HIGHLIGHTING TYPOLOGIES OF CONTROL

Victor Gruen's Second Mall Southdale in Minnesota
image from http://closedloop.us/2014/10/death-life-american-shopping-malls-pt-1/

In my previous posts, I wrote a brief overview of the socio-political and economic outcomes of having major public spaces shift from bazaars along streetscapes to mega-malls on "islands”, however, before delving deeper into further analysis of these spaces on social interaction and participation, this post will look at the architectural implications of my interest in the bazaars, markets, and malls. What exactly is the problematic of a highly privatized and controlled public space? Are these problems defined through the built-environment? What are some common “problematic” typologies worth noting? After specifying the problem and analyzing each, I will attempt to give an “architectural” response that may hopefully transgress the thresholds (barricades might be more appropriate a word) of corporate architecture onto a space for the commons.

The architecture of shopping malls has changed from its early inception to today. We could probably divide it into two large categories the first being the modernist shopping mall such as Victor Gruen’s Southdale in Detroit, and the more recent “Postmodernist” mega-malls such as the Beirut Souks in Lebanon or Sanlitun Village in Beijing, where both strive to re-create a pastiche village-like feel by fragmenting and dispersing the functions of the mega-mall into multiple buildings that seem to have multiple owners but are in fact still owned by a singular corporate entity. This is eloquently explained in The ‘Magic of the Mall’: An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the contemporary Retail Built Environment, where Goss writes:

“With the contemporary postmodern penchant for the vernacular, this original form is undergoing a renaissance in the specialty center, a collection of high-end outlets that pursue a particular retail and architectural theme. Typically these are also idealizations of villages and small towns, chock-full of historical and regional details to convince the consumer of their authenticity […] In contrast, the modern regional shopping center was built on a large scale with regular, unified architecture. Its harsh exterior modernism and automobile-focused landscaping refused any compromise with the rustic aesthetic.”

Despite these various models, all have common elements. The first and most obvious typological “problem” (and here I place the word problem between quotation marks because what may seem to be a problem to me – is the ultimate solution for developers and corporate entities) is that malls are walled fortresses, even in the case of the postmodern models of malls, the shopping areas are completely segregated from the surroundings and the only view to the exterior is usually the sky. Goss further elaborates on this phenomenon

“Even in the glasshouse malls there are no windows that look out on the world except up at the sky; there are no means but the seasonal promotional activities to determine the time of the year, no clock to tell the time of day, and no means but the identity of retail chains to determine regional location.”

Furthermore, malls are predominantly accessible through automobiles, although more recent models that are in cities are made accessible through limited pedestrian walk-ways, cars were (and may still be) the major mode of transportation to reach these fortresses of consumption. Once cars are parked, the consumer is drawn to the highlighted dramatic entrances that provide “a sense of grand arrival […] into the fantasy world inside” (Goss 1993).

Once inside, everything is controlled, from the temperature which is kept stable to optimize comfort – and according to some sources kept slightly colder than optimum comfort levels to slow mobility, to the movement of people through the circulation. Looking closer at the circulation, several parameters are used to maintain a profitable flow. Firstly, shoppers are dis-oriented through the complex and confusing spaces, this is purposefully done to prolong people’s stay within this labyrinth-like structure in a sort of treasure hunt game. Goss further explain this phenomenon through his words ending with a quote from Foucault:

“This sign-saturated place and its constant motion represent the spatial and temporal displacement characteristic of the postmodern world. We have, therefore, progressed from the shopping center as a modern regional Utopia to a postmodern Heterotopia – “a disorder in which the fragments of a large number of possible orders, glitter separately… without law or geometry”” (Goss, 1993).

In addition to this maze-like configuration, developers claim that they have discovered that an average (American) shopper is unwilling to walk a distance longer than six hundred feet which equals to approximately one hundred eighty two meters (Goss 1993, p32). For this reason, some designers have resorted to curving the mall to make storefronts stand out, make corridors seem shorter, and “funnel and pull(s) people through the center” (Goss, 1993). The widths of the corridors are also usually restricted to six meters, creating an intimate space wide enough for people to flow yet at the same time allow shoppers to explore both shops on opposite sides. Also, Stores with wider corridors tend to fill the space with seating areas or moveable islands of stands (Goss 1993, 34). In terms of the vertical circulation, developers make sure vertical movement is encouraged to display stores on all levels through “glass-bubble elevators, stacked escalator banks, overhanging platforms, and aerial walkways” (Goss 1993, 34). Here it is interesting to note that shoppers circulating in malls have been compared to Walter Benjamin’s flaneur, however Goss in his paper strongly disagrees writing:

“The contemporary flaneur cannot escape the imperative to consume: she or he cannot loiter in the mall unless implicitly invited to do so, and this generally only applies to the respectable elderly; those without shopping bags and other suspicious individuals will draw the attention of security, who use the charge of loitering as grounds for eviction. Moreover, shoppers do not independently pick their way like the leisurely flaneur, but follow the meticulously conceived plan which has plotted paths, set lures, and planted decoys for its purpose” (Goss 1993, 35).

Not only are the trajectories obviously marked out by developers and designers, but in a recent study titled Shopping in a mall: A typology of four shopping trips, Aurelia Michaud Trevinal categorizes shoppers into four groups according to the most common trajectories taken within one mall which include:

“Trajectory ‘type 1’, titled ‘passing through’, is used by shoppers who use the shopping mall as a transit zone” […] Trajectory ‘type 2’, called ‘pragmatic’, makes up a large part of the itineraries observed in this research, with relatively linear paths, no retracing and toward a particular point of sale […] Trajectory classified as ‘appropriation’ that reveals an exploration of all the available commercial offers. Trajectories […] classified as ‘meandering’ correspond to the recreational dimension of shopping like the leisure shoppers, who hang out in the malls.”

In addition to the circulation, both the indoor lighting and the music are controlled to soothe shoppers. Both are compared to “silent salesmen”, and according to Goss, some studies also show that foreground music may increase sales by up to 40% (Goss 1993, 35).

Finally, Goss writes that “Spaces and surfaces should be filled because, if everywhere in this environment there is a sign, the absence of a sign becomes a sign of absence: perhaps signifying a lack of anticipation and consideration on behalf of the developer, or more seriously, the perceived emptiness of consumption itself, but inevitably inviting a motion to fill the void” (Goss 1993, 35).

Looking at the above mentioned typologies of control, my aim will be an attempt to re-structure the conventional mall to allow local civilians and inhabitants to re-claim their public space. The basic preliminary design methodology is to try to abstract the modes of control then break it apart. My focus will be specifically on the circulation, which I will try to disperse and connect to the surrounding urban fabric seamlessly allowing for several points of entry and exit. In addition, I will aim to find a convenient system where both producers and consumers can interact by including workshops, retail spaces, food courts from local cuisines, and an entertainment zone that is also an inviting space for street performers and other local talented individuals. As a final point, the attempts will be clarified through a consistent exploration through formal experiments between form, function, and an organization pattern that allows all to co-exist interdependently.

TYPOLOGY AND THE SECRET BOOK OF CHANGES

First I have to claim my understanding about Typology.

It's from the very basic idea of typing.With the knowledge material accumulating, it's harder and harder for a ordinary people to understand some area in a whole.So we started to type. Seemingly everything can be typed, and when we listed all the types we can find, we finally don't need to understand everything one by one, but just the few types can give us a glance at the whole thing.

Typing from a information organization method becomes the first few steps to process when we started designing.

There comes the problem. We've been travel a lot these days, when I saw the typology models in GSAPP, I find it surprisingly similar to those I saw in Tokyo, GA gallery a architectural exhibition by Fujimoto. Not like infinite reality, types are limited, when types got general, it's transforming from your first glance knowledge to your easy methods, which strongly restrained you creativity.

Ancient Chinese people have done this thousands of years ago, but in a mysterious way. As everybody understand, Chinese traditional culture strongly rely on consistency, everything has the inner similarity.This idea is very geometry, like fractal geometry.So they started to type, but in a more ambitious way, they want to type the world, everything.That is the book describing changes called" zhou yi"

This book describes everything, and have been used as future telling for thousands of years. But it's a very blurred guide, only describe a trend.You can see from the picture above.It's not a simple type,it's a type system, a complex typology system. Everything come from the origin, which is in the middle. And it divided into Yin and Yang, positive and negative, Yin and Yang then becomes 4 quadrants, 4 quadrants becomes 8 Gua, which is known as a basic component, we can already use 8 Gua to do some very basic assumptions.8 Gua then become 64 sub-types then so on.

Let's look back to architecture.

Now a days typology can be seen everywhere, beautifully placed in grids, looks productive. For me, it's more likely something a graphic, especially the types got a huge number. It seems that, sometimes, typology isn't helping us make things easy, but make it meaningless.

There's a building there.
Analysis its facade - 1 drawing of typology
Analysis its plan - 1 drawing of typology
Analysis its structure - 1 drawing of typology
....

I would prefer regard architecture as a living creature. It's a whole like traditional Chinese concept of consistency. We can study typology, research typology. But when we design, we shouldn't divided each part of the architecture and typing them separately. Use typology to analysis is easy to get what you want, a series of choices, but these choices is from analysis, not from the research of the site, of the daily life, is not human.

Nowadays, we can see that the transforming between analysis diagram and real architecture is always missing. Some projects, just like diagram directly jump into real, simple and brutal, losing the humble to the context, to the people's use.Part of it is because of the using of typology methods in a wrong way.

Typology comes from big data, but turns out to be the dominator of new possibilities.

What if we can develop something not according to any existed typology?
It seems impossible because what we can do must have been done. But if we regard the architecture as a whole that's totally possible.Typology means to package, package all the information into a simple envelope so they can be discussed. If we can un-package, open the package and design distinctively.

I think the Chinese ancient book is aiming the same thing. Typology can give you a direction, but just to clarify what you need,and what already been done. The design is a serious of choices that consist a tree of decision that can not be typed, and the design process can use typology research as a reference, but not let these researches restrain your mind of creating something that can not be typed.

CAMOUFLAGE TYPES

Serpentine Pavilion, Sanaa, 2009 

The word "camouflage" comes from the French verb camoufler, meaning to mask or disguise. Its methods were largely pursued during WWI and WWII for concealment of factories and civilian areas and to confuse bombers. During the later war, design schools such as the Pratt Institute and the Chicago School of Design offered courses for students to learn and develop camouflage techniques. Students were taught the principles of visual perception together with the latest technologies of vision (which also had to be deceived). Visual studies were based on modern painting and Gestalt, and three of the main concepts were: patterns (which break up the shape of an object), shadows (which allow a shape to be three dimensionally perceived), and texture. According to Joy Knoblauch, this was a unique period in which architecture possessed an area of expertise aligned with science and technology with a social purpose of civilian defense.

[A]

[B]

Roy Behrens explains us two main types of camouflage: “Low visibility camouflage [fig. A] is a subversion of the difference between figure and ground, so that the things appear to be one, while dazzle camouflage [fig. B] destroys the homogeneity of the figure, so that one thing appears to be two or more.” He also calls our attention to the fact that camouflage and cubist painting used the same strategies to confuse the observer and to make things appear to be simultaneously in front and in the back of another figure.

The two types were applied to what is called passive and active camouflage. The passive one was normally applied to fixed elements and was related to the intention of concealment. Therefore it used the low visibility strategy, and examples of this are vegetation layers over the protected object or painted textures to the roofs of buildings. However, the active camouflage was related to the idea of the dazzling paintings in ships, and their purpose was to confuse the enemy regarding the actual position and direction of the ships.  The technique here was the creation of ambiguous perspective lines.   

Trying to further understand how camouflage is applied to architecture without military motivation, I have so far encountered two different categories: one regarding the object that is being hidden and the other regarding its technique.  First, the building can try to camouflage itself in relationship to it context (natural or artificial), or it can dazzle what is happening underneath its interface between interior and exterior, which is the case of translucent materials or perforated layers. Second, the building can base its camouflage by imitating some aspects of its context, or it can simply reflect its context.

I see Beires House by Alvaro Siza as using the first technique. Its volume and proportions resembles the one of the other neighbor houses, and it is precisely this resemblance that drives our attention directly to when he breaks the volume pattern with his “exploded corner”. As for the second technique, Sanaa’s Serpentine Pavilion is the best example for me, making the building both disappear and acquire a strange presence. 

Beires House, Alvaro Siza, 1979

    

BIOANALYSIS OF CORALS

The most popular method of creating new land is by landfill of sand, silk or debris. The way that engineers use this method has been proved inappropriate many times, but they keep on proposing it. In addition to the example of Mumbai, that I have already written about, another example is the recent land expansion in Dubai known as Palm Island, where architects created a shape influenced by nature. This landfill prevents water flow, while causing problems in the city and the ecosystem. It is not the fill of sand in the water that causing the problem but the final shape of the new land that is created, a shape totally stranger to water currents that does not take into consideration the ecosystem and the physical environment. I believe architects should find solutions into the analysis of nature. It is the most successful paradigm. Living organisms and water have succeeded living together as an integrated hole many years before the human life appeared. In contrast, architecture has proven that is not able to deal with water or physical changes, mainly due to the unadaptability of its structure.

In this research I am proposing another way of designing the expansion of the city of Mumbai into the sea, by analyzing the coral reefs expansion and understanding what is the ‘magic’ that leads to this successful relationship between the water and the organisms. If someone traces coral reefs or small islands from Google Earth images, he could easily observe that due to their organic natural shape they allow water to move freely around them. This hydrodynamic shape is not something that they choose to have, but is the result of hundreds of years of friction between water and land. Moreover, water flow has created narrow passages in the islands that lead in a fast movement and a natural filtration. The static movement of the water is the main factor of pollution in the cities nowadays.

Looking closer to coral reefs morphology will benefit my design process. Coral reefs are diverse underwater ecosystems held together by calcium carbonate structures secreted by corals.[1] Corals and reefs are combining in one whole, which means that stony corals create the reefs and are attached with them. Corals are well known for their structure in architecture as many architects use it as an influence for the building design sometimes aesthetically and sometimes functionally or both.  For example Norman Foster’s in the Gherkin Tower created a hexagonal skin inspired by the Venus Flower Basket Sponge. This sponge sits in an underwater environment with strong water currents and its lattice-like exoskeleton and round shape help disperse those stresses on the organism. Its hydrodynamic stability is something that inspired him in order to deal with the air movement and pressure. In this project he used biomimetic principle not only to maintain stability but also for aesthetic purposes.  Specifically for my research, I am not examining corals as a unit that could provide inspiration for a building design, but I am trying to understand how the multiplicity of different coral-units leads in the expansion of coral reefs. Moreover I am trying to understand how unit coral and coral function together as a unit and how this system leads in maintaining the water currents.

The closer bio-analysis in the topography of coral reefs is very important for my proposed expansion in the sea of Mumbai. Coral reefs topography is changing continuously, depending on the size and shape of corals. Specifically the variability in the geomorphology occurs from the nature of the substance on which they rest and the history of sea level relative to that substance. This is similar to the physical geomorphology of the islands and the variability in their form that they develop as years goes by. The only difference is that they are independent of the structures that grow and habited their land, resulting in a complete confusion between physical and technical environment that does not function efficiently.

Another characterization of corals that concerns my research is their reproduction method. Coral reefs reproduction becomes mostly asexually, by cloning. There are two ways of creating corals with this method. The first is by splitting a smaller polyp from an adult while the second is by division where two polyps are produced but in the same size of the original. The cloning, in this reproduction method, supports rapid habitat exploitation. Moreover, it allows biomass to increase without a decrease in surface-to-volume ratio.[2] ‘Cloning’ is very popular in architectural design and is happening mostly unconsciously by the architects. The idea of cloning in architecture, of course, has nothing to do with the idea of cloning in natural reproduction. Their only similarity is the ‘benefit’ of fast production of land. In contrast, architectural cloning is not becoming in response to an environmental issue and does not benefit the environment, it does not even taking into consideration that issue. So, cloning in architecture is not becoming as a benefit of a larger scale system and has nothing to do with the connection of the environment. In my research cloning or better say multiplicity of the same unit in different scales, will produce a whole unit (land and building) that act together beneficially in response to the environment and especially to the water. My ultimate goal is to create a new land expansion that, influenced from coral reefs will cooperate with water successfully..

The physiology of corals and the way that they function as a unit is also important for my research as they obtain self sufficiency, something that each architect dream about. Corals obtain their energy from photosynthetic algae that live within their tissue. This is very important as they depend on the tides in order to flourish or not. Water levels arrange the amount of photosynthesis on plankton, therefor in flourishing. In a similar way my design will use the water and the plants in order to function efficiently and gain the appropriate energy. The unpredictability of water levels and the dependence on different tidal levels is also something that concerns my project. The new city of Mumbai should be able to work and function with flood or without flood.

In a smaller scale corals are the production of the connection of multiple same tiny polyps. These small animals interconnected by a complex and well-develop system that is responsible in the transport of nutrients.  They are form by a layer of outer epithelium and inner jellylike tissue. Moreover they are radially symmetrical, with tentacles surrounding the central mouth, through which food is ingested and waste expelled. The outer layer of the polyps produces the exoskeleton. They also contain tentacles that protect the polyp in case of danger and a nervous system, which is responsible for their living. In architecture, polyps could be seemed as the smallest unit that creates the building –brick, stone, concrete, wood. These materials are mostly unadaptable to the environmental conditions. Nowadays, with the help of nanotechnology, researchers try to create new kind of materials, known as living materials that could create a totally different image of the city.  The response of materials to the environment is something that will benefit my design. The constructions and the city expansion will gain energy from the appropriate use of these smaller units. In conclusion, the analysis of the structure of the corals benefits my research. The way that cities are designed, cannot contribute with water subsistence, but this is not a reason for architects or humans to turn their back to the water. I believe that we could live with water successfully, if we change the design of our future cities. Moreover, cities and people need the water in order to survive, so why not use the water for efficiently, as corals do? My ultimate goal is to create a whole (land-structure-material) that could correspond beneficially to the environmental conditions in order to gain the appropriate efficiency for its living.

---

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coral_reef

[2] ibid

TYPOLOGY: THE CASE OF AQUATIC PLANTS

http://www.wired.com/2013/10/beautiful-microscopic-art-is-also-world-changing-science/#slideid-493473

Adaptation is the evolutionary process whereby an organism becomes better able to live in its habitat or habitats. Theodosius Dobzhansky. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation#cite_note-Dobzhansky_T_1968-15

The ability of aquatic organisms to adapt is something that architects should learn from. Based on the question that I introduce in my previous text, of how the city of Mumbai would expand if it were to grow naturally, my design requires an analysis of the evolution of multiple adaptable living organisms.

Looking specifically at organisms that grow in the water, the research will adopt the evolution process of these living organisms – plants, coral reefs. Water is an incredible important component to the civil life on Mumbai because first of all the city of Mumbai continues to expand on the water, secondly during the Monsoon months the amount of precipitation that receives is big and thirdly floods are very often which lead in a direct relationship between water and architecture. For all the above reasons both the land expansion of Mumbai and the architectural design in the water should imitate the development and function of aquatic organisms. The analysis of these organisms and the decomposition of their natural ‘shape’, is important in order to understand the relationship between them and water flow.

Living organisms have the magical capability to grow and successfully adapt to the environmental conditions and the physical changes of their surroundings. This function is something that architecture should mimic in order to coexist with environment. If the current architecture in Mumbai had the flexibility of living organisms to adapt in the environmental and physical conditions, many of the problems that the city faces would be different.      - Symbiosis: συν + βίος-           Take as example the successful adaptation and evolution of cells to new environments. As living organisms grow they become more specialized in extreme conditions.                   -Evolutionary biology-                     In a similar way architecture should adapt and process evolutionarily.

Organisms that adapt to live in aquatic environments will help architects to understand how architecture could expand in the water, without damaging the physical environment. In this study for this purpose, I will examine the following organisms:

-        Helophytes: plants rooted in the bottom, but with leaves above the water line.

-        Numphaeids: plants rooted in the bottom, but with leaves floating on the water surface.

-        Pleuston: vascular plants that float freely in the water.

-        Coral reefs: diverse underwater ecosystems.

Instead of plants that survive on the earth or fully submerged in the water, this design project analysis the typology of plants that exist either on the surface of the water or plants that are on the ground but with leaves above the surface of the water. The method that these plants develop and function is important paradigm for the creation of architecture on the water. Moreover the examination of coral reefs development could contribute in the expansion of the land in the water surface.

The structure of most of the aquarium plants includes: roots, stems, leaves, storage organs, and flowers.(1) The aquatic plants have a special structure in order to float. The dome of their leaves is capable through variability in the size of their intercellular spaces to trap gas bubbles and in this way maintain buoyancy and provide mechanical support. The submerged aquatic leaf anatomy is different from the floating. While the first has only three-cell thickness and the shape is linear, ribbon-shaped or finely dissected, the second contains numerous cells that make it thick and the leaves are rounded or lobed. (2) This condition is known as ‘Heterophylly’ where the same organ has a change in form according to the environment. One important lesson from this kind of plants is that some floating leaves have waxy surface so that water may not wet the surface and block stomata (3). Moreover, as for stability methods the submerged leaves intercellular air spaces are not well developed, in order the plant to remain submersed by having greater specific gravity. The highly dissected underwater shoot can be tugged at and pulled by water currents without damaging the segments.(4) The appropriate minerals are collected from the epidermis of the leaves.(5) In the epidermis there are chloroplasts that function as photosynthetic tissue and provide with energy the plant.(6) Moreover, through air channels, gases are transferred from shoot to the root in order to help the development of the plant. Furthermore, the stem is spongy due to the air channels that transfer the gases. Finally, the roots function more as foundation than as water absorbance. (7) Whereas the roots of some free-floating plants are very important as they preserve the appropriate stability.

Architectural design could benefit from this analysis. For example, the case of gas captivity is very important for structures that could float in the water, as in this way they could carry their own weight using air. In a similar way of Heterophylly, architecture units should maintain a different structure inside and outside of the water surface, in order to deal with the different environmental conditions. Below the surface the most important parameter is the water currents and the stability, while above, the environmental parameters that matters are the water flood, the air and the sun. The multiple functions of the leaves could contribute in the inspiration for the design or materiality. Moreover the way that the leaves prevent flooding using the waxy surface seems to be a prominent method, which architecture could inspire from.

The understanding of the hydrodynamic structure of the aquatic plants is very important for structures in the water, in order to succeed the perfect symbiosis between architecture and water flow.

1. http://aquaticplants.animal-world.com/PlantDescriptionandStructure.htm

2. http://www.biologydiscussion.com/plants/morphological-and-physiological-adaptations-of-hydrophytes/4583

3. ibid

4.http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/lifeforms/aquaticplants/fulltextonly.html

5. http://www.biologydiscussion.com/plants/plant-adaptations-introduction-and-ecological-classification-of-plants/6902

6. ibid

7. http://www.slideshare.net/BiologyIB/plants-powerpoint-3983594

CAMOUFLAGE

OMA, Très Grande Bibliothèque, 1989

No matter how much we can use the other senses to perceive an architectural work, vision is still the one most directly related to the apprehension of space and the creation of new memories associated with them. This way, it is important to justify the return to a formal and visual speech. 

Branko Mitrović argues in his book “Visuality for Architects” that today, differently than two decades ago, it is possible to talk about purely visual and formal interaction with architecture, independent of our concepts and ideas associated with them.  Under the influence of the Gestalt theory and psychological studies of the 1950’s disseminated by people like Gombrich and Norberg-Schulz, it was believed that every perception was cultural, which meant that there was “no innocent eye”.  Therefore, since perception of space was attached to cultural influences and completely subjective, it made no sense to talk about visual qualities. Furthermore, the understanding that there is no thinking without language – “everything is a text” - contributed to an increasing intellectualization of the discipline, and the justification of projects only through their narratives (instead of its material qualities) took place.

However, psychology has evolved during the 1980s and 1990s with the idea of the “non-conceptual content”.  This means that cultural concepts do not influence what and how we perceive, but only the way we recognize and create meaning for our percepts. Visuality is no longer individual and can be once again claimed in architectural discourse. With this in mind, now I am allowed to pursue an architectural argument based on visual qualities of buildings and their relationship to their context.

“To be democratic, one must acknowledge what exists”, said Rosalyn Deutsche, and the presence of difference in the endless urban environment is crucial for people to become consciously aware of the space they live in and their position towards it.

However, differently than what Aureli suggests with the creation of well-defined boundaries and archipelagos inside the city, I believe that this difference has to occur in a much more dialectical relationship with the context of the place a building is inserted in.  In other words, instead of creating difference with a complete alien object - what has the potential of creating a schizophrenic experience, detached from reality – my aim is to create this difference once the general framework of the object is integrated with its context. This first step of blending can be called camouflage.

Regarding OMA’s use of camouflage in the façade of the Très Grande Bibliothèque, Neil Leach identifies it as a mechanism that allows an individual react to design by both blending in or standing out of a certain environment. However one chooses to react, what is important is that people react to it.

Additionally, what interests me about the strategy of camouflage is that it can be much deeper if applied not only to the appearance, but also in all invisible layers that constitute a building, such as programming or movement vectors. The first step of my work will be to identify patterns in all these layers so later I can be able to subvert them and create the desired difference.

REDIFINING TENURE

The first criteria for what defines “adequate housing” according to the UNHCR is:

"legal security of tenure, especially in the form of protection against forced evictions;"

Brookings Institute pg. 130

Tenure is the most difficult issue to overcome with housing that hovers between temporary and permanent housing. Most often it is mired in the longevity of solving complex political situations as well as the government accepting a situation they still aim to change. Tenure begins with solidarity of ownership, whether that be an individual or an entity, public or private. Renting and cooperatives have stemmed from this unilateral stance on land ownership. However, there are many historical examples of creating communal ownership or removing ownership, often led by socialist and communist intellectuals. 

Ownership has come to signify stability in many countries, both at a large scale and within an individual's ambitions. In establishing a new state, regulating land tenure is one of the first requirements for preventing rogue individuals from monopolizing control through power. Within an individual life, home ownership becomes a goal of achievement, not only as "the American Dream" but the global dream. It is difficult in society to remove this notion of ownership, but it provides a solution to the complex issues of land tenure in displacement situations that is in some ways more realistic than settling individual ownership. 

Tony Garnier provided a model in his Cite Industrielle. While most of the socialist models do not deal solely with tenure, it is what is included in that effort that also interests me. Tony Garnier provided "a significantly radical break with the traditional definition of an architect's role in society" (109). He believe in a "productive alliance between a reformative city government and an architect" (110). He "synthesized in one body of work all the principles that subsequently redefined an architect's role in society" and showed that "architecture should apply itself to the task of bettering society" (112). 

Garnier's definition of adequate housing was based on light and required "at least one window to the south, big enough to light the entire room and allow direct sunlight"--this also went for any enclosed space (114). While he only specified these regulations for private home, he strongly suggested that they apply to all public buildings as well. He regulated density by saying the only half of all plots of land may be built up. He required that the unbuilt of the lot had "unimpeded passage from the street to the building" (115). All buildings were placed at the back of the lot, so there was a contiguous defacto park open to the public between all the buildings. Streets were set at 43-66 feet wide, and landscaping was required. (It should be noted that there was a height restriction which limits available density). 

Labor components were inherent in urban socialist models. Employment offices and union officers had "guest quarters and restaurants for persons waiting to work," similar to the worker's clubs of USSR (116). Finally, "each section [was] arranged so that it can grow independent of other sections," whether that be schools, hospitals, labor halls, or housing. Garnier embeds a caveat that the city can adjust and accommodate its needs as it grows.