Reading The City's Babel

Abstract

Within the context of the developing world, urbanism entails a dynamic set both within, and against, an emerging modernity - a synergetic construct operating between local practices and global flows. The study of development patterns within developing cities reveals scores of marginalised sites that provide the opportunity to delve into this field of tension, and critically engage a site's multiple physical & temporal scales. The city of lslama_bad was envisioned as a new capital that stood for the endorsement of a globalised brand of modernity. Such a project, of conceiving a metropolis within an historical vacuum, was realised by overlaying a grid upon land that was taken more or less as a blank canvas, with ideals of economic and administrative efficiency dictating the rationale of its arrangement. While a strong case might be made in favour of the practicality of such an approach, its lack of history leaves it short of a depth that is collectively shared by its inhabitants, who find themselves alienated within the machinations of the city. This, coupled with an overwhelming diasporic influx, which can't be reconciled with the developmental pace of the city, leaves it as an unresolved contradiction of different cultures. This thesisprobes into the communicative potential of the city's landmark architecture, envisioned between the poles of what it ideologically stands for, and its obverse image of subaltern urbanism that emerges as unanticipated instances of deviance within the monotony of ·. ' . ' its grid. Such a stance does not aim to overcompensate for the city's imperfections with a search for an architectural character that would contradict its milieu and destiny, but rather be an exposition of the predicaments it finds itself in, laying bare the incommensurability of disparate spheres of urban life within the city.