Final Thesis Prep Book

PRODUCTIVE CHAOSTHE URBAN FESTIVAL

Primary Advisor:Brian Lonsway

Secondary Advisor:Jonathan Massey

Gabriella MorroneARC505 Thesis Preparation

01-0203-04

05-0607-0809-1011-12

13-2839-3435-4041-44

45-46

47-5051-5253-5455-5657-5859-6061-62

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Productive Chaos: The Urban Festival

IntroductionContention

Terminology

On FestivalsThe Guises of Festivals The Built Environment

Social ConditionsPower Structures

Comparative AnalysisSpaces of Festivals

Burning ManGlastonbury Festival

Mardi Gras

On IdentityThe Multiple Individual Subject

On SiteSite

The Issues of the Financial DistrictThe Routine / The Spontaneous

The Production of a Festival1: Designing Scaffolding to Deploy

2: Intervening on Existing Infrastructure“An Ancient Comedy of Urban Errors”

AppendixEnd Notes / Bibliography

01

“the idea that festival, like revolution, marks both a break in everyday life and a rehabilitation of the everyday...”1

In the era of modernity, society changes so rapidly, yet the built environment is, by comparison, relatively static. New structures require massive investments of capital, and thus are expected to have a degree of permanence which will justify a high investment through a long life. However, temporary architectures (which may last an hour, a day, a week, or a year) provide a way for the built environment to change at a pace similar to the extreme speed of shifts in the consumer tastes, social trends, and flows of energy and capital.

Thus, festivals, such as Burning Man or Mardi Gras, in their temporary and temporal nature, provide examples of spaces (designed by flexible and dynamic micro-societies or special-interest niches) which are highly flexible and dynamic spaces, able to change and meet the needs of a rapidly changing society. Note, for instance, the rapid change of size exhibited by “Black Rock City” over a 3-year period in which the inclosed area increased from a perimeter of eight to nine miles, as projected attendance numbers increased (and following the constant increase in the site’s size). Yet the following year, the metropolis decreased again to an eight mile perimeter, resulting from complaints of the attendees and the removal away from the human scaled city, that the site was becoming. This is an example of a space becoming highly responsive and flexible to the needs of the “event” which creates the space.

Festivals are special celebratory instances, desirable and defined by their temporality. They provide counterpoints to and escapes from our routined lives. Our existing systems are designed to produce stability, yet we already introduce moments of ruptures (festivals) to counteract the constant routines and to provide relief from the existing state. The contention is to design an architecture through the medium of a festival which provides a critique on our current and primarily static architectural manifestations and their relationships to our rapidly changing social environments. The architectural artifact will reintroduce celebration, absurdity, inversions, and play by the temporary rupture of a festival into the existing urban routine.

Contention

festival

event space

city

transform

transform

HARDpermanent

existing

SOFT�exible

temporary

The City Fabric

some portion of street space needs to be retro�t for sleeping

speculative architectural artifactssome vertical surfaces / facades need to be retro�t for projection, posters, artwork

�re stairs can provide vertical movement along the building facades. They can create second, third, fourth, streetscapes above the existing

some portion of street space needs to be retro�t for dance parties

some portion of the street space needs to be retro�t to provide skate parks, bike ramps

some vertical surfaces need to be retro�t for public perfor-mance areas

the apertures of and into buildings (windows) can create bridging architecture over the street for perfor-mances

some street space needs to be retro�t for relaxation areas

some street space needs to be retro�t for communal discussion areas

some artifact needs to be designed to provide communal drinking portals using the existing �re hydrant infrastructure

the facade sca�olding could be retro�t public sleeping camps or acting and street theater

street lights can provide direction to festival goers. The use of color or size of a newly design system can regulate speci�c zones of activity or can denote a speci�c time during the festival

some portion of the upper bay water can be retro�t to provide a site for burning activities

some street space needs to be retro�t for foodaccessibility

steam emitting from the manholes can provide nighttime light to festival goers

gutters can be retro�t to provide music to the festival goers

cranes at construction sites can be used as amusement rides or vertical transportation devices

5 02

Just as an architect can explore spatial issues through the medium of “a building,” an architect can likewise perform his/her art through the medium of a “festival.”

This thesis is an exercise in absurd juxtaposition which will illuminate disparities in iconic American cultures. I have decided to transplant the infamous Burning Man festival in an unlikely and somewhat incompatible setting: the bustling streets of America’s capital center, Wall Street. In doing so I will call attention to the existing problem of the highly regularized conditions of the Wall Street worker of New York City by juxtaposing their circulation patterns and movements in the city with the spontaneous ludic conditions of festive activities achievable through the redesigning and transformation of the existing cityscape (streets, facades, sidewalks). By activating these differences, the festival will reconstruct our existing notions of the street as a connector, and redefine the street as a space of dynamic engagement.

03

_”an explosion of freedom involving laughter, mockery, masquerade and revelry”2

_a spatial entity composed by the built environment

_a turning point resulting from instability

_a temporal social activity that brings people together to work, think and act collectively;_the combination of differences;_an act or an action

_the change in space caused by an event

_a particular characteristic or trait of an individual

_the act or fact of intervening 3

_to devise by thinking;4

_to produce (as something useful) for the first time through the use of the imagination or of ingenious thinking and experiment 5

_a sudden, radical or complete change 6

_a fundamental change in the way of thinking about or visualizing something 7

_the activation of events with visual stimuli

_a mental state_“an entire way of being, thinking and acting” 8

_”a ‘totality,’ a ‘global’ phenomenon, shaping and influencing all of society” 9

_an idealized space

Carnival

City

Crisis

Event

Festival

Identity

Intervention

Invention

Revolution

Spectacle

Urban

Utopia

04

“When we evoke ‘energy’, we must immediately note that energy has to be deployed within a space. When we evoke ‘space’, we must immediately indicate what occupies that space and how it does so: the deployment of energy in relation to ‘points’ and within a time frame. When we evoke ‘time’, we must immediately say what it is that moves or changes therein. Space considered in isolation is an empty abstraction; likewise energy and time.”10

05

“Carnival celebrated temporary liberation from the prevailing truth and from the established order; it marked the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal.”11

In the post World War II society there was a disappearance of the mass ready to act and riot together as a collective body. Today crowds mainly form in stadiums, for mass media spectacles; large sporting events and the Olympics. Our posthuman society has also brought about a decrease of physical urban environments where individuals can act and create collectively.

While the modern movement of architecture searched for unified utopias, in our current state, we are in an age of multiplicity. Festivals are rituals, cultural events, leisure, and temporary architectures which highlight the composite of multiple identities of the city. They are an embodiment of multiplicity in a physical environment.

Henri Lefebvre argues the rehabilitative properties of the festival onto the existing society. Under every utopia there are contradictions, problems, and there is what had existed. Under every festival there is what still exists, the everyday. Festivals simultaneously engage and disengage with their surrounding environments while constructing, expressing, manipulating, and exploring the multiplicity of space and identity. Thus festivals both purify, while simultaneously, renewing the existing conditions of the built environment, social perspectives, and power structures. Existing at two ends festivals can either take shape from a community, performing expressions of cultural identity, or can uprise as an arm of the government, using the construct of a festival to enhance a city’s global status and gain economic prosperity. Existing in these various guises, festivals have both been used to overthrow or celebrate existing conditions. There is nothing to learn from a festival that exists only as a showcase of the city. Simultaneously, festivals are not productive if their

The Guises of Festivals

06

goal is complete renewal. As Lefebvre argues, festivals provide an opportunity to mend an existing state. As temporal entities, festivals exist not merely to provide critiques on existing conditions, but to provide suggestions for reinventing andre-appropriating space.

Festivals simultaneously operate within and exist by their manipulation of the built environment, social conditions, and power structures. Beginning as forms of societal expression through the performative demonstrations of cultures and identities, festivals have always been a type of social manifestation. As temporal constructs, time and space became momentarily dissolved allowing for brief personal or group transgressions. This movement between various social states inherently constructed a new environment, a dressing of joy and liberation on all surroundings. Festivals existed as the only temporal manifestations that would allow for changes in social perspectives and the liberation of identities subverted within the strict rules and customs of everyday life. Consequently, cities were temporarily reinterpreted as theaters and performance sites. The built environments were inherently challenged to provide for the extreme social states achievable by the festival.

“The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure and order of ordinary, non-carnival life, are suspended making the carnival the place for working out a new mode of interrelationship between individuals, counterposed to the all powerful socio-hierarchical relationships of non-carnival life.”12

Bakhtin’s idealistic view of carnival life defines the dominance of political structures in the creation of a festival. The site of celebration became one of popular expression rather than of the official spaces of of everyday life. Festivals are not everyday occurrences and therefore cannot exist in the same spaces and under the same regulations of the normative. To design a festival able to create spontaneous interactions and social engagement must operate within the spectrums of the built environment, social conditions, and power structures.

Built Environment

the existing city

the festival revolution re-writing

07

The Built Environment

RevolutionThe existing conditions are completely overturned and negated as a contrary entity (the festival) occupies the same space. Yet the festival transforms the space by creating a new environment, a desired condition which has and can only arise from critiques on the existing.

Re-writingThe festival exists as societal expression and to celebrate a common ideology, belief, or interest. It does not provide a utopian or imagined state, but highlights the use of temporary ludic events to negate everyday routines.

Movement along the SpectrumIn the model of coexisting, again the festival arises from critiques on the existing but does not look to reinvent the new. The festival is born as a single entity, it arises from a singular location and out of a common set of beliefs. Spreading through the city, the festival acts as a virus, taking over and inhabiting the existing.The virus spreads through the city without complete domination. Leaving a clear distinction between what had existed and how, in response, the festival has radicalized and transformed the city into a new and different social state. The impact has the repercussions to transform what had existed into a revamped, newer model of the normative. As a cyclical entity, the festival continues these moments of interjections as critical commentaries on urban conditions.

Built Environment

the existing city

the festival revolution re-writing

08

work

play

refusal coexist

Conditions

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

LEADERS

RULES LAWSSACRIFICE

leaders

rules LAWSsacri�ce

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

09

Social Conditions

RefusalWhen we strip away laws, rules, authority what happens? If the concept of work exists under these conditions, then play is the opposition to these, having no leaders, no sacrifice, and not following rules; the ability to carry out desires. Therefore, play emerges as a reaction against these existing states. It exists as a freedom from the state of work.

CoexistHow play emerges is not important here. However, what is important is the impact play has. Play exists outside of the confinement of the normative. For example, a game (a temporal condition) removes people from the existing conditions and sets up new parameters and rules to exist in a state of laughter and joy.

work

play

refusal coexist

Conditions

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

LEADERS

RULES LAWSSACRIFICE

leaders

rules LAWSsacri�ce

LEADERS

RULESLAWS

SACRIFICE

10

opposition compliance

PowerACTIVE PARTY ‘A’

FESTIVAL FESTIVALFESTIVAL

ACTIVE PARTY ‘B’

EXISTING POWER STRUCTURE

LAWS

SITE

PROGRAM

DURATION

TYPE

MANIPULATING POWER STRUCTURElaws

site

PROGRAM

duration

type

11

Power Structure

Festivals can emerge in two ways; either unexpectedly without law or they are constructed and planned within the framework of the existing society. The first acts in a similar way as a riot or a flash mob. The conception of the festival is planned privately and is created spontaneously. The latter, works within the boundaries of the existing by manipulating the power structure to allow for this temporary construction. The latter must negotiate how to manipulate the existing rules in order to produce a space of liberation rather than confinement.

opposition compliance

PowerACTIVE PARTY ‘A’

FESTIVAL FESTIVALFESTIVAL

ACTIVE PARTY ‘B’

EXISTING POWER STRUCTURE

LAWS

SITE

PROGRAM

DURATION

TYPE

MANIPULATING POWER STRUCTURElaws

site

PROGRAM

duration

type

12

13

A Comparative Analysis

In understanding the categories of the built environment, social conditions, and power structures the festivals of Burning Man, Glastonbury, and Mardi Gras have been analyzed within the subcategories of location, containment, expansion, access, organization, and density. In understanding the built environment we can use the categories of location, density, and organization to see how our planning and spatial development effects the manifested social conditions. “Development of self-awareness takes place in a field that is already contoured by that invisible and impalpable structure called power. And while there is still plenty of mystery about how the self manages to emerge under these circumstances, there is an even deeper mystery about how self and power mutually constitute each other” (Stone 30). Therefore, to understand the effects of power on self expression we can analyze the categories of containment, expansion and access.

Burning Man, situated in the Black Rock Desert, removed from society, celebrates uniqueness and the desire of freedom of expression. A temporary metropolis is constructed to create a temporal utopian city. While the Glastonbury Festival is also removed from our everyday environments and located at a farm, the dominant focus on leisure activities rather than the exploration of self has developed a festival which is highly regularized by dominant power structures. Mardi Gras existing within the confines of the built environment of New Orleans creates a temporary redefined city for a short period of time. However, while recreating the city, Mardi Gras exists solely as a break from the everyday but does not exist as a powerful proposal of how our current conditions can be permanently transformed.

removed within

the existing city

boundless constricted

spread circumscribed

open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

removed within

the existing city



open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

removed within

the existing city



open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

removed within

the existing city



open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

removed within

the existing city



open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

removed within

the existing city



open restricted

�exible strict

compact spatious

14

Location

Containment

Expansion

Access

Organization

Density

Location

Mardi Gras Glastonbury Festival Burning Man

A Comparative Analysis: Burning Man Glastonbury Festival Mardi Gras

15

LOCATION16

DESERT:Burning Man

2 miles

Transformation of the Desert to the 4th largest city in Nevada

17

Black Rock Desert, Nevada, U.S.

1998

1999

2000-2005

2006-2007

Black Rock City (Burning Man Site) Locations 1999 - 2007

Black Rock Desert

The Playa

Surrounding Mountains

18

Glastonbury

2 miles

FARM:Glastonbury Festival

19

Worthy Farm, Pilton, England

Town of Pilton

Shepton Mallet

20

2 miles

CITY:Mardi Gras

21

New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.

22

Glastonbury

Burning Man

Mardi Gras

on average the festival lasts 4 days

the Monday prior to Labour Day until Labour Day

the festival begins 46 days before Easter and ends on the Tuesday before Easter (Fat Tuesday)

1 = 1 day

23

DURATION24

Site Scale(square feet)

Participants

130,000,000

51,454

273,800

177,500

Burning Man

Glastonbury

Mardi Gras 250,000

1,200,000

25

222.5

.21

DENSITY

Ratio per Person:(square feet)

2,526.5

26

Glastonbury

Burning Man

Mardi Gras

Desert Ownership: Bureau of Land Management Federal Land “leave no trace” policy

1991: first legal permit required for land use

Laws: no cars leave no trace no buying or selling goods (except at the cafe) can only burn is a bin can only burn wood or cardboard no dogs no illegal use of drugs no firearms no plants Laws:

Farm Ownership: Michael Eavis through his company Glastonbury Festivals Ltd. environmental “leave no trace policy”

Some stages and areas are managed independently: 1 - The Left Field: a cooperative owned by Battersea and Wandsworth TUC

2 - A Field run by Greenpeace

Streets: owned by the government permits required to hold parades

Venues: private ownerships

Louisiana Superdome: State ownership

27

OWNERSHIP28

Burning ManEvolution of Black Rock City Design: 1989 - 2010

http://www.burningman.com/preparation/maps/10_maps/index.html

Scale: 1:24,00030

BARRIER: 8 mile long and 4 ft high perimeter fenceENCLOSURE AREA: 904,100 square ft

PREVIOUS EXPANSION:2008: an increase in the site to 987,500 square ft (a 9 mile pe-rimeter) with an extra 3/4 mile within the inner circle

Washoe County Sheriff takes over the gate (1997)Burning Man creates a temporary airport (2002)Entry Fee (starting 1997)

Scale: 1:24,000

CONTAINMENT:

31

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY the singular Burning Man acts as the centripetal force surrounded by a unified community

SPATIAL DIVISIONS unprogrammed space camp space

30 full-time employees and independent contractors BRC LLC formed in 1997

BRC LLC(6)

Executive Committee

(5)

SeniorStaff(18)

Scale: 1:24,000

ORGANIZATION:“Every dimension of Black Rock City is derived from a singularity, from one point in space: where the Burning Man stands”

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ZONING burn area theme camps center of camp informal camping grounds

Design and Planning of Black Rock City began in 19971999: first year for the city to be designed in a ring shaped (to allow for further expansion)2005: rezoning of theme camp areas to integrate them into the main camping areasStreet spacing of 200 feet

Scale: 1:24,000

PROGRAM:

33

Maximum Size of Possible Expansion in the Black Rock Desert

California National Historic Trails

With a current fence boundary of 8 miles, the Burning Man site could expand to a 16 mile boundary (roughly 1.9 times the size). However, in 2008 Black Rock City was increased to a perimeter of 9 miles with an additional 3/4 mile between the camps. Following the festival, this new layout received complaints that the city was too difficult to traverse. Responding to the smaller population projects and complaints, the 2009 site returned to the 8 mile perimeter of the 2007 city layout.

EXPANSION:Burning Man

34

Glastonbury Festival

http://www.glastowatch.co.uk/glastonbury-map/

2010

2009

2008

2007

2000

1990

Scale: 1:24,000Evolution of Black Rock City Designs

36

ENCLOSURE AREA: 273,800 square feetENTRANCE / EXIT GATES pedestrian authorized automobiles ENTRANCE FEE: 1970 & 1979 - current

RESTRICTED AREAS (no public access)

Scale: 1:24,000

CONTAINMENT:Glastonbury Festival

37

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY venues/stages resulting in informal growth

SPATIAL DIVISIONS camping zone: 1.1 square feet per person community zone: .46 square feet per person

Scale: 1:24,000

ORGANIZATION:Glastonbury Festival

38

SOCIO-GEOGRAPHIC ZONES more commercial family / relaxing alternative scared dystopian pleasure-city

PROGRAM ZONES camping caravans and camping vans markets crew/performer camping no public access venues

Scale: 1:24,000

PROGRAM:Glastonbury Festival

39

Border Conditions:minimal room for expansion due to the town of Pilton, major roads and forrest constraints

Main RoadsTown of Pilton

Forrest

Maximum Size of Possible Expansion on Worthy Farm

EXPANSION:Glastonbury Festival

40

Mardi Gras

Scale: 1:24,000

Parade Mapping: Krewe Routes throughout the city of New Orleans

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGY streets are closed from automotive traffic and become pedestrian environments parades are organized by the 28 Mardi Gras Parade Krewes non-profit organizations they are funded by their members permits are required from the city of New Orleans to host parades

SPATIAL DIVISIONS streets (parades) bars / restaurants banquetting halls (balls)

42

BARRIER:The buildings act as barriers of the parades, creating a total infusion of the city’s streets.

CONTAINMENT:Mardi Gras

43

EXPANSION:Mardi Gras can continue to be celebrated dominently in the streets and can create more parades to activate these spaces. Or the festival can further use the city’s existing infrastructure to expand the event’s space.

Possible Expansion of Mardi Gras

EXPANSION:Mardi Gras

44

45

The Multiple Individual Subject

“The governing artistic posture of collectivism after modernism, as it might be called, has rarely claimed to find its unity as the singularly correct avant-garde representative of social progress. Instead new collectivism gathers itself around decentered and fluctuating identities that leverage heterogeneous character of any group formation.”13

In Segmented Worlds and Self Yi-Fu Tuan illustrates the creation of the concept of the individual subject which has been produced from the privatization of social and architectural space. His research begins with the Middle Ages with, “the increasing number of family and self-portraits; the increasing popularity of mirrors; the development of autobiographical elements in literature; the evolution of seating from benches to chairs... the ramification of multiple rooms in small dwellings; the elaboration of a theater of interiority in drama and the arts...” 14 The materialization of self in turn led to a decrease in attention and desire of public space, as our built environments, new technologies, and consequently social developments focused on the individual. Allucquère Rosanne Stone in The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age is not arguing that the movement towards individual isolation, mainly in the Western hemisphere, has been a negative occurrence. Rather, she disputes that in the prominent discourse, “the self appears to be a constant, unchanging, the stable product of a moment in Western history.”15

Therefore, if the production of the individual subject has created our predominant reading of self, that of a static condition, then what is at stake here, rather than the argument between one and a group, is the notion of identity and the role it plays in the twenty-first century. Technology is changing our representations of selves and how we conceptualize identity. Our identities are no longer singularly “attached” to our bodies; they now exist in social networks, online games, and profile networks. This duplication of

46

selves in various environments, is advancing the ease and desire to generate and slightly or significantly alter multiple identities of a singular individual. Therefore, we must understand that our contemporaneous state is not that of a single self in a single body, but rather a construction of multiple identities that constitutes a singular self.

Festivals are manifestations of pluralism which allow for the emergence of the multiple individual subject who can freely float between spaces masking and unmasking desired identities. Bakhtin sees dialogism as a fundamental aspect of the carnival, being, “a plurality of ‘fully valid consciousnesses.”16 Each conscious has a unique perspective and different identities that become apparent in the constructed space of this ephemeral, ritualized environment.

“‘Two voices is the minimum for life, the minimum for existence’ (Bakhtin, p. 252); if dialogism ends, reveals Bakhtin, ‘everything ends’ (Ibid.). Bakhtin argues that by being outside of a culture can one understand his own culture. This process is ‘multiply enriching’ (Ibid), it opens new possibilities for each culture, reveals hidden ‘potentials’ (Ibid.), promotes ‘renewal and enrichment’ (Bakhtin, p. 271) and creates new potentials, new voices, that may become realisable in a future dialogic interaction. Thus the outsidedness of groups marginalised by a dominant ideology within non-carnival time not only gain a voice during carnival time, but they also say something about the ideology that seeks to silence them. Thus two voices come together in the free and frank communication that carnival permits and, although ‘each retains its own unity and open totality they are mutually enriched’ (Bakhtin, p. 56).”17

the individual as a composite of multiple identities

47

This thesis looks to create an architecture that produces a space of identity flux to mitigate existing regularized conditions by the removal of Burning Man as an isolated spatial manifestation and the retrofitting of the festival in the Financial District of New York City.

Site

People flee their existing routines to temporarily engage in the festive activities of creating a new metropolis.

But, what if instead of fleeing from society we incorporated festivals into our urban environments to juxtapose the normative conditions and to create spaces of dynamic identity shifts.

PROGRAM ZONES Commercial and Office Buildings Mixed Residential and Commercial Buildings Multi Family Residential Public Facilities and Institutions Transportation and Utility Industrial and Manufacturing

Highlighting the high concentration of Commercial and Office Buildings in America’s capital center of Lower Manhattan. The Financial District is a dense agglomeration of “working” buildings with minimal residential spaces a fewer parks and public spaces existing within the core of this area.

50

Programmatic Distribution

51

The Issues of the Financial District

Productivity and change do not occur through overthrow or celebration. Likewise, productivity and change do not occur through removal or nonexistence. Therefore, an absurd juxtaposition between Wall Street and Burning Man culture has the potential to invoke change and renewal of our existing urban fabric and how it forms and informs social and political structures.

The Wall Street worker moves through the city daily in a highly ritualized mode. The same train is taken from the suburban periphery, connecting onto the 4,5, or 6 subway leading them to the Wall Street subway exit. They find their way to the closest Starbucks for morning coffee and head to their office for the beginning of the work day. This spatial movement consists as a series of routine circulation patterns moving them between distinct rooms of the city. This movement, focused on the beginning and the end results and spaces, rather than the journey of movement and encounters through the city, produces the ritualistic behaviors and regularized days.

Festivals redraw the space and politics of permanent cities and in doing so provide critiques on the existing urban conditions. More productive than the festival which overturns all existing notions and that which simply celebrates existing systems is the festival that is able to achieve a balance between these extremities. To do so will provide a temporal representation and imagination of how a space can be reformed and manipulated. The introduction of a temporal condition, that of the festival, on the Wall Street worker’s paths of movement will reintroduce ludic environments of absurdity and celebration into their ritualized world. Thus the workers carrying out their daily schedules will be forced to move through these temporary environs, choosing at will where and if when to engage with the festival.

Henri Lefebvre argues that festivals provide the opportunity to move from the dominance of consumption to the consumption of space. Rather than moving between rooms of the city, to make more money, buy more goods, and ultimately to consume objects, by reclaiming the streets we can design a consumption of space, of activities, events, and dialogue. As achieve by Burning Man, the streetscape needs to become a dynamic landscape to attract people to this part of the city at all times of the day and night to create vibrant social interaction and the opportunity for the community to design their own environments.

festival

event space

city

transform

transform

HARDpermanent

existing

SOFT�exible

temporary

The City Fabric


















festival

event space

city

transform

transform

HARDpermanent

existing

SOFT�exible

temporary

The City Fabric


















52

streets as connectors

existing

HARD: permanent / existing

streets as hyper-active and dynamic event spaces

proposed

SOFT: flexible / temporary

The City Fabric

53

The Routine / The Spontaneous

“Our intention is to generate a society that connects each individual to his or her creative powers, to participation in community, to the larger realm of civic life, and to the even greater world of nature that exists beyond society.”18

More radical festivals, such as Burning man, celebrate anarchy and diversity with a goal of creating an alternative culture and community, to those which currently exist, in a temporary eight-day metropolis. Created by Larry Harvey in 1986, the festival arose from the celebration of the summer solstice. His critiques and desires to be removed, if only temporarily, from the current consumptive culture generated the festival’s current mission and principles. The event is closely related to and understood through the Russian philosopher, literary critic, and semiotician, Mikhail Bakhtin and his philosophy of carnival. Bakhtin looks to the folk ideals of “the many” and “openness” in defining his theories of language and carnival. He argues that the lack of authority of festivals creates a multiplicity of voices and meanings. “...Nothing is fixed in Bakhtin’s carnival world, and everything is in a state of becoming.”19 The site of a festival is an environment of adaptability that generates constant possibility.

These ideas parallel with Burning Man’s four of ten principles of; radical inclusion, radical self-expression, communal effort, and participation. Each participant without limitations designs and constructs the space of their camp and this conglomeration of structures forms the temporal metropolis. While the immediate site of the festival is confined to a roughly five square mile pentagon, the location, as of 1990, in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, enhances the feelings of separation from society and of freedom. Visually seeing no boundaries therefore, seeing no constraints. The camp sites are then organized around a singular object, the Burning Man. This symbolic gesture implies the importance of the individual, rather than the market, as the center of our world; and the Burning Man, as a constructed artifact, represents this community theory. The body of the community, the circular ring consisting of streets and camps, is then divided into a gridded masterplan with equal plots to further illustrate the theory of equality and the consequent multiplicity of identities and ideas of the individuals.

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A festival is a form of activism in which a collective body acts together to change the built environment. The conglomeration of identities in the space of the festival constructs a place where diversity creates an environment of intensity and generates the unexpected. Both social and architectural space has evolved from the emergence of the concept of the interiorized cultural individual. We read the Wall Street culture as a conglomeration of a singular identity; that of the college graduate becoming a high profile business worker, with a lifestyle dominated by work to earn high profits ultimately to act as a consumer of luxury items. This culture has conformed to the Enlightenment concept of the sovereign subject and by the dominance of static architecture and highly regularized schedules these workers have not been able to evoke their subidentities. I am interested in creating an architecture to advance and accommodate the notion of the multiple individual subject. Festivals create environments of plurality; in events, people, identities, and structures. By situating Burning Man in the Financial District of New York City, a new landscape of multiplicity, formed within a landscape of similarity is provided, to re-envision what Lower Manhattan can become.

The Ten Principles of Burning Man:“Radical Inclusion: Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.Gifting: Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.Decommodification: In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.Radical Self-reliance: Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.Radical Self-expression: Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.Communal Effort: Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.Civic Responsibility: We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.Leaving No Trace: Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.Participation: Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.Immediacy: Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.”20

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Containment

Expansion

Access

Organization

Ownership

Program

Duration

Location

The Production of a Festival

59 56

Location

The Production of a Festival

Containment

Expansion

Access

Organization

Ownership

Program

Duration

The Man

Art Zone

Center Camp

Theme Camps

Camp Sites

Open Space

The Man

Camp Sites

Theme Camps

Center Camp

Art Zone

Re-Organization

Panorama Views / Parks = 8

Relaxation / Discussion = 80

Spa / Healing = 8Spiritual = 18

Education / Inventions = 24

Services / Vehicles = 86

Food / Drinks / Bar = 136Martial Arts / Sports = 16Clubs / Dancing = 52

Games = 70

Music = 14Radio = 4

Performance (Workshops) / Parade= 24Design / Art = 54

Fashion = 4

Photography = 10 Lighting = 2Film = 10

Christmas = 1

Fire = 5Queer = 12Sober = 4

Smoking = 4Love / Porn= 8

Sleeping = 4

The festival will be contained within the exterior public areas of the district.

The festival will be re-situated in the Financial District of NYC.

Existing Spaces of Transportation to the Festival:AutomobileAirplane

Single Point Entrance

Existing NYC Spaces of Transportation:StreetsHighwaysBridgesSubways

Designing a new route for these modes of transportationDesigning new modes of transportation

Multiple Entrance Points

Centripetal camp design allow for e�ciency to add or subtract the amount of camp and theme camp space

Designing a piece of sca�olding to replace the existing sca�olding of NYC will allow for the �uid growth of the festival throughout the city.

System of Sca�olding

withinremoved

the existing city

57

1 : Designing Scaffolding to Deploy

Instead of the scaffolding that makes up a large quantity of the streets and facades in NYC, I will design a prototype, a structure that transforms the way we inhabit our city’s scaffolding and can be incorporated and infused into a streetscape to allow for “festival use.” Each piece will be designed according to programs that engage and provide a specific use (camping artifacts from Burning Man such as tents, RVs, tipis will need to be retrofitted to function in this urban environment). The scaffolding prototypes will be deployed into the urban fabric as temporary architectures and will create distinct rooms of participatory event-based experience allowing for extreme participation and heightening identity fluctuations of the festival participants and the business workers.

festival

event space

city

transform

transform

HARDpermanent

existing

SOFT�exible

temporary

The City Fabric


















festival

event space

city

transform

transform

HARDpermanent

existing

SOFT�exible

temporary

The City Fabric


















59

2 : Intervening on Existing Infrastructure

Narrative

The architecture consists of a new and interesting series of architectural interventions within the traditional city fabric of the Financial District. These interventions will use the existing infrastructure of the city (streetlights, manholes, facade systems, highway infrastructure) to emphasize the importance of producing strings of dynamic spaces between existing built and static architecture. Using the principles of Burning Man I will design an architecture that allows Burning Man to function in an urban environment.

Again, the premise is to create distinct rooms of participatory event-based experience allowing for extreme participation and heightening identity fluctuations of the festival participants and the business workers.

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Precedent: Steam Tunnel Music

“According to the Municipal Art Society, Pratt’s steam-powered plant “is the oldest privately-owned, continuously operating, power plant of its kind in the country”—and, once a year, it gets turned into a gigantic musical instrument. One of the whistles used has even been repurposed from an old steamship, the S.S. Normandie.

The implication here, that you can attach pieces of musical instruments, and even old ship parts, to your city’s existing infrastructure and thus generate massive waves of sound is pretty astonishing; this might be a very site-specific thing, to be sure, and something only Pratt has permission to do to its own steam tunnels, but the mind reels at the possibility that this could be repeated throughout New York. For instance, on any point of the existing steam network as documented last month by Urban Omnibus:

Every winter, a typically unseen machine becomes visible in the streets of Manhattan: Con Edison’s District Steam System. Seen from the street as steam leaking from manholes, or more safely vented through orange and white stacks, leaking steam hints at an underground energy distribution system that is the largest of its kind in the United States and offers a chance for the public to become more aware of and more involved in how the city works.

As Urban Omnibus adds, ‘the steam system is largely ignored by the public until things go wrong’—or, of course, until that system is turned into a city-scale musical instrument through a maze of well-placed reeds, valves, and resonators.”21

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Precedent: An Ancient Comedy of Urban Errors

“For his final thesis project this year at the Cooper Union in New York City, student Andrejs Rauchut diagrammed and modeled ‘a constellation of architectural set pieces’ meant for ‘a day-long performance of The Comedy of Errors’ by William Shakespeare. Rauchut’s project presentation included an absolutely massive, wood-bound book: it started off as a flat chest or cabinet, before opening up as its own display table.

The diagrams therein are extraordinary: they map character movement not only through the ancient city of Ephesus, where Shakespeare’s play is set, but through the ‘constellation’ of set pieces that Rauchut himself later designed...

Urban design becomes public dramaturgy.

The bulk of Rauchut’s work went into producing a series of timelines and graphic depictions of character movement in Shakespeare’s play...

He then went on to experiment with overlaying these character paths onto Staten Island, part of the New York City archipelago, as if trying to draw an analogy between the seafaring, splintered island geography of the ancient Mediterranean—with its attendant heroes and unacknowledged gods—and the contemporary commuter landscape of greater New York.

This transposition of Shakespeare’s characters’ movements onto Staten Island, Rauchut explains, became ‘the backbone for the design of a series of architectural set pieces inserted into the suburban fabric of Staten Island. At each of the points where characters interact, an architectural set is built.’

Ultimately, the project aimed for the indirect choreographing of a public, urban event—it was to be a ‘guerilla instigator of public space,’ as Rauchut describes it:The final design is a constellation of architectural set pieces that would be used for a day-long performance of The Comedy of Errors. Actors would travel along their scripted routes through the city dressed in plain-clothes crossing paths and delivering lines. The audience would consist of interested citizens, gathering, following, growing, leaving, and occasionally returning as they continue through their daily routines.

‘After the play is over,’ he concludes, ‘the architecture would remain and would be used by the locals of Staten Island’—the remnants of a play incorporated into everyday urbanism.” 22

63

1 Henri Lefebvre, Critique de la vie quotidienne [Critique of Everyday Life], 2nd ed., trans. John Moore vol. 1 (New York: Verso, 1991), pg. xxviii.

2 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/FlyerJ18.jpg

3 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, s.v. “Dictionary,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/ (accessed December 08, 2010).

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2003).

9 Ibid.

10 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1991), pg 12.

11 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), page 10.

12 Ibid. page 112.

13 Nato Thompson, ed., The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, trans. Gregory Sholette (Massachusetts: MASS MoCA, 2004), 150.

14 AllucquÃ¨re Rosanne Stone, The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996), page 19.

15 Ibid. page 19,20.

16 Caryl Emerson, The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), page 9.

17 “Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975),” Vanderbilt University, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/mikhail_ bakhtin.htm (accessed September 27, 2010).

18 “Mission Statement,” Burning Man, http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/mission. html (accessed October 2, 2010).

19 “Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975),” Vanderbilt University, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/mikhail_ bakhtin.htm (accessed September 27, 2010).

20 “What Is Burning Man,” Burning Man, http://www.burningman.com/whatisburningman/about_burningman/principles. html (accessed October 2, 2010).

21 Geoff Manaugh, “Steam Tunnel Music,” BLDGBLOG, http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/steam-tunnel-music.html (accessed December 06, 2010).

22 Geoff Manaugh, “An Ancient Comedy of Urban Errors,” BLDGBLOG, http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/ancient- comedy-of-urban-errors.html (accessed December 06, 2010).

End Notes

64

Conrad, Ulrich, ed. “Constant: New Babylon.” Theories and Manifestos. 1960.

Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. New York: Zone Books, 1994.

Emerson, Caryl. The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.

Festivals, Tourism and Social Change: Remaking Worlds. 8th ed. Edited by David Picard and Mike Robinson. Tourism and Cultural Change. Tonawanda: Channel View Publications, 2006.

Lefebvre, Henri. Critique de la vie quotidienne [Critique of Everyday Life]. 2nd ed. Translated by John Moore. Vol. 1. New York: Verso, 1991.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1991.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Urban Revolution. Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2003.

Lootsma, Bart. “The New Landscape.” Mutations. Barcelona: Actar, 2001.

“Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975).” Vanderbilt University. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/Anthro/Anth206/ mikhail_bakhtin.htm (accessed September 27, 2010).

Mitchell, William J. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2004.

Roche, Maurice. Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture. London: Routledge, 2000.

Sassen, Saskia. “The Global City,” Edited by Koolhaas Rem. Sanford: Mutations. Actar, 2005.

Shanti Elliott, “Carnival and Dialogue in Bakhtin’s Poetics of Folklore,” https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bit stream/handle/2022/2327/30(1-2)%20129-139.pdf?sequence=1

Stone, AllucquÃ¨re Rosanne. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996.

Thompson, Nato, ed. Sholette, Gregory, ed. The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life. Massachusetts: MASS MoCA, 2004.

Tschumi, Bernard. Architecture and Disjunction. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1996.

Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities: Praxis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994.

Bibliography

Final Thesis Prep Book

Documents

Transcript of Final Thesis Prep Book