“…only a certain kind of place, an open city, will stimulate you -- and that stimulation comes in particular form. Jacobs says, in a famous declaration, “if density and diversity give life, the life they breed is disorderly.” The open city feels like Naples, the closed city feels like Frankfurt…” -Richard Sennett: The Open City
OPEN CITY
New York has developed so thoroughly that it is now pushing to its edges and outer boroughs for new land, places which were previously undesirable or even ‘uninhabitable’. Its these edges where private development conflicts with public use, and where gentrification has most quickly homogenized and privatized. Because of it’s superfund cleanup project and zoning shifts, the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn is the on front lines of this conflict. In this studio, we challenge students to read the city and create within its context elements which stimulate engagement, and which keep the ‘open’ city open?
Open Form
“The open work assumes the task of giving us an image of discontinuity. It does not narrate it; it is it…” (Eco: The Open Work). From the early 20th century, the term ‘open form’ was synonymous with a limitless composition. More recently, Umberto Eco and others work with ‘open’ forms expression, activated when engaged. For them, the ‘open work’ is immediate, here and now, yet endlessly changing.
