Study Architecture 
ProPEL 
Author(s): Liang Wang
Abstract: This paper excavates the nuances and alternative readings of the ideas of the superblock through its correlation with urban form. In tracing its origin and influence over a broader lineage of modern cities and their formations, this paper posits that the superblock, through a spine-based structure consisting of a series of “cul-de-sacs,” serves as an instrumental apparatus to reorganize spaces in modern cities. It simultaneously produces a series of “singularities” in architectural and urban forms, which have reduced the representational agency of architectural and urban artifacts to specific forms, isolated contexts, and oftentimes static master plans. Furthermore, the paper contemplates the notion of “multiplicity” as a counter-proposition to “singularity” by examining two modern superblock examples: first, the Rabenhof of the Red Vienna Superblock, which is derived from the courtyard typology of Hof in the historical city and encompasses multiple scales, publicness, and porosity in instrumentalizing socio-spatial transformations. Second, Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Marquette Park, which transforms a discretely framed park into a new continuous structure of urban space and illustrates how space could be built from the traditional urban form with incrementality and temporality. Overall, it is the possibility of “multiplicity” embedded in the scale, part-to-whole structure, and temporality of the idea of the superblock that offers viable paths in combating the singular mindset of modernism and, therefore, renders it constructive in reimagining new forms of the urban in contemporary contexts and their near future.
https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.AM.113.94
Volume Editors
Sara Jensen Carr & Rubén García Rubio
ISBN
978-1-944214-48-7
