Negotiating Porosity

Christoph Heinemann

Porosity is usually explored in retrospect. The scope, permeability, and flexibility of the city emerges
through appropriation and transformation, system change and rupture, through constant questioning
and negotiating original assignments. This is what we call urbanity—and the quality planners want to
learn from in order to be able to create instantly a complexity which is usually the product of centuries.
Porosity is much more than a diagnosis. To allow for openness and participation means to create
urban and architectural structures in such way that adaptations and transformations can take place. The
set of problems and issues involved extends to questions of land policy, development strategies, and plan-
ning procedures, financial models, rights of ownership, tenancy, and use.
Urban structures are built according to changing economic and societal needs. They not only
address the requirements prevailing during the period of construction—they are intentionally equipped
with the capacity to expand and adapt in the future. Modernity broke this principle temporarily but then
recognized and confirmed that adaptability is key for the vitality of cities.
The relation between planning and development processes, forms of everyday use, and change
of use can be understood by studying Michel Écochards planning for Casablanca and what became of it:
Casablanca would grow, that much was certain and the immigrating population needed to be addressed.
The planners around Écochard, from GAMMA (Groupe d’Architectes modernes Marocains) and ATBAT
­(Atelier des bâtisseurs) studied, anthropologically in particular, the bidonvilles, the informal settlements
emerging everywhere around and translated the found qualities, orders, and forms into prototypical
architectural designs of horizontal and vertical densification (Écochard 1955, 103ff). Prototypical dwell-
ings were raised on the Carrières Centrales site, among them the famous Nid d’abeilles by the architects
Bodiansky, Candilis, and Woods.
The ATBAT projects were advanced developments and corrections of the existing CIAM dogmas
of the time and became important references for Team 10. They reoriented architecture toward the every-
day and relativized the importance of functional assignments. Today the images of the transformed
buildings rather than the initially realized projects gain the most attention—the visible conversion is
constantly discussed and interpreted. This is certainly due to the fact that the obvious questions raised
cannot be answered easily. Is it possible to stimulate this appropriation by design? Did architecture fail
or did it enable the transformation?
Écochard points out that the newly planned urban grid was scaled to implement different typolo­
gies—informal, horizontal, and vertical housing types to allow for different stages of evolution, and thus
to deal with transformation. Evolution was to be enabled on the basis of communal property. At the end
of the book Écochard claims: “It is needless to continue to govern and organize the cities as long as the
urban terrain is a matter of commerce” (Ibid., 135). The massive conversion of the proper houses was
probably not anticipated, but the floor plans were designed as spaces open for appropriation by different
forms of dwelling (Candilis, Josic, and Woods 1968, 118). In any case, evolution from built to appropriated
porosity is readable here and an icon of twentieth-century modernity is today again an icon (just google
“nid d’abeilles architecture”). Why is this the case?
The right to the city (Lefebvre 1968)—roughly speaking, the right to avail oneself of all the possi­­
bilities and commodities the city has to offer—is today a crucial basis for making a living. The ­fascination
with informal building structures, transformation, and appropriation, and the desire to ­facilitate and
trigger those qualities in western planning culture is most likely linked to that fact. Modern­ism tried to
Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology
Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM
procure access and participation through utopian and class-conscious top-down planning, welfare,
and advocacy. The tools have been corrupted. The practice of well-intended interventions has led to seg-
regation and masked speculation. By contrast informality holds out the (maybe romantic) promise of a
potentially self-determined but certainly alternatively organized urban empowerment.
Porosity is fundamental to enabling participation in the city—to provide this quality structurally 64

and socially is more important than ever (if we think this claim through to the end, the classic differen- 65

tiation between public and private realm would have to disappear for the benefit of an urban structure
inhabited as a whole). At the same time, we live in a society where every niche is instantly identified,
filmed, posted, and commercialized. Pop-up stores and street food markets wherever you look, squats
converted to coworking spaces—down to the pores. Polydimensional access to places and modes of use
is also becoming a problem as it may virtually prevent self-determining action (meanwhile there still is
not much to negotiate away from densely mixed-use and diverse urban quarters).
A degree of protection would help. Society has changed and simple top-down planning strategies
often enough just secure capitalist and consumerist claims. Resisting this means enabling participation
on all levels from planning to build to use. Integrative concepts involving local actors and global players,
future users and inhabitants can help to mirror and enact urban diversity. Thus it is not only about indif-
ferent openness and accessibility but rather about spaces open to control by occupation, ownership, and
use—spaces of negotiation.
In the following short stories about some aspects of our projects, we hope to show how building
structures, participatory processes, and urban politics relate to one another, and also to make clear that
providing these options and making these relations work are problems that architecture has to address,
thus changing the way we conceive of architecture.

Negotiations
We understand architecture as a site of everyday actions and negotiations, and develop spaces open for
appropriation, allowing for multiple forms of interpretation and patterns of use. Hermetic and special-
ized programs are rejected in favor of flexible configurations and deliberately indeterminate proposals
of use. The architectural design does not figure as an ultimate solution, but is rather understood as a
detailed articulation of a problem. Intentionally introduced complications and superimpositions are to
provoke the expression of conflicts in a productive way. Consequently, integrated forms of appropria-
tion and practices of the everyday construct relationships to urban reality by constantly questioning the
social relevance and political competence of architecture.
According to this understanding and aspiration, spaces have to provide the capacity for negotia-
tion and this is set as a key question and starting point for the development of our projects. Several issues
are in play—participation, appropriation, transformability, adaptability, sustainability. The question of
negotiation thus extends to several working spheres —from a distinct claim and design approach up to
process-oriented development strategies.

Appropriation and Intervention

In 2008 we were asked to design a project space for the Goethe Institut in New York (ifau and Jesko Fezer
2011). The main building right over the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art was shut down for
Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology
Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM
not complying with fire regulations, and the strategy was to open satellites throughout the city with the
idea of coming into closer contact with the young urban public at the “frontlines of gentrification,” as
Stephan Wackwitz, the program director who initiated this guerrilla tactic, used to put it. The space was
to host readings, screenings, seminars, performances, and is located in the deep and narrow ground floor
of the Wyoming Building on Third Street next to the Bowery.
Which part of the space would be used by whom and for what purpose and what needs to be pro-
vided for in a functional or spatial sense were the lesser problems here. It was much more important to
consider the type of relation with the public and the visitors, as well as the formats and the constellations
in which the institutional daily routines and public events would take place in this new and temporary
institution. The design intentionally includes openness and thresholds, uncertainties and complications,
indications and flexibilities for the intended forms of use.
The space is left almost untouched, as robust as possible, and is furnished with standard features
like chairs, tables, canopies—common things for common use and misuse. A small entrance space serves
as a foyer along with a counter and bar. This room, which is open to the street, is basically able to host
any format and can be separated from the rest of the venue. A passage leads to a bigger backspace, where
a steel ring is installed. The ring at first view obstructs—it encircles and excludes at the same time. ­People
can gather within its demarcation or, from the outside, lean on the railing to contemplate works on the
adjacent walls; on the other hand it allows users to attach panels, or to group tables and chairs as if it were
not there, the tabletops being a bit lower than the railing.
One sentence from the director of the Goethe Institut (skeptical about this intervention) still
­resonates: “I give you three months: if the ring doesn’t function then—we will cut it off.” This was a big
compliment for us at the time. The space was instantly open for use and different performances took
place on the building site as a test bed for future activities; while developing and discussing the final­
project parallel to that, the meaning of function had changed. The ring works as a permanent provocation
and constantly questions the forms of use of the space. To install this object, this permanent conflict,
ensures the constant negotiation of the space.
The conversion of Palais Thinnfeld in Graz, which we had just accomplished previously, was
­conceived on a larger scale but with the same approach (Kleilein 2008; Bogensberger et al. 2009). The
project is based on a sociospatial reinterpretation of the structure of the existing baroque palais, which
was to be used by three different cultural institutions. The brief asked for highly specified markers of
identity for the respective institutions, which were renounced in favor of spaces open for appropriation
by everyday routines and adjustable to further programmatic shifts and conversions.
An old passage was reactivated, cutting right through the ground floor and creating an inter­
mediate space providing access and institutional floor space at the same time. A stairwell leads to a social
foyer on the first floor, installed there as a meeting point for the three different users and their visitors.
From there, the stairs lead to a grand open space under the roof—one user group per floor, one entrance,
permanent disturbance, interaction, negotiation of space.
What happened is that one of the institution’s directors decided to move into the first floor along
with his secretary instead of his team of fourteen young staff members. This had a huge impact on the
use of the building and shows that porosity, morphologically present, reactivated, or newly enacted
doesn’t prevent grandiosity.
Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology
Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM
Situative Standards
The negotiation of space is fundamental for the everyday work of cultural institutions—one inherent
aspect of exhibition-making is to examine its own social function and to permanently redefine its use of
space. This applies to housing as well if we understand habitation as a place open for adaptive changes
and alterations of use by the inhabitant—“a natural relationship,” as N. John Habraken calls it (Habraken 66

1961, 18ff). 67

R50 in Berlin-Kreuzberg is a cohousing project we developed with the future inhabitants ­(formally
as a joint building venture) (ifau und Jesko Fezer and Heide & von Beckerath 2011; Fundació Mies van der
Rohe 2015; Vitra Design Museum et al. 2017). The city had launched a small program, where Baugruppen
(German for joint building venture) were able to apply for several inner-city plots which would be sold
at a fixed market price—thus outside of the bidding market. This indirect but decisive subvention was
linked to the condition of self-use and led to a concept-bound allocation procedure. Having formed a core
group of future inhabitants, one could provide a concept for a communal housing project, which was
evaluated by a jury designating a winning project.
The city’s interest was to stimulate new forms of urban living and to benefit from surplus values
generated by this form of participatory development. The group was given a year to elaborate the project
and therefore had to buy the land only weeks before building started—which took away a lot of finan-
cial pressure in the development phase. The project was initiated by the architects and a project devel-
oper specialized in joint building ventures, and was based on premises which were not negotiable. Cost
effectiveness was a main goal in order to open the project to as large a clientele as possible, and it was
also agreed to build with standard materials only and for everybody. Shared spaces as communal spaces
and extensions to the apartments were implemented and calculated in the budget from the start. This
concept was communicated to friends and interested parties, and from there the group formed.

As a building, R50 basically works as a support structure for different forms of spatial negotiation—the
construction is robust and permits multiple forms of adaption. Apartment sizes were fixed according to
specific needs—they can be resized in the future. Individual floor plans were designed with each party
resulting in nineteen different apartments. Size and function of the shared spaces were discussed lead-
ing finally to a space giving onto the street and garden open for different activities, serving as a guest
room and venue also open for third parties. Some planning tasks were postponed—the design of the
­surrounding garden was conceived when everybody had moved in, as well as the communal kitchen.
So it is the architectural setting initially enabling participation in all phases—planning, use,
transformation. You could also say that the premise of allowing for participation was the strongest
parameter for the initial architectural design (see questions raised above). While the basic design and
planning procedures were predetermined, others were just framed—like playgrounds open for action
and intervention. To us a major interest was to show that using standard constructions, materials, and
procedures does not contradict involving all parties and including their needs and ideas in the devel­
opment process. On the contrary—the participation in decisions leads to sound solutions as opposed to
bratty individualism. We would like to call this interference and synergy of knowledge situative stand-
ards—common knowledge creates a solution for a specific situation at a specific moment (for a long-
term use).
Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology
Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM
The process as a whole is thereby strongly connected to questions of urban politics. For all parties, the
strongest motivation to realize this project was to secure their center of (urban) life in Berlin. In 2011,
when the project started it was quite obvious that land prices and housing rents would rise, and that soon
many would have to leave the inner circle. To seize the opportunity of owning a part of the city meant
getting rid of this pressure. Ownership versus rent is a much discussed and hotly debated topic—espe-
cially in Berlin, where housing is mostly based on rent. Without elaborating on the matter, it may be
interesting to mention that the housing estate (2300 apartments) adjacent to the cohousing project has
meanwhile been sold two times. Rents are increasing and the tenants are meeting frequently in R50’s
common room to organize their resistance.

Participatory Planning and Urban Development Strategies

To enable participation on all layers is key to meeting today’s urban challenges. “The city is no longer”
or “world=city” (Koolhaas 1995 and 2000), however we may put it—this is the urban age. Everybody is
a part of it and wants a part of it. To answer today’s need for a diverse and maybe fragmented society,
­synergies have to be created and organized in such a way that the claims of the different actors can be
met. There can’t be an overall solution and this is why it is so important to allow for processes and pro-
cedures to meet particular situations—specific problems, conflicts, potentials. It’s about control and an
urbanism for good and joint causes.
Since 2015, we have been involved in a project in Hamburg at Spielbudenplatz on the site of the
former ESSO-Häuser, a housing project named after a petrol station open 24/7. The plot had been sold to
real estate developers and the inhabitants had to move out of the existing buildings after these had been
declared in danger of collapse. Resistance had already formed to save the houses and was at the base of
the following negotiations with borough and city about the future planning process. The Planbude—a
collective of local actors, artists, and planners—was commissioned to organize a participatory process
to collect wishes, ideas, and register claims. This resulted in the so-called St. Pauli code, a kind of white
paper for the future programming and design of the city block. The code calls for diversity, adaptability,
originality—a mix of clubs and commerce integrating existing local venues and start-ups from the neigh-
borhood, small apartments for rent only, with a high percentage of subsidized housing. The developer
now worked closely with the Planbude and this resulted in a brief for an urban design competition
­(Planbude 2017).
Our answer to the brief was disappointing for the clients (as we did not interpret the code as
expected). Starting from the idea of small units for commerce and apartments which we had already
developed for a proposal in Berlin (Ring 2015), we suggested a robust structure, which would be differ-
entiated during a cooperative planning process and furthermore by use, adaptation, and transformation.
Small apartments as a base for affordable housing in the long-term could be connected by shared spaces
and thus integrate numerous different communities, lifestyles, and live/work combinations. Permanent
process, big house, small units—what we had in mind was diversity formed out of informality not for-
mality (see top of the article to close the circle).
The winning proposal by BeL & NL Architects chose to create clearly differentiated houses and
thus to formally express the diversity asked for. The concept mirrored the ethics and aesthetics of the
code and was acclaimed by all involved parties. The houses would host different communities of inhab-
Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology
Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM
itants taking control of their part and mixing in the public and part-public spaces. This structure was
taken as a base for the following architectural competition where every invited team had to design
­several houses to allow for a mix generated out of a wide range of entries. We fully accepted this turn and
designed our buildings elaborating on BeL & NL’s preliminary studies. It felt like designing an old town—
so why do this? Because the story leads to this and the motives are credible outcomes of the process. 68

69

References:
Bogensberger, M., et al. 2009. “Palais Thinnfeld Graz,” in Of People and Houses: Architecture from Styria, edited by I. Ruby and A.
Ruby, 200–27. Graz. | Candilis, G., A. Josic, and S. Woods. 1968. Candilis-Josic-Woods: A Decade of Architecture and Urban Design.
Edited by J. Joedicke. Stuttgart. | Écochard, M. 1955. Casablanca: Le roman d’une ville. Paris. | Fundació Mies van der Rohe. 2015.
“R50Cohousing,” in Mies van der Rohe Award, European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture, 420, Shortlisted and nominees,
64–67. | Habraken, N. J. 1961. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. Translated by B. Valkenburg. London, 1972. | ifau und
Jesko Fezer. 2011. “12 Arbeitsthesen,” Disko 25, edited by A. Brandlhuber and S. Linden. Nürnberg. | ifau und Jesko Fezer and
Heide & von Beckerath. 2011. “R50,” ARCH+ features 4, ARCH+ 201/202. | Kleilein, D. 2008. “New Scenes and Partial Publics,
Graz: Revitalisierung Palais Thinnfeld,” in Public Spheres: Who Says That Public Space Functions? A Europan Discussion, edited
by K. Geipel and U. Poeverlein, 288–91. Berlin. | Koolhaas, R. 1995. “The Generic City,” in SMLXL, by R. Koolhaas and B. Mau,
1239–64. Rotterdam. | Koolhaas, R. 2000. Mutations: Harvard Project on the City. Barcelona. | Lefebvre, H. 1968. Le Droit à la ville.
Paris. | Planbude. 2017. “Spielbudenplatz Projects,” accessed November 10, 2017, http://planbude.de. | Ring, K., ed. 2015. Urban
Living: Strategien für das Zukünftige Wohnen/Strategies for the Future. Berlin. | Vitra Design Museum, et al. 2017. “R50,” in
Together: Die neue Architektur der Gemeinschaft, edited by I. Ruby and A. Ruby, 306–7. Berlin.

Project Information:
ifau – institute for applied urbanism are: Christoph Heinemann, Susanne Heiß and Christoph Schmidt. | Goethe Institut
Wyoming Building, New York: ifau und Jesko Fezer with common room, completed 2009. | Palais Thinnfeld, Graz: Ein
radikaler Kompromiss – Revitalisierung Palais Thinnfeld, ifau und Jesko Fezer, completed 2008. | R50 cohousing, Ritterstraße
Berlin: ifau und Jesko Fezer, Heide & von Beckerath, completed 2013.

Brought to you by | Chalmers University of Technology

Authenticated
Download Date | 12/22/19 1:44 AM