Architecture

This paper presents a new approach to brick prototyping that explores the capabilities of digital technologies and manufacturing techniques. The use of a clay 3D printer enables new shapes for the bricks and the definition of complex interior geometries that can adapt to its boundaries and provide a future overall performance improvement. The lack of a native software represents simultaneously a handicap and an appealing opportunity to adapt the printing process to the particularities of a clay based material while maintaining full control over the final result.

Waste is commonly, considered an effect separated from the economic processes of production, construction, and consumption. This is seen both in the politics of recycling and in the legal apparatus regarding the reintegration of industrial wastelands, in the aftermath cessation of the exploitation. Consequently, this management represents merely the ‘after’ attempts that try to minimize the effects of waste negatively affecting our lands and lives.
In contrast, this paper addresses the interdependence between production and waste by making visible the  ‘mounds of marble waste’ in Estremoz Anticline Alentejo, Portugal. These mounds of marble waste allow us to demonstrate that the intervals of ‘artificial time’, as explained by Cedric Price (1996), that is, that use, reuse, mis-use, dis-use, and refuse, are not only successive but coexistent (Kümmel 1968).

This paper addresses built heritage from the perspective of marble as a cross-scale legacy between distant and close places. Through Estremoz marble we make visible that heritage is not only a static element to preserve but a matter continuously in motion across time and space. Topology of marble brings to the fore this awareness of seeing the interconnection between its geological formation, the extraction and the constructive processes, in a multiplicity of cycles still in transformation.

The article is structured by the simultaneity of in-here and out-here interconnections: (a) Here and In-here, maps the motion of marble from the quarries with the built urban heritage of Estremoz; (b) Here and Out-here, renders visible the intimate connection with distant places, such as Europe, Africa, and South America.

Remoteness commonly means the distance between things, either in space or in time. What distance is this? Distance is the length between two points, which is a quantitative feature, an in-between measurement. For example, in ordinary discourse we refer to remote places as distant places, the ones from which we feel physically or temporarily distant, the ones we don’t see, the ones that are somehow untouchable. Is this in-between only a linear measurement? In order to unfold this question, the present paper selects Robin Hood Gardens (RHG), a residential project in Poplar, London, designed by the architects Alison and Peter Smithson in the late 1960s and built in 1972. This case study is explored through two in-betweens: in-between Here and There and in-between Now and Then. “Here and There” discloses the relationship between one’s body and place. It focuses on becoming closer to or distant from Robin Hood Gardens; asking underlies our feelings of remoteness. We ask: why do we (not) get closer, why do we (not) approach? “Now and Then” presents the relationship between one’s body and time-space. It focuses on the feeling of remoteness in travelling across the space and moving back and forth in time. We ask: why do we (not) traverse between spaces and between the future and past in Robin Hood Gardens?

The present paper presents an alternative urban design approach that explores the project as an in-between mechanism. By in-between, we assume that “the project is neither the beginning nor the ending it is just an in-between in places’ time, both past and indeterminate future.”[1] It is an in-between time process that crosses several scales, actors, and places. We found the in-Between Project by searching through the existing cracks [2] in the contemporary built environment – uncertain and abandoned places/buildings and wastelands – generated by four factors: (a) the increasing of a fragile global economy; (b) the recurrent urban transformation processes (such as the over construction of road infra-structures and the cyclic destruction/construction of the old/new housing planning); (c) the absence of activities/production; and (d) the consequent abandonment of buildings and urban plots. Therefore, it was acknowledged that these cracking processes are creating a catalytic effect in the built environment, causing uncertain cross-scaled consequences between time, space, and society such as: not knowing the future of these places, not expecting positive scenarios for these places, not conveying the relationships of these places, and not engaging socially with these places. When addressing this problematic, fundamental questions arise: how can we articulate the (dis)connections created by the existing cracks in the urban environment? How can we transform the waste inherent to these cracks into a life potential? How can we create a viable metabolism with this waste? How can we generate new activities? How can we attract new inhabitants? How can we transform cracks into magnets? In this research, we realised that these questions cannot be answered through the narrow design solutions formalized by neither the conventional object/programmatic approach, nor by the top-to-bottom/bottom-to-top urban strategies, detached from the indeterminate cross time-scale relationships of these cracked places. An alternative urban design approach was required. The in-Between Project is structured using three interconnected concepts: Cite, Recite. and Incite. Cite is to select the time traces found in the place to trigger and ground the design project. Recite is to transform the cited elements into a simple base structure that stimulates unforeseen appropriations and becomes adaptable to change. Incite is to critically imagine future possible scenarios for the created base structure.
These ideas are presented, tested, and developed in one specific design research in Azenha do Mar, a remote fishing village on the southwest coast of Portugal. It is acknowledged that the in-Between Project is a simple practice of in(c)(v)itation: it incites the hidden potentials of cracked places and invites human beings to appropriate them in an imaginative and unforeseeable way.