By their very nature, the ideas of Island and Archipelago in architecture live in the ambiguity of their metaphorical meaning, between the folds of myth and literary imagination. This research aims to re-interpret these themes through the study of forms, spatialities and compositional paradigms that define the concepts of Stadtinsel and Stadtarchipel in the theory and practice of the German architect Oswald Mathias Ungers.
The first part of this thesis identifies the defining principles of the Urban Island within O.M. Ungers’ theory. An attempt is made to clarify the lexical boundaries and the conceptual grounds behind the multiple terms used to describe these urban enclaves before and after the renowned Manifesto Die Stadt in der Stadt. Das grüne Stadtarchipel (1977). The seeds of these ideas have long been latent in his work. Approaching the non-typological concept of the island, the typologies of the Urban Villa and the Superblock are juxtaposed as informants of those characters of autonomy in the urban texture that distinguish the Stadtinsel.
The central part of this thesis examines the 'practice' of the Urban Island. The island is analysed as an elementary and autonomous part of the Archipelago-city. An anatomical dissection of the case studies––through critical re-drawings and spatial mapping–– reveals recurring morphological and spatial paradigms and determines new categories based on the main compositional operations.
The third part aims to test this reading of the Island models and to explore the concept of the Archipelago, going beyond the only condition of the "green lagoon of nature” expressed in the Manifesto. In other words, the aim is to recognise in O.M. Ungers' work those large-scale urban compositions, “Urban Islands in the Sea of the Metropolis”––that is, to understand the ‘double nature’ of the island: the possibility of being both a large-scale autonomous entity in the landscape, and an urban enclave capable of re-signifying the ‘sea’ of the homogeneous, dense, fabric of the metropolis. This multiformity of the Archipelago portrays a pluralistic, “dialectical” city in which an order, writes O.M. Ungers, “prevails over the disintegration […] of the city of the unconscious” (of the city's forms and spatialities).
Projekt: Dissertation: An Anatomy of the Urban Island
Anmerkung/en: An Anatomy of the Urban Island. Inquiry into Oswald Mathias Ungers' Ideas of Island and Archipelago
Ort: Bari/Aachen
Jahr: 2022 - 2025
