Yona Friedman

La obra de Friedman abarca modelos urbanísticos, textos teóricos, películas de animación. Ha participado en numerosas bienales de arte (Shanghai, Venecia, etc.) y también en documenta 11 del año 2002 en Kassel, donde exponía Dibujos y modelos.

En 1958 publica el manifiesto L'Architecture Mobile, que constituye a su vez el documento fundacional del "Groupe d'étude d'architecture mobile (GEAM)". Desarrolla conceptos espaciales urbanos como "La Ville Spatiale". Las ideas de estos manifiestos fueron visionarias y adelantadas a su época; las megaestructuras sobre ciudades existentes, en las cuales los ciudadanos podrían reconfigurar su vida futura de manera flexible, ocuparon a varias generaciones de arquitectos y urbanistas. Conjuntamente con Ionel Schein, Walter Jonas y otros, fundaron en 1965 el "Groupe International d'Architecture Prospective" (GIAP).

Proyectos destacados
1953 Cylindrical Shelters, propuesta de construcciones para inmigrantes
1957/1958 Span-Over Blocks, proyecto de estructura urbana elevada (parte del manifiesto "L'Architecture Mobile")
1958 Cabins for the Sahara, propuesta de vivienda para África del Norte
1959 Paris Spatial, proyecto de estructura espacial encima de París
1963 Seven Bridge Towns to link Four Continents, proyecto de ciudades-puente en Gibraltar, Canal de Suez y Canal de la Mancha
1963 Bridge Town over the English Channel, proyecto detallado (con Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz) en el contexto de la discusión sobre el Túnel del Canal
1980 Manilla Squatter Settlement, propuesta de autoconstrucción de viviendas en barrios urbanos carenciados
1989 Musée des Sciences de La Villette, París, pabellón de hidrotecnología, con Eda Schaur
1992 proyecto de viviendas para marginados en París
1994 Haram es Sharif, Jerusalén: "estructura techo"
 


The Spatial City

The Spatial City is the most significant application of "mobile architecture". It is a spatial, three-dimensional structure raised up on piles which contains inhabited volumes, fitted inside some of the "voids", alternating with other unused volumes. It is designed on the basis of trihedral elements which operate as "neighbourhoods" where dwellings are freely distributed. 

This structure introduce a kind of merger between countryside and city (compare to Paolo Soleri's Arcology concept) and may span:

• certain unavailable sites,
• areas where building is not possible or permitted (expanses of water, marshland),
• areas that have already been built upon (an existing city),
• above farmland. 

 

This spanning technique which includes container structures ushers in a new development in town-planning. Raised plans increase the original area of the city becoming three-dimensional. The tiering of the spatial city on several independent levels, one on top of the other, determines "spatial town-planning" both from the functional and from the aesthetic viewpoint. The lower level may be earmarked for public life and for premises designed for community services as well as pedestrian areas. The piles contain the vertical means of transport (lifts, staircases). The superposition of levels should make it possible to build a whole industrial city, or a residential or commercial city, on the same site. In this way, the Spatial City forms what Yona Friedman would call an "artificial topography". This grid suspended in space outlines a new cartography of the terrain with the help of a continuous and indeterminate homogeneous network with a major positive outcome: this modular grid would authorize the limitless growth of the city. 

The spaces in this grid are rectangular and habitable modular "voids", with an average area of 25-35 square meters. Conversely, the form of the volumes included within the grid depends solely on the occupant, and their configuration set with a "Flatwriter" in the grid is completely free. Only one half of the spatial city would be occupied. The "fillings" which correspond to the dwellings only actually take up 50 % of the three-dimensional lattice, permitting the light to spread freely in the spatial city. This introduction of elements on a three-dimensional grid with several levels on piles permits a changeable occupancy of the space by means of the convertibility of the forms and their adaptation to multiple uses. 

In Yona Friedman's own words "The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth : a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles".

Fuentes:
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yona_Friedman
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yona_friedman