.

46 Senol, in Re: Fascinating Kassel, p. 26.

47 G. Deleuze and E Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus..., op. cit., cf. op. cit., note 11.

48 See M. Hays (ed.), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998; K. Nesbitt (ed.), Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture, an Anthology of Architecture Theory 1965-1995, New York, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996.

49 See G. Broadbent, Emerging Concepts in Urban Space Design, London, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990; A. Madanipour, Design of Urban Space, An Inquiry into a Socio-spatial Process, Baffins Lane, Wiley, 1996; N. Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism, Cambridge, MA, Blackwell, 1996.

50 D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope, California, University of California Press, 2000.

51 Cf. op. cit., note 49, p. 15.

52 D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, Cambridge MA, Blackwell, 1990, p. 225.

53 R.V. George, «A Procedural Explanation for Contemporary Urban Design» Journal of Urban Design, 2(2), 1997, p. 143-161.

54 Cf. op. cit., note 43.

55 M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. I: The Will to Truth, London, Penguin Lane, 1979, éd. orig. La Volonté de savoir (Histoire de la Sexualité, t. I), Paris, Gallimard, coll. «Bibliothèque des Histoires», 1976, cf. op. cit., note 17.

Indice delle illustrazioni

Legenda Figure 1. Images of Kassel, as appeared in: Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-1.jpg
File image/jpeg, 144k
Legenda Figure 2. Front cover and back cover of: Kallus, R., and Hatuka, T. eds., Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-2.jpg
File image/jpeg, 458k
Legenda Figure 3. Hercules in: Kassel Service Gmbh, Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, Schanze GmbH Press, 1987.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-3.jpg
File image/jpeg, 80k
Legenda Figure 4. City Images in: Jennifer Holmes, Kallus, R., and Hatuka, J. eds, Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-4.jpg
File image/jpeg, 236k
Legenda Figure 5. Ordinary and Exciting Everyday Spaces, Fatma Senol, in: Kallus, R., and Hatuka, 1. eds,. Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-5.jpg
File image/jpeg, 154k
Titolo As An Architect
Legenda Figure 6. Shifting in: Urban Experiences from Tulshibaug to Konigs Platz, Aparna Sharma. Kallus, R., and Hatuka, T. eds., Re: Fascinating Kassel, Kassel, IFU, 2000.
URL http://books.openedition.org/editionscnrs/docannexe/image/4308/img-6.jpg
File image/jpeg, 199k

Autori

Rachel Kallus is a Senior Lecturer at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, where she teaches architecture, urban design and town planning. She is a practicing architect, and has worked in the United States, the Netherlands and Israel. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Art, her Master of Architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Doctorate from the Technion. Her research in the field of housing and urbanism focuses on the interplay between policy and design and examines the relationships between policy measures and their physical outcomes, especially in relation to equity, equality and social justice. She has published extensively on these topics in planning and architecture publications and in various edited volumes.

Tali Hatuka is finishing her Ph.D. in Architecture at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. She is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is an architect holding a Bachelor of Architecture from the Technion, and a Master of Urban Design from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh College of Art. Her professional experience includes working as an architect and urban designer in several cities in Israel. She received several prizes for her projects. Her research in urban design focuses on the relationship between extreme events of violence, everyday life, and the built environment.

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