Architecture as Production from Culture:

Ideas on Place Making in High Density Multi Level Housing Design

ABSTRACTS: The idea behind this writing is intended to raise the awareness among readers
on the importance of culture and quality of difference among individual occupants in high density
multi level housing design, and the notion of place making from an individual dwelling part, to a
meaningful high density residential area as a collective whole. The idea of world uniformity has been
a significant issue in terms of high density housing design, and it has to be eliminated due to its
regardless of culture of occupants in order to establish a better living standard for building occupants.

Key words: place making, high density multi level building, individuality, culture, community

1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 On High Density Housing

Density, as referred in Oxford Dictionaries is the mass per unit volume of a substance. To
bring the term into a much humane context, it implies the degree of compactness. On the other hand,
housing in this context means houses and flats considered collectively, while high implies something
of great vertical extent as referred in Oxford Dictionaries. In a more concrete sense, high density
housing means a compact living within one plot of land. In other word, it is a condition of living
together with a great number of neighbours. High density housing does not have an absolute meaning
globally and it is interpreted differently throughout countries in the whole world.

1.1.1 General Ideas of Multi Level Housing

Idea of multi level residential housing started to evolved back in when Le Corbusier‟s utopian
idea came to reality. Initially, the idea was celebrated as it was able to house a large amount of
occupants into one single tower block of glass and concrete, but things turned the other way round
especially in the western country, the so called high rise tower block failed to serve the occupant well
and it became a breeding ground for the anti-social behaviour. Take to case of Pruitt-Igoe, one of the
urban housing projects in the city of St. Louis, Missouri, United States. It is very unfortunately that
the tower blocks have to be deconstructed after serving the occupants for only 14 years due to the
rising rate of crime, poverty and decay cause by the building design.
Generally, a high rise residential building is strongly link to the term „community‟, as it serves
an amount of individuals as a collective whole.

1.2 On Community

Community is defined as a group of people living in the same place or having a particular
characteristic in common. (Oxford dictionary) Common characteristic may be a belief that a group has
in common, place that people lives together, area of interest that people practices and activities that a
common group undergoes. In short, community means a group of people view collectively. Even
though people possesses common characteristic, there are still individualities in particular individuals,
where every individual possesses unique culture and lives in a different way.

“There is no such thing as „society‟.” Margaret Thatcher

The idea of community, like society, is problematic if it is not well defined. “History shows
that all of the worst things which a state can inflict upon individual human beings — conscription,
apartheid, expropriation, compulsory contraception, genocide are characteristically marked by some
collective abstraction like „the State‟, „society‟, „nation‟, „race‟, „proletariat‟, „community‟ or
„spaceship Earth‟ whose interests are said to override those of the individual, and so justify the
coercive and repressive actions of the State” (Duncan and Hobson, 1995: p. 298).

1.3 On Individuality

Individuality is the opposite of collectivity. It implies the quality or character of a particular

person or thing that distinguishes them from one another. The idea of individuality has a close link to
culture, a way of living and belief. Man develops his own culture since he was born and throughout
his entire life within the limitation of climate, geography, topology, the influence of existing cultures
of places and many other aspects as well.

“If a man, fixing his attention on these and the like difficulties, does away with ideas of things
and will not admit that every individual thing has its own determinate idea which is always
one and the same, he will have nothing on which his mind can rest; and so he will utterly
destroy the power of reasoning.”
Plato, Parmenides

The statement made by Plato implies that there exists no two completely identical things and
it sparked a thought on the quality of individual in this world. Even with the ability of advance
industrial machinery to mass produces identical things, there still exists a factor call time. Given that
every individual possesses himself his own distinctive culture and characteristic, so does architecture
of housing reinforce this notion? Act of reducing the world of diversity into uniformity or as one kind
is an act of bureaucracy.

2.0 On World Uniformity of Mass Housing Design

Back in 19th century, world had a vast changes in social and economic due to the innovation
in process of manufacturing of industrialization. Repetition in production of daily equipments,
transportations, houses and so on has been highly available and it became one of the issues until today.
However, apart from supplying accommodation and the needs of shelter for numbers of people,
industrialization which involved mass production of housing has been perceived as problematic as it
reinforced the idea of world uniformity, in another word, a world as a community with regardless
distinctive culture of individual and particular locality which included climate, geography, topography,
and context. Pruitt-Ignoe is one of the examples of a mass housing project designed and built with no
cultural references and history unmarked but merely social engineering and social science. It has been
proven as a failure in mass housing design to meet requirement of user, and it became a breeding
ground for anti-social behaviour.

2.1 Problem of Research

“A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic?” Joseph Stalin

“Do not put faith in what statistics say until you have carefully considered what they do not
say.”

William W. Watt

Research is a systematic inquiry towards creating knowledge (Groat. L. N, 2002). A

systematic way of finding answers has been evolving long before century, when human being try to
put two stones together trying to make a shelter. In post-modern world, architecture became more
subjective instead of objective as pointed out by Lucien Kroll, 1986. They decided to focus on a
singular aspect like climate, place, time, race, tradition, scale, return to roots, recent history and so on.
As a result, buildings were only capable to respond well towards a singular aspect but not other
aspects as a whole. Just like the case on architecture of green agenda, statistics were being presented
without any conceptual framework on other aspect, thus failed completely to engage the user. It is sad
to know that the visionary idea of greening the whole housing project in Huang Bai Yu by Architect
William McDonough failed to meet the culture and requirement of users. This gives a clear idea that a
intelligent reform may require cultural references, and it is to be done slowly rather than in a drastic
manner. Culture may reinforce.

3.0 Process of Dwelling

In 1980, Christian Norberg-Schulz made a case on ideas of dwelling, that for an individual to
dwell, one must experiences the process of visualization, complementation and symbolization.
Through visualization, one sees and learns the environment, then he starts to put up what is lacking in
his surrounding to suit his need as an act of complementation. Finally, he is able to relate his
environmental elements and things to one another in order to give meaning to it.
3.1 Creative User

“Diversity encourages creativity, while repetition anaesthetizes it.”

Lucien Kroll, An Architecture of Complexity

A design of a house is meant to be flexible, when it allows changes to meet user‟s objectives
within the limitation of climate, geography, topography, context and culture. Then followed by the
framework which allows users to deal with their environment and create meaningful spaces on their
own. When user deals with their environment, they learn, their culture may reinforce it, and
architecture supports it.

However, it is always an issue in terms of flexibility in architectural built form, does an open
plan really provides flexibility to the occupant? In this case we may look into Pompidou Centre in
Paris, France by Renzo Piano and Richard Roger, where structures and services of the building were
placed outside of the building to allow maximum degree of flexibility for the occupants. However,
such idea might works very well as the interior of gallery were use to be design by designers and
architects, but not for housing design because occupant might not have much ability to translate ideas
into built environment and they may not aware on the impact of the way they make changes in their
environment might affect on their neighbour or even the world! Plus, such an act seems to abdicate
role of an architect by leaving the rest of the work to be decided totally by the occupant and leaving
them a neutral plan.

3.2 Diversity

“But whatever the cause, such homogeneity makes it difficult for the users to add anything of
their own, and we lose that rich resource of popular creativity which can transform a space
into place and give it life.”

Lucian Kroll, An Architecture of Complexity, p29

In most of the cases, dwelling units are mass produced in a repetitive way and interiors are
being well divided into specific rooms. In the process of dwelling, there would be less room for
creativity for user to participate in creating their environment, but being restricted to the repetitive
design from the industry. So, rather than inducing a bureaucratic imposition on users, can architecture
provide framework to foster creative imposition on users in their process of dwelling? And if so, to
what extent of diversity that it brings?

Diversity would definitely encourage creativity. In every human activity, there is an

environment totality to support it and makes it occur, and the dimension differs from every individual
as resulted in the difference.
4.0 Case Study

4.1 Social housing of Madrid by Morphosis

This is the first social housing which exists in Madrid. Instead of a radical reform, Morphosis
decided to reform the context of housing slowly by referring to the history, demography and culture of
the place. Interestingly, an idea of connecting ownership of occupant into the public realm of
transportation is conceived, forming public, private courtyard and a mix of low rise housing units and
medium rise housing block instead of a tower which owns by no one. Components like ventilation
shafts and pergolas generate a microclimate and structural landscape.
4.2 Medical Faculty by Lucien Kroll

This project demonstrates the significance of culture of users in making meaningful and
successful place. Initially, users were involved in the design process by filling furniture scale model
into a scale model of the project. It is important to identify the range of possibility of spaces so that
the flexibility of a space provided for user in design might be base on that. The idea of placing column
not following grid, movable and modular components encourage creativity and involvement of user in
creating their own spaces. The entire design is created upon individuality of the users in terms of
culture and it reciprocally produced meaningful places shaping behaviours of user who use the spaces.

5.0 Summary

World uniformity in mass housing is problematic due to its regardless on culture and history
of place. With the consideration of the ideas above, several conclusions is deduced:-

1. Architecture has to be culturally rooted with respect to the quality of difference that
individuals possess.
2. Design process which involves user participation is much desirable.
3. Ideas of place making rely upon the consideration on culture as a way of living and belief
within limitation of topography, geography, climate, existing culture and context.
5.0 Bibliography

[1] Atelier Kroll. Faculty of Medicine.

Available from http://homeusers.brutele.be/kroll/auai-project-ZS.htm

[2] Groat. L. N, Wang. D. 2002. Architectural Research Methods. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

[3] Hertzberger. H. 2005. Lessons for Students of Architecture. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers.

[4] Kroll. L. 1986. An Architecture of Complexity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

[5] Maguire. P. 1968. From Tree Dwellings to New Towns. Harlow: Longmans.

[6] Mayne. T. Heritage Transform.

Available from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGX640s2aDI

[7] Meek. N. 1998. „Society‟ Does Not Exist (and if it did it shouldn‟t). London: Libertarian Alliance.
Available from http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/polin/polin144.pdf

[8] Morphosis Architect, Inc. Morphopedia.

Available from http://morphopedia.com/projects/madrid-housing

[9] Newman. O. 1996. Creating Defensible Space. Available from http://www.defensiblespace.com

[10] Porter. T. 2004. Archispeak: An Illustrated Guide to Architectural Terms. London: Spoon Press
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(Originally published in 1979)

[12] The Age. China's first eco-village proves a hard sell. Available from
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