The Master Plan as a Political Site

Author(s): Mario Gandelsonas

Source: Assemblage, No. 27, Tulane Papers: The Politics of Contemporary Architectural
Discourse (Aug., 1995), pp. 19-24
Published by: The MIT Press
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 Mario Gandelsonas
The Master Plan
as a Political Site

I am going to present a few remarkson the politics of contem-

poraryarchitecturaldiscourse, articulatingdiscoursewith
practiceand displacing the object of architecturalpractice
from the building to the city, as the place where the political
takes a preeminent role.' I would like to startwith an example
of political action, not to illustrate,but to rendervisible spe-
cific forms of antagonismthat configure the politics of archi-
tecture in the American urban scene.2

Mario Gandelsonas is a partnerin the firm of Agrestand I will describe a project, the Vision Plan for Red Bank, New
Gandelsonas and a professorof architecture at the Princeton Jersey,which was recently adopted by the city's planning
University School of Architecture. board. This marksthe firsttime that a "visionplan" - a term
new to the discoursesof urbanismand planning - has been
adopted in America, or, for that matter,anywhereelse.' In
April of 1995, the town of Red Bank opened up a request for
proposalsfor a masterplan. Of the three selected firms, my
own (Agrestand Gandelsonas) and GBQC of Philadelphia
decided to form a joint team. Insteadof upgradingthe exist-
ing masterplan, as the RFP called for, we made a counterpro-
posal in which the masterplan would become a moment in a
process both preceding and extending beyond it: a vision plan
would explore the formal and social conditions specific to
Red Bank;this would then be used to develop a long-term
masterplan and, finally, for its immediate implementation, a
short-termstrategicrevitalizationplan.4
From the perspectiveof urbanpolitics, a masterplan is a
legal instrument (representingthe presence of the public)
Assemblage 27:19-24 ? 1995 by the
that regulatesthe long-term functional and physical processes
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and the forces of both government and developers) that de-

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1. I knew that Red Bankwas on the Navesink
River.On my first visit, however, it took me a
while to get to the river. I went through a process
that took me back in time, from the speed of the
Grand Central Parkwayto the slower movement
of north-south road - a local highway - to the
even slower flow of Broad Street, Red Bank's
main street, coming to a full stop when I finally
hit the wall of Front Street that conceals the river.
2. The riverwall: Accessto the river,both visual
and physical,is very limited because of the street
structurethat produces a "wall"on the riverfront.
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assemblage 27
termine the configurationof a town or a city. From the per-
spective of the politics of architecture,the masterplan's role
is to fill a void, to maskthe absence of architecture.'The
presence, more precisely, of the shapes determined by the
masterplan's regulations(which are answersto social, eco-
nomic, and political questions) in the place of architecture
rendersthe void invisible, obscures the absence of architec-
tural form. Our proposal,by contrast,implies the construc-
tion of a new political site in the space occupied by the
masterplan, where architecturecan be empowered. How, we
asked, through the displacement of establishedboundaries,to
allow for a series of antagonisticconditions to come to light
and for a new relation between the city and architectureto
emerge?
Now, what preciselyis a vision plan? It is the opening of the
masterplan to an architectureof the city. The term itself was
firstproposedby Diana Agrestand myself in the context of Des
Moines, Iowa, to designatea processthat articulatesthe read-
ing of the specific formalarmatureof a city with the socio-
political and economic forces that traverseits body. Through
differentnarratives,we presentedto the local community our
readingsof the basic formalmoments in their city, engender-
ing debate, dialogue, and an increasingawarenessof the visual
world in which they lived. This processabandonsthe tradi-
tional discourseand practiceof urbanism,the scale of the
architecturalbuilding object, the formaland symbolic strate-
gies, the principlesof unity, continuity, and wholeness and
begins to constructa new imagerywhere the cultural-aesthetic
implicationsof urbanform are conjoined with the contempo-
raryrestructuringprocessesof the global city.6
In Red Bank, as in Des Moines, we set forth, in a series of
meetings, visual/discursivestoriespresented as symptomatic
readingsof the city plan: storiesthat were returnedto us trans-
formed by the local community, generating new stories, rais-
ing new questions and potential architecturalinterventions.
These storiesbegan with the detection of two symptomsthat
reveal a sequence of urban anomalies.
The firstsymptom is a wall that impedes both visual and
physical access to the riverand conceals a well-keptsecret:
generous privateuses of the waterfront,such as marinas,a
yacht club, tennis courts, and a scarcityof public space to
materialize the identity of Red Bank. The opposition between
 Gandelsonas

the wall and the riverprovidesan open stage for social/civic

interaction.The second symptom is a hole in the center of
town. Due to the particularconfigurationof the street plan,
access to the center of town (with its abandoned railroad
yard, industrialbuildings, and plentiful vacant land) is
nearly impossible. While railroadtracksdivide the town
diagonally, this hole distances east side (black and His-
panic) from west side (white middle class). The effect is a
divided town that is not perceived as such physicallybe-
cause of the seeming continuity given by a few streetsthat
weakly link the two sides.
But this split is reflected in the presence of two main streets:
Broad Street, the perceived main street, and Shrewsbury
Avenue, which functions as a main street for the west side.
A desire for stitching together the two sides was immedi- 3. The diagonal cut: Railroadtracks divide the
ately expressedin the town meetings, and reestablishingthe town diagonally into two sectors: the west side
fluid movement of driversand pedestriansinterruptedby where the black and Hispaniccommunities live and
the wall and the hole became one of the goals during the to the east side where the white middle class lives.

process. While shrinkingthe hole by inwardgrowth and

extending some of the interruptedstreetscould remedy the
problem at the pragmaticlevel (although creating a "fantasy
of unity"),the challenge for me was how to addressthe
question at the symbolic level. Monmouth Street, which in
fact suturesthe east-westgap (although its role is not seen as
such), allowed us to transformthe double main street con-
dition into a continuos loop. Monmouth, with the Count
Basie Theater, a concentration of live music entertainment,
and a musical instrumentstore, alreadyarticulateseast and
west, local resident and outside visitor.Naming it the "Mu-
sic Band"could rearticulateits urban function into the vital
linear corridorurgently needed in Red Bank.
The political effect of introducingarchitecturaldiscourse
throughthe vision plan, extendingthe discursivespace of the
masterplan and expandingcommunityparticipation,was
immediatelyapparentin Red Bank.The silent antagonisms
were verbalized,the political space that was apparentlysplit
into oppositionalfields (east and west) was fracturedby a
4. The hole in the center: What we discovered in
proliferationof these points of antagonismwhere architec- the plan was confirmed in reality:this town has a
turaland socioeconomic questionswere broughtto bear on hole in its center. In other words, the configura-
one another.'The vision plan processprovidesa possibility tion of the street pattern makes it impossibleto
todayfor entertaininga public dialogue on the shape and experience the center, where there is an aban-
doned railroadyard, industrialbuildings, and
form of the Americancity and thus for defining a space for
plenty of vacant land.

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5. The invisible walls: The separation of the east-
west streets and the north-south streets shows
how the riverwall and the hole in the center are
produced by invisible walls.
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assemblage 27
urbanismstartingfrom architecturalquestionsnot presently
partof the civic discoursein America.It also bringsto the
foregroundcertainideological and economic obstaclesand
the political spacesdefined by them.
One of these obstacles lies in theories of urbanism.A dis-
course developed in Europe on the basis of very specific
conditions at the turn of the twentieth century, where ur-
ban configurationwas approachedin two opposing direc-
tions representedby Camillo Sitte, on one side, and Le
Corbusier,on the other. The discourse of European urban-
ism is totally inadequate to deal with our cities in that it
suppressessome of the most importantquestions vis-A-vis
the specific characterof American cities: their foundation
based on gridded plans, their articulationwith the conti-
nental grid in most of the American territory,their weak
legal status,their relationshipto "nature,"their role in the
market,and since World War Two, the hegemonic position
of the United States. One of the latest theoretical strategies
to representthis discourse is Colin Rowe's attempt to ex-
pand and consolidate the modernist urbanisticideology,
which ignores the specificity of the American city and its
position in a choreographyof desire that links it in different
ways to the European city.8And within this approach is a
discursivepractice where oppositions such as object versus
texture (fabric)or urbanversussuburbanobscure a number
of antagonismsinvolving issues of class, race, and gender.
Another obstacle is architectural.This is, in part,the ideo-
logical opposition between the social and the formal, be-
tween the social political discourse where the formal
questions are absent and the architecturaldiscourse where
the political is absent. But perhapsthe most formidable
obstacle resides in the architecturaldiscourse itself, in the
ideological opposition of neotraditionalists/avant-gardists
that reduces the question of architectureto a question of
form, suppressingthe overdeterminationsthat join the
formal questions to the urban and to the symbolic, to the
questions of historyand desire. In fact, the neotraditionalist
urbanismthat presents itself as a "new urbanism"is filling,
in America, the void left by the absence of architecturein
the masterplan and in the world of development.
22
 Gandelsonas

This discourse representsone of the two poles that structure

the oppositional tendencies that produce the repetition of
the same ideology and the preservationof twentieth-century
modernism. The avant-gardistand object-fixateddiscourses
- the other pole - ignore the conditions that are the point
of departurefor an urban architectureand are therefore
unequipped to challenge successfully the neotraditionalists.
They both propose fantasyuniversesthat mask the failure of
the traditionaland the modernist urban ideologies alike.
Neither acknowledge the radical contingency and ultimate
impossibilityof the city.
A third obstacle is economic. It is played out by two of the
most powerful actors in the construction of the urban stage,
the engineering departmentsin the public sector and the
developers in the privatesector. While the engineering 6. The twin main streets: Although people in Red
departmentscontrol - design, build, and maintain- the Bank think of Broad Street as their main street,
roads,the developers control - design and build - the ShrewsburyAvenue has a similar role for the west
buildings. Architectureis absent in both due to the inher- side.
ent antagonism between the radical practicesof architec-
ture and the demand for functionalism and profit. For the
engineer, any change in the established practices involves
potential delays and thereforeadded costs. For the devel-
oper, any change in the familiar imageryinvolves taking
risksin terms of the consumer, the market.
To bring architecture into these practiceswill produce an
antagonisticcondition and thereforethe introduction of the
political, the inevitable struggleagainstthe existing order of
things that suppressesan architecturalpresence in the ur-
ban realm.

7. Establishingnew links:To reestablish the fluidity

of movement interrupted by the riverwall and the
hole in the center, new links could be created by
extending certain streets.

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8. Shrinkingthe hole: Red Bankpresents a
unique opportunity to grow toward the inside.
The two residential areas on the north-south
sides and the commercial area on the east-west
sides could develop inward and the vacant land
could in the future become a park without
totally erasing the formal and physical traces of
the hole.
9. The MusicBand:Perhapsthe most difficult
question is the one raised by the existence of the
two main streets and the implicationsof the split
- both social and physical. On the one hand, in
its formal position linking Broadand Shrewsbury
and, on the other, as an urban site where music
is played in a dozen places and where the Count
Basie Theaterprovides an important cultural
center, Monmouth Street could be used to stitch
together the two parts of town.
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assemblage 27
Notes
1. I use city as the signifier /city/
that supportsthe identity of the city
even if all the "original"distinctive
features have changed. The city as a
physical object with an intelligible
and institutionalized form does not
exist. In this, I subscribe to Saul
Kripke'santidescriptivismas
discussed by Slavoj 2i ek in The
Sublime Object of Ideology (New
York:Verso, 1989).
2. This is an architecture that can
exist only as an effort to construct
an impossible object.
3. Although the vision plan has a
discursivestatus in another city, Des
Moines, where it was developed
with the supportof the city and the
business community, extensively
reportedon by the media, and has
had physical and ideological
consequences, it never became a
legal instrument.
4. RobertBrownfrom GBQC pro-
posed the incorporationof a "strate-
gic revitalizationplan"as partof the
process. From my perspective,its in-
terest resides in the introductionof
the presentand the inevitable con-
frontationwith the realityof the
rapiddecline and deteriorationof
the downtown in America. In so do-
ing, it discloses a geographyof po-
tential sites for architectural
intervention.
24
5. On the ideology of planning and
the suppressionof architecture, see
Diana Agrest,"The Misfortunes of
Theory," in Architecturefrom
Without (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1981).
6. See Saskia Sassen, The Global
City: New York,London, Tokyo
(Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1981). The processes that
Sassen describes in New York,
London, and Tokyo resonate
throughout the metropolitan region,
as in the case of Red Bank in
relation to New York.
7. For the political implications of
this multiplication of political
struggles, see Ernesto Laclau and
Chantal Mouffe, Socialism and
Radical Democracy(New York:
Verso, 1985).
8. See Colin Rowe, Collage City
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1978).
ProjectCredits
The Red Bank project was
developed by Agrestand
Gandelsonas, Architects/Brown
Keener, Urban Design. The
drawingswere draftedand
transformedseveral times through
different softwaresby Jasmnit
Rangr,
Ho-San Chang, Michael Crawford,
and Greg Luhan.