Extremely mute and incredibly intelligible

Extremely mute and incredibly intelligible

Rashidi, A.R. (TU Delft Architecture and the Built Environment)

Schoonderbeek, M.G.H. (mentor)
Jennen, Pierre (mentor)
Milani, S. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences

2020-06-30

The rapid development of the ‘New Silk Road’ involves Tashkent – the site of where the graduation studio BT operates– and simultaneously affects the socio-political context of architecture. In fact, in the case of Tashkent interesting urban scenarios emerges from this process of urbanization. Tashkent is no longer a historical centric city from the 19th century that operates within the city walls –fortress– that serves at the same time for the protection of the city against invaders. On the contrary, Tashkent is a polycentric city – the earthquake in 1966 has contributed to this process– that gives birth to new centres such as ‘Tashkent City’ with new international business districts. This huge man-made object is under construction and from this process of urbanization new centres are emerging at this moment and more will appear in the future. Equally as important as the centres themselves is the infrastructures that is also constructed to connect them. The infrastructure of Tashkent is the chain of the necklace that is able to give place to different additional attachments.

It is well-known Rossi’s interest with the relationship between architectural form and the city and this form is not independent. For instance, cities such as Athens, Rome and Paris. The form of the city actually reflects the architectural form, or it is even better explained by saying that the city’s form is the summarization of architecture of the city.

Rossi argues that from the form we can read the city and consider the cities problems. The architecture of the city is not that simple. By architecture of the city we refers to two fundamental different things: Rossi states ‘’first, the city seen as a gigantic man-made object, a work of engineering and architecture that is large and complex and growing over time; second, certain more limited but still crucial aspects of the city, namely urban artifacts, which like the city itself are characterized by their own history and thus by their own form’’.

the notion of time in relation to understand on the one hand the city and on the other to address its problems. The architecture of the city is the skeleton of the urban tissue. In this context skeleton refers to the history and memory of the city. The skeleton actually entails the index of both the action that have taken place and the action that will take place in the city. When the notion time is reintroduced in the architectural form of the city, therefore it is fundamental to understand that Rossi is not merely concerned with the history, but also with future. The architectural form is an object that implies singularity and it is independent of its use. In architecture ‘use’ or ‘function’ is time related, but through this notion of singularity the concept of timelessness.

architecture of the city
primary elements
urban artefacts
Tashkent
Silk Road
urbanization

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:16627095-ce77-476f-ba73-b6b1b6d00bc1

2020-06-30

41.311081, 69.240562

Student theses

master thesis

© 2020 A.R. Rashidi