EAST WAHDAT: UPGRADING PROGRAM
Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung
Ludwig, Vienna, 1999
"When in New York, I like to go browsing for new
ideas in the Urban Center Bookstore. It was there that
I came upon the information on the East Wahdat Upgrading
Program in a book titled The Architecture of
Empowerment. It showed East Wahdat, a neighborhood in
Amman, Jordan, being upgraded with core units. [As shown in
image below.] These are small functional buildings
provided by the city. They are equipped with water, sewage,
and electrical systems. People build whatever they want
around them--in short, whatever they think of as home. Here
this minimal intervention by the city was a real success. It
even received the Aga Khan Award."
Marjetica Potrc, an architect turned sculptor, believes that where
urban planning fails, shantytowns succeed. In her work, which has been described
as "anthropological urbanism," she documents viable makeshift
housing solutions from around the world and recreates in museums the kinds
of shelter they produce. Her installations usually focus on government programs
that allow temporary structures (built from discarded materials) to evolve
into something more permanent, something that can be constructed according
to the resident's needs. Potrc records other examples of failed planning
and successful "individual initiatives" through works on paper.
Currently more than one half of the world's population is urban, and surrounding
every city in developing nations are shantytowns (occupied primarily by
newcomers to the area). In the next 15 years one billion more people are
expected to settle in those cities, which will then hold three-eighths of
the world's population. Shantytown residents often live without access to
running water, electricity, or waste collection--not to mention transportation,
grocery stores, or banks. Nonetheless, they often resist governmental attempts
to place them in public housing ghettos. Potrc thinks the reason is
clear--public housing marginalizes the poor by denying them the authority
to make their own choices.
In fact, residents often upgrade. One of the best-known cases is Rocinhã,
in Rio de Janeiro, which has become a tourist destination. This neighborhood
of some 200,000 people was once one of Rio's poorest, but now features houses
and apartments made of brick and concrete; services like water and electricity;
locally owned shops, schools, clinics, and banks; and its own Web site (www.rocinha.com.br).
Last year McDonald's opened an ice-cream kiosk in Rocinhã (if that
happens to be your idea of progress).
Offsite:
Explore Marjetica Potrc's Web site,
www.potrc.org, to see examples
of her writing, works on paper, current projects, and online collaborations.
Potrc's art demonstrates that unregulated urban areas, which have
their own organizations and economies, thrive autonomously. Cities can accommodate
these unregulated areas alongside regulated ones. "I'm not criticizing
society," says the 48-year-old Slovenian, who won the Guggenheim Museum's
Hugo Boss Prize 2000. "What I'm doing is celebrating the individual
initiative, which usually cannot be controlled by city planners but can
be approached by them." Citing Brasília as the ultimate example
of failed planning, she says, "It's funny that the plan for Brasília
is actually in the shape of an airplane, which was supposed to fiy
the nation to a better future. I am not a part of this tradition. I don't
think the system can actually plan a better society. I don't go for those
big ideas; it's better to make small additions to existing buildings."
This argument for decentralizing power and reconceiving our idea of the
city may owe something to Potrc's background. "In the future,
the nexus of the world will be the city-state and not the nation-state,"
she says. "I come from Slovenia, which is a nation-state of only two
million people that could fit in a Manhattan neighborhood. In the course
of the twentieth century, the name of Slovenia has changed seven times.
It's very abstract. National borders have been formed, developed, and enforced
without me doing a thing. I stayed in Ljubljana, and my identity changed
overnight."
Even if the future lies in accommodating shantytowns, they are still poor
and comparatively dangerous neighborhoods. Although critics accuse Potrc
of romanticizing poverty, she believes that the people making that charge
simply don't want to be reminded of the problem. "Ten years ago the
plans for Caracas didn't even have a drawing of shantytowns. They were there,
but they were drawn in the plans as green areas or public parks." More
and more people are living on the fringes of society, and they can neither
be controlled nor dismissed. "I show how the two--regulated and unregulated
cities--can work together in a productive way."
KAGISO: SKELETON HOUSE
Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2001
"Core units are hugely popular in South Africa. You build a small functional
building with some electricity. They are very cheap. People can build around
them any way they like or can afford to. For the Guggenheim exhibition I
showed an example from Kagiso, a suburb of Johannesburg. The city provides
a simple structure: a roof on stilts and connections to the sewage and water
system. Owners build the rest with whatever materials they have at hand."
NERLIDERE: THE 24 HOUR ORDINANCE
Worcester Art Museum, 1999
"Another initiative I like is the 24-hour ordinance in
Turkey. Whatever you build in 24 hours that has a roof is
allowed to stay in place. People live in permanently
unfinished buildings, so they don't pay taxes. I think
that's quite humorous. These are just great solutions--they
work flne. We all know that shantytowns have lots of
positive sides to them. I read in Harvard Design
Magazine a great article that said that people in
shantytowns who are offered places in public housing just
refuse to go there. They have their own aspirations to make
life better."
THE CORE UNIT
Landesmuseum Münster, 1997
Potrc's first core-unit installation was modeled on suburban housing
programs in South America, where some local governments train the
jobless in skills that promote self-sufficiency, like building. As with
the other core-unit programs she has studied, the buildings come equipped
with electricity, running water, and a toilet. People add rooms as their
finances and building skills permit.
