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PARASITES

 

Shaping the Image of the City

Content

1. Introduction

2. The Origin of the Term Parasite

3. Parasitic Architecture

4. Parasitic Architecture Behavior

5. Early Parasitic Architecture

6. Parasitic Housing in the 21st Century

7. Parasitic Public and Commercial Buildings in the 21st Century

8. Parasites in the Urban Environment

9. Parasitic Graffiti

10. Graffiti in Urban Contexts

11. Conclusion

 

 

 

 

1. Introduction

The 20thcentury has witnessed the development of many remarkable architectural movements, approaches, and tendencies, including modern and late-modern architecture, postmodern architecture, deconstruction, and parametric architecture. These movements and approaches introduced different architectural styles, which have a tremendous effect on the forms of buildings and the visual appearance of the fabric of cities. However, cities have experienced a significant change and transformation in the way buildings are constructed and the characteristics of the built form. These contemporary transformation processes likely affected people’s aesthetic preferences and the way they perceive and interpret the change in buildings’ form and the urban context in the city. Change in the visual character of a city might be perceived as a significant factor that provides value to the urban environment. In his ‘The Image of the City’, Kevin Lynch (1960) argues that for any given city, a corresponding set of images takes place in the minds of the people who experience that city. He also believed that a city would never be complete because of the constant change in its morphological level.

 

Buildings with blank exterior walls and the unbuilt in-between spaces in the city became relevant for accommodating the parasitic structures. Although these inserted pods would create an increase in the density of the city, the inhabitants might be more linked together, as well as social sustainability would be developed. Also, these vacant in-between spaces have been the subject of several academic discourses. Merten Nefs discussed the role of unused urban spaces in city planning and the production of urban space, while Elly Van Eeghem regarded these in-between spaces as ‘urban cracks’ that ‘refers to the “decoding of city development”. Similarly, in her Ph.D. (2015), Nainoa D. J. Cravalho focused on the problems of dead spaces within the urban environment, while Alyn Griffiths (2012) reflected on the possibility of transforming these gaps between buildings into functional urban properties. Georgia Kachri (2009) believes that parasitic architecture can introduce reliable answers to the problem of the density of cities by providing temporary accommodations, while Senem Yıldırım (2013) discusses the urban parasites formed by the connection of graffiti spots and examines the changing identity of interstices in different contexts.

 

Thus, parasitic structures, as a new element of change, affect the visual image of the city and could be discussed on two levels. Either it could provide sensual pleasure, as people can involve themselves in the new context, or it may feature a poor visual quality that is unsympathetic to people's senses. In this sense, parasitic objects in a city introduce a variety of forms that may accentuate their context or create visual disorder and confusion. Henry Sanoff argues that there is “growing dissatisfaction with the visual environment of the past few decades, in contrast to the positive feelings evoked by its historical predecessors.” However, integrating new forms of parasitic objects in the city should not be viewed as merely an abstract aesthetic phenomenon, but also as a new strategy for evoking an appropriate dialogue about the visual environment.

2. The Origin of the Term Parasite

The term parasite originated in Ancient Greece, and it was derived from the word “parasitos” (Greek pará = on, at, beside; sítos = food). First, the term parasite was used to describe the employees who dine at the expense of the public in the sacrificial meals. Later, it was applied to followers who used to flatter the rich by paying them compliments in order to gain entry to ceremonies where they would take some food. Also, “parasitos” became an essential part of people’s social life in Roman antiquity. In addition, it reappeared in the European theater in pieces such as Friedrich Schiller’s “Der Parasit.”. In the seventeenth century, botanists described dependent plants such as mistletoe as parasites. However, in his masterpiece “Systema Naturae” in

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Cover: "New OCAD Building" by Jason Prini is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 21.12.2020
ISBN: 978-3-7487-6909-5

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