John Meunier

Making Desert Cities

Modern desert cities, such as Phoenix, Albuquerque, Tucson, Las Vegas, even Riyadh and Dubai, are

being made in ways that reflect the capacity of post-industrial technology to overwhelm the limitations

that constrained the forms of older, pre-industrial, desert cities. This work questions whether both the

technology and the living patterns that typify such modern desert cities are sustainable. It also looks at

some older desert cities to see if they have much to teach us about how to live well in desert cities without

an excessive dependence on non-renewable resources, and without placing so much stress on the

environment. At the same time, as Amos Rapoport and Besim Hakim have suggested, we must recognize

that the forms in which cities are made respond as much, or more, to cultural imperatives, as to issues of

climate and technology. We need to be cautious, therefore, as we derive these lessons and attempt to

apply them. Nonetheless, many of these older cities, such as Yazd in Iran, Shibam in Yemen, Jaisalmer

in India, and Marrakesh in Morocco, have evolved in response to their desert contexts over extended

periods of time. Some have even survived significant cultural shifts, such as in Sana’a in Yemen, with

the arrival of Islam after many centuries of growth. It is argued that they may provide valuable models,

regarding compact urban form, alternative house forms, climate control and its optimization, water usage

and its celebration, low-energy construction materials and methods, even the nature of windows, in the

making of modern desert cities.

Desert cities in the United States, such as Phoenix or El Paso, even Los Angeles and San Diego, face

a unique responsibility as they provide models for what it means to live a “modern” life in a desert

environment. Following these models can multiply by many times the stresses placed on other ecological

and political systems as they are emulated, partially or wholly, throughout the world -- first by the

wealthy in their suburban villas, and then, over time, by others in the population -- abandoning the old

dense city centers as they seek the benefits of a life that begins to match their images of twenty-first

century urbanism.

This work aims to address a growing concern by many regarding the long-term prospects of cities,

such as the rapidly growing cities of the American Southwest, with both an urban form and an array of

building types that have largely ignored their desert settings. It also is a response by the author based on

extensive travel to desert cities around the world, particularly, but not solely, to older cities whose cores

were built in a pre-industrial era, in search of lessons indicating more appropriate ways of living in a

desert context. This work is not informed by nostalgia or cultural conservatism, although these are

certainly forces staying the hands of those who would destroy, indeed in some places have already

destroyed, the patrimony of ancient cultures in the name of “modernization”, and in response to the

ineluctable forces of the marketplace. It is informed by a deep commitment to what Vitruvius called

“propriety”; by a belief that the best way to live is not by dominating the context but by optimizing its

benefits and gently ameliorating its challenges; that the power of modern technology should be used only

as a last resort when all other means cannot meet the demands of twenty-first century life.

Background. The advent of twentieth century technology has radically changed the nature of desert

city living in many parts of the world. Widespread use of automobiles, increased access to large scale

urban water and sewage systems, almost universal access to electrical power and, in some cases, full

climate control through air-conditioning have eroded the need for a care-full relationship with both the

social and physical environment. Satellite receivers, powered by that electricity, have infiltrated almost

every household with images of ways of life that challenge indigenous cultural norms of both behavior

and artifacts. This barrage of images, reinforced by the communications from international commerce,

has promoted the uses of the new technologies as a means to “modern” life patterns.

There are still many desert settlements in the world where access to all of these modern technologies

is very limited. Automobility is at best a motorcycle, and much travel is done in mini-buses or shared

taxis. Although electricity may be available via a tangle of overhead wires, water may be available only

for a few hours a day or a few days a week, or has to be brought in containers from communal taps or

wells. The building of sewer systems often has been less than satisfactory in some desert cities, as 

leaking pipes have both polluted the ground and dissolved the foundations of older buildings. Further, the

effluent is often left untreated as it leaves the system. But these transitions to “modern” living, even

when incomplete, have still been eroding ways of making desert cities that evolved over centuries and

were adapted to the physical demands and opportunities of their physical and cultural contexts.

Is this process reversible? There have been political and religious leaders who have attempted to

resist this tide of “modernization”. Countries such as North Yemen had rulers who refused to let their 

community participate in twentieth century developments throughout the first two thirds of that century.

The resistance to this western model of modernization may be reflected in some of the political turmoil in

the world today among those who value the traditional ways of life and fear their destruction under the

wheels of the juggernaut of western modernization. However, even in countries that profess a cultural

hostility to the west, many of the forces of “modernization” seem to be irresistible. What is needed is an

alternative model that retains much of what is valuable from the past but that also accommodates with a

new sensibility the demands of the present.

Intricacy.

This work elaborates the idea that Intricacy is the missing ingredient in far too much of the architecture and urbanism of the modern world, and its lack is the cause of the banality and superficiality that results in our feelings of dissatisfaction with that world.The research is a celebration of Intricacy in the built environment, believing that environments possessing this quality will be elevating to the spirits, the mind, and our sensibilities; that when we live amidst such buildings, streets and places, our lives will be enriched instead of, as so often is now the case, being diminished.

My interest in Intricacy has several roots, but in some way it is a natural extension of my previous work on Desert Cities and Compact Urbanism. That work caused me to think hard about the pedestrian realm, and its need for intricacy to provide enough information content at a human scale to satisfy the relatively slow moving pedestrian in an urban setting.  It is my goal in the research to dig into history, to look at current theory and practice, to ask what the new technologies of design can do for us, and then to direct our attention back to issues of urban and architectural form.

As this work began a working definition was developed:

“Intricacy is an intellectual construct that interprets a challenging set of perceived phenomena within a rich structure of relationships that link each member of the set consequentially to the rest. An object of our attention is perceived as intricate when its comprehension requires such intellectual engagement. Such an object may have complex form, but it can also be intricate because of its ambiguity of form or significance. Multiple readings of simple form may also imply intricacy.

“Art, Music, Architecture, and Literature must necessarily be “intricate” to qualify as substantial works of long-term cultural significance. Their formal structure and their multiple layers of meaning may separately, or together, achieve the quality of intricacy. It is this quality that lends major works the ability to reward those who revisit them many times.”

It began to become clear while on a sabbatical leave travelling around the world in pursuit of ideas for the future of Greater Phoenix as a desert city, (visiting cities such as Yazd and Isfahan in Iran, Jaisalmer and Jaipur in Rajasthan, Tunis and Fez in North Africa, Sana’a and Shibam in Yemen, Lima and Cuzco in Peru, and Adelaide and Alice Springs in Australia), that many highly rewarding physical environments, rewarding particularly to the pedestrian, shared the quality of intricacy.  And so, on returning to research and teaching at Arizona State University, the subject matter gradually evolved from Desert Cities, through Compact Cities, to Intricacy, not just of urbanism, but also of the architecture that contributed to that urbanism.

The work on Desert Cities had been stimulated by a continuing unease that the urban conglomerate of Greater Phoenix, composed of about 23 cities and townships distributed along the valley of the Salt River and its tributaries in central Arizona, has been taking a form that has more to do with cheap land and automobile accessibility than with any focused attention on its setting in the Sonoran Desert, its challenges and opportunities. And so older desert cities were visited that had evolved over many centuries, accepting the constraints of their settings while developing an architecture and urban form that was richly responsive to that desert environment.

But there is something else bothersome about Greater Phoenix. In spite of the fact that it has been a home to some highly talented architects and urban visionaries, starting with Frank Lloyd Wright and Paolo Soleri, the dominant characteristic of both its architecture and its urbanism is an unrewarding banality. In this, of course, Phoenix is not alone. In fact a generalization would claim that this characterizes almost all newer cities and buildings round the world, and that Greater Phoenix is simply exemplary, and by no means unique. Here again the word ‘intricate’ seems to stand for what is missing. The absence of intricacy is what makes walking around the city tiresome, and the encounter with the vast majority of its buildings boring. This, of course is not an original perception; Robert Venturi, in his book of 1966, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, makes a very similar point. We will have to return later on to attempt to draw some distinctions between our argument and his, while at the same time recognizing similarities.

Hence this work, which is not focused on Phoenix, or Desert Cities, but on the need in all our cities and buildings for the quality of Intricacy. Cities should be fascinating and enjoyable to live and work in, as well as to visit, and our buildings should reward the human encounter, physically, intellectually and aesthetically.

Intricacy is not the same thing as complexity; we suggest that it is in fact a special subset of complexity. The intricacy that we discuss here is not just a formal characteristic either; minimalist environments can be intricate too, as can a Japanese rock garden or the Barcelona Pavilion, in their elegant profundity and capacity to generate multiple readings.

Intricacy can be both the product of one creative mind, and of many minds and hands. In nature intricacy is the product of evolution, and indeed the intricacy that comes from adaptation and evolution over time would seem to be a characteristic shared by both nature, the most intriguing of our cities, and some of our older buildings

In the course of this work the thoughts and ideas of many others have been consulted. An early discovery was an exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in 2003 organized by Greg Lynn whose title was INTRICACY. The exhibit focused primarily on recent developments in art, and to a certain extent in architecture, influenced  largely by recent digital and genetic engineering developments. 

“Among artists, designers, and architects there is an emerging sensibility of intricacy. Partially heralded by the digital and genetic engineering revolutions, the term intricacy connotes a new model of connectionism composed of extremely small scale and incredibly diverse elements. Intricacy is the fusion of disparate elements into continuity, the becoming whole of  components that retain their status as pieces of a larger composition. Unlike simple hierarchy, subdivision, compartmentalization or modularity, intricacy involves a variation of the parts that is not reducible to the structure of the whole”

Greg Lynn’s definition from his Essay in the catalogue for his exhibition:

INTRICACY: A Project By Greg Lynn FORM

Another discovery was that Chapter V of William Hogarth’s publication, The Analysis of Beauty, published in 1753, was devoted to Intricacy

Chapter V - Of Intricacy

‘Intricacy in form, therefore, I shall define to be the peculiarity in the lines, which compose it, that leads the eye a wanton kind of CHACE, and from the pleasure that gives the mind, intitles (sic) it to the name of beautiful: and it may justly be said, that the cause of the idea of grace more immediately resides in this principle………. except variety; which includes this and all the others.

‘Intricacy is that part which serves to correct the excess of simplicity falling into meanness’.

‘ It is a pleasing labour of the mind to solve the most difficult problems; allegories and riddles, trifling as they are, afford the mind amusement: and with delight does it follow the well-connected thread of a play, or novel, which ever increases as the plot thickens, and ends most pleas’d, when that is most distinctly unrvell’d?’

This latter is a fascinating anticipation of Stan Allen’s comment on Peter Eisenman’s design practices, “practices that owe something, if somewhat obliquely, to the operating principles of detective fiction….”(Trace Elements by Stan Allen in Tracing Eisenman: Peter Eisenman Complete Works Edited by Cynthia Davidson 

And so this work is intended to be a celebration of Intricacy in the built environment, believing that possessing this quality will ensure that such environments will be elevating to the spirits, the mind, and our sensibilities; that when we live amidst such buildings, streets and places, our lives will be enriched instead, as so often is now the case, of being diminished.

What makes a place intricate, as opposed to just complex? Here we might go all the way back to Aristotle’s distinction in his Metaphysics (1024a) between a “whole” and an “aggregate”, Alberti’s thoughts about “congruity”, or Gestalt theory that seeks for wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Architectural systems of proportion ensure that a rich diversity of elements can be linked both to each other and to the whole, because they share a common mathematical discipline. In many older towns, as Bernard Rudofsky identified in his book Streets for People: A Primer for Americans, “in all vernacular architecture, the elements are standardized but never identical” they are “sufficiently varied to avoid monotony”. In all of these we are looking for some balance between the intrigue of diversity and the resolution of unity. Diversity alone can yield confusion; unity alone can yield boredom. In their mutual presence one can discover intricacy.

Alexander Pope, in describing the ‘Gardens of Lord Viscount Cobham at Stowe in Buckinghamshire, England’  summed it up with his typical wit:

Here Order in Variety you see,

Where all Things differ,….yet where all agree!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge defined a poem: “(it) is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.” (from Biographia Literaria, Chapter XIV 1817)

For many years I have used a definition of architecture as ‘buildings worthy of contemplation’. In other words if we are prepared to spend time and effort in extending our encounter with the building both intellectually and emotionally, and find that that effort is rewarded by both increased understanding and enhanced aesthetic appreciation, then we would suggest that it is worthy of being described as a work of architecture.

We would go further and ask that the building should reward the physical encounter at a rich diversity of scales. The finger and the hand should find elements that gratify the touch and the grasp, the seat and the back should find places to rest and to lean, the body should find niches and aedicules, such as the zharookhas, as they are called in Rajasthan. Stairs should be a pleasure to climb and descend, offering different points of view and just the right mix of security and exposure. (Paul Rudolph was a master at exploiting the positioning of the body in space so that one is exhilarated by the experience). Camillo Sitte recognized that “outdoor use of certain interior features like stairs…was an essential charm of ancient and medieval city building….The effect is such that one feels that he is both inside a building and out in open space at the same time..”(p71 The Art of Building Cities: City Building according to its Artistic Fundamentals 1889 Translated by Charles T. Stewart Reinhold 1945). There should be a smooth transition between the intimate human scale and the progressively larger elements and spaces of the building and ultimately its urban setting.

Far too often in today’s buildings there is only one scale, usually large, at which the building is composed. The more intimate elements, furniture, hardware, fittings, have so obviously been selected from standard catalogues and have little or nothing to do with the extension of the argument of the building down to the human scale. It was one of the finest qualities of the buildings of Frank Lloyd Wright that his creative energy extended down to that smallest detail. And it has to be admitted that, for all their other limitations, this was also true of many of the better Art Deco buildings such as Rockefeller Center (1930-1939) in New York and The Netherland Plaza Hotel (1931) in Cincinnati (the latter a building that is often thought to have had an influence on Michael Graves, whose first architectural degree was earned in Cincinnati).

In architecture one can usually expect that the intricacy one finds is the product of one guiding creative mind, for although most buildings are the product of many minds there is usually one central figure. In urban situations this is almost never the case, although there may be smaller set pieces such as the Campidoglio in Rome where a single architect, Michelangelo, is given the credit for pulling the ensemble together. Intricacy is not solely a quality generated by one creative mind, it can be cumulative; and it is that cumulative quality that typically generates urban intricacy. The authors of grand transformative concepts, such as Haussmann’s revisions to Paris, following Sixtus Vth’s changes in Rome and John Nash’s intercession in London, may be very significant contributors but even then they are only a part of what has created cities that reward their citizens through the rich intricacy generated by a multitude of creative acts.

So in what way can we distinguish such urban intricacy from just complexity? Again we must return to Aristotle’s distinction between a “whole” and an “aggregate”. As he elaborates this idea he states, “(collections) to which the position of the parts in relation to each other makes no difference are ‘aggregates,’ those to which it does make a difference are ‘wholes.’ “….In other words we will find the intricacy of “wholes” where the various parts of a city are responsive to each other. This does not imply that they must mimic each other, but it does imply an effort to provide continuity of scale, materiality, or other factor that will ensure a positive urban relationship.  Aalto’s Enso-Gutzeit Headquarters in Helsinki, and Le Corbusier’s Casa Curutchet in La Plata, Argentina, come to mind as emphatically modern buildings that nonetheless attempt to provide such continuity. In Jerusalem the mandate that all buildings must use the beautiful Jerusalem stone did not inhibit Moshe Safdie in his design of the Hebrew Union Seminary, one of his best buildings. In Barcelona Enric Miralles’ Santa Catarina Market modernization is not only inventively original but also exquisitely responsive to its setting and that setting’s history. Far too often our modern cities are merely aggregates of self-absorbed and aggressively histrionic buildings that ignore this necessity to create a whole through a responsibility to provide continuity with the rest of the city.

What has caused the loss of Intricacy in so many of our modern environments? Certainly the automobile must bear a major share of the blame as it loosened up our cities and removed the pedestrian from our streets. Although it has to be admitted that there are many occasions when the experience of driving in and around our cities, as a kind of high-speed urban promenade, can be both exhilarating and also explicative. Nonetheless the intimate encounter, at a level where all the senses are involved, that is available to the pedestrian in a city scaled to ‘his’ dimensions and ‘her’ tempo offers an easier path to Intricacy, as we all experience in the many older, pre-automobile, urban environments that are such a pleasure to visit and desirable to live in.

Adolph Loos must also bear a share of the blame in his association of ornament with crime at the beginning of the twentieth-century. This hugely influential fatwah took away from many of the designers of the environment the means of formal elaboration, of evoking conventional meanings, of elaborating light and shade, of inviting tactile exploration. It could be argued that Loos was merely the messenger from a culture that had lost its deep religious faith and no longer looked to the Greek and Roman ‘ancients’ as models for its Humanist thought and action; a double loss that emptied most decoration of its authority and meaning. It could also be argued that Loos showed a way in his own work, with the spatial richness of his raumplanung and his celebration of nature through polished woods and marbles, toward another kind of Intricacy, the Intricacy found in the work of Mies van der Rohe. But sadly this subtler kind of intricacy turned out to be beyond the skill of the majority of designers, whereas the language and disciplines of Humanism had been accessible not only to all the architects but also, through Pattern Books, to the speculators and builders who produced most of the buildings of elegant cities like Georgian London and nineteenth-century Paris.

The dominance of a limited range of scales, typically large, in both buildings and urban environments is both a by-product of the previous two issues, the automobile and the loss of meaningful decoration, but is also a result of the ways in which buildings are procured in a market driven culture that favours so-called ‘economies of scale’ whether we are talking about retail, education, or even housing. Buildings and developments tend to be large and self-contained. But it is not only the institutions that are large, the scale of the elements from which they are composed tend also to be large and relatively inarticulate. Whereas there may sometimes be an interesting and even inventive architectural concept informing the building as a whole, all too often the creative energy dwindles at the finer grain of decision-making. Large buildings do not necessarily lack Intricacy, in fact they might offer more opportunity for Intricacy because of the richness of their programs and the purchasing power of their size, but it is all too easy for them to be simply repetitive and mono-scalar, and, of course, there are economic incentives for that to be the case. Hanging frilly decorative screens around them does not generate Intricacy. This may be an early manifestation of an emerging interest in re-engaging with decoration and of exploring the resources generated by the computer, but it only serves to demonstrate that elaboration does not equal intricacy.

A share of the blame for the absence of Intricacy in our architecture may also lie at the feet of the Journals that both reflect and stimulate architectural culture, where easily perceived novelty in the basic concept behind a building is more likely to be celebrated than the less accessible and subtler intellectual, experiential and aesthetic intricacies that structure a more profound understanding.

Nonetheless it is the goal of this work not to simply point out failure, but to suggest routes to success. We live in a time of radical social, technological, and cultural change, each of which offers both an incentive and an opportunity to realize intricacy in our built environments, and particularly our cities.