India

Jaisalmer
Under the stars vaulting the cooled Thar Desert I lay supine, just 100 kilometers from Pakistan and within spitting distance of my camel, losing my corporeality in the constellations above and remembering that it wasn’t my birthday anymore, not anywhere in the world and that one year had passed since the Rotch committee granted this opportunity for which I am infinitely grateful. The sky’s dome contained these thoughts and the calmness of the desert was broken only by the safari leader’s cell phone rattling digitized, trebly sitars over our camels’ low, slobbery air-filled mating calls.

The following day our crew of eight woke early, one by one, and with the benefit of a flat, expansive horizon, we watched the earth roll gently into the sun from atop our dune. A breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, toast and “mysterious nut butter” filled our stomachs, after which our camels staggered back into the heat and we returned to the city of Jaisalmer. Once an important stop along ancient camel trade routes connecting India with regions further west beyond the Arabian Sea, Jaisalmer is now an adventurous tourist destination for backpackers abroad. However, this business is both a blessing and a bane.

The city is camouflaged with desert sandstone hues, save for bright blue 50-gallon-drum-sized plumbing tanks floating above the majority of buildings. There is very little rainfall so residents siphon water from below and now the fort is sinking. That the fort will slowly merge with the landscape from a functioning piece of civilization to archaeological ruin seems an inevitable fate for Jaisalmer. Yet despite this, the outward appearance of the fort’s integrity remains convincing, particularly for enduring the desert sun and sandstorms for over 850 years. Thus, the Jaisalmer Fort combined with the surrounding havelis (heavily ornamented residences of former ministers or landlords) and an adventurous camel safari allows Jaisalmer the exotic tourist appeal associated with India. For me, it was just a quick stop on my three-week detour into the country.




Mumbai
Almost two weeks before the camel encounter, I first arrived Mumbai from Shanghai. At nine in the morning, my cab reeled through traffic in stifling air, from the airport to the neighborhood of Colaba at the southern tip of Mumbai’s islands. Mumbai’s black and yellow cabs buzz around the city like sixty thousand shiny worker bees among two-cycle autorickshaws (though not allowed downtown), delivery trucks, personal cars and bikes. Traffic laws are lax or non-existent and navigating through the city appears to be a free-for-all; take a look at the opening scene of Wes Anderson’s Darjeeling Limited for an accurate portrayal of the frenzied autorickshaw (or taxi) journey through just about any town in India. Watch out for the sacred cow.

It’s estimated around 14 to 15 million people inhabit the city today, with well over half in poverty. Yet, like major South American cities visited, this aspect of the city is not always immediately apparent. The poorer neighborhoods hide primarily on the outskirts of the city, while the core retains the historical image of the city. Recounting the centuries of overlapping ruling parties of India and their influence on Mumbai is as much a dizzying effect as braving a cab. The country’s history spans from the Indus Valley Civilization, over the Mughal and British empires, and into the present day Republic of India, the global outsourcing hub. This complex historical fabric gives the culture a plurality, with each region, state and city possessing a completely unique identity.





At first glance there are two immediate architectural readings of central Mumbai: the buildings constructed before and during the British Raj, and those constructed through the chaotic intensity of contemporary development within the last couple of decades. The former is comprised of a wide variety of structures, especially in the Fort Area, from the Victorian Gothic Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station to the copious Art Deco theaters. Many of these buildings display a fusion of British imperial grandeur with Hindu and/or Indo-Islamic elements, resulting in architectural categorization of the Indo-Saracenic style. On the other hand, the latter vision of the city shares banalities with major developing South American cities visited – Mumbai too is a concrete jungle.

Yet while the Victorian aesthetic of Mumbai may serve as iconography for a formerly repressed India, its residual functionality is clearly an asset. The Oval Maidan, for example, offers a much-needed release from the city for cricket enthusiasts, local residents and tourists, despite its connection to the Raj. The northeastern edge is lined with clothing vendors and further south one can find the University of Mumbai as well as the High Court, both architecturally and culturally significant to India’s history. The highest concentration of art galleries in the country is nearby as are many Bollywood theaters. Recognizing the value of maintaining such a dynamic space, the Oval-Cooperage Residents Association (ORCA) took over the land in the mid 90s and is largely responsible for what might be the most popular public space in Mumbai. ORCA’s efforts were crucial in allowing the continued activation of this public space while simultaneously releasing it from a static and irrelevant symbol into an evolving resource – an important perceptual shift for any city.

However, Mumbai faces more issues with the preservation of not only public space in its physical state, but also as a shared concept between disparate portions of the population. As was similarly observed in South America, Mumbai appears to suffer from a continually increasing segregation of the population. And again with South America, neither architecture, nor urbanism is responsible such demographics, but neither are they employed to conduct experiments of overlapping programmatic conditions that could potentially lead to a cohesive, yet multifarious typology of public spaces. If these spaces do exist within the city – for example around various markets where cows, spices, electronics and all their consumers rub elbows – it is out of necessity or coincidence, not an attempt to maximize the benefits of complex public spaces.


Ahmedabad
Ten hours north of Mumbai, out of Maharashtra state and into Gujarat lies the sprawling, dusty city of Ahmedabad. Over five million people live and work here, but the overall scale is impossible to sense and you would never guess this is where Gandhi took the first steps toward the coast on his famous Salt March. It is a completely flat region and buildings are seldom beyond four or five stories tall which gives Ahmedabad a very different scale than Mumbai.

One deviation from the clamor of Ahmedabad’s cityscape is Louis Kahn’s India Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM), one of seven business schools under the same ownership and financing via the Government of India. Established in 1961, the university is recognized as one of the most important in India and today churns out MBAs for India’s well-known rapidly developing economy.

Escaping from the city into the campus, the noise, pollution and traffic of Ahmedabad are displaced by cathartic, firmly organized landscapes and meeting places between dormitories, administration and classrooms. These social spaces act as points of transition between interior and exterior, between the university’s different programmatic components. Kahn’s monumental geometries convey the austerity of the institution, but his applied sensitivity to scale, materiality and light return the experience to the individual. His intentions are further articulated in the execution of architectural details that form a broader logic recalling the underlying strategies of Islamic and Hindu architecture I observed during my time in other Indian cities.









It is specifically in the transition of structural elements that Indo-Islamic buildings, as with all Islamic architecture, find an element of their identity, with perhaps the foremost example being the squinch. As an architectural device for transitioning between the circular base of a dome, to polygon and concluding in orthagonal floor plan, the squinch is part of a system for connecting different architectural elements that define separate and/or overlapping spaces. Definition of space is thus influenced by a set of architectural rules, or logic and variations emerge depending on the lineage of craftsman and culture.





Employing variation within a minimal material palette, Kahn establishes his own basic architectural logic throughout the project for defining spatial and material transitions. Only a few brickwork patterns are utilized (Stretcher bonds, Flemish bonds and Header bonds) and concrete is used sparingly in the tension members at the base of arches and commonly for floor slabs. The construction and detailing between these materials evolve elements of historic Indian architecture, as is with the use of the many different arcades. These details, both the structural formations and material transitions, seem to embody an architectural language that provided Kahn his unique ability to shape space.

Though there is clearly a difference in appearance between Kahn’s modern resolutions of masonry construction at IIM and, for example, Sarkej Rosa, a collection of Islamic buildings outside the city (where I fractured my toe). However, a relationship between the two exists whereby both attempt to refine space through the logic of highly articulated geometries (though Islam indulging in more surface complexity) and deliberate expression of materiality. Perhaps then it is no surprise that I was told by a local professor in Ahmedabad that Sarkej Rosa was Kahn’s all-time favorite building.




Delhi, Agra & Chandigarh
Following Ahmedabad, I spent a single day in the indigo city of Jodhpur the Mehrangarh Fort that rises like a mushroom out of the desert. The same day I moved on to Jaisalmer and later ended up in Delhi. Around Delhi, I also visited the nearby cities of Agra and Chandigarh.

Agra possesses three major architectural relics: the legendary Taj Mahal, the once-impenetrable Agra Fort and the eclectic Fatehpur Sikri. Though the Taj is effectively the single most iconic building for India, all three are undoubtedly indispensable historical structures. Architecturally, the three building sites are actually composed of many separate buildings and together they project all of the qualities noted in the section about Ahmedabad, albeit through an array of functions, materials and construction. From the Taj’s white marble whose color reflects the passing of the day to the Fort’s overlapping Hindu and Islamic ornamentation, these buildings are an architectural account of the former Mughal Empire. All three still serve as inspiration for contemporary architects in the country.







Perhaps most interesting is the proximity of Agra to Delhi and Chandigarh despite their disparate representations of India. Sir Edwin Lutyen grafted the monumentality of the British Empire onto Delhi’s landscape in 1931. Yet, with much irony, the British left only 16 years later and the new Indian government occupied the same buildings. The British legacy halted immediately after independence, but was replaced, at least in one instance, with modernism’s vision of the future. After the division of India into what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh, also known as Partition, the state of Punjab necessitated a new capital city. Following American architect Albert Mayer’s proposal, Le Corbusier developed a new urban and architectural vision for Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru’s post-Partition India. Chandigarh emerged as a supposed new progressive identity for the country. However, the urban and architectural vision of Chandigarh failed to take hold in other states.







Thus, India’s premier political chronology – Mughal Empire, British Empire and Republic of India – is accessible within a string of 450 kilometers. Missing is India’s advancement into the global network and subsequent adaptation of the ‘office park’ as the center of financial power. Though I never visited these new Indian cityscapes, the visions crafted by journalists such as Thomas Friedman as well as the stories provided to me by some foreigners living and working in India, I cannot imagine them dissimilar from their American counterparts. However, while critics remain cynical regarding the continual growth of such complexes in the United States, the perception of the banal steel-and-glass office box is still foreign, and stimulating. In search of a contemporary Indian architecture, one that addresses India's rich architectural history and simultaneously speaks of its new global position, one might remain lost. I'm reminded of a one-liner from Wes Anderson's script that might function as a sort of mantra in this context: “We haven’t located us yet”.



(for more photos of India, feel free to visit this link: http://s293.photobucket.com/albums/mm46/archmcp/India/)

China I

HONG KONG
At six-thirty in the morning, Hong Kong time, an old woman across the lightwell down on 15 woke me with a more than just a clearing of the throat. She was really letting go, rattling her lungs with expectorant coughs and wheezes. I know where the sounds came from because I moved to 15 after a couple of days up on 16. Thus the following morning it was even louder and a little earlier, but the room (if only the size of the bed) is clean and has four minutes of warm water in the shower wand over the toilet. Luxurious. No, really.



This is Chunking Mansion, a 16-floor “rabbit-warren” of Guesthouses, Indian and Pakistani restaurants, small electronics stores, internet “cafes”, convenience stores and one perpetually closed women’s underwear store. This so-called mansion is right in the center of Kowloon, a vast shopping and tourist district with no shortage of brand name and imitation brand name anything for sale. Indian men bark at foreigners about tailored suits and Rolexes, while crisp, white fluorescent-washed storefronts with chrome borders sit under enormous, colorful flickering signs that cantilever over the street, advertising anything you can buy. It’s the kind of space for making a purchase, preferably something shiny and new. Consumer space.



For my cell phone, I opted for a shop in the Chunking. Just outside this 8’ x 10’ shop within the Chunking a steady stream of new and used cell phones are unpacked, unwrapped and set on display by a group of Pakistani men. They must sell thousands of phones a month to foreigners like me, which is high volume for such a small outfit, but the wholesale market is probably ten times as strong. During my stay at the second guesthouse, a Nigerian man was crowding the small lobby with 12 large boxes filled with around 3000 cell phones in all. International small-scale businessmen come in, buy loads of electronics and then cart them back single-handedly to their respective countries. Plus, it’s the Chinese New Year (the year of the rat!), a shopping frenzy, so everyone is buying anything they can get their sale-sifting hands on.



Which sheds light on one small aspect of modern China – many of those cell phones, or at least many parts of them are made here, and thanks to marketplaces like this one most of them are also used in the mainland. China – known for all things immense – has a purported 200 million cell phone subscribers and makes up one quarter of the world’s cell phone consumer market. Trying to measure the immensity makes me think of an exhibit back in the Guggenheim in New York where a pile of cell phones, all turned on, lay in the center of the atrium producing a heat wave tangible at twice the diameter of the pile itself. Or for a two-dimensional comparison, if an average cell phone is about 2” x 4”, 200 million cell phones laid flat measure over 11,000,000 square feet, or almost a half square mile. Cell phone companies are steadily producing.

Hong Kong is harnessing the global cell phone culture and linking it to the city’s tourist sites. It’s a sort of orienting device that brings the cell phone back into the physical realm, or at least creates relationships between the information it disposes and the tangible thing before you. Architects and artists have been hurling these ideas around for some time, but Hong Kong, along with a few other international cities, is experimenting with the system.

Though one can presumably gather select information about the Hong Kong region from Buddha sculptures to iconic skyscrapers, the application falls short of anything more than one of those banana-shaped audio guides at a museum near you. Instead, just travel on the area’s modern region’s extremely modern urban infrastructure.



A continually growing system of roads, bridges, buses, trains and ferries has linked Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region – SAR) with the surrounding areas of Kowloon (tourist area to the north), Lantau (tourist area to the west), the New Territories (relatively unpopulated with recreational arena), Macau (former Portuguese colony meets Atlantic City of the East - pictured below), Shenzhen (Special Economic Zone – SEZ) and Zhuhai (SEZ). It’s an economically complex region - China’s richest, but despite this, maybe not it’s prettiest.





SHENZHEN
Crossing the border from Hong Kong (the New Territories actually) into mainland China is an abrupt transition. Because of Hong Kong’s history as a trading post under British rule and its return to China in 1997 as a Special Administrative Region, the area is heavily modernized and wealthy. Hop over the border into nearby Shenzhen and it’s another world. Personally I felt like it possessed some qualities I’ve read about early 20th century Shanghai, when it was deemed the “Whore of the Orient”.





Over twenty years ago Shenzhen was an old fishing village, but now it’s an industrial center recognized as one of the original frontrunners on China’s list of rapidly urbanizing cities. Thus, in China, Shenzhen is recognized as a leader of industry, urban development, shopping, etc., but my experience didn’t fit the latest glowing articles about this modern city nor some of the interesting speculative work for the city.

Just outside the train station, maybe 50 meters from the border, a straight-faced police officer pointed me in the direction of his travel service collaborators for a ticket to Guilin, attempting to charge over twice the actual price (later I bought an official ticket). After traversing a vast plaza and entering a field of high rises, one encounters dozens of offers for the proverbial massage. Shenzhen is also the weekday shopping destination for idle Hong Kong residents. They head north in the morning, hit the dense accumulation of shopping malls within a 5-kilometer radius and return before dusk. Hong Kong can feel gloomy with hazy, grey skies, but entering Shenzhen, entering China, was a different weight. Its the foremost reality of China’s urbanization – masses of rapidly produced consumer centers, industrial centers, business centers, financial centers etc., all in the form of faceless/lifeless architecture seized by a heavy, unremitting smog.

YANGSHUO
To ameliorate my bleak first impressions of China, I took a detour to Yangshuo, a small area renown for its spectacular landscapes and "quaint" villages. While nearby Guilin is developing like the rest of china Yangshuo appears to be strolling along at a comfortable pace. The quiet Li River meanders through small, sharply rising, conical hills, mirroring their every detail. Nearby, several of the country’s 55 minorities (of 56 ethnic groups) make a living, for example the Zhuang among the terraced rice fields in Lonji (aka, the Dragon’s Backbone). Also in the region are the Yao, who have a particular tradition of growing their hair tremendous lengths, beyond a meter, and then wrap it atop their heads until finding their proper suitor.





Though I would have like to have visited more remote areas in the region, including those of particular architectural interest like the Hakka roundhouses in Yongding or the traditional architecture in LiJiang, it was time to proceed to Shanghai.





SHANGHAI
It’s a 22-hour train ride from Yangshuo to Shanghai - plenty of time to develop a plan of attack for arriving at my hostel. The train came to its final destination around three in the afternoon at which time the droves of Chinese returning from Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) disembarked and I sought out the metro. It turns out the train stopped at what is a new station in southern Shanghai, not the older one, the only one my Lonely Planet guide had shown. The guide also indicates only two metro lines, with two more projected; today there are nine with many more under construction. My 2005 Lonely Planet is outdated, as is my 2006 Shanghai book, as is the Frommer’s Shanghai 2007 guide. Media can’t seem to keep up with the city’s ceaseless demolition and re-creation.

The western influences in China accelerated during the middle of the 19th century when the British were flooding China with opium imported from India. The British, among other western countries including America, had a hankering for Chinese tea, silk and porcelain, but had little to offer in return. Opium filled the trading gap and crippled Chinese culture as addiction became a nationwide problem; the Qing government responded by confiscating 20,000 chests of illegal opium and then setting them ablaze. The First Opium War ensued, the British won and the resulting Treaty of Nanking forced the Chinese to cede the island of Hong Kong and five ports (including Shanghai) for residence and trade, and basically gave foreigners free reign in these concessions. Thus from 1842, when the treaty was signed, until 1937 with the advent of World War II in East Asia, Shanghai became the center of occidental-influenced culture in China.





While the Nationalist Republic Party, the Kuomintang, slowly gained control of the Chinese territories in Shanghai, the French and Americans acquired their own concessions (the latter of which would later merge with the British to form the International Settlement) and together with the British would reshape the urban landscape of the city. Because of its size and function as a simple fishing village, Shanghai never received the attention to urban organization, such as a logical, orthogonal street pattern, prior to western settlement that other Chinese cities such as Beijing had; it was no more than a conglomeration of twisting streets of varying lengths and widths, save for the walls of the old city shaped in a large circle. Following the presence of western powers the city continued to grow organically into a mosaic of urban development, subject to the economic forces of international trade and local commerce. Each territory grew independently of one another and without a master plan or set of civic guidelines such as the Laws of the Indies used by the Spanish to build cities in Latin America.

Though no overall plan transpired, smaller localized constructions materialized with some organization, a few of which are still among the most prominent features of Shanghai’s architecture.

The most familiar presence of western influence during this period is the Bund, a wall of stone-clad buildings built in a variety of styles ranging from Art Deco to Italian Renaissance. Facing east and bordering the Huangpu River, the Bund was once the financial and commercial center of Shanghai and later assumed non-traditional, impromptu functions (during WWII the Japanese occupied some of the buildings, such as the American Club as the Japanese naval headquarters or the Hamilton House transformed into the “Enemy Aliens Office”). Many buildings on the Bund and into the former concessions still exist today, serving various institutions. Though some buildings remain empty, the collection of architecture serves as an effective reminder of the western powers that once inhabited the city.





Lilong
Another, more prolific building type built during the same period known is the lilong, or longtang in Shainghainese. The lilong, a housing typology unique to Shanghai and constructed during the period of western settlement, can be translated as “neighborhood lanes”. The lilong pattern is a combination of traditional spatial organizations native to southeastern China and the well-known Row Housing, or Terrace Housing, established in London during and after the Industrial Revolution. The typology arose from an increasing demand for a systematic housing pattern, as millions of migrants relocated to the metropolis. There are several evolutionary stages of the lilong.

The first stage, the Old Shi-ku-men (“shi” meaning stone and “men” meaning door), is characterized by a hybrid brick-and-wood structure. Individual units, arranged in rows, are organized around a south-facing courtyard space and entry, surrounded by principal communal spaces to the north, east and west. Service and private spaces are located to the north and on the second floor. The houses form a line running east-west (each row facing south), thus providing a secondary lane between each row. The organization of each individual unit and the entire south-facing row retain traditional Chinese southward-oriented public or communal spaces. The resulting pattern of solid-void – row house and lane – is the foundation for the lilong typology exclusive to Shanghai.




The second stage, the New Shi-ku-men, maintains many characteristics of the old, but is denser and more compact. Though rows and individual units still face south, the courtyard is often shifted to one side and decreased in size, while an additional story was sometimes added and rooms partitioned off for additional families. The fall of the Ming Dynasty, of Imperial China, in 1911 coincided with the dissolution of tradition extended families and thus, the New Shi-ku-men addressed the first urbanization of Shanghai wherein many small, low-income families were in need of housing. Primary and secondary lane structure is maintained in the New Shi-ku-men Lilong.




The third stage, the New-Type Lilong, includes three different models accommodating a mix of classes, namely the growing social class. During this period, the lilong saw advancements in internal performance and functions, for example bathrooms with plumbing and improved spatial arrangements like a direct entry into the kitchen from the lane, which allowed easy access and allowed one working in the kitchen to monitor children playing in the lane. The three models, constructed of brick, wood and concrete, also take advantage (to different degrees) of increased natural light and ventilation, and respond to new technologies such as the telephone and automobile. Walled gardens replaced the courtyard and the actual façade of the buildings was set back from the lane, behind the garden. While variations occur with the individual plan and outward appearance, the cohesive integrity of the urban block plan remains the same: privacy of the home, semi-private communal spaces, and the semi-public and public lanes.




The fourth stage, the Garden Lilong, takes the form of detached and semi-detached dwellings and represents a shift in the original social and spatial characteristics of the lilong typology. The creation of exterior, semi-private, semi-public and public spaces is no longer inherent to the design. Houses are either detached or semi-detached, which allows more area for light and ventilation, but increases the open space around the buildings, altering their scale and use. The Garden Lilong symbolizes the introversion of social activities associated with the residential environment; it is also interesting to note that spaces such as clubs, theaters and similar venues hosting social activities emerged in greater numbers during this period. Concurrently, the overall cohesion, the parti, of the developments loses continuity with some blocks as individual, detached units sometimes deviate from the row alignment found in earlier evolutions. The Garden Lilong is constructed of concrete and benefits from increased efficiency of internal spatial arrangements, more facilities and the exposed southward-facing garden.




The fifth and final evolution of the lilong no longer follows the original Old Shi-ku-men or British Terrace Housing horizontality. The Apartment Lilong is a vertical structure, resembling the modern apartment block with anywhere from four to six stories with two to four units per floor. They are constructed of concrete with a variety of external finishes. Apartment Lilong are dense and compact, but ultimately deviate from the ground-related lilong up to this point.





In addition to the aforementioned attributes, the first three types of lilong are often bordered by a periphery of commercial spaces contributing to the greater urban fabric. Food, clothing and other goods are available on the same block as the residences, but in the public realm. The threshold between the interior, communal spaces of the block and the exterior is found in the form of two or three gates at the periphery of the block. Even at these thresholds, these edges, small restaurants, flower shops, etc. can be found. Many of the blocks still share this relationship between the private, residential spaces and the commercial public spaces beyond.








The benefits and values featured in various publications about lilong parallel those recognized by the inhabitants. First, there is a benefit in the proximity of living to services such as restaurants, grocery stores, clothing shops, etc. found at the periphery of many blocks. In turn, the area becomes a localized and highly interactive community (I met one man who lived in his unit for over 60 years; he was in fact born in his home and knew every single resident on the block and related history). Secondly, the (original) spatial arrangements of individual units and the overall organization of rows and lanes promote an environment in which inhabitants willfully rely on each other for simple services, including community policing. Overall, the lilong typology offers a complex network of private, semi-private, semi-public and public spaces that together appear to work in sustaining community living.

In general, the lilong provided a very particular type of mixed-use development that arose from the dynamic conditions exclusive to Shanghai. The evolution of the settlement – the transition from a horizontal to a vertical construction, the dissolution of the semi-public and semi-private spaces, and the rearrangement and increased efficiency of interior spatial organizations – illustrates the frenetic period prior to WWII and later development in communist China.

Lilong were constructed in Shanghai from approximately 1842 to 1937, up to the point of the Japanese invasion at the start of WWII in East Asia. After the war, and following the exodus of Nationalists to Taiwan, Mao Tse-Tung and the new People’s Republic of China would essentially halt shanghai’s previous form of urbanization and adopt the Soviet Union’s model of socialism, which effectively abolished private enterprise. Thus, since the beginning of WWII, no additional lilongs emerged whereas apartment high-rises proliferated to accommodate the majority of the working class mobilized for the hopeful five-year plans such the Great Leap Forward beginning in 1958.

In 1962 Mao instigated the infamous Cultural Revolution in an attempt to re-instill socialist ideals in the people, and meanwhile repress capitalist values. It’s safe to say the movement was a disaster and reportedly “the most severe setback to [the] socialist cause since [1949].” Political circles turned circles and Deng Xiaopeng, the former Secretary General, led China into a period of significant political, social, economic and cultural reform following the end of the revolution. Then, from around the early 1980s, China stumbled its way into the present-day blur of ominous statistics. Did you know that purportedly…

“…60% of [China’s] projected 1.5 billion 2020 population, or 900 million people, will live in cities.”

“If the current pace of expansion continues, there will be 140 million motor vehicles on China’s roads by 2020.”

“Only 1% of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union.”

“For air quality, a major culprit is coal, on which China relies for about two-thirds of its energy needs. It has abundant supplies of coal and already burns more of it than the United States, Europe and Japan combined.”

“China has only one-fifth as much water per capita as the United States.”

“…300,000 people die each year from ambient air pollution, mostly of heart disease and lung cancer. An additional 110,000 deaths could be attributed to indoor air pollution caused by poorly ventilated coal and wood stoves or toxic fumes from shoddy construction materials.”

“…China now makes half of the world’s cement and flat glass, and about a third of its aluminum.”

“By 2005, the United States share [of steel production] had dropped to 8 percent, while China’s share had risen to 35 percent…”

“Each year for the past few years, China has built about 7.5 billion square feet of commercial and residential space, more than the combined floor space of all the malls and strip malls in the United States.”

And so on…

(DISCLAIMER: This information is out of context and taken from second-hand sources (or maybe further removed) and therefore I neither claim nor bear responsibility for their truthfulness and accuracy. Besides, once such statistics attempting to measure China’s growth and change are published, they are immediately outdated. This is only a blog after all!)


Shanghai is just one of many cities affected, if not re-created by this period of “flash-urbanization” reshaping China and thus a relevant focus for my huge, all-encompassing Rotch study of all things “global” and what notable shifts are manifest at both the city scale and building scale. It’s overwhelming, but how else does one approach understanding China’s current growth?

Today, lilong are disappearing in the wake of urbanization because these structures were not originally designed for such density; the lilong is not a realistic solution to China’s current housing challenges. Instead, Shanghai is undergoing major urban transformations that have replaced lilong and many other buildings with the universal high-rise apartment complex – typically 20 to 30 stories with parking, modernized facilities and formal security. It would seem that non-descript apartment buildings and the introverted shopping mall are the most common construction in the country today.

Of course, housing and consumer goods are necessarily supplying demand, but can China advance its approach to these challenges with a more critical architecture and urbanism? Can China keep a culture from drowning in its own mass? Can China provide extra-large solutions for its extra-large problems? It would seem a perfect opportunity for establishing evolved settlement typologies that negotiate the influx of China's city-dwellers and their needs with interesting and sustainable solutions.

South America

We're not quite keeping pace with the opposing rotation of the Earth, otherwise the sun would hang on the southern horizon right around 12 o'clock all day, perpendicular to my window. Instead, our steady 519 miles per hour has given the sun a lazy appearance, taking nearly 13 hours to travel south to southwest. We just passed Mt. McKinley and the Bering Strait, and are now gliding toward the International Date Line right into tomorrow. I begin to wonder what kind of buildings one might see at the Bering Strait, but the stewardess interrupts my thoughts, “The score?” I just stare at her, confused. “The Patriots are winning 14-10.” Here, 30,000 feet above the Bering Sea are Patriots fans – a fine thread of globalization up here. Scratch that, “17-14, Giants.”

The South American tour is over and Asia is in sight. So with a total of 17 hours of flight time to kill, it's an opportune time to compile notes and images. From here on out, it will be just one blog, one that merges more academic pursuits with more personal impressions. Or, that's the intent.

Following Brazil, my travels took me down to Argentina, then west over the Andes and up the western edge of South America. Approximately one week, a very short time, was spent in each country. It’s a different way to travel; there is always a lot more to see and less time to acquire an in depth understanding of a place. Still, these quick portraits provide a crucial supplement to a broader cultural perspective of Latin America.



As I traveled beyond Brazil, it became clear very quickly that many countries in South America suffer similar social, economic and political issues. In that respect, it is difficult not to be redundant about some of these characteristics. On the other hand, each country and city possesses a unique identity from which these conditions arise and that contribute to how something is or is not expressed in the form of architecture and urbanism.


ARGENTINA
Flying over northwestern Argentina is like flying over Nebraska; one sees an immense grid penciled across the landscape, plotting agricultural property, webs of urbanity and all that space between. Though it resembles Midwestern America, this landscape lacks some compositional rigidity. Also, in place of a shotgun Main Street slicing through downtown, one finds an equally distributed grid with one or several voids dispersed around center of the town. It is an urbanity organized around property management, political space and public space. It is the townscape of the Laws of the Indies, of Spanish colonization.





There are exceptions, particularly within the more challenging Andean landscapes, but many of towns and old city centers in Spanish-speaking Latin America are organized according to the Laws of the Indies. Mendoza, a small horizontal town in northwestern Argentina, just west of the Andes, is one such example. Mendoza is laid out on a simple grid, with Plaza Indepencia, and four secondary squares a few blocks beyond this, creating a solid-void checkerboard pattern. Further out from the center, the grid remains fairly consistent, with a few adjustments related to topographical variation. Beyond the town proper is the famous wine-producing agricultural region; the edge of the city quietly dissolves into this landscape. Though large, it feels like a slow-moving town, focused on its Malbecs. In other words, the homogenizing affects of globalization are relatively minimal, especially when compared to a city like Buenos Aires.




Due to a variety of historic and geographic circumstances, including Argentina’s relative isolation in terms of Spanish conquest, Buenos Aires has a rich collection of European influenced architecture. From Italian, French Neoclassical, Art Nouveau and modernism, the capital has it all. In the second half of the 19th century, the city modernized with a network of broad avenues not to different than Baron Georges-Eugène Haussman’s avenues constructed in Paris around the same period. As a result, the formal organization of the city is an exception among others in South America, like its architecture.









Contemporary urban development is continuing to change the face of Buenos Aires, particularly along the waterfront just east of downtown. This area, known as Puerto Madero is home to several international business regional headquarters, mixed-use developments including strips of new brick buildings made to resemble industrial building, and a new Calatrava bridge spanning the still-polluted Rio de la Plata. It’s a relatively new area, still under construction and the homogenizing affects of globalization rule the development; the view from TGIFriday’s is an anonymous steel and glass office building, LG I think (the most Argentinean restaurant sits down the river a couple of lochs - Siga la Vaca (‘Follow the Cow’), a steakhouse where one can find everything from crumbly blood sausage to rubbery intestine).

Of course, the argument for a more authentic Argentinean architecture could be made, but in preserving the round-the-clock occupation of a downtown area, this development outperforms the financial-district urbanism clearing out city centers across the world, including America. And still, while visiting the neighborhood, I wondered what Argentineans actually frequent this environment. Or is this development simply maintaining Buenos Aires’ position as a uniquely international city among characteristically Latin American ones? In one or two hundred years, will Puerto Madero acquire the same scale of appeal that historic neighborhoods such as La Boca, Recoleta, and San Telmo have? (And when will they jail that strange man?)










PERU
The most popular tourist site in South America is Machu Picchu, and it is easy to see why. The Incan ruin sits atop a lush, mountain shard at the edge of the jungle just outside of the high Andes and the city of Cusco, once the center of the Incan empire. The combination of archaeological ruin and natural landscape is astonishing. Among all the ruins in northwestern South American, this is the one not to be missed. It is at once an ancient and modern symbol of Peru; a newly elected “Wonder of the World.” The exponential increase in popularity of the site in the past decade has ensured tourism as one of the country’s principle treasures attracting international interest.





Peru has long been appealing because of its known crafts, culture and ruins. In fact, Dwell magazine just published an article on Lima, Peru’s capital, hoping to find something of contemporary architectural movement, but only finding remnants of the past and a few isolated contemporary buildings. There is an open-ended chasm between Spanish colonial architecture and the present. Certainly the city is built up, with over nine million inhabitants in the metropolitan area, and there are simple modern buildings dotted around the city, but there is no identifiable establishment of a uniquely Peruvian contemporary architecture. If anything, one sees the homogenizing affects of globalization as architecture more than a new language.

Miraflores, Lima’s most popular tourist center and (supposed) new cultural center, is a neighborhood like many others in the world. It features all the Starbucks, McDonald’s, KFC, and so on that these centers typically do, while steel and glass hotels rise among shopping centers and international restaurants. Perhaps Miraflores is the new Lima, but it’s the old form of the anonymous international city.





In Lima’s downtown, one can still find traces of the icons of globalization everyone is familiar with, but they adapt to Spanish colonial structures and classical buildings built over the past three centuries. The signs of globalization hide in nooks and niches, around the corner from major attractions like Plaza das Armas. Nothing is destroyed, but then nothing has really evolved. These colonial centers are static, like objects in a museum – artifacts of cultures abandoned or cultures deceased. Still, one cannot help but imagine a new evolution, one in which the architectural languages are not simply catalogued, but are rediscovered and challenged. For example, one could reinterpret the rich wooden balconies suspended off mute stone facades, breaking the wall of the street space. Or perhaps a new ornamental richness could be developed in new building façades, one comparable in textural complexity to the Moorish Baroque churches downtown. Further still, the masonry craft found in Incan temples could be renewed in light of new architectural experiences.





The potential for new architectural explorations is obvious, but realization is a challenge. Again and as in Brazil, there is an issue with the separation of social classes and the isolation of contemporary architecture away from the public realm. What remains to be seen is how Peru will develop architecturally as money enters its economy through both tourism and natural resources and what affect this will also have on the socio-economic landscape.








ECUADOR
The geography surrounding Quito, the capital of Ecuador, is a welcome retreat from the flat, brown and dry landscape of Lima. The city rests in a long thin valley, over 9,000 feet about sea level; altitude sickness is not uncommon for foreigners (coca leaves are employed as a natural remedy in the form of tea, candy or just the raw stuff – chew on it and your gums go numb!). A small hump, atop of which rises a grandiose gothic cathedral, separates the colonial Old Town and the modern, and touristy center, Mariscal.









The Old Town is a fully functioning collection of historic Spanish structures built directly on top of Incan ruins, which in turn were built directly on top of Pre-Incan ruins. Recent studies by the Quitsato research team, suggest that a peculiar east-west alignment of churches in this area share a relationship with the country’s pre-colonial history. This line, established by Pre-Incan societies now beneath the colonial churches, is parallel to the equator just a few miles outside the city. Other Pre-Incan structures notate the actual equatorial line (not to be confused with the French’s monument which is apparently incorrect according to contemporary GPS technology) and have been found to correspond to one another. Thus, a large-scale settlement pattern, designed in relation to solar phenomena and topographical relationships, appears to have been established by Pre-Incan civilizations many centuries ago.





Current development is an entirely new history. In the central area and to the north, the hillsides are filled with staggered massive colorful condo development. Mariscal is a collection of plain structures and tourist traps. To the south is the poorer region, like the periphery of other South American cities. Besides the string of social and political issues of the aforementioned countries, Ecuador also faces the ongoing threat of more than 19 volcanoes. In fact, one volcano, Guagua Pichincha (which I climbed!) is actually immediately adjacent to Quito and erupted recently in 1999, covering the city in a thin veil of ash. (During my visit, another volcano in the city of Banos erupted, whose plume of smoke could be seen right out my window during the flight between Lima and Quito.)



Over time, Ecuador’s architectural identity will likely emerge out of their ability to cope with seismic issues and reconstruction as well as addressing the usual social difficulties. However, one potential path for Ecuador and Quito in particular might include the intentional layering of a new, contemporary architecture related to the country’s ongoing exploration of its cultural identity. The country is at a great advantage, with a very rich and well-preserved cultural history to draw from.


COLOMBIA
After the Andes pass through Peru and Ecaudor, they run along the western edge of Colombia before falling into the Carribean. The Pacific lies to the west of the Andes and the llanos, or plains, stretch east into Venezuela. Jungles are scattered everywhere throughout the country and this is one reference for the country’s division: between the revolutionary forces that live in the jungle and everyone else.

Since the middle of the 20th century, Colombia has been challenged by political and social unrest. The assassination of liberal presidential candidate Jorge Eliécer Gaitán led to the eruption of tensions between opposing political parties. They formed an alliance in an attempt at a resolution, but still found themselves divided. Meanwhile, various revolutionary forces were organizing to fight the government. These groups initially formed by young intellectuals with ‘good’ intentions fell from grace. With little or no money, they formed alliances with drug cartels and over time found their organizations fully corrupt. Many got out and work in Colombian government today, but this also means many politicians have some tie to guerrilla or paramilitary groups.

The struggle between political parties, revolutionaries and drug cartels has more or less left Colombia crippled following World War II to the present day and thus, globalization in Colombia is always in the context of this ongoing battle. As such, it is difficult to discern whether the influences of globalization push inward, as they do in other South American countries, or if the nation actually extends outward as an intentional act aimed at its own dissolution.



The city, whose quantity of masonry construction appears to surpass that of Boston, is intensely red. Bricks are everywhere, including informal construction, simple modern buildings, historical structures, and new contemporary design. Furthermore, architects like Rogelio Salmona developed a contemporary architecture dedicated to the material and detailing, as in the Biblioteca Publica Virgilio Barco. Overall, Bogotá gives the impression of an architecturally rich feeling, one not found in other South America cities. Yet just like any other large South American city, Bogotá has a great deal of social issues, including insufficient housing and infrastructure. Considering its mass, combined with the aforementioned issues, the city can only move so quickly at addressing these problems. Yet, there are organizations attempting to assist those in need, particularly in Bogotá’s eastern periphery.





Un Techo Para Mi Pai, literally “A Roof For My Country”, is an organization that seeks to improve the lives of various Latin American communities through the construction of housing and social programs. Simultaneously, it attempts to tie the lives of young adults outside of these communities to the realities their countries face through a volunteer program. It operates in nine countries total stretching from Central America to South America, including Colombia. It was the last day, the celebration, when I arrived in Bogotá and a friend of mine took me to see the project and how the program works.





The site, in the south of Bogotá, is generally where the poorer populations live, often illegally, but as part of a common process (as in Brazil, the land is ‘loaned’ by the city until it either requests the land back, is purchased by the settler). Individuals were selected in this particular neighborhood for new houses and to form a community organization. National and international companies are solicited for materials, architecture students design the temporary structure and volunteers (sometimes the same students) construct the house. They houses are cheaply constructed and not necessarily pretty, but they provide the basic protection the family needs. As the family and community grow, Techo offers more opportunities for future development. The two grow symbiotically.

In terms of the structure, or building, the basic idea is that one lives in an informal, poorly constructed shack prior to being chosen. They are then offered a period of opportunity with the temporary structure with the expectation that they will eventually acquire a permanent residence. The photo below illustrates the three stages of this process – informal shack, formal 10-year house, permanent masonry house.



Lastly, and the most difficult, is the social formation of the community. Revolutionary forces control many of these poor neighborhoods. In this case, a para-military group controls the area. Any opposition to their control, be it through city police or volunteer organizations, is a threat to their power. As a result, they sometimes react and through intimidation and violence discourage the formal organization of communities. Techo and community leaders have been directly affected.

In Colombia, public and private space is politically charged. Be it new, poorer communities, as in the neighborhood described above, institutions such Universidad Nacional de Colombia or the historical plazas like Plaza de Bolivar, these spaces always function as both a measuring device and stage for the country’s social milieu.






SOCIAL-ANTHROPOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
There is a thread of logic, accessible through the domain of social anthropology, which has been found particularly appropriate for the understanding and response to social issues in South American countries. The entire continent is unique in its investigation and application of this realm of knowledge, to the extent that even the built environment has been strongly informed by it, as in the case of Brazil’s modern architectural movement. Successful or not, the future of South American architecture lies in the ability of these societies to address their social issues and find architectural expression through the logic of social anthropology. If successful, there is an opportunity for an entirely new string of rationalist architecture, an advance beyond the failures of socialism, the obsoleteness of colonialism and the banalities of globalization.