A new
city is being built atop the old. It erupts from the old city at odd
points, on streets near busy metro stops, along the radial highways
that cross the canals, seemingly ignorant of all previous
geographies.
I
find myself, one night, on a bridge over a canal in On Nut, where,
not long ago, the traffic and the concrete gave way to the rice
paddies and orchards. All around are the sounds and sights of
construction, of 2x4s being nailed into place, of fresh caterpillar
tracks in the red clay soil, of cascades of sparks coming off of
welding torches on steel armatures, of fluorescent lights left on in
unpainted hallways, illuminating gray drywall and plastic sawhorses.
Signs
are going up. Condos for sale, plus a “community mall”-- a
ubiquitous Bangkok feature, a self-conscious imitation of Southern
California planning with all the spas and modern Japanese restaurants
one would expect. Artists' renderings show manicured hedges, smartly
dressed diners, joggers somehow blithely ignorant of the fanged Thai
sun.
And
yet cross the road, and find yourself in a fully unreconstructed
city, a hodgepodge of spontaneous construction-- market sellers of
grilled pork skewers and greenish oranges, shophouses occupied by
dental clinics and hairdressers, broken concrete, stray dogs, old
wooden houses starting to tilt alongside an ancient canal, A
supermarket with stalls selling cheap clothes, knockoff jewelry,
herbal soaps, butchered squid splayed out across rapidly melting ice.
In
1922, Le Corbusier, the Swiss architect who had the gall to turn
himself into a pseudonymous brand decades before Cher, planned out
his Ville Contemporaine,
a planned city of 3,000,000 souls that was designed to reflect his
own authoritarian vision for what a city should be. Preaching the
gospel of architectural determinism, he saw the perfection of man in
the perfection of architecture-- which, fortunately, was a task Le
Corbusier felt he'd more or less accomplished in the form of “towers
in the park.”
But
unlike a great many of his colleagues, Le Corbusier was able to
merrily shoehorn his vision into multiple political ideologies. A
handmaiden of wealthy European industrialists, he designed their
country estates and lobbied them to build worker housing along his
lines, but who also spent a few years as the favored architect of the
USSR, and who willingly carried out the architectural vision of the
collaborationist government in France in World War II, who afterwards
lent his vision to the construction of vaguely democratic-socialist
megaprojects in an idealistic, newly independent India.
After
cycling through industrial capitalism, communism, fascism, and social
democracy, the tower in the park can thus take the form of
post-industrial capitalism, as it did in the years following World
War II, became emblematic of large-scale corporate architecture, both
in high-density housing complexes and in suburban office parks.
And
so On Nut is increasingly filled with the towers, as assets for the
city's investing classes, leased out to more housing-transient
populations-- young professionals, university students from wealthy
families, expatriates looking for an environment that could just as
easily fit into Dallas or Sydney. As the new city grows in size and
influence, one wonders what will happen to the old. Will it be
replaced, or will it grow in size accordingly, as a belt of poverty
supplying the necessary labor to feed the tastes of those in the
towers? And how much of it will be preserved as a nostalgic relic, an
easily marketable counterpoint in a vertical city? After all, even Le Corbusier spent his final years in a rustic cabin by the sea.
The
new Bangkok seems to grow and grow without reason, and one wonders
where all the capital comes from. Ads appear for more and more
condos, in further and further neighborhoods, with invitations to buy
units off of the plan before ground is broken. The city takes on the
character of a mirage, and it seems as if the act of construction
takes primacy over the place itself. I'm reminded, at last, on that
bridge over the canal, of Italo Calvino's Thekla, from Invisible
Cities.
- “Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask 'Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?' the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer 'So that its destruction cannot begin.' And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, 'Not only the city.'”
