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Vacancy
Akio Yasumori
Nigel Bertram reported Melbourne's suburban environments along the Ring-Road which was built in 1990's.
Melbourne's suburb seems low-rise and low dense, hence at a glance, it looks that ordinary and rambling scenes spread out, where many "vacant lands" are seen such as cemetery, parks, parking lots, sport fields and so on.
These vacant lands are not necessarily so-called "urban exterior space" like squares which Camillo Sitte referred in 19th century or streets facade which Yoshinobu Ashiwara referred in 1960's, but many non-public spaces such as magnetic zones under power line, flood area, ex-quarry, disused sites etc. Some of these vacant lands are vegetated with grass and function as parks or backyards for neighbors, it can be said that the places which had to become vacant are founded "squares" after the fact. Moreover, what is interesting is these vacant lands become the most stable areas in the unstable suburban circumstance.
This time, I would like to examine such "vacant lands".
First of all, it may become a bit abstract, I will regard vacancy as a space model.
Spaces called "Aki-chi" correspond to "disused lots" in urban planning, that is "functionally vacant" lands. Moreover "urban exterior space" reminds us somehow originally public space like squares or streets. Contrary to them, whether it is used or disused, we can prepare a category which defines "spatially vacant" lands to urban masses. We can call them "Kuu-chi (vacant land)". (cf. In Japanese, "Aki-chi" and "Kuu-chi" are written in the same ideographs.)B
"Kuu-chi (vacant lands)" are socially articulated to various categories as usual. For example, in a level of public/private they are categorized to "parks" and "gardens", in a level of function they are categorized to "disused lands" and "used land" including "residential", "commercial", "industrial", "educational", "agricultural" or "leisure" zonings, in a level of traffic they are categorized to "street" or "railway". But in the level of "vacant lands", these segmented categories are put in the parentheses and they can be seen as spatial forms.
When we consider value of "vacant lands" in such a way, they are "zero signs" in urban space. (Zero sign is a sign where "non-existence itself functions as a signifiant"*.) Although I would not like to emphasize analogies to linguistics or semiology in this essay, it is easy to grasp as a model, from here I'll examine vacant lands along this notion. There are two aspects of zero sign.
As one example, zero sign is an omitted relative pronoun in a sentence like "the man I have seen"** (zero sign in syntagme). In this example, although there is nothing between "the man" and "I have seen", this prior noun and subordinate phrase are related each other by "vacancy" which is a "unit represented by zero". Though there is physically nothing, this "vacancy" itself becomes a syntactical unit in relation to adjacent words.
Vacant lands in urban space are also physically nothing but sometimes make relationships between adjacent buildings visually or circulationally. That is to say, "Kuu-chi (vacant land)" is not a Tabula Rasa which is totally nothing, but it is founded "vacant" together with surrounding things. One characteristics of "Kuu-chi (vacant lands)" is to be able to become a "unit of network".
As the other aspect of zero sign, there is an example of Czech noun "˙zena" and its plural form "˙zen"**. Even though we don't have enough knowledge of Czech, we can understand that "vacancy" after "n" means plurality in relationship with two words (zero sign in paradigme).
In case of urban space, sites with vacant part are sometimes linked to certain conditions. In Melbourne, some vacant lands are linked to being under power lines or flood area. Rem Koolhaas once proposed an urban planning of Murant- Senart with voids called bands for the sake of reducing noises of TGV, visualizing an edge of woods or being developed along highways in the future.
Thus vacant lands don't have only public functions like park, nor necessarily should be put amusement events, but has meanings by vacancy itself. "Kuu-chi (vacant lands)" can be understood secondly as "having variety of meanings".
After preparing such a category of "vacant land", we can grasp urban exterior spaces more widely.
In fact, there are a lot of queer vacant lands in Tokyo even though they are not squares or streets.
For example, "greenway" covering over ex-stream or ex-river is a queer vacant land which cannot be said street nor square. In a suburb where I live, because a greenway was recently constructed over former agricultural canal, we can not access to houses which has been existed on the both sides before. In this case, its linear shape with houses on both sides is formally the same to street, it doesn't have function of access and becomes just a network between two streets at both ends. A road called Cat Street over former Shibuya River is also greenway, from this roads we cannot access to old houses but entrances of new retails face to it while making a new network.
"Station Square" is also a queer vacant land. It is originally a street but becomes square by being surrounded with dense buildings. Hachiko-Mae in Shibuya station is just an intersection as a street pattern, but we feel it a square by being surrounded with billboard and buildings. Moreover we can see buildings far from several blocks, such as 109, Marui or Serlian Tower, and they are visually linked. At the south exit of Shinjuku station, railways like Yamanote-Line, Chuo-line, and Saikyo-line locate between a wide pedestrian deck called Southern-Terrace and Takashimaya department store, they are united spatially.
Tokyo is said that there are few areas of parks and less public exterior spaces, but if we consider this category of "vacant lands", there are plenty of urban exterior spaces. It might be said that they are lived as a public space ex post facto in urban space.
* R.Barthes "Éléments de Sémiologie"
**F.D. Saussure "Cours de linguistique general"
profile
Akio YASUMORI
Born in Tokyo, 1972. Architect and Urbanist.
1997 Member of Team "Made in Tokyo"
1998-99 the Berlage Institute Netherlands
Currently attending Doctor Course at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Sakamoto lab.)
Works= "Tokyo Suburb Void Map", "LA Surface Urbanist's Catalogue&Tutorial" ("Hunch" No.1,"10+1" No.24), "Sport-Voids Home" (Honorable Mention in Shinkenchiku Residential Design Competition 2001, "JA"No.44, "Shinkenchiku"0112), "Housing in Woods" (First Place in Future Indivisual House competition, Harima Science Garden City, "Shinkenchiku"9708), "House Carving Distance" (Kazuyo Sejima Prise in the 6th S*L International Competition, "Shinkenchiku"9607) etc.
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