ESSAY JORIS KORBEE The Yokohama PorT Terminal as a new

18-04-2013
Circulation and movement as a design strategy.
The Yokohama Port Terminal as a new public space
ESSAY JORIS KORBEE
Seminar Architectural Studies
Fig. 01. (cover) own collage from three
pictures: 1. Yokohama Site Plans Courtesy of
Yokohama Port and Harbor Bureau
2. Yokohama Competition Details Courtesy of
Yokohama Port and Harbor Bureau
3. 2G magazine: Foreign office architects
Fig. 02. Diagram of the geometry of the
structure, 2G magazine: Foreign office
architects
The Yokohama Port Terminal as a new public space
Circulation and movement as a design strategy.
Abstract
In 1994 Foreign Office Architects won the competition for a new passengers port terminal in Yokohama. Their answer
to the competition was a new public space that connects the city with the port terminal. One of the most important
elements of the design is the flow and circulation inside the building, not only connecting the new public space with
the rest of the city but also to provoke an interaction between the different users of the building. FOA created a new
kind of urban space. But how is this new public space designed and what is new about this space?
In this essay we compere the view behind the design of FOA for the Yokohama Terminal with other conceptions on
public space from different architects. The circulation and freedom of the users is one of the most important elements
in the new public space. According to the architect Vito Acoonci, the meeting element is very important in this new
public space. Adriaan Geuze mentioned the importance of freedom for the users to create self-awareness and creativity. Ben van Berkel, an architect who did also a submission for the terminal, mentions the importance of the routing,
circulation and flow in a public space for the connection with the rest of the city, an element FOA also used for the
design of the terminal.
Introduction
In 1994 an international competition was held for a new Port Terminal in the city of Yokohama. This building is a very important
institution not only for the tourists who visit the city but also for
the citizens of Yokohama. In the brief of the competition (Zagreb
Society of Architects, 2013) there is an important concept called
“Niwaminato”. This concept contains two different meanings. It
is a mediation between garden and harbour but also a mediation between the citizens of the city and those from the outside
world (Zaera-polo & Moussavi, 2000). From the 660 submissions
the winning design came from the architects Alejandro Zaera-Polo and Farshid Moussavi. Their architect studio, Foreign
Office Architects (FOA) designed a building that is more than just
a building. It is a new public space for the city. A public space
that has to be used both by the tourists and the citizens. One
of the most important elements in the terminal is the use of flow
and circulation to make the different users aware of the building.
In combination with the new kind of public space, combining
building and landscape, connects this circulation element the
terminal with the rest of the city.
This essay describes in which way the connection is made between the new public space and the rest of the city. The terminal
is positioned outside the city, on a pier in the water, away from
the public life. Which elements where used by the architects to
make the new space attractive not only for the tourists but also
for the citizens? What has this to do with the movement FOA
wanted to create in the terminal? And what is the opinion of
other architects about this new public space, the users of the
public space and the freedom in the public space?
In the end of this essay there is a comparison between the
design of FOA and the design made by Ben van Berkel for the
terminal. Both architects appoint the importance of routing,
circulation and flow to connect the new terminal with the rest of
the city.
Fig. 03. Yokohama Port Terminal, Zagreb
Society of Architects
Fig. 04. City and Port; grid structure, own
diagram, map: Google Earth
Fig. 05. City and Port; parks, own diagram,
map: Google Earth
FOA Building
For Aljandro Zaera Polo and Farshid Moussavi one of the most important things was that
the new terminal building should make a connection to the city. They started the project
not by looking at the building but at the urban scale. The building has to be an open
space, a park and shall not block the view of the Yokohama harbour but have to turn the
quay into a promenade (Moussavi, 1997). With the concept Niwaminato in their mind
they wanted to make sure that the terminal was integrated in the city. They don’t wanted
to welcome the tourist trough a ‘monumental gesture’, but ‘through an open space full of
its citizens’. The design of the Yokohama Terminal is not just a building, it is a new public
space.
There are a couple of elements in which the building and the new public space connect
to the rest of the city. Some of this elements are clearly visible, others are non-visible.
One of the first things you see when studying the map of Yokohama is the systematic
grid in the urban plan, comparable with cities such as New York and Barcelona. This grid
is aborted by the quay with the harbours and piers. The new Yokohama port terminal is
an extension of the grid taking out one of the streets and connecting the new site with
the city’s urban fabric.
Another visual connection of the building with the city is the connection with the green
fabric in the district. On the quay there are two parks. In the west, you have the Akarenga
park and in the eastern direction the Yamashita park is positioned. More inside the city
there is a third park in front of the Yokohama Stadium. The ground surface of the Yokohama Port Terminal is a complementary public space to the parks on the quay. According
to the architects ‘The building is the first perpendicular penetration of the urban space
within Yokohama Bay’ (Zaera-polo & Moussavi, 2000). Hereby the city will ‘seamlessly’ be
connected with the building and is the building an ideal spot to produce a multiplicity of
urban events.
One of the non-visible methods to connect the building with the city is about movement
and circulation. Before the architects designed the building they started to register the
pedestrian flow on the Yokohama waterfront. In the essay ‘Order Beyond Chaos’, Alejondro Zaera-Polo revealed two kinds of movement: one is conductive, the other one is
deductive. The conductive pedestrian flow is a linear linking of different locations. In this
flow there is a kind of constant scale of excess: the street circulation. The inductive pedestrian flow is more a mixture of lines, more dense and with an intense pattern. This flow
is the movement on the more intensively used public areas such as the parks, squares
and plazas. The architects wanted the Yokohama Port Terminal to be an attractive place
where the movement of the city continues (Zaera-polo, 1997). In the design circulation is
very important, both inside and outside the building. For the interior the architects chose
to separate the terminal facilities and the civic facilities and placing them far apart: the civic facilities was placed at the piers head and the terminal facilities at the entrance of the
pier. In this way the routing of the tourists and the routing of the citizens crosses.
Another connection is presented by Toyo Ito, who was also one of the jury members of
the competition. He claims that the design of the Port Terminal is architecture without
exteriors (Ito, 1997). Ito says the project is set at the limit between earth and sea but that
the proposal attempts to eliminate this differential. As an example he mentions the Sydney Opera House, also a monument on the limit between city and sea. The difference
between the two buildings is that the Opera House’s greatest value is the form contrasting with the environment while the Port Terminal’s value is the absency of this contrasting
form. Ito: “The architecture doesn’t have to make its presence felt, it has to unite those
two aspects of nature- the surface of the earth and of the sea-, to later disappear, once
the union between these two elements has been realized.”(Ito, 1997, p. 86) Because of
the form of the building, horizontal, low and almost naturally curved, the building tries to
project itself into the sea and extend itself to infinity.
Right page
Fig. 06. Circulation: space and routing, 2G
magazine: Foreign office architects
Fig. 07. Circulation: program and routing, The
Yokohama Project, Foreign Office Architects
Left page
Fig. 09 - 10. Interior of the port termnial,
Computer model made by FOA, 2G magazine: Foreign office architects
Fig. 08. Exterior of the port terminal, 2G
magazine: Foreign office architects
Fig. 11. Interior of the port terminal, photo,
http://www.idesignarch.com
The new public spaces
Circulation is one of the most important design element in the Yokohama Port terminal. The circulation appears on two scales. On the smaller scale, the circulation ensures the flow inside the building and the public spaces. FOA used computer modelling,
in that time a new kind of modelling, to provoke an interaction between the different
users of the building. The circulation on the city scale ensures the connection with the
building as a public space with the rest of the city.
According to FOA the modern cities require a new kind of public space. The design
made by FOA combines landscape and building. Traditionally those two elements
were not combined. A building was private, stone, a black spot on a Nolli map. Nature
was the green between the buildings, a park or rest-space, a white piece on the Nolli
map. The Yokohama Port terminal can be seen as a new way of public space design.
There are more architects who are also aware that something has to change in the
public spaces of the modern city. Some architects find their answers in history. Rob
Krier is one of those architects. According to Krier, in the modern cities, we have lost
sight of the traditional understanding of urban space (Krier, 1979). The solution of
Krier is going back to the traditional elements such as the square and the street.
Other architects are looking into a more modern way to solve this problem. FOA is
one of those architects. They look at the freedom and restrictions of the users in the
public space, the routing and movement and how the public space is connected to
the rest of the city.
Freedom of the users
In the essay Public Space in a Private Time by Vito Acconci, the architect is talking
about the users of the public space. Acconci says that in open public spaces, such
as a square, users are dots, sprinkled across the floor. The users are in groups or are
alone and don’t react to the other users in the public space. Acconci: The space is
public, but the people in it don’t function as a public (Acconci, 1990, p. 78). To get the
users to function as public defined by Acconci, the space needs a gathering point.
Users have to blend together so that they form this publicness of the square. Adriaan
Geuze does not agree with the thesis from Acconci about that the public space need
a kind of organisation. According to Geuze, the public space has to create freedom
and creativity for the users (Geuze, 2000). Because the modern public space is so
(over)organised there is nothing left for the interpretation of the users. The real challenge is to create space and textures for the city dwellers to colonize in their turn. He
claims that the preprogrammed space is one-dimensional and that the new public
space has to provoke and disorient the user. The sensation, how users experience the
space and how they react on the space in combination with the freedom and anarchy
of the users is more important than the beauty or design of the space.
If you look at the opinions of Acconi and Geuze, the design by FOA has some elements that relate to their ideas. On the space of the urban roof and inside the terminal
there is the freedom to go and do whatever you like to do. The users can interpret
the building how they want to interpret it. On the other hand there is a clear idea of
circulation in the building and the building is designed and organised. With the use
of ramps and slopes the user is forced to move in the direction the designers chose.
Because of this forced movement the different users of the building meet each other.
Notable is the ‘emptiness’ in the building. FOA create a public roof without big elements and inside the terminal there is a big empty indoor space. According to the
Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, this is something that is typical for Japan. Kuma:
for Japanese architects, emptiness is always very important. The architecture is in this
way free from politics and economy (Kuma, 2007).
Public space according to Vito Acconci
Public space without a gathering point
- users are dots, sprinkled across the floor
- users don’t react to the other users
- the people don’t function as a public
Public space with a gathering point
- users bend together
- space is really public
Note: the gathering point can be realized in many
different ways
Public space according to Adriaan Geuze
The (over)organised public space
- nothing left for the interpretation of the users
- one-dimensional space
The new public space
- the space provoke and disorient the user
- freedom and anarchy
- space create freedom and creativity
Public space in the Yokohama Terminal
Organised space, users bend together
Non-organised space, freedom for the users
Organised and non-organised blend together
Fig. 12 - 16. own diagrams
Ben van Berkel
One of the remarkable entries for the Yokohama competition was a design from the
Dutch architect Ben van Berkel. The design for the port terminal by Van Berkel is an
organisation of different routings through the building connecting to each other with
parks inside the building (Van Berkel, 1995). There are a view similarities between
the design made by Van Berkel and the design made by FOA. Not only did both the
architects want the terminal to be a union between landscape and building, they also
both used the computer to design the different ideas and forms in the building. Van
Berkel used computer modelling to create the flow inside the building. For both the
architects the design routing and circulation is very important. Van Berkel appointed
the importance of mapping the movement pattern before you design a building. Only
when you really understand this movement, you can create a relationship between
the program and the form of the building. The way the architects makes this movement possible is different. Van Berkel combines different routings for different users
to one routing, FOA create one routing for all the users. Similar is that they both want
that the different users of the building meet each other in (or on) the building. Same
as FOA, Van Berkel says that his design has to connect with the city. This has to be
done not on a symbolic way but by a topographic connection. In his essay Liquid
Architecture he says more about this connection and about the transformation architecture has to make to come to buildings such as the Port Terminal. This is a new
kind of Architecture. Architecture that is a little bit crazy. Not too much -the users
have to use the building- not too little, ‘let’s be less boring in the future’ (Van Berkel
& Bos, 1999). The liquid architecture is a form of architecture where the organisation
of the structure is far from traditional. New techniques have to trigger the imagination
of the public. According to Van Berkel, the architect can access remote and complex
situations by combining specific knowledge and visualising techniques. By making
the public space more attractive, forcing the public space and the public imagination,
the liquid architecture can be achieved.
With the non-traditional way of construction and the form as a triggering element, the
FOA building is also an example for this new liquid architecture. The main difference
about the idea is that in the design by Berkel all the program and routing is inside the
building where in the design of FOA the outside spaces are also a part of the terminal.
Mapping movement pattern
City
Terminal
City
Ben van Berkel: Only when you really understand this movement, you can create
a relationship between the program and
the form of the building.
FOA: Mapping the different movement
in the city and implement this in the
new building create a relationship
between building and city.
Routing in the terminal according Ben van Berkel
Combining different routings for different users to one routing
Routing in the terminal according FOA
create one routing for all the users
Left page
Fig. 17. Submission Ben van Berkel for the
Yokohama Port Terminal Competition, www.
unstudio.com
Right page
ig. 18 - 19. Mapping movement pattern, own
diagram (fictive situation)
Fig. 20. Routing in the terminal according Ben
van Berkel, own diagram (based on diagram
by Van Berkel)
Fig. 21. Routing in the terminal according FOA,
own diagram
Fig. 22. Circulation in the Yokohama Terminal
designed by FOA, own diagram
Circulation in the Yokohama Terminal designed by FOA
Connect to the city
Terminal
Provoking space
Freedom
Summary and conclusion
The Yokohama Port Terminal is a new public space for the city. Different elements
make it possible that the terminal is not just a traditional building. With computer
modelling FOA created a new kind of architecture that combines architecture with
landscape. By looking at the movement in the city and do movement mapping, they
recognize two different movements in the city. A conductive movement on the streets
and deductive movement on the more intensely used public spaces. With continuing
this movement in the building they connect to the city in a non-visible way. With the
connection between the building and the urban grid and the parks on the quay, FOA
create also a visible connection. Circulation is the key element in this connection.
The Yokohama Port Terminal has a lot of ‘empty space’. In this public space, people
can move wherever they want and how they want. According to Geuze, this is something very important for the modern public space. On the other hand the circulation
paths create an obvious routing in the port terminal. Trough ramps and slopes, the
users of the building are slowly directed. By placing the program far from each other,
the different users will meet each other in the building. This meeting of people is often
missing in public places according to the architect Acconci. Notable is the entry of
Ben van Berkel were there are a few similarities between his design and the design
of FOA. The architects both want to create an union between building and landscape and create a new public space. Both architects use the computer to design the
building, the routing and the circulation in the building. The circulation element is very
important for the connection of the city with the new building. FOA and Van Berkel
designed the building different but the idea behind the design has many interfaces.
With the new ‘liquid’ form of architecture, they make the building an attractive and
triggering urban public space.
The new architecture of the Yokohama Port Terminal not only combines a building
with landscape and creates a new public space. This is a space with two different
elements. On the one hand the space has the freedom to stand where you like,
on the other hand it’s a space where the users are directed in a specific direction,
designed by the architects. In this new architecture, circulation is the most important
element. Not only connect the circulation the building and new public space with the
rest of the city, the circulation also ensures the interaction between the different users
in the building, provoke an interaction between them.
Literature
Acconci, V. (1990). Public Space in a Privat Time. In T. Avermaete, K. Havik & H. Teerds (Eds.), Architectural
Positions. Amsterdam: SUN publishers.
Geuze, A. (2000). Accelarating Darwin. In T. Avermaete, K. Havik & H. Teerds (Eds.), Architectural Positions. Amsterdam: SUN publishers.
Ito, T. (1997). Yokohama International Port Terminal. 2G International Architecture Revieuw, 16(IV), 84-87.
Krier, R. (1979). Typological and Morpological Elements of the Concept of Urban Space. In T. Avermaete, K.
Havik & H. Teerds (Eds.), Architectural Positions. Amsterdam: SUN publishers.
Kuma, K. (2007). Architecture of Emptiness. In T. Avermaete, K. Havik & H. Teerds (Eds.), Architectural Positions. Amsterdam: SUN publishers.
Moussavi, F. (1997). Dreams and Hopes Left to the Pier. Osanbashi Designer.
Van Berkel, B. (1995). Yokohma Terminal. Arch+, 1995(128), 32-33.
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http://www.think-space.org/en/competitions/yokohama/
Pictures
Ashihara, Y. (1994). Yokohama International Port Terminal Design Competition, Competition Details.
Courtesy of Yokohama Port and Harbor Bureau. (1994). Yokohama Site Plans
iDesignArch: Interior Design & Achtecture eMagazine. (2013). Architecture Without Exteriors In Yokohama. Retrieved 17-04-2013, from http://www.idesignarch.com
Moussavi, F., & Zaera-Pollo, A. (2002). The Yokohama Project. Barcelona: Actar.
Van Berkel, B. (1995). Yokohma Terminal. Arch+, 1995(128), 32-33.
Van Berkel, B., & Bos, C. (1994). Boat Terminal. Retrieved 15-04-2013, from http://www.unstudio.com/
Zaera-polo, A., & Moussavi, F. (2000). Terminal Del Puerto Internacional De Yokohama/Yokohama Interna
tional Port Terminal. 2G, International Architecture Review, 16(IV), 88-105.
Zagreb Society of Architects. (2013). Think Space Think Space Programme. Retrieved 15-04-2013, from
http://www.think-space.org/en/competitions/yokohama/