ARTERY ARCHITECTURE

Arch 497-03 / 3 Elective Credits
Prof. Martin Kläschen

COURSE DESCRIPTION

The course focuses on historic, existing and new progressions of metropolitan artery-architecture. Students will study historic and contemporary archetypes around urban arteries and their reuse today. Investigations through the lenses of various topics aim on studying Hamburg’s multifaceted intertwinement between its arteries and new architectural developments.

Due to the environmental quality of Hamburg’s enormous greenery and waters, its newly developed quarters and industries around its harbor, and its continuously flourishing economy, the city-state profoundly attracts increasing quantities of immigrants and tourists. Resulting housing and parking shortages pressing the metropolis to further densify its urban fabric and rethink its traffic organization. Seeking for zones that would allow for taking on these profound problems, the city decided to focus on neglected potentials for quality civic realms within its metropolitan arteries.

In order to discover new means for living and working along these metropolitan passageways, this elective will explore economic, and social-urban functions of artery-architecture such as malls, sub-centers and mixed use facilities and investigate historic and contemporary interactions between architecture and civic realm.

As Hamburg’s arteries cross and connect various urban districts, the course will focus on those architectural typologies that generate distinct means of place and culture of living within each neighborhood. Correlations between architectural programs, scales, typologies will be explored in order to detect their social-urban functions and understand their impact on the public realm. Central will be the examination of particular architectural and metropolitan influences on place making in relation to density, demography and governance.

Travelling to European capitals, such as Vienna, Graz, Prague, Brno, Moscow and Venice the course seeks to explore and draw comparisons between various architectural relations to urban arteries. We will focus on architectural features such as peripheral façades, scales, programming, construction types and materials that are characteristic to each city.
BACKGROUND
Bauforum 2019 in Hamburg

The agenda for the 2019 Bauforum took on the topic of Hamburg’s artery development, as a component of an urban improvement strategy “More city in the city” that seeks potentials for metropolitan growth. Focusing on seven selected arterial routes that cross all districts, innovative ideas and provocative proposals had been generated in close cooperation with Hamburg’s Department of Urban Development and Environment. The Bauforum pursues shifting the objective from mere principal infrastructures towards diverse livable realms charged with social-urban backbone functions, such as neighborhood centers, public spaces and habitats that sustain various combinations of living, working, commerce and mobility.

Whereas many North American cities are organized and morphed by orthogonal grids, most European cities commonly relate to infrastructural arteries as a significant urban phenomenon that determines their organic layouts, historic developments, market organizations and inter-regional connections.

Since its foundation within the fourth century A.D, Hamburg’s river-delta has a long history as center of global trade, merchandizing, and regional power. With Hamburg ‘s vast destruction during World War II, the city’s formerly representative boulevards and thoroughfares had converted from vivid promenades to mere high-capacity traffic passages, now primarily distributing mobility from collector roads to highways, and between urban centers. With the shift from individually packaged goods towards systemic modulated containers and vehicular transit, substantial sections of formerly existing freight train hubs and port-infrastructures had been replaced by large-scale post-war artery infrastructure and container terminals. Especially, the more recent change from cargo trains towards road based vehicular transportation increased traffic volumes within urban arteries.

COURSE FORMAT

This course will take place during the Fall 2020 Study Abroad Semester in Hamburg. In parallel coordination with Arch 497-02 and Arch 497-04, Students will be expected to select, research and compare two urban arteries. Whereas one being located in Hamburg and the other shall be chosen from one of the cities that are on the travel agenda. Along each artery, course participants will investigate architecture that takes on central civic functions, such as place making, traffic interfaces, malls, social-urban diversity, etc.. Students will study and prepare their focal buildings in advance to travelling to the destination cities. They will produce printed pamphlets as informative guides for fellow students that will have to be further updated on site as the course progresses.

During our travels, the course will be organized around a series of scheduled visits that will address each subject at hand and students may approach their particular localities with knowledge, useful questions and give a brief on-site presentation.  Students will document and analyze related data through recording, mapping, diagramming in a short report with the aim to produce a catalogue for future applications in a collective effort.
Landscape Program students may focus on particular urban-landscapes and features that allow for investigating (dis)-connections between landscapes, urban fabric and architecture.

This course involves direct cultural and academic exchange with students and faculty at HafenCity University (HCU) in Hamburg.
ASSIGNMENTS

  1. Explore and investigate architectures along your chosen arteries in Hamburg and the other city (see Arch 497-02) in relation to central urban functions, such as place making, traffic interfaces, malls, social-urban diversity, etc.
  2. Select a focal building in Hamburg and the other city. For each building, study readings and collect data to prepare an informative pamphlet that will be produced prior to our departure to the other city.
  3. Give a brief 10 (or more) minute on-site “tour guide” presentation. Each student should be prepared with whatever aids they feel necessary.
  4. Deepening of the onsite research with documentation through recording, mapping and diagramming. Outline a written essay of 1000 words minimum.
  5. Preliminary paper laid-out with all research documentation to be completed upon scheduled date below.
  6. Final paper revised and laid-out with all research documentation to be completed scheduled date below.

 

DELIVERIES
Pamphlet
Analytical Diagrams (Elevations, Signage, Advertisement, Sections, etc.)
Written Paper

GRADING

  1. Artery Architecture Investigation – 10%
  2. Data collection and Preparation – 10%
  3. On Site Presentation and Pamphlet – 20%
  4. Onsite Research and Documentation – 20%
  5. Final Paper and Layout – 40%

SEMESTER SCHEDULE

Aug 24                         Arrival in Hamburg
Aug 24 – Sept 22          Research and Preparation
Sept 23 – 30                 Travel to Moscow
Oct 01                         Draft Due with 1000 Words
Oct 01 – Oct 18           Research and Preparation
Oct 19 – Oct 31           Travel to Vienna, Graz, Brno, Praha
Nov 01 – 18                  Research and Preparation
Nov 12                         Draft Due with 1000 Words
Nov 16 – 19                 Travel to Venice
Nov 26                         Preliminary Draft Due
Dec 7                           Final Paper Due
RESEARCH TOPICS

  1. Archetypes:
  • Historical
  • Industrial
  • Residential
  • Commercial
  • Entertainment
  • Mixed Use
  1. Klinker Architecture
  • Brick Gothic and Neo-Gothic
  • Fritz Schumacher
  • Art Nouveau and International Style
  • Contemporary Applications of Klinker in Architecture
  1. Floating Architectures:
  • Historical & Contemporary Houseboats
  • Ocean Liners & Vessels
  1. Hanse Architecture:
  • Historical Storage- and Kontorhäuser
  • Markets
  • Contemporary
  1. Post-Industrial Architecture of Port Facilities:
  • Heavy Industrial Facilities
  • Transformations Today
  • Container Terminal Architecture
  1. Architecture of Immigration and Emigration:
  • Historical (Auswanderermuseum BallinStadt)
  • Current Architectural Strategies of Integration and Inclusion
  1. Contemporary Architectural Developments within the Haven-City and IBA-Area:
  • Inner-City Densifications
  • Materials and Technical Innovations
  • Energy Bunker & IBA Wilhelmsburg
  1. Architectural Interconnections with Water:
  • Bathing Architectures Past and Today
  • Architectural Developments around Waterfronts
  • Pier Architecture
  1. Architectural means of Water Management Interventions:
  • Transformative Architecture: Gates, Tides and Underwater
  • Flood Protection Innovations
  1. Social-Urban Factors on Arterial Architecture:
  • Entertainment Architecture
  • Architectural Spectacles
  • Architecture and Tourism

REFERENCES

  1. Nicole Boysen, Julia Graupner, Teresa Denefleh, Hamburg – From Jungfernstieg to the HafenCity (VIADAVINCI-CityTours Book 1) EBook:: <https://www.amazon.com/Hamburg-Jungfernstieg-HafenCity-VIADAVINCI-CityTours-Book-ebook/dp/B007XCDSQ6/ref=sr_1_59?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1519174280&sr=1-59&keywords=hamburg+architecture> [accessed 21 February 2018]
  2. Baker, Lisa, Built on Water – Floating Architecture + Design, New edition (Salenstein: Braun Publishing, 2014)
  3. Hipp, Hermann, and Hans Meyer-Veden, Hamburger Kontorhaeuser (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag fur Architektur und technische Wissenschaften, 1988)
  4. IBA Hamburg – WaterHouses’ <https://www.iba-hamburg.de/projekte/bauausstellung-in-der-bauausstellung/waterhouses/projekt/waterhouses-wohnen-am-inselpark.html> [accessed 2 February 2018]
  5. Lester, Herb, ed., Authentically Hamburg: A Guide to the Usual & Unusual, Fol Map edition (S.l.: Herb Lester, 2017)
  6. Meyer-Veden, Hans, and Manfred Sack, Die Hamburger Speicherstadt (Berlin: Wilhelm Ernst & Sohn Verlag fur Architektur und technische Wissenschaften, 1989)
  7. Nagel, Britta, Meredith Dale, and Bernadette Grimmenstein, IBA DOCK Floating Container House: IBA Hamburg, Pmplt edition (Berlin: Schnell & Steiner, 2010)
  8. Pelka, Walter, and Frauke Kasting, eds., Perspectives in Metropolitan Research 3: Science and the City: Hamburg’s Path to a Built Environment Education (Berlin: JOVIS, 2017)
  9. teNeues, Hamburg and Guide (Kempen: teNeues, 2005)

PLAGIARISM

The IIT Code of Academic Honesty states that: “It is a violation for a student to knowingly engage or attempt to engage in the misrepresentation of any work submitted for credit as the product of a student’s sole independent effort, such as using the ideas of others without attribution and other forms of plagiarism.”   For suggestions on how to avoid plagiarism see – http://www.iit.edu/cac/student_resources/general/plagiarism.shtml