Transition!

69

observed, state nomads (civil servants etc . . .) without home, both made and destroyed the city. Or, in Bermans words, the traditions of this city are distinctively modern, growing out of the citys existence as a symbol of modernity in the midst of a backward society (Berman 1988: 285). In Manhattan, where Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas saw the rise of a city of blocks . . . alone like an island, fundamentally on its own (Koolhaas 1994: 97), the void would reach its peak to become something completely different, the emergence of a third kind of space, a transitional space.

Transitional space
The inherent compulsion towards reducing the time-space frame of the process of industrialisation creates at a certain moment a third phase in the hierarchical relationship of the three subsystems of architecture. The turning point from a sequential space to a parallel space was still ambiguous; the shift from a parallel space to a subsequent type of space on the other hand is clearly noticeable. I would like to call this space a transitional space. Construction is now actually creating the context, and both context and construction become one subsystem (see Figure 5.4). Marc Auge has noted that in these transitional spaces there is no more duality, no more regret for something lost, as the modern artist lamented. He writes: Place and non-place [his term for the transitional space] are rather like opposed polarities: the rst never completely erased, the second never totally completed (Auge 1995: 79). Michel Foucault must have had something similar in mind when he wrote about a heteropia: capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible . . . they have a function in relation to all the space that remains (Foucault 1986: 22).

Hierachy

Activities Construction Context Sequential Agrarian society Context limits activities and construction

Context Activities Construction Parallel Industrial society Construction allows for contextual freedom

Context Construction Activities Transitional Communications society Construction creates context Activities Zero time-space No context, no material space Development

Figure 5.4 The shift towards transitional space