18 black/white posters (60 x 85 cm each), wallpapered
in a grid of 3 x 6 posters.
Total size of the work: 255 cm high x 360 cm wide.
“Urban Re-Identification Grid” combines found photographs of buildings
and urban spaces throughout the world that became (famous) street-skating
spots with texts of the “brutalists” and “Team X members”
Alison and Peter Smithsons and Aldo van Eyck, that deal with the social aspects
of urban space.
The title “Urban Re-Identification Grid” is quoting the title of
a diagram presented by the british architects Alison and Peter Smithson at
the 9th CIAM congress in 1953. Their presentation initiated a controversial
discussion about the planning principles of CIAM, finally leading to the abolition
of CIAM in 1959.
They replaced CIAM’s functionalist categories of dwelling, work, recreation
and transportation by the new categories: house, street, district and city.
By recognizing and integrating of a site’s specific characteristics in the
architectural design they wanted to create a new social environment.
Our work examines the (failed) utopian ideals of modernistic and brutalistic
architecture, which created urban spaces that became the “birth places”
of street skating.
In the quoted texts the Smithsons and van Eyck emphasise the importance of
the street as a place of public life and human association. There's a strong
connection between the Smithsons ideas and street skateboarding in their way
of re-reading urban space and in their criticism of functionalist architecture.
In the context of street and skate culture the Smithsons term “Urban
Re-Identification” may be understood as re-appropriation of urban space.
The work includes the following street skatespots (among others) :
- Justin Herman Plaza, Embarcadero, San Francisco (Architect: Lawrence Halprin)
- Royal National Theatre, South Bank, London (Denys Lasdun)
- MACBA, Barcelona (Richard Meier)
- Sears Tower, Chicago (Skidmore, Owings, Merrill)
- Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe)
© Wiebke Grösch/Frank Metzger