The debate at the Berlage Institute on 27 march was one more of these useless debates. Very boring and very disappointing. Difference on European and American positions and the whole saga about American trying to realize European’s utopia dreams is also an outdated story belonging to the modern history. The discussion hardly extends outside LA and a bit of NL. South Africa was only briefly mentioned. I would like to add a few pointed with South African and Chinese references.
Rients Dijkstra talked about cars, as if automobile is synonymous as mobility. Mobility takes many levels and dimensions. Mobility has its price too- energy consumption, pollution, environmental crisis, etc.
In South Africa, gated community is so desirable, not only because fear plays a major factor in the mechanism, but also because of traffic congestions. People prefer to live in a secured and ‘complete’ surrounding, where they never have to get out anymore. They work online- a gift of mobility, so they can reduce traveling and ‘getting out’.
Maybe to find some clues of how to ‘re-fabricate’ gated community, what defines/makes gated community should have been outlined in the lectures:
Is gated community defined by the organizational diagram?
Is gated community defined by architectural style and dream-like environment, so people perpetually feel they are somewhere else and sometime else?
Is gated community defined by the mechanism of in-/ex-clusion?
Who governs gated community?
Who is keeping the demand of gated community going?
What really is the problem of gated community? What is ok and what is not?
One of the better points of Lars Lerup was to point out that overcoming and making distance at the same time is the ultimate art of gated community. To distant oneself from the undesirable, and to include all the desirables- the alike, facilities, golf course, etc- in one little world. In Chinese gated communities club houses are very crucial.; they are social centers of a ‘un-spontaneous/passive community’.
Lars Lerup made a point that walls and fences expel differences and include sameness. Behind walls there is a sort of commonality. I find examples in post-Apartheid South Africa very interesting. The enclave of Apartheid explodes into micro enclaves. Behind walls similar income brackets sort themselves out. Gated community does not know colors of skin. Gated community knows only have’s and have-not’s. Behind walls, difference of skin color is less important. Their collective enemy is who is outside. In order the perpetuate the speculative security development, fears has to be perpetually produced and propagated to maintain the demand for a secured environment.
St.Francis Bay, South Africa
What is also interesting is to understand gated community in a large economic dynamics. For example, Lars Lerup pointed out that land acquisition depends on land cost, which also dominates density and planning/design criteria. I would just say that this point does go very far, just think about a game of monopoly as example, one can have an initial idea of what the speculation is about. What I would like to add is that the phenomenon of gated community never exists alone. It is only symptomatic of a larger social illness. And gated communities never exist without the barrios, townships, or ghettos. Only focusing on the gated community is to ignore the complete ecology of have-havenot dynamics. It is the eternal struggle between master and servant.
Lars Lerup said that the problems against gated community is a European problem and architects need to invent grammar of life. Building has to be intelligent and it is architects’ job to re-fabricate the whole old idea of gated community, make it nice and livable and remodel gated community, make it richer and deeper. He pointed out that the problem of gated community stays a problem of practice. Research and books can put issues on the table but practice holds the key to better alternatives. I agree with this. But how can gated community be remodeled if the organizational diagram defines planning strategy and performance?
Saying ‘remodeling gated community into a nice and livable environment’ is as if gated community is not fundamentally problematic and discriminating. Stéphane Degoutin talked about gated community as part of the globalization and inter-infection process. I find gated community extremely problematic when places like China copies from the U.S. as a sort of lifestyle aspiration without further ‘re-fabrication’, editing or customizing to the Chinese context. The copy of a copy of a dumb American gated community does not produce something new and will never produce anything good. It is too easy to say that the problem against gated community is a European problem and all we need to do is to make good gated communities.
Shanghai, China
As a conclusion, Lars Lerup went on about how rhetoric is important; architects need to sharpen up our representation, provocation. Peter Trummer made it sound like the whole big answer lies in the technique. Rients Dijkstra simply concluded that architects should not take on all the issues, time management is very important. This to me is just a total surrender to the difficulty facing our profession and environment.
In comparison, the debate on 13 march had a much more polemic edge. Kees Christiaanse made a statement that out of gated community is down and out. In the future, people will look back on the modern history and say that was a brief moment in history without gated community. I wonder if gated community is maybe the true manifestation of humanity. And I just won’t believe that it is.
