Tag: D-Crit

Is Green = Sustainable?

image
Gardens and greenery are probably one of the least controversial elements of a city. They are seen as the counterpoint to the urban plaque of grey buildings and concrete. Greenery — parks, plants, rooftop gardens — is a handy symbol for any city keen to show it understands and cares about the impact of urban development, that it can build in a more sustainable fashion.

But what we often forget is that greenery in a city needs to be maintained. Unlike nature where trees, plants and animals are left to grow as they like, a city’s greenery is a carefully constructed element no different than a building. After a seed is planted (or tree transplanted), a whole maintenance system needs to be developed to keep greenery alive and not in the way of a city.

The picture above is Gardens by the Bay in Singapore, the city’s latest green initiative to rebrand itself from a “Garden City” to a “City in a Garden”. In this carefully manicured landscape are two conservatories of plants that would never have survived in Singapore’s tropical weather without carefully controlled climates. The garden itself is also built on land reclaimed from the sea. One can only imagine how much water and labour it takes to keep the Gardens prim and proper.

While the Gardens’ architecture and design attempts to be sustainable, what if we compared it to if there had been no such development? Can we truly “construct” sustainability in a city? Or is its very existence already unsustainable?

———–
Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to “Introduction: Whiter ‘Earthly’ Architectures: Constructing Sustainability” by Simon Guy

An Inconvenient Truth of Architecture

Does the responsibility of an architect stop at designing and not its construction?

The is the controversy sparked off by architect Zaha Hadid’s defense that it wasn’t her “duty” to look into the deaths of immigrant workers during construction work in Qatar as part of the World Cup 2022. One of the most prominent projects being built for the event is Hadid’s al-Wakrah stadium.

PHOTO: AFP/Getty Images
PHOTO: AFP/Getty Images

Like the workers who died, the London-based Hadid is an immigrant who made use of globalized networks to find work for the Qatari government. The mobility of labour today has made the building of cities into multinational projects which are often designed and constructed by foreigners and even cater to them rather than citizens. That architects like Hadid are rewarded handsomely for their concepts and designs while the people who make it into reality are often exploited and in the background points to how cities have become spectacles and brands as suggested by Shiloh Krupar and Stefan Al in their essay “Notes on the Society of the Spectacle Brand.”

The focus on architecture as an image—first as renderings and finally tourist photos—obscures architects and the public to the realities of constructing a city today. It takes an entire transient community of migrant workers to give our cities concrete permanence. Is this something architects should consider when coming up with their designs? The narrow focus of architecture as a backdrop for our lives turns the process of building into a walled-up construction site—an inconvenience waiting to be gotten rid off once it is built.

———–
Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to “Notes on the Society of the Spectacle Brand” by Shiloh Krupar and Stefan Al

CREATIVE©ITIES

“Creativity” is a buzzword in urban development today. Many governments are enacting master plans and policies to build a future city powered by industries offering creative products and services, and populated by open-minded and imaginative citizens. This idea of a “creative city” is built upon a triumvirate of ideas — creative city, creative economy and creative class — and it first emerged in the US during the global economic restructuring over a decade ago. It has since spread across the globe and become the new paradigm of what cities should be today.

image

image

CREATIVE©ITIES is a project I worked on last year which mapped out 10 cities in the Asia-Pacific that are examples of the “metacity”. The maps were created by asking local designers and artists to recommend people, places and products and projects that represented their “creative city”. Despite the different cultures and languages across cities like Seoul, Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, there existed a common creative infrastructure including bookstores, cafes as well as art and design centers. Within them were content that crossed national and cultural borders, such as products, publications and art from the region. The “creative city” then is an international space of cultural production and collaboration, but it can also be a generic urban order easily imposed upon anywhere around the world. It matches a similar itinerary I’ve often taken in my overseas trips: despite visiting different cities, I’m always traveling the same map. 

———–
Written for Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi’s Cultural Theory class at D-Crit in response to“Introduction: Metropolis, Megalopolis and Metacity” by Brian McGrath and Grahame Shane