creative amsterdam

144 Pages·2015·7.2 MB·English

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CREATIVE AMSTERDAM
GRADUATION REPORT
Ksenia Polyanina ~ 4318668 ~ [email protected]
Delta Interventions studio ~ MSc Urbanism ~ Factulty of Architecture ~ TU Delft
Mentors: Han Meyer & Arie Romein
june 2015
The little elephant Murugan practices for the upcoming official parade
Amsterdam Weesperstraat April 20th 1955
Source: http://amsterdamize.com/
GRADUATION REPORT
MSc Urbanism Faculty of Architecture TU Delft
Introduction
There are very inspiring ideas and creative city is one of them,
probably even the most inspiring of all. It is an idea about a
city where everyone is unique and passionate, where every day
is like Christmas, where boredom and mediocrity never come.
Also elephants walk in the streets. It may seem too much to
bear, too utopian, but who would mind this? Who would prefer
to live in a boring, grey, sad place?
There is no definition of creative city as a concept, probably
because it cannot be explained in words. Words create
associations in mind, resulting in certain perception, while
creative city appeals to emotions - happiness, excitement,
curiosity, surprise, engagement - relatively abstract categories.
Any concrete definition ruins the magic of creativity, and this
is why current urbanism vocabulary with land use, functions,
accessibility and alike cannot grasp the creative dimension.
For urban planners creative city is on the one hand a desirable
perspective, as it is economically and culturally beneficial, but
on the other hand it is a more chaotic setting, which sets in
danger the way cities function now.
This project is an attempt to put creativity in broader
framework and discover how chaos can be ordered.
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CREATIVE AMSTERDAM
Project of Ksenia Polyanina
1. Problem statement 6
1.1 Problem field 6
1.2 Statistics 8
Contents
1.3 Personal observations at TU Delft 10
1.4 Challenge the future 12
1.5 Sennett: The fall of Public Man 14
1.6 The right to free development 14
1.7 Craftsman - the Man as His Own Maker 15
1.8 Relevance of creative city to the problem 17
2. Theoretical framework 18
2.1 When you google creative city 18
2.2 Maslow: What is creativity? 20
2.3 Jacobs: How old is creativity? 23
2.4 Florida: Why is creativity so important nowadays? 25
2.5 Laundry: How can city activate and accelerate creativity? 27
2.6 On quantitative research 28
3. Hypothesis 30
3.1 Network: creative infrastructure 30
3.2 Ancient creative cities 32
3.3 Historical evolution of infrastructure 34
3.4 Choice of parent network: water system 36
3.5 Structural elements of creative city 38
3.6 Reference: own project - ‘water-building’ 42
3.7 Reference: own project - creative infrastructure 44
3.8 Reference: Iphone Applications 46
3.9 Reference: Cedric Price & Fun Palace 48
3.10 Reference: Google Campus project 50
4. General analysis 52
4.1 Precedent of creative city: pop-up city 52
4.2 Creative networks 60
4.3 Cities and water 62
4.4 Water in the city: Dutch experience 64
5. Amsterdam analysis 66
5.1 Personal impression 66
5.2 Creative clusters & networks 68
5.3 Broedplaatsen (breeding ground for entrepreneurs) 70
5.4 Current creative city in Amsterdam 72
5.5 Water system 74
5.6 3x3x3 analysis 76
5.7 Use and value of urban water 78
5.8 Water safety 80
5.9 Water management and perspectives 82
5.10 Water and urban fabric in Amsterdam 84
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GRADUATION REPORT
MSc Urbanism Faculty of Architecture TU Delft
6. Design of Creative Amsterdam (CA) 86
6.1 Principles 86
6.2 From magic room to modular construction 88
6.3 Visual Identity 90
6.4 Typologies of elements 92
6.5 Position in real Amsterdam 96
6.6 Structural plan of CA 100
6.7 Framework and levels of regulations 102
6.8 Overview 102
6.9 Creative / historical / self-building frameworks 104
6.10 Reference: creative urban fabric - shopping streets 106
7. Organization of CA 108
7.1 Management 108
7.2 Rules of access and use 109
7.3 Rules of operation and development 110
7.4 Committees of supervisors 111
7.5 Communication platforms 112
7.6 Urbanists role in CA 113
7.7 Problem of strategic development of CA 114
8. Development 116
8.1 Strategy 116
8.2 Assembling encyclopedia 118
8.3 3 in 1 space 119
8.4 The water-city 120
8.5 Integration 121
9. Sample masterplan: Overamstel 122
9.1 Current state of the city 122
9.2 Basic structure 124
9.3 Operation of the area 126
9.4 How it works for users 128
9.5 Potential scenarios for water storage 130
10. How CA can change real Amsterdam? 132
10.1 Relation to current city vision 132
11. Reflection 134
12. The difference between CA and ideas of modernism 137
13. Why this is not a utopia? 140
14. Bibliography 142
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CREATIVE AMSTERDAM
Project of Ksenia Polyanina
Problem analysis
Problem field
The title of the project contains the word ‘creative’ that suggests
Observed spatial problem:
creativity to be the subject of this study. However this is not
Cities are overregulated,
the only subject, as in fact there is considerable number of
boring and homogenious.
terms, highly connected with creativity - the cause, condition or
result of it. Psychologists point out quite often the interrelation
Original social problem: between creativity and other positive emotions like happiness,
passion, playfulness, joy, freedom, curiosity, etc. Therefore,
The fall of public man.
creative city is to a large extent also happy, passionate, playful,
joyful, free and interesting city; while unhappy, indiffirent, dull,
sad, overregulated and boring is apparently not creative. All
categories, except freedom, refer to emotions, what leads to
Epression of the problem subjectivity of their measurement. Neverheless, be this creative
by Cooper in ‘Interstellar’: city, happy city, playful city, passionate city, joyful or free city -
imagination draws something engaging and diverse, sincere
“We’ve always defined ourselves and bright - like illustrations on the left. In reality, illustrated
by the ability to overcome the by the images on the right, cities are still highly regulated and
impossible. And we count these planned, so individuality has to follow rules of spatial structures.
The conclusion that actual city (in this case - Dutch city) is not
moments. These moments when
creative is based on emotinal impression that is produced by
we dare to aim higher, to break
its outlook. This is the primary problem in simple words, but the
barriers, to reach for the stars,
real problem, standing behind it, is more fundamental.
to make the unknown known.
We count these moments as our
Analysis of the problem has the following structure:
proudest achievements. But we
1. Rough outline of statistics on general development of the
lost all that. Or perhaps we’ve just
Netherlands in world context - how happy and advanced the
forgotten that we are still pioneers.
country is. This is aimed to show the picture ‘from above’.
And we’ve barely begun. And that
2. Comparison of statistics with personal observations ‘from
our greatest accomplishments
inside’. Being the foreigner, I am mostly familiar with community
cannot be behind us, because our
of MSc Urbanism and its home - bk-city, so I shall use my
destiny lies above us.”
observations of fellow students at the faculty, ironically called
the city. This small case is used as a model for speculating
about larger context - real cities.
3. Referring to sociological research of historical evolution
of the problem, indicated in previous sections, I explain how
creativity can reactivate the Rise of Public Man and why it should
be addressed by urbanism.
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GRADUATION REPORT
MSc Urbanism Faculty of Architecture TU Delft
IMAGINATION REALITY
Illustration source: Aerial view of Amsterdam Noord
http://creativityissues.com Image source: bing maps
Kinderspelen, 1560 Amsterdam Kerkstaat streetview
Painting copyrights: Pieter Breughel de Oude Image copyrights: Ksenia Polyanina
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CREATIVE AMSTERDAM
Project of Ksenia Polyanina
1
Statistics
World rankings, comparing happiness and human development
in different countries around the world, place the Netherlands
on the 4th place. This is a very high position, as rankings are
based on analysis of 156 and 185 countries respectively. Why
do Netherlands have such a high ranking?
Common sense suggests that there is certain interdependance
between happiness and development. It is also expressed
in similarity of indicators, which are used in calculations, but
happiness statistics are partially based on polls and interviews,
while human development is more based on documents. In
both cases gross national product per capita and life expectancy
are the main determinants, so the more wealthy nation is and
the longer its population lives - the higher is level of happiness
and development. What is interesting about the ranking of
happiness is the extent, to which ‘freedom to make life choices’
affects aggregate index. It is more subjective indicator, as well
as generosity and perception of corruption - all of them are 2
to 3 times less important than more objective indicators - social
support, life expectansy, GDP. Logical conclusion is that society
affects people’s happiness and development more than their
individuality, but what are the consequences of such way of
seeing?
I shall focus on ‘freedom to make life choices’ and take the
freedom of choice of occupation. In theory, if country is wealthy,
safe and supportive, people are ‘on right places’ where they can
be the happiest and contribute the most to society. However,
the research of engagement into work shows that only 9 of
100 people in the Netherlands are engaged into work. This
indicator is quite low in all 142 countries, participating in the
research, but the Netherlands are the on the 4th position in
other rankins. It means that absolute majority of people spend
around 40 hours per week on activity which they do not enjoy.
The following observations look at this issue closer.
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GRADUATION REPORT
MSc Urbanism Faculty of Architecture TU Delft
Ranking of Happiness 2010-2012
source: World Happiness Report 2013
Human development index and its conponents Ranking of engagement into work, Western Europe
source: Human Development Report 2014 source: State of the Global Workplace Report 2013
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CREATIVE AMSTERDAM
Project of Ksenia Polyanina
2.1
Personal observations at TU Delft
I refer to my personal experienceto to show the problem ‘from
within’. Taking situation at MSc Urbanism separately from the
context allows to guess what can cause lack of engagement
into work.
The idea of the degree ‘Master of science’ suggests that
students choose their specialisation freely, so they can do
what they like most of all and consider to be important. Motto
of TU Delft is ‘Challenge the future’, which communicates
engagement, passion and courage. It is written on employees
and students cards, as well as in presentations template, but
reality does not reflect this bold suggestion. Examples below
offer a brief overview of my experience.
After 3 weeks of the first project, Chinese teammate [1] decided
to quit and re-apply to Architecture track. She said: ‘It was not
what I expected and I prefer to go back to China and reapply
rather than wait longer’. Another Dutch teammate [2] said in
the middle of the project that she does not like design and her
fascination is history, so it was constantly disappointing to see
her indifference during discussions over collective vision of
the project. Although I still stay in contact with her and she is a
great person.
During the second project of MSc Urbanism program, the
assignment was entirely individual, unlike collective first project
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