ABSTRACT
In my opinion, Rossi’s book is complex and ambivalent. He tries to analyze city in a rational scientific way, but he cannot just use rationality to face the complexity of cities in a clear way. He wants to separate autonomy of urban science from sociology, ecology, psychology and other science, but he can not escape the support by sociology, ecology, psychology and so on. He ends up constructing theories as artificial as they are useless, but can his method theory and urban science really work usefully and eternally? His text is induction. However, Koolhaas’s theory is opportunistic, in other words, he is good at managing words, exposing facts but leaving out conclusion and summarization. He uses fragment episodes to make reader weave in subjective way. Accordingly, comparing with Rossi, Koolhaas is free. He is not constrained by rationality; he uses his visual and vivid language to expose the irrational and hardly elucidative part of city thoroughly. His text is interpretation. What does their different text imply of the city? This is the key theme of my comparison Here, if Rossi’s theory which comes from study of the many historical European cities, such as Paris, Berlin, Italian,
2 UNSCRAMBLE IN THE SHELLPHYSICAL SPACE
2.1 Study area-reduplicative
For Rossi, study area is a kind of cognizant method to classify space. Actually, it is an apparent perceivable way for people from simple to complex in same frame of reference, otherwise, we can not describe, compare and analyze in no area or no frame of reference. So we can find out easily in Manhattan episodes, Koolhaas reduplicative use block and grid in physical space to determine the study area for Manhattan which can cluster the episodes offering the same scene. [The grid defines a new balance between control and de-control in which
the city can be at the same time ordered and fluid, a metropolis of rigid chaos.] (Koolhaas, p20) and [The block itself is equipped with technological paraphernalia that manipulate and distort existing conditions beyond recognition, establishing private laws and even ideology in competition with all the other blocks.] (Koolhaas, p96) Moreover, in reality, people switch the study area from island as geographical area, to block and grid as man-made physical area, to feminine space, queer space as cultural area and so on, which spreads in all the feasibility beyond physical space to mental space.
