Two
great challenges facing architects, urban planners and political socio-economic
strategists in the second millennium of the common era are the trends of urban
migration and technological dominance. Together these challenges create the
basis of a new paradigm which may well define human existence for the
foreseeable future. Over the past sixty years, rates of urban growth have risen
to an unsurmounted 180,000 people per year, a rate which tipped
the urban/rural scale definitively into the urban region sometime in 2007,
according to UN estimates.6 While the reasons as to why the majority
of the global population now inhabit urban environments may be attributed to failed
harvests, better access to higher paying jobs and services, etc., the cost of
this migration on the supportive fabrics is often dire, with the worst cases
falling to the responsibility of the least capable regions.6,9 While
North American and European urban areas have stabilized at around eighty
percent, developing and undeveloped regions continue to suffer under the influx
of people, allowing its cities to grow to a population forty times larger than
that for which the infrastructure was designed. Often these urban areas provide
no better services than the rural areas left behind which, in Africa for
example, leaves seventy percent of the urban population living in slum
conditions.6
This is
the issue of capacity. The existing model for urban design developed by modern
theorists, while promoting an urban lifestyle, has not proved capable of
dealing with the exponential growth urban areas have experienced. This existing
model is completely dependent upon the conceptualization of space from a
two-dimensional point of view (zoning) and until urban designers begin to think
in three dimensions, peak capacity will never be reached and the problems
facing urbanization will continue.7,10
The
second challenge is beginning to understand how architecture and planning will
respond to the technologically-dominant lifestyle that has emerged over the
last thirty years. In the same way that recent changes in the political borders
and the creation of a universal currency in Europe have affected the way European
citizens inhabit that place, so too the phenomena of technological space-time
compression has changed the way global citizens inhabit the world.15
At the very lowest level of technological integration humans exist as users within
networks even when completely disconnected from technological devices, whether
they are ecological networks, social networks, or professional networks. It is
when these networks are analyzed and integrated into a constructed "datascape"
that they become a layer in understanding
the human spatial condition as a whole.3 When a user is connected to
a digital device however, and inhabits multiple virtual spaces simultaneously,
is when a complexity is reached which has the ability to inform architecture .
"No other phenomenon [urban densification] in
the history of architecture has been so heavily and widely criticized as this
one. It rendered the Modern movement taboo. And although many believe in its
necessity , most of us want to distance ourselves from it, frightened of its
very complexity and of its assumed dangers. But the awareness of the growing
megacities has become apparent and has led, for instance, to UN declarations. A
resurgence of interest in the at the end of the millennium can be explained by
the new economies: this new financial world has established itself within the
major cities and settled with the densest places because of the desired (if not
strictly needed) interconnections with the financial world and, because of the
density and intensity of cultural life, giving birth to a middle and upper
class of multinational character. These processes underline the imminent return
of density, born out of clash between pure differences. This clash opens new
possibilities for architecture, reuniting banal yet fascinating combinations of
programme." 8
-Winy
Maas
Clearly, architecture at the
beginning of the second millennium is faced with a daunting task, and one for which
architecture alone may not be prepared. Architecture
must mature and develop integrating fields into its discipline which were
previously beyond its scope. It must adopt a wider agenda, one focused on
directions rather than reactions. In order to survive, architecture must
provoke a public debate on space by placing itself in the middle; serving as
curator to ideas which could result in its own maturation.9
Statistics
As
previously stated all matter belongs to some part of an existing network. In
this aspect, humans are no different than single-celled organisms. The
difference is that humans belong to many more networks and require much more to
survive. Therefore, designing spaces for humans to dwell requires a vast
knowledge of these networks. Statistics provide another layer to the
architectural perception of space through quantitative analysis. In 1999, MVRDV
published a project Metacity/Datatown
which would serve as their manifesto for the role of statistical analysis in
architecture. Metacity/Datatown seeks
to define space strictly according to numbers with one element, "Metacity",
which would cover the entire globe composed of smaller "Datatowns."
These towns are formed as 400km by 400km blocks, a distance derived from the
possible distance traveled using modern means of transport. Each town is designed to be completely self-sufficient
meaning that all the numerable networks associated to each individual, of all
the numerable individuals inhabiting a singular Datatown must be quantified.
With modern information, processing these calculations are fairly simple, thus
quickly creating a virtual representation of a city in which the entire global
populace could virtually exist with all their needs met. 3 The power
of statistical analysis is the ability to see what is, in a way which predicts
what will come next.
The
problem with statistics alone, however, is that what is or what will come may
not be satisfactory. Design is not in the numbers, but rather is guided by
them. Where architects and planners often fall short is not in their ability to
collect information, but rather how to observe the data they see and extract
from it meaning which is translatable to a realistic connection. 3 This
translation inserts qualitative analysis back into the equation, allowing for
human sensory perception to begin to abstract the numbers according to the
designers intentions creating a datascape. 3 The paradoxical
relationship between the staunch validity of the original data, and the
personal perception of truth within the datascape is the bond which maintains
its integration in reality.3 This is where Metacity/Datatown fails. While it is a project in which every
global inhabitant could live, it is uncertain if anyone would choose to.
Metacity/Datatown however was not
designed as a solution to the vast number of urban and climatic concerns caused
by rapid urban growth. However it was designed to make the public aware of what
the numbers are and just how many of them there are. In this case MVRDV was
playing the role of curator, bringing the information, and the possibilities,
into the debate.
Technology
A
datascape containing all the information necessary for a project like Metacity/Datatown contains such a vast
amount of data that the use of these statistics would not be possible without
contemporary technological advances. According to Moore's Law (which is still
proven true) originally composed in 1965, the number of transistors which can
be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit would continue to increase exponentially.
Because this has remained true as technology advances, it continues to advance
at an ever increasing rate.16 This has massive consequences on the
world of architecture allowing architects to process information at rates and
in ways unimaginable in years prior. It also begs the question of what will be
the next innovation and how will it again transform the way space is designed.
MVRDV is on the forefront of this movement. Upon the completion of Metacity/Datatown, Winy Maas together
with a research group from The Berlage Institute began working within the
virtual domain using simulation as a tool to translating the data compiled for Metacity/Datatown and eventually
creating The Evolutionary City. Evolutionary City is the project which
created a bundle of applications - "user interactive planning machinery"
- which allow for users from numerous backgrounds to compare and evaluate data
to the point of simulating and generating proposals. 12 The Grand Machine: The Ultimate Network as the bundle
is called, encompasses numerous parallel applications, or mini-machines, which
share the various data sets in the same way a computer cluster shares the
computational load. Inframaker
absorbs data on movement and proposes optimized traffic solutions. A Housing Generator develops optimized
housing units based on input data. The
Evaluator and The Evolver are
Darwinist evolutionary problem solvers which translate the input based on
innovation parameters. In this way new ideologies can be compared with the
existing, based on various input parameters from competing cultural, political
or economic ideologies. Evolutionary City
is the result; a city which has the ability to study itself, optimize, adapt,
and create new strategies accordingly. Because
of its user friendly interface, every citizen of The Evolutionary City has the ability to take part and help to
improve the function of their city.12
A
similar but much simplified version of this software is in place today in New
York City. NYC311 was launched in March of 2003 and now handles 50,000 calls a
day in addition to information supplied via smartphone applications, Twitter,
and Skype by the city's residents on issues ranging from car alarms to air
quality. Because of this service the people in charge of running the city have
access to real time data on issues that matter to the residents and are able to
address these issues according to their nature and priority. Also, because
NYC311 stores all of the information received they are able to create a
datascape that allows them to make improvements even before the complaints are
received.5 This is the
concept behind The Evolutionary City, real time data analysis for the continual
optimization of the urban environment.
While The Evolutionary City was truly
innovative in the attempt to integrate technology and architecture/planning,
the result is much like that of Metacity/Datatown
in that the result is still simply based on fact, creating a banal and sterile
environment. Because of its ability to handle a large number of parameters
simultaneously, it does have the capability to deal with the complexities of a
contemporary city in a way not previously conceptualized, but the result would
not necessarily be an improvement. The observation of the data is still
incorrect and while, the human, qualitative analysis is improved, the possible
spatial result still remains static. A successful urban environment is dynamic
and multi-dimensional, described as overlapping fields where the natural
paradoxes of territorial intersection provide a framework for the
interrelationships of urban life. The complexity of urban environments is the
reason they exist. Cities can be equated with dynamic manifestations of a
living organism, forever in the process of distortion and transformation.
Therefore, tools such as these that allow one to begin to understand urban
complexity are necessary in understanding their capacity for growth but should
not be used without correct observation at the risk of diluting the natural
potency of the organism in favor of modernist rationalistic urbanism.4
Technology
has more to offer architecture than simply computing facts and generating numbers.
While the software within The
Evolutionary City does take advantage of the virtual domain within its
calculated simulations, the effect that happens when one begins to
conceptualize the potential of virtual space allows one to think beyond the
need of understanding urban complexity and actually begin to design for it.
Virtual
inhabitation is a fact of life for most people. Everytime one accesses a
digital file whether it be on a phone, a computer or a website they are
inhabiting that place. It may be argued that users with profiles or website
that remain online even when the user is not connected is still inhabiting
virtual space. Where virtual inhabitation affects architecture most radically
however is most clearly apparent in the obsession with Massively Multiplayer
Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPG's or MMO's) over the past ten years. If the main purpose of architecture is the
creation of space, or place (for the sake of this argument), then what purpose
does architecture have when its inhabitants spend the majority of their time
within a virtual space? MMO users not only move about in virtual space but also
meet people and build relationships, conduct business, engage in political
protests and even commemorate the passing of a loved one within a virtual
world.20 Some users not only bring their Away From Keyboard (AFK)
lives into the virtual environment but also their virtual lives into their AFK
lives, engaging in trading and "black market" negotiations based on
objects or currency within the virtual space. Millions of World of Warcraft users claim Azeroth
, the virtual world within the game, is their home.20 Honestly, why
shouldn't it feel like home when their only necessary connection to the AFK
life are the simple physiological functions necessary for survival. Most, if
not all, of their other needs such as love, belonging, esteem, and self-actualization
come from within the virtual environment.
According to Martin Heidegger, dwelling is a
state of existence - ich bin; essentially I dwell. The word neighbor, nachgebauer, thus means one who dwells
near. Building is an act of dwelling. Customization of one's environment is a
result of one's care for the protection of that environment; to cherish it.
Therefore the enjoyment and protection of one's self and one's loved ones is an
act of dwelling.18 Dwelling is therefore not tied to physical space
but rather the relationship with whatever form of space he or she is currently
inhabiting whether that be virtual, physical, or other. This is the challenge
for designing architectural space in the current technological world. People,
more specifically MMO users, have chosen another world in which to dwell. That
world is cherished, much unlike our physical world where famine, disease and
deceit consume a large number of its inhabitants.17 The same issues
that drive 180,000 people a year away from their homes to live in slum
conditions in the urban centers also created a situation where seven-million
people chose a virtual world as their home.
Virtual
space is where architecture will find the tools necessary to understand the
existing complexities and design with them to create cities of greater capacity
and better environment. Gaming is a perfect way to bridge that gap. Gaming
allows for people to come together to create community and collectively discuss
their personal perceptions of what they believe their environment should be.19
The addition of game theory to applications such as Evolutionary City may add another layer of input that preserves urban complexity while still
allowing it to be studied and, depending on the game play, could allow users to
begin to build relationships within that virtual world that could serve as a
model for extending urban capacities. In 2007 MVRDV published Spacefighter, another application bundle
based on Evolutionary City, as an
attempt to explore and model chains of interactive planning using a competitive
game environment to model the conceptual city. Unfortunately, while the
addition of the users within the application and the assignment of value to
specific parameters, among other changes, does create a competitive
environment, the interface for the game and the game play is geared more
towards the software developers themselves.14 In order for virtual games to begin to make a
difference in the way architecture and planning are conceptualized, they must
first learn from World of Warcraft
and be, "easy to learn, difficult to master." 17
Landscape
Urban
environments are not simply comprised of architectural forms. Much more
inherent to the urban issue is the concept of landscape. Landscape offers an
opportunity to face a situation that is becoming, "increasingly complex,
potentially hybridized and decidedly heterodox in relation to the urban
structures that nowadays define our environment." 4 The challenge is to intensify the border
region between architecture and landscape in order to preserve that dynamic
region. The interaction with that border through the act of crossing it and re-crossing
multiplies the potential for resonance
and synergy, to reveal the landscape as a multiplicity of places. Urban
landscape is not simply the geological patterns on which the city is built,
rather it is the fabric that binds the urban environment together.4 In many ways landscape has a permanence and a
dynamic quality that architecture lacks. While architectural form may retain a
certain amount of fluidity during the design process, once constructed that
fluidity is lost. For landscape this is not true. Throughout the design process
it is known that whatever the final form may take it is constructed of living
organisms and will therefore, continually optimize itself to its environment.
The design process itself is rooted deeply in ecology and conservation so that,
from the beginning, the final level of complexity is understood.7
Even
with people moving from agricultural regions into cities at such an alarming
rate arable land is also diminishing. The farm lands that once surrounded and
supported cities is being consumed by sprawl
as the people who can afford to leave move outside the urban area to
escape the failing conditions within. In The Netherlands this problem is
especially bad and national policies have been put in place to help preserve
the remaining open spaces. In the work of MVRDV, a fear of these ecological
risks and a need to publicize them is evident and their work better analyzed
with the understanding of these policies.7 MVRDV's Dutch Pavilion, at the World's Fair in
Hannover in 2002, is a prime example of their use of landscape and their
ecological concern. The Netherlands, possibly more than any other country, has
a history of conforming the natural landscape to fit the needs of its populace
as roughly one fifth of the land that makes up the country's total area has
been reclaimed from the sea. Yet The Netherlands is one of the densest
countries on the planet and rivals Germany in technical prowess. What the Dutch
Pavilion shows then is a model of urban hybridization between nature and
technology. The multi level building seeks to increase the total area of green
fields rather than diminish them by providing layers of natural program, parks,
forests, etc. within the boundaries of the pavilion. The density and diversity
within the program and the emphasis on nature serve as a, "symbol for
multi-faceted nature of society." 13
While
ecological concern and attempts to draw attention to the risks is a valid role
for architecture to play, the work of MVRDV does not always provide a
legitimate solution to the problem. The methodologies they use are deeply
modernist, as is evident by the way they present risks within the contemporary
model as a basis for the design. The solution to these risks comes from a very
thorough library of documentation (data) about the existing model but, as
previously mentioned, the design process suffers in the way they observe or
select what information to use and how. This was a methodology used by
architects and planners such as Le Corbusier, Hilberseimer, Van Eesteren, and
Van Lohuizen at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, the level of
complexity to be understood calls for a solution that is more contemporary. The
result of this is the lack of integration between built form and landscape in
most of their work. While the building may house its own landscape on the
interior, the way it is connected with the exterior landscape or urban fabric
is not defined. When asked of this, Slavoj Zizek's remark is, "too general
and too specific at the same time." 7
Two
great challenges facing architects, urban planners and political socio-economic
strategists in the second millennium of the common era are the trends of urban
migration and technological dominance. Together these challenges create the
basis of a new paradigm which may well define human existence for the
foreseeable future. If architecture makes a point to provoke the public debate
and stand for its own personal development by accepting outside methodologies, it
may be the force which guides us through the period of change. If architecture
realizes the complexity and the fragility that exists within the creation of
place and reintegrates itself with the urban landscape, then our cities may
indeed become the urban environments they were once conceived to be.
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