Brussels agglomerated : looking closely at territorial ways
(2010) Traceable cities, MARC - Manchester Architecture Research Center à l’Université de Manchester — Location: Manchester (11.November.2010)
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- Abstract
- Cities become traceable when one takes a close look at its territorial “machines”. That exact word doesn’t abound in my book (Agglomérer, pp. 177-178) but I take it up again after reading Celine Tellier’s work2. When describing the genealogy of the Brussels’ subway system, Tellier refers to the machine as comprising the ministries, professional trades, technical construction methods and public budget allowances which, all together, propel the subway into the city’s destiny. And that is the point. Other than a network, the machine propels; it has momentum; it gets going and, when it does, it is hard to stop. Not only does it have a body and cogwheels - i.e. State’s offices, mu- nicipal councils, civil servants, engineers and others - but it’s also made of simultaneous move- ment, of entangled holds and grips, of concatenated pressure points and supporting surfaces which allow the machine to hold. Just like in a dancers loop - the image is from Isabelle Stengers3 - it’s the momentum of the whirling and circling which fuels the performance. Rather than mapping its elements or connexions, the machine’s rendering must therefore account for its workings, its fuel, its forces. Thus the descriptive locus - i.e. the position or coordinates that allow one to trace the ter- ritorial machine and its workings - is no longer aimed at cartography but also at unveiling collec- tive propensity. What is this propensity and how can we trace it?
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Zitouni, B. (2010). Brussels agglomerated : looking closely at territorial ways. Traceable cities, MARC - Manchester Architecture Research Center à l’Université de Manchester, Manchester. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/170173