2005 Urban Design
Grounding Fantasy

What is the state of fantasy in architecture today?

Architects have historically used fantasy to explore the potential of new ideas in the built domain. From early notions of the sublime to the eighteenth-century perfection of nature, to early modernist utopianism, to the radical architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, this theme is central to the evolution of architecture. In Russia and China there has been a consistent record of realizing those aspirations in their purest form. In order to understand the contemporary state of fantasy in architecture and urbanism I intend to study the line that connects these two countries and the two cities, St. Petersburg and Beijing, that embody this phenomenon best.

A satellite photograph taken at night shows clusters of light against the black expanse of European and Asian territory that stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In the southwest, a mottled collection of white lights clearly defines the aggregation of European cities that have evolved through the play between natural forces and the changing socio-political landscape of European history. In stark contrast to this clustered arrangement of lights, a pattern of lines and dots array themselves across Russia like a wiring diagram projected by a giant lanterna magica over the largest country in the world. Out of this pattern a long spoke emerges to the east of Moscow and passes through the black expanse of Siberia until it terminates amongst the dense collection of lights that constitute the developments of Asia’s new economic centers. It is this line that I wish to focus on.

The Trans-Mongolian rail line is a datum along which a succession of sociological fantasies have solidified in the form of Architecture and Urbanism. Connecting the imperial Russian capital of St. Petersburg to the Chinese contemporary capital of Beijing, this line is over 9,000 kilometers long. Along the way it passes through the endless socialist blocks of Russia’s western population centers, cuts a line through the forests of Siberia, crosses the Mongolian steppes, follows the Great Wall of China and finally reaches its destination along Asia’s eastern shore. Appropriately, this journey connects two similarly idealized cities. In the popular imagination both St. Petersburg and Beijing are places in which the dramatic scaler and ideological relationships that characterize fantasy have emerged in built form. Both were planned and implemented with the belief that they would be the iconic and political center of their countries. Both underwent major changes to their urban form during socialist revolutions. And both have emerged as symbols of the post-communist era. And yet the present condition and trajectory of both urban form and idea in these two cities could not be more different. This difference, I believe, can best be understood by following the line that connects St. Petersburg to Beijing, the Trans-Mongolian railroad.

This proposal is an extension of a task to which I was assigned at the onset of my current Master's thesis at Harvard University. My analysis of the contemporary city of St. Petersburg and the potential for new ideas to shape the future of it has begun with a traditional reading of the built domain but has coupled this knowledge with an analysis of themes that shape the contemporary state of Russia as a whole. This process has been positive but there are two topics which I believe would reinforce my current research. The first is to understand how these prototypically Russian ideas which have manifested themselves across the rest of the country’s vast landscape while the second is to use a comparative study to understand how a similar scenario has manifested itself in a similar city, Beijing. Using the Trans-Mongolian Railroad to move from point to point and the methodology that I have already deployed in my current work I intend to look at cities across the Russian landscape and finally at Beijing as a foil and complement to some of the ideas that I have extrapolated from St. Petersburg. With these two tasks I hope to understand the role of fantasy in the evolution of these two cities and most importantly how, in recent times, this subject has made them so different.

In its simplest form my proposal is to look at St. Petersburg and Beijing because they represent the potential of fantasy in architecture and because they are two similar but divergent representations of the east-west, capitalist-communist dialectic that lies at the heart of many contemporary large scale urban projects. Consequently, this terrain provides the most potent fodder for radical architectural ideas. The current urban dilemmas range from the rapid decay of St. Petersburg to the uncontrolled excesses of development in Beijing to the environmental hazards that plague both cities. But what will make this proposal and the resulting analysis far more interesting is the understanding of the contemporary context in which these cities and their accompanying ideas are set. With millions of square kilometers of land and thousands of cities to visit there is no feasible way to do a complete survey of China and Russia. However, the Trans-Mongolian provides a convenient editing device for selecting a limited set of varied destinations to visit and it gives a filmic frame through which to see a cross section of the incredible landscape that connects the two destinations. Through a combination of photography and video to record my experiences, a written journal to document my thoughts, and a period of research to ground my ideas, I hope to use the SOM Foundation travel fellowship to bolster my own current fascination with the state of fantasy in contemporary urbanism and architecture.

Proposed Itinerary

This proposed itinerary consists of two primary categories:

1. St. Petersburg and Beijing require an analysis of specific imperial, socialist, and contemporary architecture and planning projects.
2. Cities along the Trans-Mongolian railroad will be studied to see how the specific themes of St. Petersburg and Beijing manifest themselves across the Russian and Chines landscape.
   i.e. The Mutation of typical socialist typologies (microrayon, palace, etc.) across the varied Russian landscape.

China, Mongolia, and Russia