Mapping Urban Landscapes Urban Landscapes

EXPERIMENTING PROXIMITY
The Urban Landscape Observatory

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1852_mise_PPUR.indd 2

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EXPERIMENTING PROXIMITY
The Urban Landscape Observatory

with the contributions of
Elena Cogato Lanza
Antonio di Campli
Christophe Girot
Nadine Schütz
Fred Truniger

Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes

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The authors and publisher express their thanks to the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne
for its generous support towards the publication of this book.

The PPUR publishes mainly works of teaching and research of the Ecole polytechnique
fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), of universities and other institutions of higher education.
www.ppur.org
First Edition
© Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne, 2014
ISBN 978-2-88915-022-9
All rights reserved, including those of translation into other languages. No part of this
book may be reproduced in any form – by photoprint, microfilm, or any other means – nor
transmitted or translated into a machine language without written permission from the
publisher.
Printed in Italy

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Table of Content

7

17

Mapping Urban Landscapes
Antonio di Campli

59

Landscape Video
Fred Truniger, Nadine Schütz

85

Urban Qualities and Visualization: Towards a New Pedagogical Approach
Elena Cogato Lanza, Christophe Girot

93

French Abstract: Un kilomètre de paysage urbain

103

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One Kilometer of Urban Landscape
Elena Cogato Lanza, Christophe Girot

References

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Mapping Urban Landscapes

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Antonio di Campli

Mapping Urban Landscapes

In mapping practice the process of landscape representation is marked by its particular concern with the identification of signs, urban materials, or situations through
which the qualities or values of a given space can be
described. Bringing these elements into clearer focus
means adopting an openly narrative posture, as in constructing an account of a place, something that does not
apply when one is representing space in terms of quantity, boundary, or extent. Associating space with a narrative – an image or ecology – is done by means of drawing
together observations on different scales and from different vantage points. A close-up view that focuses on a
sign, object, or populated situation, in which a group of

subjects interact among themselves and a specific use of
space is outlined, is usually combined with a more selective view, possibly a zenithal view, capable of rendering
the wider background and setting.
In representations of the battlefield of Waterloo as
described by Yves Brunier, or in descriptions of the Pro-

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vençal countryside found in the infrastructure projects
of Desvignes & Dalnoky, or in Alexander Von Humboldt’s
section drawings of the Andean slopes, landscape is
treated in a manner not dissimilar to that in which Georges Rodenbach and Victor Hugo, in their literary tales, confer the role of lead character upon the cities of Bruges or
Paris (Auricoste/Blaisse/Claramunt 1996; Marot 1996, 4445; Von Humboldt 1997, 78-83; Desvigne 2009).
Some scholars, such as Denis Cosgrove, William J.T.
Mitchell, and John Barrell (Barrell 1983; Cosgrove 1984;
Mitchell 1994), when reflecting in general terms on landscape representation, have claimed that its primary concern is the definition of a model of space and a system
of values aimed at the control of a territorial or urban
area. Understood in this way, the concept of landscape
acquires an ideological dimension as an expression
of values and viewpoints on how space should be perceived and occupied. Some of the picturesque images of

the English Romantic period are an example of this, like

Map of Geneva’s case studies:
Meyrin village, Meyrin Cité,
Vernier, Lignon, Libellules.

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20

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those of John Constable, where describing the landscape
has a distinctly model character: “It represents a way
in which certain classes of people have signified themselves and their world through which they have underlined and communicated their own social role and that
of others with respect to nature” (Cosgrove 1984, 15).
This form of description or account occurs through a
process of decantation and abstraction of signs, conventions of use, and values and expresses the way in which a

social group implicitly tends to think of space, and to naturalize economic and social practice within it. The result
is a partially imagined territorial space and an expression
of a system of power relationships – by which we mean
cultural power.
In the practice of mapping landscapes as narratives we
can identify at least two tendencies. In the first, the city
is seen as a palimpsest: accumulated traces, re-writings,
and overlayerings that can be peeled away. This tendency is concerned with uncovering the signs, inheritances,
or assets linked to the forging of its identity, the ways in
which a certain grammar of the construction of space
persists through time and presents itself as an “implicit
project” for its modification. This way of looking at urban
space finds legitimacy mainly whenever modernism is in
crisis, where the design of a city is redefined as a contextual critique and a tool for recuperating the genius loci.
The way in which we articulate this tendency today is expressed through representations that, on the territorial
level, search for the “statute” of a place (Scazzosi 2001)
and its structural invariants.
The second tendency, which goes right back to Humboldtian forms of description (often revisited today
in the debate on sustainability), is concerned with the
ecologies of a space: how the balance is defined between

different inputs, elements, or subjects living together in
a landscape, is defined. This second tendency, in which
the representation and design of cities develop rhizom-

atically, emphasizes long-term phenomena – processes
rather than forms or signs – with a view to maintaining a
state of equilibrium. An example would be the territorial
representation of post-traumatic phenomena (Mathur/
Da Cunha 2001).
These descriptive models have formed the starting
point for the experimental mapping we have explored
in our 1 km Well-being project for the representation of
qualitative landscape features and urban comfort, bearing in mind that identifying comfort against a general
background of urban landscape analysis includes looking for elements and dimensions of environmental, atmospheric, or social control. Comfort is a condition we
hope to find in well-defined environments, spaces, or
atmospheres, which, due to the presence of both fixed
elements and specific ecologies and evolving processes,
determines the way the spaces are used and yield a definable result. For these reasons, we approach the description of the aspects of comfort that connote an urban
space using the two aforementioned techniques of “narrative description” of landscape.
At the same time, we have tried to move away from

these models and their tendency towards stable narratives and settled configurations, since forming a critical
judgment on the features of urban comfort in a given
context must encompass a design aspect, something we
cannot achieve by describing a landscape as a static or
closed model.
First and foremost, such a design-oriented approach
has called for a search for information on several levels
and the composition of appropriate representational
languages. This is not a matter of producing “saturated”
descriptions of spaces and values but of constructing
open representations that permit, as in a work of criticism, separate identification of the individual elements
that define a state of comfort and verification of exactly
how they function.

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We have looked at a broad range of fields: the material
character of spaces, their environmental character, morphologies, and a number of anthropological and psychological phenomena. The maps correspond to narratives
constructed on different levels that allow us to convey
an explicit critical judgment. They combine map sectors

on differing scales, sections, quantitative and interpretative diagrams, text and photographic input – all with the
aim of pushing the representative potential of the map
as far as it will go.
The concepts of comfort and well-being that belong to
the realm of common sense have not been subject to any
specific theoretical development on our part. We have
regarded them as “black boxes” that we do not need to
open up in order to use. Indeed, we have purposefully
tried keeping common sense at arm’s length – to make
a virtue, as it were, of “distance” in our observational
mechanism. No relationships of familiarity connect the
observer with the parts of the city observed. Having identified these parts as samples – exactly like those on a microscope slide (Ábalos 2005; Ábalos 2008) – we have deliberately scrutinized them with an external eye. We regard
this conscious pursuit of extraneity, if not estrangement,
as essential for research that has adopted the “learning
from” model, describing situations and “spatially situated” forms of comfort with the goal of defining more
general, innovative ways of imagining urban comfort on
a neighborhood scale.
The five case studies examined are located on the outskirts of Geneva, a city with a morphological, environmental, and social character that has much in common
with the bulk of Central European urbanized space. It is
fair to assume that, in the near future, these areas will be

affected by densification in line with “new norms” of sustainable urban design. While the Lignon and Meyrin suburb case studies may enable us to rethink the qualities
of two satellite suburbs of a decidedly modernist stamp,

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the examples of Meyrin Village, Vernier, and Libellules
are representative of fringe areas with a more mixed pattern of urban materials – residential, commercial, and
industrial forms, and environmental or transport infrastructure.
The Lignon satellite suburb, built in the 1960’s, is composed of a single megastructure roughly 1 km in length
housing 2,870 apartments. The building, which has a
semi-linear form, sits on top of a promontory skirted by
the Rhône and forming a large, open-sided court facing
the river bank. The surroundings are made up of a fine
grain of individual houses on plots and a productive/industrial area of small-scale services.
Built between 1962 and 1963, the Meyrin suburb was
designed to house 16,000 people in close proximity to
CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The
district is made up of tall ranges of eight to ten storeys,
concentrically arranged on grassy terrain around a civic
and commercial hub.
Meyrin Village is a small, compact settlement, which
has seen a growth in small-sized commercial/productive
fabric and residential areas (with a prevalence of individual houses, their expansion held in check by residual
agricultural land) resulting from the increased regional
importance of the main road, the Route de Meyrin.
Vernier is a ribbon settlement that dissolves into a
cluster of residential spaces on the banks of the Rhône,
articulated by a series of agricultural spaces that face the
river to the south, with the Jura Mountains to the north.
The Libellules quarter, just beyond Geneva’s urban
center, is denoted by the presence of a series of infrastructure services for urban scale transportation that
link and yet separate elements of a mixed residential
neighborhood, sports facilities, services, commercial areas, and green space.
With the sole exception of Lignon, these examples are
representative of the urban grain of the Geneva area,

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where a variety of urban and rural conditions, whose
materials are connoted by a contained and regular scale,
exist comfortably side-by-side. This kind of territory has a
mixed configuration, that is one in which different forms
and situations of urban well-being can be discerned at
neighborhood level.

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A Western Project for Describing Landscape
Comfort features in this particular context of investigation have, as already stated, been rendered by looking
critically at the traditions of landscape description in
mapping technique. At the same time, we have taken a
keen interest in a number of recent experiences in rural
landscape description. This is a field in which innovative
mapping experiments have emerged in the last two decades. They use techniques that can distance themselves
from the “picturesque” forms of representation that,
even today, often implicitly hearken back to the lessons
of Lynch or Cullen (both approaches to urban analysis
and design that seek to capture the identity of a given urban landscape and build, coupling strategies between local societies and urban spaces) (Lynch 1960; Cullen 1961).1
Two representational techniques in particular, found
in James Corner & Alex MacLean’s Taking Measures Across
the American Landscape and Alan Berger’s Reclaiming
the American West, have yielded forms of description
decoupled from traditional values, identity, or heritage discourses, and tried to overcome the Cartesian or
perspective-based representational logic that too often
reduces landscape discourse within a purely spatial dimension (Corner/MacLean 1996; Berger 2002; Mathur/Da
Cunha 2001; Mostafavi/Najle 2003; Abalos 2005; Atelier
Bow-Wow 2007).
These two techniques, explored in various research
developed in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, talk about
a “Western project” of landscape description, marked
by recombined representation, image, and non-rigid

description which, rather than capturing a precise image of a landscape, brings several dimensions, scales of
observation, and elements into play that recall various
different narratives. Structured around aerial photography, drawings, and maps, these representations reveal
the particular “uncanny measure” of the American landscape: a place built according to a purely functional, extreme form of logic – an abstract space, signified by paradoxical dimensions, producing effects of estrangement.
The attitude – both combinatorial and estranging –
that these two “critical” techniques adopt has no desire
to entrench models and values but rather to define innovative project strategies for regenerating parts of the
American landscape. The focus is on one landscape in
particular: the “post-technological” Midwest, signified by
the presence of sites that have been profoundly modified
in one way or another, if not “altered,” and that, nevertheless, remains imbued with potent symbolic meaning.
The Midwest, like a research laboratory on landscapes
not connoted by culturalist discourse – a space subject
to fluid modification – lends itself to scrutiny without
nostalgia and, therefore, can inspire innovative forms of
representation, discourse, and strategies for modification.
Alan Berger’s work considers mining sites as altered
sites, raising a host of morphological, ethical, and social
questions, with the aim of their “reclamation” in a posttechnological context. Reclamation is understood as
a particular category of landscape planning that does
not aim to define an image based on the cosmetics or
re-creation of original conditions. Modification and the
hidden aspects of the alteration process are viewed nonideologically, with the aim of defining new ecologies and
processes.
In this sense, representations produced in Berger’s research are conceived as generative devices. Unlike the
representation of places as “units” – natural, friendly,

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stable, romantic – these representations clearly reveal
the problematic framework of describing, starting with
the accumulation of information, data, text, and image
over time. They activate a strategy of interaction and
recombination of ideas, meanings, physical presences,
forms, and processes. Reclamation is a dual movement,
where one experiments with descriptive methods that
lie in between narration and visual recording, while distancing oneself from preconceived judgments about the
landscape.
Three types of graphic “objects” are deployed to construct these representations: cartography, notationmapping, and aerial imagery,2 all used to describe surfaces, geological strata, jurisdictions, topographies,
sequences, cleared areas, movements, diversions, dislocations, volumes, dispersions, and ecologies. Measurement is an objective datum that plays an important role
in constructing a spatial order of events or relational sequences which allow us to interpret the organization of
a given landscape, but its language is modified to deliver
something more graphic, less sectorial in aspect, capable of stimulating public debate on changes made to the
landscape.
In this sense, mapping produced in Berger’s research
is reflexive in character; it loses the holistic character of
traditional cartography and becomes a tool for deconstruction made up of fragments and information that differ in both nature and provenance.
James Corner and Alex MacLean combine aerial photography, maps, captions, and short essays to develop
ideas about conventions of use and construction in the
landscape of the Midwest. Description focuses on taking a “measure” understood in the sense of a numerical
dimension, a functional device for describing land use
and relationships between anthropic and natural forces.
They talk of material quantities (spatial rhythms and geometries) and instruments (technical tools), but also in

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terms of the measure of moral and social justice, and spatial, legal, or technological control from the angle of determining what is socially just. The intention is to show,
through the combinatory handling of various forms of
information, the reciprocity between functional aspects
(like those connected with the subdivision of farmland
into lots, or with spacings, security buffers, etc.) and
measurements that reflect the imaginative and symbolic
features of landscape dwelling.
Although denoted by “modern” functional and analytic measurements, there is no doubt that the shape of
the American landscape also contains aesthetic valences
that are revealed as ambiguous, estranging, and paradoxical.
This process of “taking measures”3 requires us to come
to grips with tools, methods, and practices. Ends, limits,
and time have to be recognized, and judgments and values expressed as the basis of the representational exercise. Taking measures calls for a zenithal viewpoint, combined with aerial photography: Alex MacLean’s images
look at space and show its dimensions, but also have a
particular kind of immobility and permanence. While recalling the traditional language of photography, they are
also almost indifferent to the subject.
The combinatory materials explored by these authors,
whose research predates that of Alan Berger by a few
years, are assembled from a series of map-drawings
overlaid with photographic and satellite imagery, maintaining a certain relationship of scale.4 Map-notations
and aerial images provide zenithal views, but the former
contain a degree of abstraction which makes them both
complementary and yet remote from the photographs.
Subsequent entries, additions, and erasures aim to reveal some of the minimal rationale that lies behind the
construction of the American landscape but without reducing the potentiality of the territory’s narrative, metaphorical, or mythological aspects.

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24

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1 km
1 km = 50 cm

(maquette 1/2000)

(1/2000)

1 km = 25 cm

square maquette (greys)
maquette section (greys/one color)
maps/diagrams (color)

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Critiques of student work and scheme
presenting the format for 1 × 1 km readings
production: a series of square tablets
and a maquette.

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26

Filtering [LG03]: model.

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The critical tension and openness to design innovation
in these representations of the American landscape have
made them essential models for the representation of
urban comfort at the local level in the 1 km Well-being
project. The combinatory, estranging technique, aimed
at forming a judgment, has in our case been re-defined as
an intersection of two viewpoints.
The first is the zenithal point, the cartographic view
that selects spatial structures, grids, or precise situations
capable of producing urban comfort within the context
under scrutiny. Attention focuses on the dimensional
character and shape of the objects identified. Taking
measurements is a key operation, used here to construct
a discourse applicable to the disciplinary context – architecture, urbanism or landscape – with implicit allusion to
the issue of design. This view from above reveals orientations, patterns, recurrences, sequences; it describes and
measures form and morphology.
The second is the view from below, resulting from investigations in situ, an outline that concentrates, on the
one hand, on urban materials and how they define the
subject landscape, and, on the other, on uses of space.

This view is rendered chiefly by means of photographic
investigation, sometimes with additional diagrams to
render sensory qualities and degrees of well-being. References for this view from below come from the techniques used by Guido Guidi (Zannier 2006), an Italian
photographer who more than anyone has trained his eye
to observe marginal and intermediate spaces, and the urban research of the New Topographical Movement. This
movement looks at the city as a context of the unfamiliar,
a crime scene waiting to be investigated, like in the photographs of Lewis Baltz (Salvesen 2009; Baltz/Callahan/
Porter/Digrappa/Adam 1980).
In our experiment, as regards the format, the representation of each case study is made up of 25 × 25 cm map
sequences. A small-square format, combined with nonconventional representation, deactivates the customary
representational systems of the discipline, in particular
as regards format and scale. It places the viewer in the
situation of not being able to draw on familiar techniques, thereby doubling the effect of unfamiliarity one
senses in the presence of the site. The square produces
an initial isotropic perception of the place, without hierarchies or ordered ranking, and forces an extremely
selective approach. Each of the 25 × 25 cm maps is mounted on a rigid support, like a tablet, and presents itself
as a flat, yet solid, manageable object. Together, these
tablets form a cinematic sequence of photograms where
different developments – narrative, demonstrative, serial, etc. – are possible. The tablet sequence is accompanied by a 3D representation twice the size of the map
(50 × 50 cm). By constructing a physical model, certain
characteristics that cannot be rendered graphically can
be expressed. This model is generally neutral in colour
– white and grey; a sheet of Plexiglass is fitted on top
onto which the viewer can position the section most
meaningful for describing the comfort features of the
box being studied.

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Three Areas of Investigation
Our inquiry into the comfort conditions pertaining within a 1 × 1 km extract of the urban environment has been
steered, to a large degree, by the practical and technical
modalities of looking at it. In other words, how do we observe a terrain that is a priori unfamiliar, with a view to
rendering it in a predefined shape? In contrast, a thematic view of the comfort features associated with walking
has been intentionally left open to ensure the process
does not channel subjective and corporeal aspects of the
encounter with a place and the imaginative realms conjured by it. Despite this, our explorations have not led to
a jumble of irreducible viewpoints. The maps of Geneva
and videos of Zurich can be grouped according to three
areas of investigation (with three corresponding categories of “visual” knowledge as well as corresponding areas
of design). We identify them as Dwelling, Formation, and
Atmosphere. Dwelling refers directly to a survey of the
relationship between space and body size, and the ways
in which inhabitants use space. Formation addresses
both the form and the movement, giving rise to the
form as part of the generative processes of the city. The
notion of Atmosphere qualifies urban space synesthetically according to ambient conditions; in this case, comfort is defined according to an “immersive” practice in
which urban landscape is regarded experimentally as an
envelope.
Dwelling
According to De Certeau, the search for comfort by a
city’s inhabitants might be described as a tactic (De Certeau 1974) that rewrites space and recombines materials,
customary rules, and codes – as the capacity of a subject
to utilize the folds and furrows of spatial and social orders, reconstruing them to personal advantage. It is taking possession of a topographic system, appropriating

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and defending the “given.” In this “comment from below”
on the features of an urban landscape, inhabitants focus only on some of the conditions present in the urban
field, leaving others in a state of inertia. Investigation
and representation operate in a similar way, like a filter
or grid, sifting the urban landscape, selecting elements
and situations that underpin states of well-being. Within
a given field, viewed as a composition of parts, only some
of these elements and situations prove relevant; it is
a matter of evincing the selection made by the subject
to fathom a setting or customary sequence and to act
within it. As it will be shown, in some cases we have had
to find adequate techniques for making explicit the imaginary constructs activated in relation to particular objects or places. In the work assembled here, our analysis
has led us to a thematic treatment of comfort conditions,
expressed in terms of friction, thresholds, and estrangement.
FRICTION [LB01]. Residential spaces in the Libellules
quarter are marked by the presence of two large housing complexes, separated by a fabric of smaller dwellings. In our observations we have detected a tendency
on the part of people living in the large complexes to
move from one complex to the other and back again, in
order to use open spaces and their facilities – sometimes
to avoid direct contact with their immediate surroundings. As for the routes taken to traverse the quarter, we
observe a preference for slow walking, attentive to the
elements that connote the landscape traversed. There
are vegetal outgrowths and single objects – signs, entrances, porticoes of various kinds – to attract attention,
thus slowing the pace of the walker. This can be viewed
in terms of friction, meaning a resistance to movement
produced between two systems in contact. The slowing
of pace is an indicator of ease, and from reports given by
the inhabitants, is closely linked to feelings of security:

27

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LIMITES ESPACE PUBLIC

11'
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28

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VEGETATION

REPERES VISUELS

Friction [LB01]

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Topographies de confort
car wash
parking ikea

arrêts de bus

silo

buissons

arrêt de bus

parc

parc

residences
cimetière

Les moulins

30

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Arrêt de bus
bruit avion

horizons

confort

150 m

660 m

300 m

nature

2,80 m

Les moulins

2,90 m

1,90 m

1,20 m

9,03 m

2,40 m

Car wash

5,20 m

4,10 m

fleuve 59 m

7m

3.5 m

46 m

17 m

Threshold [V01]

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«Le but de l’art est de communiquer la sensation des choses telle qu’elles sont perçues et non
pas telle qu’elles sont connues. Le procédé de l’art consiste à rendre des objets étranges, de
fabriquer des formes difficiles, pour augmenter la difficulté et la durée de la perception, car la
perception est une fin esthétique en elle même et doit être prolongée.»
Viktor Shklovsky, L’Art comme technique. Théorie de la Prose. 1925

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ÉTRANGETÉ

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HORIZONS PLASTIQUES

Estrangement [V02]

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 33

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a “slow” space is controlled and safe, unlike a space that
one would traverse “quickly” – the case for nearby industrial areas.
THRESHOLD [V01]. Our research on comfort within the
urbanized fringe of Vernier, delimited by the Rhône to
the south, has identified a constellation of discrete places, spread over an especially eventful topography. Each
of the places identified is a threshold, a portal between
mobile and static situations, seemingly protected and
introverted on one side, and open to a dynamic setting
or distant landscape on the other. Car parks, carwash
stations, bus stops, parks, and cemeteries contain these
threshold points, placed at different altitudes and distributed across the map in heterogeneous fashion. These
are precise locations in a topography best rendered
using the language of a geological survey: in our threedimensional model, the cross-section containing these
thresholds implies a stratigraphic reading of the urban
landscape. In terms of sensing the landscape, this stratified topography is contained by the water level below
and the soundscape of the air traffic corridor above; the
northward view is blocked by the crest, while the southern horizon is blocked by the Lignon housing precinct
and Mount Salève.

34

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 34

ESTRANGEMENT [V02]. The quality of any habitat also
has an imaginary dimension whose intensity can distort
our sense of the surroundings. The idea of estrangement
has been used to render the properties of Vernier as a
landscape suggestive of distant horizons, analogous
landscapes. Certain presences around the edges of the
1 × 1 km sector stimulate an abstract, mental relationship with the place, characterized by reflection rather
than sensation. The colour of the Rhône, for instance, is
linked back to the confluence of the waters of Lake Geneva and those of the Arve river, originating around Mont

Blanc, a presence on the far horizon. Added to the sensation of being at the point where the waters of the present merge with the ancient dynamics of geology, there
is the feeling of being in a paradoxical space, closed in
and protected by the confines of the traditional village
of Vernier, yet traversed by the air traffic corridors out
of Geneva Airport, representing a node and departure
point to the planet’s farthest corners. Finally, the gasometers, highway infrastructure, and the residential giant
of the Lignon estate bring to mind a specific repertory
of images and situations with no direct relationship to
the context – US-style freeways, iconic modernism in
the image of the Unité d’habitation in Marseille, with
all the imagined social and visual narratives that these
engender.
Read in this way, comfort loses its traditional inflection as a “condition” in which we find ourselves, and
assumes instead an active character, as a “relation” produced and reproduced over and again through the direct
involvement of a subject.
Formation
When thinking of urban comfort in terms of formation,
we accentuate its spatial character, its dependency on a
particular “infrastructure” or spatial palimpsest (Corboz
1983, 14-35). Attention to form is one of the features of
a particular period in architectural research – the period
from the mid-1950’s to the early 1970’s. Scholars in this
period adopted a critical standpoint in relation to modernist urban design, seen as too remote from contextual
values, and the elements and formal arrangements of
permanence that characterize that context.5 We have
to go still further; for our students this field of inquiry
has often meant ranging over several scales of observation, and defining systems of calculation or inventories
capable of rendering spatial or typological variations in
the processes by which urban spaces are formed. In the

20.01.14 14:08

ELOIGNEMENT PAR CHANGEMENT D’HORIZON

ELOIGNEMENT PAR OUVERTURE SUR LE QUARTIER

silence
espace libre
végétation
vue

coupure
route

frontière
batiment

confort coupure
ouverture route

silence
espace libre
végétation
vue

coupure tampon
route trottoir

confort
espace ouvert sur le paysage

Cut [LB02]

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 35

35

20.01.14 14:09

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1852_mise_PPUR.indd 36
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Archipelago [V03]

20.01.14 14:09

work presented in our chapter on formation, we have primarily used mapping and measurements, but not to the
exclusion of the psychological and imaginary dimension.
We have conceptualized urban comfort as a phenomenon linked to measurements and morphologies that we
denote using the notions of cut, distancing, archipelago,
and visual porosity.
CUT [LB02]. Transport infrastructure transects the Libellules quarter and produces fragmentary, discontinuous
urban space. Such a cut is normally seen as negative but
here, in some situations, it can yield a sheltered space
where we can explore conditions of well-being connected
with a state of isolation. The sheltered spaces are a product of the association of several urban materials: bladeinfrastructure, a buffer space between the infrastructure
and the residential zone, a built frontage stabilizing the
frontier that separates the residential from the sheltered
space, and, finally, the sheltered environment itself. Different combinations of these materials can be described
as resulting from a “process of lateral isolation” of sheltered space in relation to infrastructure; a “central isolation,” where the sheltered area is surrounded by residential buildings; “detachment,” when the isolated space
offers “visual apertures” to neighbouring quarters; and
“horizon change,” where an outlook is revealed towards
a distant horizon. An assortment of structures come
together to set out a spatial grammar comprising both
large residential buildings and a smaller, more mixed urban fabric.
ARCHIPELAGO [V03]. Even in Vernier it is possible to describe comfort as a discontinuous condition, exploring
it in terms of the notion of an archipelago – a group of
islands with different characteristics. The ribbon of urban fabric running along the hill crest, with a vale on
either side, includes more dense areas with a special, pic-

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 37

turesque, somewhat intimate or semi-medieval atmosphere – semi-public spaces, access conditioned by form,
symbolically connoted by the presence of materials, surfaces, and signs that inspire us to imagine them in such
terms. In opposition, one can equally pick out places of
more extrovert character, framing views and distant horizons, and signified by the presence of elements such
as especially imposing trees. The second group tallies
with breaks in the built fabric, where one can explore
conditions of tranquillity and release. Together, the two
different types of “island” describe a comfortable urban
sector, in that they offer opposing yet complimentary
situations. The image of the archipelago accentuates the
micro-reticular nature of comfort: something dispersed
yet connected.
DISTANCING [V04]. From the fields and farmland interposed between single-family dwellings, spaces that represent a terrestrial equivalent to the air traffic corridors
associated with the airport, we can take a different reading of Vernier. In the houses, exterior areas are treated
in a way that blends neatly “picturesque” gardens with a
heightened awareness of strangers: both forms expressing the residents’ introversion and conservative tension.
In relation to this appropriated, strongly defensive landscape of habitation, the strips of farmland act as distancing spaces, devices capable of establishing conditions of
comfort by creating reservation spaces withdrawn from
the residents’ gaze. Buildings merge into the agricultural environment, with individual claims on the latter
rendered opaque by the terrain’s topography. These distancing spaces are “reservations” that can be used collectively or individually, spaces that lend themselves to
leisure and its pursuits, such as walking, sports, alternative pathways. The slope between village and river possesses similar characteristics – its dimensions and height
are based on security criteria – as do the unbuilt roadside

37

20.01.14 14:09

C

h

a

m

p

12

E s p a c e m e n t
Les maisons sont confondues
avec ce grand paysage agraire.
Leurs revendications individualistes sont estompée par la
distance et la courbe topographique du champ.

6

E c a r t e m e n t
Cette distance est sécurisante
Psychologiquement, le danger
perçu ailleurs, est éloignée.
R
é
s
e
r
v
e
Le champ est un objet potentiellement exploitable à l’échelle
collective ou individuelle; Je
peu l’emprunter en lieu et place
du chemin pour effectuer un
trajet.

200

155

C o n t r a s t e
Le paysage primordial agricole
est partagé par l’environnement
sonore produit par la proximité
de l’aéroport

229
20

7

202

27

38

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 38

1/1000 10m

50m

100m

20.01.14 14:09

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 39

57

5

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E s p a c e m e n t
Les pentes ont un effet sur la
perception du paysage, elle
rend invisible le bâti situé en
amont de celle-ci et augmente
la portée du regard de celui qui
la surplombe
E c a r t e m e n t
La dimension de ce paysage
forme un écran entre deux
réalité potentiellement conflictuel; Celle du Village et celle du
Lignon
T r a v e r s é e
Un seul parcours nous permets
de longer le rivage, du fait de
sa relative longueur il rend son
usage plus exceptionnel pour
les promeneurs mais s’offre
bien aux usagers sportif.
C o n t r a s t e
Ce paysage est bercé dans
divers environnements sonores
continus: l’eau du fleuve, le
bruissement des arbres, le
chant des oiseaux , le bruit de
l’autoroute.

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Vernier-Village

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Elena Cogato Lanza, Antonio Di Campli

43

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Distancing [V04]

39

20.01.14 14:09

relations visuelles et influences du paysage environnant

40

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 40

porosité visuelle

UE Territoire et Paysage, 1 km well-being, Lea Stocker + Dominique Brunner

20.01.14 14:10

... et illimité

limité...

„Une maison est une machine à habiter.“

Le Corbusier

„L’architecture est le jeu, savant, correct et magnifique des volumes sous la lumière.“

Le Corbusier

Visual Porosity [MC01]

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 41

41

20.01.14 14:10

verges. Fields, slope, and verges are experienced as sharing a single soundscape: the flowing of the river, the rustling of the trees, birdsong, the rumble from the freeway.
Distancing here appears measured so as to hold off dangers that seem remote. The presence and dimensions of
the fields, slope, and verges create a frame within which
distant, and potentially conflicting urban realities, like
the picturesque Vernier village and the modernist megastructure of the Lignon, are situated.

42

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 42

VISUAL POROSITY [MC01]. The Meyrin residential quarter, located halfway between the airport and CERN, is
an example of modernist town planning, its open space
invested with a pastoral, prairie-like feel, a picturesque
place that hosts a series of variations on the multi-storey, linear “range” form. Allied to an orderly hierarchy
of structures dedicated – in keeping with the modernist
blueprint – to mobility (motorized or pedestrian, relating
to public facilities or residential clusters, etc.), there is
the prospect of unobstructed vistas in all directions.
Here we have explored and tested the spatial dimensions of comfort in terms of visual porosity: a gaze that
percolates the urban surroundings owing to the morphology and architectural character of the built environment. At ground level, buildings stand on pilotis or concrete walls that permit outward glimpses through and
beyond the quarter in all directions, acting as semi-transparent membranes. At higher levels, at least in the buildings that adhere to the pure rationalism and stereometry
of the modernist idiom, the conditions are reversed. Reflective, large-sized windows transform the business of
looking into a game of cross-reference, a “gazing into the
mirror,” where, looking across to the building opposite,
one sees only a replica of one’s own position. If the modernist project was concerned with imagining space as a
place in which to contemplate oneself, others, and the
landscape (di Campli 2010, 52-53), the Meyrin residential

quarter can be seen as an immense machine à regarder,
where the qualities of the habitat correspond closely to
the act of looking, of relating oneself both to the nearby
rural landscape and distant horizons.
Atmosphere
The notion of atmosphere defines comfort as an “immersive practice” in which urban landscape is explored
as an “envelope” endowed with intrinsic environmental
and climatic features. Experience of the atmosphere of
a place is in a sense beyond measurement, a thing that
cannot be rendered using traditional representations
contrasting physical space with lived space. As Gernot
Böhne has said (Böhme 2010 [2001], 92) atmospheres are
intermediate phenomena, “interstitial” between subject
and object, situated between the psychic interior and the
environmental exterior spheres. They are tied to given environmental qualities and are relatively independent of
the inner life of a subject. Atmosphere is a spatialized, supra-personal (Griffero 2010) sensation that resists attachment to solid, circumscribed or discrete elements, but
has a connection with situations that possess a meaning of their own. To render this contextual relationship
or perceptual, situational attachment requires us to pay
attention to the forms of mutation and variation in atmospheric performance. We primarily use combinations
of diagrams, axonometric views, images of spatial use,
and close-up details. In the Geneva studies, investigation
has allowed us to accentuate microclimate, domesticity
(protection, thickening), and filtering. It is worth emphasizing that the Lignon and Meyrin studies have yielded
the most analysis of atmosphere. These two satellite suburbs could be regarded as an example of the relationship
arising between urban design and the pursuit of states
of well-being in the modernist architectural habitat, by
which we mean a particular form of “explicitation” of, and
conditioning strategy for, atmospheres (Sloterdijk 2002).

20.01.14 14:10

MICROCLIMATE [MC02]. Observed from a zenithal viewpoint, the Meyrin estate appears as an isotropic urban
space with assorted pairs of linear ranges disposed concentrically around a civic core. As a whole, the spatial
features of the place appear somewhat uniform. Read
from below, though, one sees how different orientations
and compositions of ranges divest this space of its homogeneity, tracing instead an alveolar spatial structure
with a combination of microclimates. These are defined
by the varying atmospheric performance of materials
in the open spaces (grass, asphalt, concrete, stone) and
the orientation and composition of the residential bars
with the varying levels of protection they afford from
wind and sun. Investigations have revealed essentially
four of these microclimates: the open court/plaza, sheltered from the wind, primarily in use in summer; the sunlit semi-court mainly occupied in winter; the semi-court
with part grass and part asphalt floor treatment, occupation differing according to season; and, lastly, the closed,
perfectly air-conditioned shopping center, which, on an
urban level, separates both climatically and in landscape
terms the open space to the west – with its car parks and
access features – from the garden treatment to the east.
One of the cornerstones of urban comfort in Meyrin is
the ability to frequent environments and microclimates
in which various forms of exposure, both to atmospheric
agents and public life, can be experienced.
PROTECTION [LG01]. The Lignon satellite precinct, built
at the same time as the Cité de Meyrin, was designed to
make a major impact in both urban and landscape terms.
The main bar is twelve floors high, clad in a panel system
that outlines a stereometric arrangement of volumes articulated by walkways at three storey intervals.
The spatial layout is reminiscent of a broken line tracking the course of the river, emphasizing the topography
of the plateau sloping towards the banks and defining

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 43

a half-enclosed semi-court, stopped by a pair of towers,
one of twenty-six and the other thirty storeys. The main
building embraces a sophisticated array of communal
services and open spaces. The introverted aspect of this
space, primarily defined by the morphology of the site,
constitutes a controlled atmosphere – a tranquil, safe
environment enjoyed chiefly by the residents. It provides
the benefit of specific conditions of shelter and protection. From within this space, the façade is read as an
immense screen delimiting the space and reflecting the
outlying landscape. We have linked the conditions of protection afforded by the space and its enveloping megastructure to the notions of domesticity and filtering.
DOMESTICITY [LG02]. Domesticity is an invention of the
bourgeoisie, something traditionally associated with
family values and family spaces, their intimacy, and
their symbols of hearth and heritage (Reed 1996, 7). But
through observation of the morphologies and usages of
the furnished central space at Le Lignon, framed by its
residential megastructure, we have been able to pinpoint
comfort features more properly belonging to a domestic
space. Residents tend to occupy the services and open
spaces in the center by exporting behaviours more commonly found in the home, such as studying or resting,
perhaps in corresponding attire. The state of privacy is
here transformed into a state of intimacy (Sennett 1977,
187); looking becomes more introverted. The ground and
the volumes housing the shopping center, school, church,
sports club, leisure center, car park, and garden, are modelled using a technique reminiscent of Loos’ Raumplan
(Colomina 1996, 233-281), the result resembling an interior composed of different degrees of intimacy. Here one
can experience different situations and atmospheric
densities, defined by surface materials (mainly asphalt
and grass), different kinds of artificial lighting, and the
transit of the sun. The central court is used in different

43

20.01.14 14:10

combinaison de microclimats

N

44

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 44

20.01.14 14:10

protection et soleil

ouverture et vent

chambres

séjours

chambres

séjours

chambres

hiver

«ICI, NOUS SOMMES À L’ABRI DU VENT ; LÀ-BAS, ÇA SOUFFLE, C’EST AGRÉABLE EN ÉTÉ.»

printemps automne

séjours

été

«EN HIVER COMME EN ÉTÉ, LE MOUVEMENT DU SOLEIL DÉFINIT NOS ACTIVITÉS EXTÉRIEURES.»

Microclimate [MC02]

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 45

45

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46

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 46

20.01.14 14:10

Protection [LG01]

1852_mise_PPUR.indd 47

47

20.01.14 14:10

ways at diff