JONILA PRIFTI ABSTRACT The paper reconstructs the evolution of the term “acupuncture” from its very definition in the traditional Chinese medical theory to the coined term of “urban acupuncture”, now used worldwide in urban design fields, often with a vague meaning. It provides an overview of the single physical interventions on urban public spaces, conceptually designed with the use of this approach, from the Curitiba case in Brazil to the European case of Netherlands. It also attempts to explain the importance of discussing about “ urban acupuncture” in a city like Tirana as an. The thesis propounded is that the worldwide best practices on urban acupuncture, applied with an intelligent and realistic prospective of the future of the city by designers/architects/planners, can form the basis for new urban renewal practice in Tirana. KEY WORDS: URBAN ACUPUNCTURE, PUBLIC SPACE, COLLECTIVE SPACES, REVITALIZATION, RENEWAL.

1 THE URBAN TRANSFORMATION IN TIRANA “Detto questo, è inutile stabilire se Zenobia sia da classificare tra le città felici o tra quelle infelici. Non é in queste due specie che ha senso dividere la città, ma in altre due: quelle che continuano attraverso gli anni e le mutazioni a dare la loro forma ai desideri e quelle in cui i desideri o riescono a cancellare la città o ne sono cancellati.” 1(Calvino, 2003) If we would correlate the city of Tirana to one of these two species, which one would we choose? Is there a shared vision for future development of the city? Does the rapidly changing urban structure reflect people desires? Can we identify whether common desires are transforming the city or the city itself is erasing desires? After the collapse of communism and the beginning of land privatization the Albanian capital witnessed rapid urban expansion causing a boom of unprecedented informal settlements. People began to migrate immediately to the cities and the capital was the most sought after destination. The urban periphery and the downtown of Tirana became the focus of drastic transformations. In 1990, Tirana was a compact city of 225,000 inhabitants (Felstehausen, 1999). Nowadays, we do not refer to Tirana as a city (inside the municipal boundaries) but as a metropolitan area with almost 764,000 inhabitants in 20112. Over the past twenty years the uncontrolled urban process have led to an uneven urban texture, mono-functional areas, improper use of building typologies etc (Aliaj et al., 2003). In this context, harking back to Calvino, I would say that Tirana has been erased by people desire, but concurrently, it appears quite clear that this “desire” does not express the common vision of the city, it rather detects the social housing need which still persists. Despite attempts of local institutions for urban regeneration, in the last ten years, Tirana have failed to find solution to problems. The national and local government have organized different international competitions. Well-known international architecture studios were invited to come up with solutions. The question arises as whether is possible to reconstruct the city identity or consider the city as a “tabula rasa”. Tirana is trying to reinvent itself as a modern city but it does not have a clear strategy and do not know where the current choices led to. Rem Koolhaas stated that “where there is no architecture there is much to do, where there is architecture there is nothing to do.”3 In this perspective, if in Albania there is no (or not much) architecture it is easier for the architects/urban planners to express themselves. This is what is happening now with the demolition of the existing houses and construction of some high quality private buildings, especially in the downtown. However, this do not seem to resolve any problem to the city and probably, the reason of the failure is not considering private buildings as public elements to “serve as vehicles for social meaning and values that reach beyond themselves, and is precisely in this that they are urban”.4

                                                                                                                         1 “That said, it is pointless to determine whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. It makes no sense to divide the city into these two species, but rather into another two: those who through the years and changes continue to give shape to their desires and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.” (translated by the author)  2 Tirana Region hosted 763,634 inhabitants according to “Preliminary Results of the Population and Housing Census 2011”, Institute of Statistics of Albania. http://census.al/Resources/Data/Census2011/Instat_print%20.pdf  3 Koolhaas, R., 1995. S, M, L, XL: small, medium, large, extra-large. New York: The Monicelli Press.  4 De Sola Morales, M., 2008. A matter of things. Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, pp189.  

2. PUBLIC SPACES/COLLECTIVE SPACES The importance of public spaces as vital places to urban life in the contemporary city, is shared by a number of urban theorists, from the perspective of improving life quality, enhancing urban image and encouraging economic development. Public spaces provide opportunities for social interactions, neighborhood gathering, community events and recreational activities. In order to become livable and successful, they must produce a sense of identity and attachment to users. The identity of a place fosters contacts between people. The Albanian conception and perception of the urban public space has experienced radical transformations through decades. Nowadays, the proper term we would use to define these spaces is non-places5 instead of public or collective spaces. The usual public spaces such as the piazza/shesh, the urban park/lulishte or the boulevard/bulevard are now replaced by shopping malls, supermarkets, computer and cash machines etc which are all the same all over the world (Augè, 1996). It seems that urban design in Albania is no longer able to realize culturally inhabitable public spaces. Even in the recent urban projects realized in Tirana, the attention of the designers is mostly to create privately owned collective spaces.    According to Manuel De Solà Morales “collective space is both much more and much less than public space, if by the latter we mean solely that which is publicly owned”. He believes that it is pointless to discuss if an urban space is more or less public because “in our cities, the spaces of ambiguous nature are the ones that are going to play a more and more significant role in everyday social life”. The project should not be evaluated for the intensity in which they are “public” and, “the good city is one that is able to give a public value to what is private” (De Sola morales, 2008). If a building follows its own internal logic without necessarily responding to the urban context, it becomes sculpture or just an object in space.    In Tirana, where there are still problems with the land ownership, the local institution must overreach the matter of properties and opt for alternative interventions in guaranteeing public/collective spaces. The city of New York offers vast models of best practices. Paley Park in New York is a privately owned private space opened to public through the benevolence of the owner. It was realized in 1967 and since than “it has become a model for how philanthropy and design can produce a peerless public space”.6 Paley Park is a small plaza of about 2100 square meters (30m x 70m) with a rectangular geometry and made of very simple materials. It is composed of 17 trees and other planters filled with flowers, movable wire-mesh chairs, movable tables, a rock-face 14 meter high waterfall and a food kiosk at the southeast corner. Paley Park's quality is confirmed by its unusual quantity and mix of uses and its influence extends beyond its borders, in New York city and elsewhere around the world. It attracts people who live and work nearby, also accidental and intentional foreign tourists (Kayden, 2000). 3. TOWARD A CATALYTIC CITY7: URBAN ACUPUNCTURE AS A STRATEGY OF INTERVENTION At the 1999 UIA Conference in Beijing, Kenneth Frampton presented the agenda for the architecture and planning for the new millennium. According to him, there are seven points of interest for the contemporary architecture. Point six highlights the need for an incremental urban strategy and is specifically entitled: Megaform as urban acupuncture. The land speculation limits the scope of urban design and any kind of master planning remains an academic exercise. As a result, alternative strategies for urban development of the modern city are requested. Frampton                                                                                                                          5 Augè distinguishes the collective spaces in places, encrusted with historical monument and creative of social life, and non-places, to which individuals are connected in a uniform manner and where no organic social life is possible.  6 Kayden, S. J., 2000. Privately owned public space: the New York city experience. New York: John Wiley & Sons, pp.157  7 The term “catalytic city” was used by Kenneth Frampton in his paper presented in 2003: Identification and Documentation of Modern Heritage. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Center. It represent a city in which every intervention realized go beyond itself, “...the Greek word catalysis is highly ambiguous; for while in chemistry it alludes to the presence of an essential inducing substance that in a reaction undergoes no change, in its original sense it meant dissolution and destruction. On the one hand, then, it may be used metaphorically to allude to an intervention whose effects extend beyond its own corporeal boundary;...”  

points out three figures worth mentioning for their strategic approaches to urban design: Henri Ciriani for the concept of “la piece urbain”, Fumihiko Maki for his concept form developed with Ohtaka and Manuel De Solà Morales, who coined and developed the notion “urban acupuncture”. He argues that: “The contemporary environment is now so conditioned by maximized technology that the possibility of creating significant urban form has become extremely limited. Restrictions imposed by the dominance of automotive distribution and the volatile play of land speculation limit the scope of urban design to such a degree that any intervention tends to be reduced either to the manipulation of elements predetermined by the imperatives of production, or to a kind of superficial masking to which modern development seems to gravitate in order to facilitate marketing while maintaining a prerequisite level of social control. It is this that makes any kind of master planning other than public transportation largely academic. And the same may also be said of large-scale urban design. Since this is an equally harsh reality in both the development and developing parts of the world, urban designers, architects and planners have tried to evolve alternative piecemeal strategies for development and/or modification of urban form....To this, I would like to add the notion of urban acupuncture as developed by my colleague, the distinguished Barcellona urbanist Manuel De Solà Morales. By this term he intends a similar strategy of making catalytic, small-scale interventions, with the condition that they should be realizable within a relatively short period of time, and capable of achieving a maximum impact with regard to the immediate surrounding.”8 In this regard, several questions arise in our minds: what does urban acupuncture mean? How can acupuncture “heal” the city? How to determine the precise point to intervene? The word acupuncture is derived from the Latin acus (meaning “needle”) and the English puncture. Acupuncture has been in use for over two thousand years in the Chinese medicine and is one of the oldest therapies known to humanity. It is a therapy that relies on the holistic approach. (Lever Kidson, 2008) Referring to the Oxford English Dictionary9 the word holistic means “characterized by the belief that the parts of something are intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.” In terms of medicine the holistic approach implies the treatment of the patient as a whole.    The Spanish architect Manuel De Solà Morales explains that the skin of the human body, as in the ancient therapy of acupuncture, is the main energy transport system, with 361 sensitive points spread over the surface of the body. When the needle breaks the skin in a precise point, it triggers “sensory impressions” that are transmitted to the rest of the organism, exterior and interior, by means of twelve meridians or pathways. For acupuncturists the skin is not the covering of the organism but the main part of it.10 He also claims that the urban skin could be treated with the acupuncture therapy: “...the location of the sensitive points is the first step in the strategic treatment of the urban skin. It is dexterity in the identification of the spots and the channels of influence in the fabric that enable us to add new qualities, adequate energy, whether cold or hot, and to empower urbanity in its various modes.”11 (De Solà Morales, 2008, pp.24) Referring to the need of alternative strategies for urban regeneration, the architect and urbanist Jaime Lerner shares the same thoughts as Frampton about the city needing fast pinpoint interventions. Planning is a long-term process. Although it is necessary, it does not determine immediate transformations. Almost always, there is a spark that starts the action from which follows a propagation. That is what he call an acupuncture, a true acupuncture. (Lerner, 2003) If acupuncture is strongly related to times of realizations, what does “immediate” mean in urban transformations? How can a city, or a part of it, change in a short time? In 1972, in the city of Curitiba, Brazil, it was proposed to transform and revitalize the main central street in the downtown into a pedestrian mall. At the moment of the project proposal, shop owners were up in arms and the reaction was hostile. They were afraid that the change would destroy them. Jaime Lerner, who at the time was

                                                                                                                         8 Frampton, K., 1999. Seven points for the millennium: an untimely manifesto. Architectural Review, 206. 1233, pp.79  9 See the online dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/holistic?q=holistic  10 De Sola Morales, M., 2008. A matter of things. Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, pp.24  11 Ibid.  

the mayor of the city, knew that he could not force the implementation because the work would probably be interrupted by court injunctions. For this reason, he did not order the project to start unless he was sure in accomplishing, at least a part of it, in less than 72 hours. Works began on friday evening and were closed on monday. Once completed, even those who had signed the petition against the project, asked for an extension of the pedestrian zone. Rua 15 de Novembro now represent a central meeting spot and a vital artery through downtown Curitiba. In the TED12 conference Lerner explains that in the city you have to develop a good idea and to work fast. Participation is good but you have to have a good idea to start. The “sparkle” may come from the inhabitants, the major of the city or from designers, it doesn't matter, someone has to start. The physical change may not always occur in a short time in the city but, its revitalization may be immediate even without the need of physical transformation.    Manuel De Solà Morales and Jaime Lerner represent the two main figures who developed in practice and theory the urban acupuncture approach. De Solà Morales has designed mostly in his country, Spain but also in other countries in Europe while Lerner has always been dedicated to Curitiba and has tried to spread all over the world the successful experience in this city. In the following, I want to describe a representative case study for each architect basing in three important questions: where to puncture? how to puncture? Which are the acupuncture benefits? 3.2 Manuel De Solà Morales: urban acupuncture in Netherlands As to Frampton, the spanish architect Manuel De Sola Morales was the first to coin the term “urban acupuncture” in referring to small-scale catalytic interventions. He believes that, as the human body, the city is an ever changing organism and it has a skin, the urban skin. It is composed of constructions, textures and contrasts, of streets and empty spaces, of gardens and walls, of contours and voids. In his writing on the architecture and urban design of De Sola Morales, Hans Ibelings notes that, though the medical analogy is evident, the term urban acupuncture for this approach holds to a certain extent. Indeed, while acupuncture is based on the idea that a needle inserted at one sensitive point has an effect somewhere else, the effect of De Sola Morales' interventions is located precisely at the point where he intervenes, and not somewhere on the other side of the city. In contrast to acupuncture, the work of De Solà-Morales consist to a large extent of interventions at points where there is little energy, if any at all13. De Solà Morales have designed a number of projects in many cities of Europe. The most simple and representative project of small scale public space acupuncture is the Winschoterkade in Groningen.

                                                                                                                         12 Lerner, J., 2007. Jaime Lerner sings of the city. TED Conference. http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jaime_lerner_sings_of_the_city.html  13 Ibelings, H., 2008. Urbanity. In: M. De Sola Morales. A matter of things. Rotterdam: NAi Publisher, pp.11  

Project title: Winschoterkade, Groningen

Where to puncture? How to puncture? Acupuncture benefits?

Groningen historic center is surrounded by a canal and most of the beautiful architectural elements of the city are faced on it. The area area of intervention is located in the street Winschoterkade where two canals intersect and it opens to a panoramic view.

The goal is to create an attractive public space which will serve as a window to the city without losing the sense of peace and quietness that the canal conveys. De Solà Morales use simple elements to bring out the richness of the site: a platform, a bench and a window. The water platform can have many uses: it may serve as a stage for the community events, as a sun deck or a resting place. The area is crossed by a linear wooden bench that face the canal. It ends with a rectangular window that focus a particular part of the city.

Though it was a simple intervention in a small area it attracted residents and tourist to visit it and enjoy the city's “picture”. It is also a catalytic project because it encourages new initiatives to improve the panoramic view.

 

Photo from www.manueldesola.com [Retrieved June, 2012]  

 3.3 Jaime Lerner: urban acupuncture in Brazil    

Jaime Lerner is one of the most conspicuous defender of “urban acupuncture”, which he practices for many years in urban development projects in the city of Curitiba. In 2003, he wrote the book “Acupuntura urbana” which outlines successful examples of this approach. He began stating:    “I have always had the illusion and the hope that, with a prick of the needle, it would be possible to cure illnesses. To begin recuperating the energy of a sick or tired point through a simple touch, you have to deal with the revitalization of this point as well as its surrounding area. I believe that some medicinal “magic” can and should be applied to cities, as many are sick and some nearly terminal. As well as the medicine needed in the interaction between doctor and patient, in urban planning it is also necessary to make the city react; to poke an area in such a way that it is able to help heal, improve, and create positive chain reactions. It is indispensable in revitalizing intervention, to make the organism work in a different way.” (Lerner, 2003) His theories are easily verifiable in his interventions. A significant example is the realization of the Wire Opera House.

Project title: Teatro Opera de Arame (Wire Opera House), Curitiba

Where to puncture? How to puncture? Acupuncture benefits?

In 1992, in the north edge of Curitiba, there was a disused quarry that threatened the public use of the green area. The recovery of the urban park would produce new public spaces for the Pilarzinho neighborhood revitalization.

The aim was to create an equipped urban park with a unique character which would provide a sense of place to the neighborhood. The project should not interfere with the existing characteristic landscape and had to be in complete harmony with the natural context of the site surrounded by rock walls. It had to be also, a recovery intervention due to the presence of the quarry. Jaime Lerner decided to realize there an opera house14 in the crater of the quarry and use the quarry itself as an artificial lake. The building was built in record time, it took only 60 days to finish it. It was made of recycled steel tube and glass with content costs. The access to auditorium is via a walkway over the water.

The project succeeded in accomplishing the goals, it revitalized not only the surrounded areas but also the entire city. The opera had such a strong iconic power that it become part of the urban imaginary of the city of Curitiba.  

                                                                                                                         14 In this project Jaime Lerner and his team decided the strategy of intervention and the opera house was designed by the architect Domingos Bongestas. The city needed the opera house for not losing the possibility to host the Opera Festival.  

 

Photo by Arthur Lubow, published on May 2007 in The New York Times [Retrieved June, 2012]  

5. CONCLUSIONS: FOR AN URBAN ACUPUNCTURE IN TIRANA The rehabilitation of the city of Tirana is a must. It should begin from the downtown with the realization of new iconic places and buildings and renewal of the existing, to the revitalization of the suburbs. Every neighborhood need an urban park or a piazza, a space were the social life takes place. Maintaining the public space inhabited it is possible to preserve the vitality, interest and security (Gehl, 1987). Local institutions complain the lack of financial resources available to the municipality but there is an immediate need for transformation. Although it obstacles the regeneration process, we can not afford to stop trying. Once Jaime Lerner said that “creativity starts when you cut a zero from the budget, if you cut two zeros is much better”. We have to reconstruct or to reinvent the neighborhood’s identity and reflect it to their collective/public spaces through art. The concept of urban acupuncture does not have a clear methodology. Architects and designers are free to use all the tools they need. The importance of this concept is to act strategically and to give the project the possibility to evolve. Intervening in Tirana using urban acupuncture, the first step to take for a good puncture is to define the pressure points. We can identify them through the overlapping of the street network and the urban density of the city. They can be existing urban public spaces, urban voids, disused areas, main streets of a settlement, the space where two or more streets intersect etc. The second step is to propose15 small interventions: improve accessibility of piazzas, maintenance of the green areas and of paving, realization of playgrounds for children, extension of dead-end streets, relocate the parking lots and prohibit the car parking in certain areas, locate monuments to reinforce the identity of the place, improve lighting design, remove street vendors, connect public spaces with each other etc.

                                                                                                                         15 As to Jaime Lerner the propose can come from the inhabitants, the local institution or the designer/architect.  

The rehabilitation of the public spaces in Tirana does not only depend on the design or the methodology of intervention but also on the good will of the inhabitants and local institutions. Probably urban acupuncture cannot “heal” the city but it is a good approach in identifying how to act in a city. 4. REFERENCES 1. Aliaj, B. and Lulo, K. and Myftiu, G., 2003. Tirana: the challenge of urban development. Tirana:

SLOALBA. 2. Augè, M., 1996. Nonluoghi: Introduzione a una antropologia della surmodernità. Milano: Elèuthera. 3. Calvino, I., 2003. Le città invisibili. Milano: Mondadori. 4. De Solà Morales, M., 2008. A matter of things. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. 5. De Solà Morales, M., 1999. Progettare città/Designing cities. Lotus Quaderni documents, 23. 6. De Solà Morales, M., 2010. The impossible project of public space. [online] Available at: <http://www.publicspace.org/files/MSM_Impossible_project.pdf> [Assessed March 2012] 7. Gehl, J., 1991. Vita in città: spazio urbano e relazioni sociali. Rimini: Maggioli Edizioni. 8. Felstehausen, H., 1999. Urban growth and land use changes in Tirana, Albania: with cases describing

urban land claims. Land Tenure Center, 31. 9. Frampton, K., 2003. On the predicament of architecture at the turn of the century. Hunch the Berlage

Institute Report, 6/7, pp.176-90. 10. Frampton, K., 1999. Seven points for the millennium: un untimely manifesto. Architectural Review, 206.

1233, pp. 76-80. 11. Frampton, K., 2003. The catalytic city: between strategy and intervention. Between strategy and

intervention. Identification and Documentation of Modern Heritage. Paris: UNESCO World Heritage Center.

[online] Available at: <http://whc.unesco.org/documents/publi_wh_papers_01_en.pdf> [Assessed March 2012] 12. Kayden, S. J., 2000. Privately owned public space: the New York city experience. New York: John

Wiley & Sons. 13. Koolhaas, R., 1995. S, M, L, XL: small, medium, large, extra-large. New York: The Monicelli Press. 14. Lerner, J., 2003. Acupuntura urbana. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Records. 15. Lerner, J., 2007. Jaime Lerner sings of the city. TED Conference. [online] Available at: <http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jaime_Lerner_sings_of_the_city.html> [Assessed May 2012] 16. Lever Kidson, R., 2008. Is acupuncture right for you? What it is, why it works and how it can help you.

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