Urban Transformations and the Architecture of Additions

"Rodrigo Perez de Arce's essay Urban Transformations and Architectural Additions was published during the formative stages of Post Modernism, at the point where theory was becoming seriously established. Jencks' first essays formalising the term Post Modernism in architecture and the revised Learning from Las Vegas were published the previous year. In planning terms, modernism had become associated with comprehensive redevelopment and forms of urban organisation that ignored context, history and any sense of tradition. De Arce considered the essential nature of buildings and the richness of historic urban form and explored how robust that essence was over time. He looked at the value of essential remnants and rich complexities in maintaining a sense of continuity and relevance. Having explored the adaptation process in history, de Arce went on to see how such a process might be simulated in contemporary cities with modern buildings, using additions and layers to change them from objects in infinite windswept space to being part of a rich urban fabric which described urban place. To do this he used concrete examples; housing schemes by James Stirling, new government centres in Chandigrah and Dacca and more prosaic 60's housing blocks"--

Julian Marsh is Professor of Architecture at Sheffield Hallam University, UK