Time-Image of Cities: Filmic Representations in Urban Imaginaries 1960’s -1970’s

Abstract

The emergence of art cinema, experimental videos and animations in the 1960’s and 1970’s took place simultaneously as architects and urban designers took a step back and reflected on the legacy of modernism in urban design, though few in-depth studies looked into this concurrence. One result of this paradigm shift in the discipline of architecture was questioning the modernist definition of presentness and the overlooked subjective experience of time. With media such as short films, storyboards, and animations, architects and urban designers created time-based urban imaginaries that fit Gilles Deleuze’s definition of time-image in cinema, in which the coexisting past and present formulate diverse and experimental narratives of time. Drawing from architectural history and media theory, the thesis investigates the ramifications of the application of time-based media in generating urban imaginaries in Europe and the U.S., as it interrogates the ideological and critical overtone embedded in such projects. This thesis contends that not only did these mediums serve as technical supports, but their medium specificity was also incorporated in the conceptual and critical framework underlying the design proposals. Case studies include Aldo Rossi’s documentation film exploring the concept of analogy, Superstudio’s storyboards and films highlighting freeze-frames and imprisoned subjectivity, and Madelon Vriesendorp’s animation staging Manhattanism as a form of animatism. Through historicizing the connections and exchanges in this period, a framework of cultural history that shaped the formal and ideological transition of both disciplines can be derived.