III-4. Multilayered structure of space

City within city

    The phenomenon of “the city becomes invisible” occurs as cities become huge. The medieval and modern cities of Europe, many of which are still thriving, are enclosed compactly within city walls, as is well known, and the form of the city can clearly be discerned at one look. However, the cities of the modern ages let city walls useless and gigantic cities called metropolis or megalopolis appeared in the 20th century, which have no longer a boundary line. In current cities, infrastructure such as expressways stands out, and cities have become thought of as almost purely expansionary. Thus, the theme of “city structure” has gained precedence over the theme of “city form”.

    If we are asked whether the human connectedness of the small cities has disappeared as people began living in high densities, we may or may not say there are some. As cities continued to become larger, they did not change into new one-dimensional structural systems, but old systems were left scattered behind even where it had been attempted. Thus, within this kind of old small-scale system, images of cities with the initial human connectedness were left behind. Now, these are not called “cities” but are grasped using a partial concept as “city precincts” called “viertel” (German) or “cartier” (French).   

    The phrase “city within city” was born within this awareness. If we put this in an easy-to-understand way, the former “cities” are the huge modern cities and the latter “cities” are the old image of cities that are now called “city precincts.” This idea caused a big reaction in the various countries in Europe that has a smattering of historical small cities and city precincts. In the 1970s there was a movement to preserve the urban environment called “amenity” together with a movement to preserve historical precincts. This idea can be understood more easily by considering the historical “downtown” areas within the giant city of “Tokyo.” There can be found a universal theme of Modernism exceeding over regional identities, and this again brought about the universal problem of organic city forms versus inorganic city forms.

    The city of Vienna is clearly divided into a city center and peripheral area by a wide ring road called “Ring (Ringstrasse)”. This is a good example for envisioning the “city within city”. Within this “Ring” is a medieval town embedded within more modern streets around this core, and outside of the “Ring” sprawls a modern city. This kind of clear city structure was made possible because the “Ring” is the place where the city walls of early early modern ages originally ran, and has been replaced with a wide road without changing course.

    As this city structure of Vienna is both reference material for knowing the way of expansion and development of a city and is also important from the nostalgic viewpoint of reevaluating, preserving, and rejuvenating the older city precincts of today, this has attracted renewed attention in recent years. People thought that old city precinct is left behind at the core of the huge city which hides an important and unique value for the urban life. The viewpoint of an urban structure composed of multilayered rings has confronted the spatial image suggested by the theory of the modern city planning which rejected the unhygienic environment of the old city precincts, and has created a new city planning concept of the type of anti-development and preservation. The city is regarded as sound when the core of old precinct is enveloped with several layers of shells.

    A variety of efforts started for the “International Building Exhibition (IBA) 1987” that was planned for 1987 (although it was originally planned for 1984, it was delayed by 3 years). The theme of this was creating “livable city” once again by rejuvenating the life in the contemporary cities that were declined to lose the flavor of humanity. It was here that the idea of “city within city” had a large influence. The value of pre-modern cities was rediscovered for modern cities and an attempt was made to realize urban spaces that were more familiar to people.

    The theme of this architectural exhibition included double partial themes, namely “city renewal (Stadt Erneuerung)” and “city repair (Stadt Reparatur)”, and the the architectural exhibition was divided into two with separate organizations under separate leaders (architects Josef Paul Kleihues and Hardt-Waltherr Hämer). This had the difference of, on one hand, focusing on new construction of buildings and, on the other hand, focusing on preservation of buildings. It could also be said that, on one hand, the former focused on the aesthetic side of urban spaces, while, on the other hand, the latter focused on the social organization side of urban precincts. Although at a glance these two themes and organizations appeared as if they would fracture the uniformity of the exhibition, they, at the same time, showed the need for a diversified yet integrated approach to the prescription required for a “livable city”.

    Both terms, “renewal” and “repair”, are the words that incorporate the element of time. Here the problem was: what kind of building activities should be undertaken through the flow of time of past, present, and future. This could be said to be an attempt to fill the gap created between the old urban space and new urban space, in other words, the city of the past and the city of the future. Thus, the problem of following the flow of time, namely the problem of diachrony, is transformed to the problem viewed as a cross-section of present time, namely the problem of synchrony, attempting to replace the theme of time with the theme of space.

    The city of the past was a small city; the city of the future is a large city. The image arises from the spatial structure of the old city enveloped by the new city. Although the new city cannot form without destroying the old city to some degree, this must run down the old city completely. The thesis that a city suitable for humans to live in is achieved for the first time thanks to the coexistence of both leads to the lesson that modern people learnt from the various failures through the process of constructing a modern city. This doubled structure was found well under the ideal of a “livable city”.

    The concept of “city within city” took shape in an operation that the dwelling condition is examined in the smaller administration unit, for example Kreuzberg district, stepped down from the viewpoint of a large city, focusing even further on a space several hundred meters square within that district, and that the prescription is wrote to preserve the organic harmony of the present urban space. It is composed of a series of blocks, namely spatial units formed with rows of buildings  enclosed by the periphery streets,  which is vaguely equivalent for the spatial unit of “町 (cho)” in Japanese. This envelops some parks or squares that form the vital core of this unit zone space. Just as same as a small-scale medieval town was urbanized surrounding a central square, where market was held, a similar thing can be rediscovered and the value as a human community is found again in such modern assembly of blocks.

    It’s difficult to bring to mind an overall image of a huge modern city. And even if it’s all possible, it will be regarded as an interwoven mechanism of inorganic buildings. In contrast, this urban district level is formed as a certain firm level of the organic dwelling space units of human faces, which should not be forgotten. However, the giant structure of large cities with a thin scent of humanity also creates its own unique level that cannot simply be rejected as inhuman. The total space of a city can in fact also be split into a large hierarchy similarly as that the human body can be divided into many levels from the solid level, the level of internal organs, the level of cellular structure, to the molecular level, atomic level, elementary particle level, and finally the quark level. In terms of this, focus on the intermediate level of the city precinct can be nothing more than rediscovery of a single concealed level.

    If we also trace the characters of the various blocks contained in a single city precinct not in the diffusive direction from the inside to the outside, but in the centripetal direction from the outside to the inside, then there is a complete change of appearance. Looked at from the viewpoint of construction projects in particular, block level planning strategies are effective, and the block type construction methods have been reevaluated and taken over to the realization. This is clearly shown, for example, in the block type construction of the Northern part of Ritterstrasse which was newly constructed in the Southern part of Friedrichstadt designated as one of the districts for the IBA exhibition (Fig. 63, 64). As this was designed by several architects under the master concept by Rob Krier, the styles of each part differed slightly. However, it formed an overall clear spatial structure of four or five story buildings densely packed around courtyards.

    Each block here, that could also be called “city precinct within a city precinct”, has autonomous spatial characteristics, which also form a single unit of social organization which has a closed courtyard within the block as a core of everyday community activities. The rows of building constructed along the roadsides seem as if protecting robustly and warmly the small familiar social space within. The character of the heavily layered structure of urban space reveals one of its cores here.

  The modern urban planning theory of the first half of this century proposed the idea of creating open residential space in the suburbs with fresh air, luscious green, and sufficient sunlight, while high density buildings were arranged in the city core such that the city core space becomes like the interior of a giant machine. In contrast, this proposed the creation of small units of idyllic urban space also within the city center. This showed a prioritization on a more romantic, intuitive, and holistic image of residential space, compared to the mechanistic image of residential space.

Architecture within architecture

    Oswald Mathias Ungers presented a theme of “the house within the house”, while he was designing the “Deutsches Architekturmuseum” (Frankfurt a.M., 1984, Fig. 65, 66), and realized it there. This concept was to reuse the outer wall of the existing historistic building constructed more than a hundred years ago and attempt to cleanly ameliorate the interior, inserting a smaller house form with a gabled roof into the interior of the square shaped outer wall. A kind of duplicated structure was formed as another building with the dimension of one third to one quarter was built within the existing building.

    For this idea of “the house within the house”, Ungers explained it comparing with an overpacked chest like, and further, raising for example the painting “L'importance des merveilles (The Importance of Marvels)” (1927) drawn by Rene Magritte using surrealist method which showed that several much smaller bodies are repeatedly inserted inside a larger body.* Ungers used this idea to present the theme of autonomy of architecture that had lost an autonomous character bothered by a variety of realistic factors. People who entered the “Deutsches Architekturmuseum” were faced with another small house shape before their eyes, creating the odd feeling of still being outside despite being inside a building. Then, when people enter into the smaller inside building they are hit with the feeling of actually having entered a building that they did not feel upon first passing through the entrance. People feel constrained there to recognize the more pure idea of “architecture”.

    The duplicated concept of the architecture of a museum with the theme of architecture was expressed by a real building shape. This kind of extremely conceptual and revealing design is nothing more than a simple idea that invites more deeper interpretation. This resembles the multi-layered spatial structure of the “city within city” and let associate us with the multi-layered structure of “architecture within architecture. This does not merely mean that the scale of the urban space is reduced to the scale of the architectural space, but represents the multi-layered character of psyche corresponding to the multi-layered spaces of the actual social life.

    Furthermore, in addition to this multi-layered character of telescope like nesting form displayed over the floor plan, the internal structure constructing “the house within the house” has four stories, a meeting room in the basement like a crypt and three stories of exhibition rooms above that. People will polish gradually his spirituality as they ascended through the stairs step by step. The small house form placed at the highest point is a completely simple, white, gabled house that is lit up almost divinely like a temple. Although we don’t know if Ungers was inspired by the white marbled and gabled form of some Greek temple, it evokes the feeling of some kind of connection. Indeed, the architectural form of the Greek temple spanned history as the ideal form of European architecture and the origin of the idea of “architecture”.

    As described earlier (see Fig. 55), Laugier in the 18th century advocated the principles of architecture up to the primitive hut with a gable roof supported with standing logs in “Essay on Architecture.” But the house form of Ungers was reminiscent of this. The theoretical demands of Ungers to turn the action and workpiece of “architecture” into the main issue were affected by such philosophy of the Enlightenment. Because, while the philosophy of the Enlightenment by Laugier was to pierce the simple temple architecture with colonnades and to go back to the architectural action of the ancient human being, Ungers also envisioned the house form as the archetype abstracting the shape of the temple.

    In Europe, there was such a duplication method of fitting roofed baptisteries or baldachins within a roofed church building. Generally in religious buildings, the space layered or divided into several stages in correspondence to the degree of holiness is created between the most holy place and the vulgar outside world, such as the space for god, the space for priests, the space for believers and so on. We can  easily envision this because it is the same in the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples in Japan. In a Shinto shrine, the object of worship is concealed by the smallest house form and so a miniature of the house shape sits in the center. In a Buddhist temple the sanctuary is covered by house form or has baldachin which makes a small independent building form that envelopes the statues of Buddha. The “Golden Hall (Konjikido)” in the Chusonji temple enclosed by the protecting structure “Ooiya” is another one of examples. This can be also understood as the layered structure spatially divided into a relatively holy part and a relatively vulgar part hierarchically.

    The image of this kind of layered spiritual world that can be read from the plan of the “Mandala” that expresses the multilayering of the Buddhistic spiritual world can be thought of as being common to religious facilities around the world. Here, the hierarchical spiritual structure is expressed in a plane. There is a recent trend for the people of Europe and America dissatisfied with the way of thinking of Western Modernism to search for something new in this kind of Eastern spiritual religious ideas and philosophical ideas. For example, in “perennial philosophy,” Ken Wilber* focused in his work “The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes”(1982) on the theory that a person’s eyes are finally completely opened after reaching the final stage of the six stages of (1) physical, (2) biological, (3) psychic, (4) subtle, (5) causal and (6) ultimate. This kind of view is thought to be effective because it probes the spiritual world that cannot be dissected using the method of interpreting the world through Western subject-object relationship in particular.

    Whether or not the Mandala accurately represents the spiritual world which humans see has no way to be determined unless we clarify the information processing that goes on inside the human brain. The interest here is the point that the spiritual world as a multilayered structure displayed on the Mandala might be able to be duplicated to the architectural space structure. Throughout history this kind of thing was incorporated into the layout plans and spatial plans of religious facilities such as the temples for tantric Buddhism. However, an attempt to re-express in real space a more universal structure of the spiritual world, that is transcending over the particular religion and is common to all humans, remains as an issue of architecture that should be attempted.

    The modern ages rejected the irrational way of thinking of religions and we are in a state at the present time where religion has fallen and people have become secular. However, despite this, religions, which inhabit the crux in the human view of life and death and the spiritual world, exist without expelled completely by the rational thinking. If the structure of the human spiritual world and spiritual phenomenon are clarified scientifically, religions would be relegated to the past as a thing in a museum. It would require further effort on the side of scientific knowledge. Some of the physicists performing contemporary leading science have shown an interest in Eastern spiritualism. It appears at first glance as if they appraise the ancient Eastern mysticism, but is actually an attempt to dismantle the mystery of mystic ideas.

    If we attempt to represent the spiritual multi-layering as an architectural space,  for example, creating a holy space in its center where one could meditate in the highest transcendence, it would probably differ from the holy spaces created by historical religion. However, the attempt of Ungers left vestiges of the Greek temples and exhibit remnants of a historical view of religion. It is an ordinary thing that designers incorporate this kind of eclectic historicist method in his expression which is easy to understand for the people. But, as is known from various historical experiences, after a period when there occurs the eclectic expression borrowing historical motifs, a purer style will be born just like an alchemy. The rapid change in architectural form over the period from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century is an example of this. The attempts of Ungers can be considered as a kind of medicine injected into the crucible.

    The idea of "architecture" as one of the traditions in Europe includes the thought assuming the architecture as spiritual. The reason why Japanese find this point so difficult to understand is that Japanese feel it yet difficult to have architectural communication at the spiritual level. The buildings created by Japanese are easy to understand at the physical level, and are not so different from that of Western people at least from the eyes of a layperson. People might believe simply so. But it cannot be ignored that the mutual understanding at the spiritual level is so weak that the Japanese schizophrenic attitude of "Japanese spirit with Western knowledge (Wa-kon You-sai)" remained strange if compared to the consistency of Europeans. Today, we are in an abnormal situation where the knowledge is global universal but the spirit is wrapped in “Japanese (Wa)”. In order to resolve this, a global-scale universality is sought in the spatial representation of the spiritual world. When we consider the two aspects of the spiritual world of breadth and depth, the theme of “architecture within architecture” is related to depth. Approaching the architectural spirituality through profound meditations without falling into trivial mysticism will help reveal a new sacred image of building in place of the temple architecture.

Holonism of architecture

    In the two themes of “city within city” and “architecture within architecture”, scale can be thought of as a step-wise progression like architecture as physically small structure and city as large structure. The problems that were originally treated separately in these have different phases here, with city being the physical representation of social spirit and architecture being the physical representation of human spirit. Each of these themes leaves room for investigation not only of these limited phases, but also of a more diverse range of phases. For the present, this is nothing more than an explanation from the standpoint of the double-layering or multi-layering that surpasses the physical images of city and architecture.

    Of course, the physical world that directly and indirectly relates to the human body does not stop at the city or architecture, but spreads across even more diverse layers from the level of microscopic elementary particles to the vastness of outer space, and actually realizes the intrusion of the techniques of humans into each of these levels. It is not only the problem in physical scales, but also that of the depth of spirit that is subject to science and technology. Without considering only the buildings as the problem of architecture, if we establish the theme of architecture as “high-grade technology”, then we must include all scales and all layers of spirit within this thinking on architecture. Of course, although it is impossible for a single human being to cover all scientific knowledge and techniques, all the natural world and spiritual world throw shadow explicitly and latently on the stage of the “house (oikos)”. It must not be forgotten.

    From the idea of “holonism” (Arthur Koestler) described earlier, a relationship must no always be formed of subordinate parts and an integrated whole between things of small scales and things of large scales, i.e. between the parts and the whole. It is thought that the whole is also subordinate as a part to some larger whole, and that the idea of the “holon” as a single autonomous unit is more correct than the idea of mere parts. If this kind of idea is applied, the cities and the buildings discussed here are also kinds of “holon”. If we then consider holons at an even more diverse variety of levels, a structural form arises in multiple layers.

    However, although it is made of multiple layers, the individual levels are not clearly defined and do not behave completely independently, and conversely it is not necessarily possible to continuously divide these down into continuously smaller levels. If we envision the two levels of city and building, even if there is some sort of clear continuity between the two, there is also a clear substantial difference. For example, on one hand, as is shown in the “Unite d'Habitation” of Le Corbusier, there are cases where a large apartment complex is already equipped with all of the functionality necessary for an independent city. On the other hand, there are also cases like suburban residential areas where even if many houses are gathered together, they are not sufficiently independent as a city. It is not necessarily possible to categorize the two cases based on scale or physical apperance. We must throw in there the substantial question whether the individual units exhibit harmonious collective behavior.

    The mismatch between real appearance and the whereabouts of ideals or the gap of levels, such as that a precinct is more truly urban than the whole city or that architecture within architecture represents purer ideal of architecture, makes it difficult to grasp rationally real spaces and turns criticism towards one-sidedness of rationality. Therefore, speaking of the order of holonism, each level is not clearly distinguished, but there is mutual dependence and contrasting relationship between each of the levels. If holonism is taken as a range of behavior and means of manipulation exceeding the domain as means of identifying phenomenon, then the more rational it is, the more it leads to an unnatural rigidity just like totalitarian control systems. This is easily understood if it is recognized that the more rational city planning creates the more unfamiliar urban spaces.

    Compared to the holon theory of Koestler, the theory of “bio-holonics” of Hiroshi Shimizu* proposes a feedback loop between the parts and the whole that performs self-organization with the adaptability to suit the environment through mutual control. This exhibited examples of the strange mode of life of cellular slime mold that reflects the same process of growth as the time when amoeba-like single cellular organisms gather into colonies depending on the conditions and act almost like a single organism and then break up into many individual cells and are dispersed (Fig. 67). Between the elementary particle physics ideas of Koestler and the biological ideas derived from the modes of life of lower organisms of Hiroshi Shimizu, although the ranges of validities of each of the ideas could be said to differ, each of them has some kind of effectiveness as logic for reviewing the ecology of buildings.

    If we apply the ideas of bio-holonics, then, for example, the city precinct in the “city within city” is one part of the city, but it represents the whole through having one aspect that expresses the character of the original city. Furthermore, city precincts like those that can be seen in West Berlin are not spatial units that originated from government divisions but are a group of spatial organizations that were created spontaneously at some unknown time within the large city, and that may possibly dissolve and disperse as time passes. Furthermore, if we consider Japan, the social organization unit of the “chou” that were created within the downtown areas of the feudal castle city with the purpose of administrating the city at the beginning of the Edo period were continually changing, eventually transforming into communities of "chou-nai-kai", and thereby forming an organic organizational unit. Although these have reached the point of almost dissolving within the modern city, there rise efforts to return to this organic quality through the movements to preserve the original name of "chou", etc.

    In this case of a city as a social space, the subconscious activities of human groups form a background that can also be fully thought to resemble the modes of behavior of lower organisms mentioned above. As one memory that marks the process of evolution of humans, this could probably be said to be something that appears and disappears with time. However, humans do not merely behave in a subconscious animalistic way, yet have additional conscious and spiritual behavior that make the overall behavior of humans relatively complex. In order to explain the cultural activities of humans, it would be best to clarify a new dimension of, as it were, “human holonics”. Certainly the problems of buildings and cities are themes of this dimension. The theme of a “architecture within architecture” in particular is deeply related to the spiritual behavior of humans because it is an issue from this dimension.

    The Chicago architect John J. Poli drew an improvisational housing proposal drawn in ink and colored pencils called the “parasite house” (1980) (Fig. 68). This was a small dwelling attached to the front external wall of a flat office building consisting of monotonically arranged horizontal and vertical members. This small building was primarily formed from horizontal box skeletal steel structure with a small pavilion showing a temple facade with four Ioniac columns placed on top. The meaning of this architectural design can be interpreted as something that mediates between postmodern historicism and modern technology through referencing the Mies-style modern architecture and referencing simultaneously the temple facade for the design question of the most modern super-high rise building. The modern architecture of Mies was handled here as a historical building image, and three stages of different generations and merged exhibiting something beyond the relativism of post Modernism wearing the costume of historicism.

    The method of merging is extremely simple, with each of the columns of a Mies-style small structure matching the parallel vertical axis lines through structural columns and mullions that divide the large wall. The column axes of the temple-style pavilion are aligned with the middle lines between mullions. Therefore, an overall basis is formed by the rhythm of the vertical axes. Cypress trees are placed at both sides to give symmetry, and these were also placed to match the column axes in the background. The idea is exhibited here in simple way that, while aligning the rhythm of these abstract axis lines, not only a historical image but also the representational quality – historical forms and vegetation – as described earlier are incorporated to the integrated architectural system.

    It should be noticed that this also evokes the palladian tradition that had continued to exist in Europe. The facades of the Venetian chapel buildings Il Redentore and Santa Maria Maggiore of Palladio are known for being decorated by incorporating two or three pediments. This represented a single facade in multiple layers that was designed from the intention to fuse a holy building image with a secular building, in other words, the intention to divide and fuse again the levels of the spiritual world and the real world. Within such a meaning, the formal grammar of Palladio’s classical architecture stimulates the way to interpret the architecture with the idea of holonism.

    However, in connection with the “parasite house” of Poli, the evocation of the Palladism in England in the 17th and 18th centuries can be seen as relatively fitting. The reason is that the simple proposal of Poli has replaced the method of Palladism with modern design technique and cannot be seen to exceed the imagination of the naive Epigonens. Anyway, the “parasite house”, as if hanging against a background of large-scale Modernism that is expanded colossal and conceived only as a simple repetition of the parts, exhibit certainly an example of “architecture within architecture.” The slight fruitfulness of this proposal might be the point that it has succeeded in creating a mutual dialog by way of common rhythms between the small building and large building, i.e. between the architectural image of the spiritual world and the that of physical reality, and therefore between historical architecture and modern architecture. In order to create a holonistic ordering, it is important to create a plot that can mutually interact between such multiple dimensions. When the theme of fusing abstract forms and representational forms enters in here additionally, then it means to have approached the region of holonism as human culture.