Faster Pussycat, Kill Kill (or Programming Urban Landscapes)

vi·o·lence vahy-uh-luhns

1. swift and intense force: the violence of a storm
2. rough or injurious physical force, action, or treatment: to die by violence.
3. damage through distortion or unwarranted alteration: to do editorial violence to a text.

In ‘Violence of Architecture’, Tschumi seems to think of violence mostly in this last sense, and suggests, or rather advocates for its presence in architecture as “it contains the possibility of change, or renewal”. He categorizes violence into two types, formal and programmatic. He describes formal violence as the collision of objects and the disruption of site. Programmatic violence is described as evil or destructive program. In his earlier work, ‘Spaces and Events’, he argues the importance of collisions of program, which also suggests violence, or disjunction.

The value of program that is suggested in Tschumi’s work has multiple readings when juxtaposed with ‘Programming the Urban Surface’, which argues for “non-programed use" as a strategy for addressing the surface. It might be suggested that such a strategy takes Tschumi’s argument one step further in that it advocates the elimination of program in order to allow for variation and juxtaposition. However, a lack of programmatic enforcement may simply allow for nothingness, an empty void. In addition, providing a space for the user to develop program may permit a dominant group to exclude a weaker one. However, some of the examples provided are more specifically in the realm of what Tschumi suggests. The OMA Yokohama Design Forum project “invents new programs and provisions”, and “shows a more heterogeneous mix of functions”. This is also true in the Yokohama Port Terminal.

In the end, Alex Wall and Tschumi are advocating for the same result (heterogeneous space) through different methodologies. While Tschumi argues for the designed, violent juxtaposition of program, Wall argues for an undesigned surface that will inevitably become heterogeneous. In the end the absolute is inconclusive: heterogeneity cannot be designed nor can it be anticipated. This leads us back to questions the class has already been asking. Is 'good' or 'successful' urban space heterogeneous? Can it be exclusionary? Can it be designed?