Ab Urbe

Two weeks ago, I moved to Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Often overlooked by tourists and pleasure-seekers in favor of Amersterdam, Rotterdam was almost entirely bombed during World War II, and consequently has only recently replaced many of the structures destroyed during conflict. Yet, despite this rejuvenation, many Europeans seem to think little of Rotterdam. Their criticism is blunt: nothing happens in this sleepy city. Though the population of the Rotterdam metropolitan area has recently surpassed 616,000 residents, the city feels much like a village: stores close at six on weekdays, bars and restaurants remain uncrowded on the weekends, public spaces and plazas are (by European standards) devoid of people. Though contemporary marvels of architectural design abound in newly-rebuild swaths of the city, Rotterdam is undoubtedly a city for living and working, and, so they say, little else.

To me, however, Rotterdam seems a marvel of a city. Small and compact, its urban environment affords residents unparalleled access to numerous amenities which would make many Americans green with envy. A remarkably well-developed public transport system, which employs buses, light rail transit, and an extensive subway system, allows residents to transverse much the city in only a few minutes. Dutch row houses, some of the only structures not destroyed during the second world war, allow residents to live in incredible densities while preserving public open space for all urbanites to enjoy. Two long, parallel canals cut through the center of the city, creating long stretches of public green space punctuated by playgrounds, a skate park, and basketball courts, all frequented by locals. Small cafés abound in the city, and residents happily enjoy small cups of coffee (koffie) in makeshift patio spaces which extend into the streets.

The Seattle Central Public Library, designed by REX/OMA.

Indeed, there is an air of publicness here; the urban fabric of Rotterdam, though seemingly benign to those accustomed to European compactness, functions like a well-engineered machine intent on providing a maximum quality of life to its residents: its density, urban amenities, and use of urban space concoct a potent mixture for an appallingly livable city. While what I describe above may be par for the course in some of the world’s most densely populated environments (for example, London, Hong Kong, Tokyo), for a North American, it presents a radical polemic as to the more indirect implications of the built environment.

Architecture, first and foremost, is a social endeavor. Architecture shapes and defines space, both public and private; its proliferation establishes a set of relationships and flows which will, directly or indirectly, create an urban environment. In Rotterdam (as with many European cities), this is exceedingly clear from even a cursory reading of the urban fabric. Like many of the world’s most vibrant metropolitan environments, Rotterdam is so dense, at points, the figure/field reading of public and private spaces within the city becomes inextricably linked, producing a powerful relationship between these two (supposedly) disparate zones. Long rows of residences shape public spaces dedicated to parks, soccer fields, and playgrounds; any individual building merely plays a small part in the unselfish task of shaping space for all residents of the city to enjoy, not just those who spend time within a building’s envelope.

This is not a feature exhibited by only a few structures in the city, or those designed by the most avant-garde of architectural firms: it is typical, a mindset of design undoubtedly formed by centuries of operating within a dense (and largely permanent) urban environment. There is an overwhelming sense of wholeness to the city here––architecture actively participates in both defining and activating the urban environment, creating a symbiotic relationship between the “figure” of private development and the “field” of public space; it may even blur the traditionally-distinct line between the two.

Indeed, the urban implications of architecture and private development is something often overlooked in America. Los Angeles––with an endless supply of “object” buildings, where public space and urban amenities seem a garish afterbirth to an endless stream of private development––typifies the prototypically American disjunction between public and private, urban and “architecture.” In an endless quest to accommodate North Americans’ kleptomaniacal obsession with space, and to bow to the constraints of an automobile-centric transportation network, American architects and urbanists have seemingly abandoned any attempt to activate the public realm. Many developments in large urban areas––especially those constructed toward the end of the twentieth century––capture precious space for their own use, but turn their back on the city at large. This unconsidered space––“urban” remains of a capitalist excavation––are simply residual. The reciprocal relationship between public/private space, as found in many cities throughout Europe and Asia, is markedly absent: architecture deserts the public realm, retreating inwards, seemingly impotent to affect what does not lie immediately on site.

This urban amnesia, and the widely-discussed (and feared) impotency of architecture to affect a contemporary global condition, are hardly unrelated. It is possible, if not popular, to see architects as merely instruments of the private sector, craftsmen who serve to realize symptoms of international commerce and globalization. Admittedly, the contemporary practice of architectural design is but a small component of a complex economic, cultural, and political environment: architects are often the "last link" in an increasingly long chain of influence. Yet architects must not lose hope in their ability to transform the everyday, and create meaningful difference in the lives of those who inhabit the built environment. Rotterdam is proof of the impact carefully-considered architectural and urban design can have in creating a vibrant city. In short: the social implications of architecture must not be abandoned, even in contexts which seem to exhibit little potential (notably, object-obsessed cities such as Shenzhen, Los Angeles, or much of Generica).

One particularly powerful example of explicitly social thinking in such a context, which masterfully incorporates many of the organizational principles found in the city of Rotterdam, is the Seattle Central Public Library, designed by OMA. Each of the library's most public floors is conceived as an extension of the street below: benches, book-stacks, chairs, tables, and sofas are arranged so as to produce an atmosphere not so far removed from that of public plaza. These public floor-plates rest on top of programatically-specific volumes, each of which are stacked on top of one-another to produce a complex sectional arrangement of public, semi-public, and private spaces. A carefully-considered chain of escalators (the building’s infrastructure) forms an experiential narrative through the project, one which serves to generate a dynamism of experience as visitors progress through each densely-programmed volume. Each floor-plate’s immense area is expertly employed to produce a critical mass of activity and event, as guests read and talk under immense canopies of glass and steel, without striations which traditionally serve to interrupt the interior spaces of such a structure. This organization generates a decidedly urban environment, one engineered to produce a vibrant public space. To spend time inside the Seattle Public Library is to spend time in an extension of the city itself: it is a powerful polemic against the mono-programmatic, normative Modernist constructions which populate much of Seattle’s urban fabric.

I would like to suggest that there is a similar design strategy employed by both the city of Rotterdam and the Seattle Public Library, one which is not simply concerned with the appearance of the built environment, but instead focuses on the organizational and social logic of the built environment, defined here as sociofunctionalism. This breed of thinking is, simply, the engineering of programs to produce dynamic, public, and socially inventive urban conditions. We see this breed of thought in much of OMA’s work, particularly the Seattle Public Library: buildings are not “designed” so much as they are programmatically engineered, carefully machined to produce a desired social result. Sociofunctionalist logic, similarly, is found in the organization of the city of Rotterdam, as it is in many of the world's most vibrant cities: a superimposition of high-density development, sophisticated organizational strategies, hybrid programming, and complex urban narratives enact meaningful influence on the lives of inhabitants, producing vibrant and dynamic urban spaces.

Architecture must concern itself with the production of such dynamic urban conditions, and the employment of sociofunctionalist logic in their production. The skillful application of such thinking, as typified by the Seattle Public Library and, similarly, the urban organization of Rotterdam, typifies the positive impact such design strategies can yield in the built environment, creating territories which are efficient, dynamic, and undoubtedly catalytic. With the embrace of such logic, architecture may well regain its formerly paramount importance in producing vibrant and meaningful public spaces: realms engineered for all to enjoy.

KUNSTHAL

SOCIOFUNCTIONALISM