back to basics

Today has been a literary day.

I have spent most of my Saturday with my head in 'The Architecture of the City' by Aldo Rossi. This is a very important text for any architect, urban designer, planner and perhaps most of all, student. With any piece of writing of this stature, there are going to be many issues raised. I have chosen a few key phrases that have been stored in my mind that relate (in some way) to by project work.

"When we consider the spatial aspect of primary elements and their role independent of their function, we realise how closely they are identified with their presence in the city. They possess a value 'in themselves', but also a value dependent on their place in the city. In this sense, a historical building can be understood as a primary urban artifact, it may be disconnected from its original function, or over time take on functions different from those for which it was designed, but its quality as an urban artifact, as a generator of a form of the city, remains constant."

"Primary elements are elements capable of accelerating the process of urbanisation in the city and they also characterise the process of spatial transformation in an area larger than the city."

"Amorphous zones don't exist within the city, or where they do, they are moments of a process of transformation; they represent inconclusive times in the urban dynamic."

"In cities, a tension is created by urban artifacts and primary elements and between one sector and another. (This is) caused by urban artifacts existing in the same place and must be measured in terms of space and time."

"Transformation of parts of the city over time is closely linked to the objective phenomenon of the decay of certain zones." (This is widely referred to as obsolescence.)

"Urban artifacts have their own life, their own destiny."

I am off to the Heritage Market tomorrow. This is the market held at the Tobacco Warehouse... well, the ground floor of it at least...