PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA: Where should our cities grow — in width, endlessly increasing the territory of the suburbs, or vertically? Both strategies are criticized. How to find a balanced position between these two extremes?
Alexander Popov: Vertical growth is not a story that started recently. Let's remember the islands of Ancient Rome and ancient Carthage - multi-story quarters-islands. This topic has been transformed many times by each new generation of city planners into something of its own. At the beginning of the 5th century there was even a futuristic project of a multi-level city in New York, which assumed that pedestrians would move on bridges, on the upper level of the city, and all the infrastructure with transport would remain on the lower level. The question of vertical growth is the question of psychological perception of the proportionality of architecture to a person. What ancient people perceived as a high-rise building (6-XNUMX floors), we perceive as the most comfortable, commensurate height. This is the height of the buildings of Paris during the time of Baron Osman and the upper limit for living on floors without an elevator. This is our "blue line". High-rise is something that goes beyond normal human perception. And if you delve into the questions of psychology, then who is ready to go beyond the norm, beyond perception?
Alexander Popov, co-founder and director of the archimatika company
When a tall building is erected by heroes, we call it a tower. When in medieval Italy the cities were ruled by warring clans, after another victory they built a tower, but others could demolish this tower and build their own. An example of this can be seen in San Gimignano, as a monument to those crazy times. And there is also the city of Shibam towers in Yemen, where the lack of space behind the fortress wall pushed the buildings up.
What other images are associated with the word "tower"? This may be the house of God; the Aztec pyramids, where those who survived the bloody ordeal went to meet the divine; this is a fortress, guarded by defenders. Height can be perceived by us as a space of fear in front of a large and unknown space, which is beyond the control and incomprehensible to man. Or maybe it is like the dwelling of a hero who has reached the treasure and protects what he has found.
And at the other pole of associations - a tower - a house of a person, one of many, whom the density of life in a big city pushes upwards. According to the law of hydraulics, the increased density of life in the city is discharged by pushing the mass upwards. In this mass, there are human units that rose to the top not by their own will, but simply because they found themselves in a city where there is not enough room for everyone who wants to.
Who are the heroes of our time? Residents of penthouses are those who, breaking through all social restrictions, climb up. They perceive the height as a victory. Our human psyche is evolutionarily built in such a way that new situations and new meanings are superimposed on everything recorded by previous generations. Just as physical rudiments and atavisms (a tail or hair on the body) are preserved, the fear of heights, the image of God soaring high, and the hopeful image of a brave hero, erecting and defending a tower, are preserved in our consciousness and unconsciousness.
And for whom does the high-rise district become an unnatural, aggressive environment? For an ordinary person, a non-hero, who is pushed to the top by a "hydraulic". The average person does not strive upwards, but he is forced to - external forces push him simply because of the limited area. And it does not matter who among the unsuspecting homo sapiens is pushed to the top of the skyscraper by a random choice of coexistence in the conditions of increased density.
At the same time, climbing the Burj Khalifa and looking down on the garden is a fan, a way to join the world of heroes. But will everyone like going out on the balcony and not seeing paving slabs, trees, grass, when the people below are tiny dots crawling along the sidewalk? This causes discomfort.
In each of us, the awe recorded by our ancestors before the higher powers and admiration for the courage and daring of those who oppose them have been preserved in our subconscious. Either one or the other of these patterns is activated, and we get either a suffering soul abandoned to an inhuman height, or a hero who overcomes this fear, finds the greatness of the height, and then zealously protects what he has found. What to choose - the first or the second - the question is already personal preference of a particular person! The formulation of the question is due to our nature, figuratively speaking, a spiral of twisted evolutionary layers. And is there a third version of the relationship to height? Is it possible to do without the fear that dominates or that can be overcome? But somnambulists, who follow dizzying routes in a dream, can offer an alternative! But even then, until they wake up and "load" the human perception of reality.
Hong Kong. Quarry Bay - Yick Cheong Building Image source: Tavarius / Shutterstock.com
Therefore, from my point of view, the problem of perception of high-rise construction is outside the architectural plane, outside architectural categories. After all, we are building scenery, and people are the characters who live in them. No, this does not mean that architects should remain indifferent to these processes, but it is necessary to understand in what plane they are considered. No matter how beautiful we create a high-rise palace, no architectural form will convince a simple person, forcibly pushed up, to be in solidarity with us. No architecture will turn people into social climbers if they have no reason to do so. And never in any of the societies were all the heroes. This is always a limited category. The answer from the architectural level can be the definition of the typology of objects depending on who we are building for. If we build a high-rise for conquerors of heights, that's great, we certainly have a chance to get admiration and understanding. If we are building a modern island, it is a completely different matter. Cities that push citizens to the top are doomed. People do not want to live in these conditions. Yes, they are forced to live in skyscrapers, because wages are high in Manhattan, and a person is forced to lead such a lifestyle because he earns his own capital. Even before the pandemic, the lifestyle of a person who started earning in Manhattan was as follows: the family lives in Florida, in a house, and the earner lives in New York. First he rents an apartment, then, perhaps, he buys it. There are also intermediate options when the whole family is located somewhere in the suburbs. Manhattan is home to heroes who have broken through and can secure space in a penthouse. When the business develops, a person can already live in a metropolis for six months, and spend six months with his family in Florida.
PM: How did the quarantine affect this schedule and how will the new waves of the pandemic possibly affect it?
A.P.: Quarantine showed us the opportunity to distance ourselves from the office. And people ran away from Manhattan. Neither the distinctive culture nor the unique sphere of service kept them. Simply because it is uncomfortable and unpleasant to live in these narrow streets against the backdrop of high-rise buildings. People run away. And this process will continue.
If we plan to build towers for heroes, then we have every chance of success. In all cities there is a high-rise business center, full of people, and people who like it there. But this is their conscious choice. The key point, which is the reason for the increased density of cities, is the need for contacts between people, and these are transport problems. The 40-minute availability factor forces people to choose less comfortable housing than they would like, simply because this housing is closer to the office. But the factors brought to the surface by the quarantine — the desire for remote communication and remote solution of issues, improvement of services and the formation of the habit of remote work — lead to a decrease in density. If you have the opportunity to live where you want, and most of the issues will be solved remotely - great! And if hyperloop systems will be developed, which will allow people to reduce travel time, the density will also decrease.
PM: First of all, who should worry about whether the density will decrease or increase? Architects, urban planners?
A.P.: City, city authorities. How high should the density be and at what price is it achieved? It is possible to save on infrastructure and transport by increasing the height in the city, and it is possible to develop infrastructure and allow people to live where they like, and at the same time quickly get to any point of the city. This is also a question of diversification of centers. There is a historically developed hierarchical principle of city formation: for example, there is a royal palace surrounded by courtiers, for whom it is vitally important to be near the point of decision-making. You may have a beautiful estate, but for some reason you are drawn to Versailles, you buy yourself a house somewhere nearby. This entire historical system was based on the need for personal contact, personal communication. So far, even the epidemic has not managed to change this radically - we still break into offices, where we work more efficiently than in digital spaces. But if it couldn't be otherwise before, now there is an alternative. When did the skyscrapers appear? At the end of the XIX - the beginning 10th century, when the population, the need for communication and progress entered a phase of rapid growth. Now the birth rate is decreasing. Sergey Kapitsa formulated the theory that XNUMX billion is a figure to which the human population naturally strives. And civilized, developed countries have already developed enough that their citizens live longer, and population growth did not increase rapidly, so demography there "paused." So there is no reason to fear global overpopulation. And although all this is not a reason for the heroes to give up their aspiration to the top, it gives the commoners the opportunity to choose a comfortable environment for themselves.
PM: Is it better for us to limit vertical expansion?
A.P.: The question is not whether it is right or wrong. It is a matter of freedom of choice and the understanding of happiness. The problem of megacities is that a large number of citizens (in the good sense of the word) are forced to live in a dense environment. They had no other choice, and as soon as they left such an environment, they immediately lost their income. It is not for nothing that the American dream was to move to the suburbs, but not leave the distance — to have the opportunity to live outside the city, but quickly, on good roads, to come to the office. The three-tiered American division of cities into suburbs, middletowns, and suburbs is no accident, in fact, a city of heroes who overcome their fear of heights. Between comfortable
for the heroes of the city and the suburbs, which are convenient for the citizens, a completely uncomfortable, dense environment of Middletown was formed, a sort of trap, a gray zone, where people who do not want to live here, but cannot afford anything else, hang out. And the global social and partly architectural problem is to decide how to provide a huge number of people with the space they need for happiness.
Kyivskie Poznyaki, Osokorky is our middle town, where the problem is cast in concrete. How to make the building so that everyone who is afraid of heights can live in low-rise buildings is our agenda. And our demographics are such that this is quite possible. In the same Calcutta, for example, there is no reason to think about it at all, since population growth inevitably leads to densification.
432 Park Avenue. New York. Photo: Miikka Airikkala / unsplash
PM: You mentioned the utopian projects of the beginning of the XNUMXth century. about multi-level cities. Why do you think these plans have remained unrealized until now?
A.P.: There are limitations of a purely organizational nature. Who organizes esplanades, roads, subways? Power And residents of any city scold their municipalities, because they are reactive simply by their structure, by their capabilities. Such a system is not capable of equipping multi-level spaces. Here, it would be difficult to understand in one layer - where the gas passes, and where the subway. And when the city turns into 3D, our managers simply cannot cope. Once upon a time, there was no sewage system, because it was too complicated from an organizational point of view. Although this is a marker of civilization. Sewerage appeared - historians say: the city reached the point of civilizational development. London grew to sewage only in the XNUMXth century. Therefore, it is one thing to draw a multi-layered garden on paper, quite another to realize it. I think that when artificial intelligence develops to such a level that it can be relied on, then we will be ripe for more complex
structures.
PM: Is the upward growth of cities capable of solving traffic and environmental problems by itself, or will it only exacerbate them?
A.P.: Consolidation is the answer to the desire of a large number of people to be together, the answer to overpopulation and the desire to save time for moving. If we worry that any car with a gasoline engine worsens the environment, then it would seem logical to build a skyscraper, house everyone together and move with an electric elevator. But electric cars have also appeared as an alternative. So the question of moving is completely solved. The question of communication is now solved with the help of digital platforms. Therefore, apart from the heroism that I spoke about and the desire to live closer to the social elevator, which is plus or minus near the physical center of the city, there is no weighty reason for densification. All 10 billion of the population — Kapitsa's constant — can freely settle in the city without exceeding the five-story level.
/The material is published on the pages #31 of volume PRAGMATIKA.MEDIA/
