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The manner in which global trends affect cities and increase instability is like letting a rising river loose on a house. Global trends create urban flotsam that forms a second skin of the earth. How is this visible and how can it be useful in urban planning? This book answers questions through examples. It contains a manifesto for a general debate of issues, a poetic setting of the theme of the second skin and case studies undertaken in urban situations. With splendid photographs and magnificent conceptual maps and diagrams, the book balances between urban theory, urban pedagogy and urban poetry.
Following the crisis of the Special Period, Cuba promoted urban agriculture throughout its towns and cities to address food sovereignty and security. Through the adoption of state recommended design strategies, these gardens have become places of social and economic exchange throughout Cuba. This book maps the lived experiences surrounding three urban farms in Havana to construct a deeper understanding about the everyday life of this city. Using narratives and drawings, this research uncovers these sites as places where education, intimacy, entrepreneurism, wellbeing, and culture are interwoven alongside food production. Henri Lefebvre’s latent work on rhythmanalysis is used as a research method to capture the everyday beats particular to Havana surrounding these sites. This book maps the many ways in which these spaces shift power away from the state to become places that are co-created by the community to serve as a crucial hinge point between the ongoing collapse of the city and its future wellbeing.
CYBERNETICS: STATE OF THE ART is the first volume of the book series CON-VERSATIONS. Driven by cybernetic thinking, it engages with pressing questions for architecture, urban planning, design and automated infrastructure; in an age of increasing connectivity, AI and robotization and an evolutionary state of the Anthropocene - perpetuating angst-ridden anxiety as well as excitement and joy of a future, that we will be able to predict with less and less certainty. The book, with a foreword by Omar Khan, discusses cybernetic principles and devices developed in the late 20th century – mainly developed by Ross Ashby and Gordon Pask (second-order cybernetics), to learn from for a future of mutual relationship and conversation between man and machine. The anthology reviews and previews cybernetics as design strategy in computational architecture, urban design and socio-ecological habitats - natural and artificial. It weaves together cybernetic-architectural theories with applications and case studies ranging from regional planning to the smart home. Nine chapters written by an international group of authors from four academic generations are structured into two complimenting parts. While ‘A Concept and a Shape’ focuses on the history and theory of cybernetics, its temporary disappearance and future impact (Raúl Espejo, Michael Hohl, Paul Pangaro, Liss C. Werner), ‘System 5’ – relating to Stafford Beer’s project ‘Cybersyn’ - discusses applications, the role of the individual and human feedback; also with a strong theoretical underpinning (Raoul Bunschoten, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Timothy Jachna, Arun Jain, Kristian Kloeckl). CYBERNETICS: STATE OF THE ART invites the reader to enjoy a glimpse into the past to enjoy and discuss a cybernetic future. CYBERNETICS: STATE OF THE ART mit einem Vorwort von Omar Khan ist die erste Buchausgabe der Serie CON-VERSATIONS. Auf kybernetisches Denken und Schaffen basierend, diskutiert CON-VERSATIONS Fragen zu Architektur, Stadtplanung, Gestaltungsstrategien und automatisierter Infrastruktur in einer evolutionär zunehmenden Vernetzung durch künstliche Intelligenz, Robotisierung; im Zeitalter der Anthropozän, in einem Zustand der sich verewigenden angstbeherrschten Unruhe - wie auch einer besonderen Lust auf eine Zukunft, die wir mit immer weniger Sicherheit voraussagen können. Das Konzept ‚Kybernetik zweiter Ordnung’ des späten 20igsten Jahrhunderts, u.a. entwickelt von Ross Ashby und Gordon Pask, begründet das Buch. Es genießt einen Rückblick und eine Vorschau in eine kybernetische Zukunft der gemeinsamen kausalen Beziehung zwischen Mensch und Maschine. Die Autoren schlagen Kybernetik als Entwurfsstrategie für computer-generierte/-gestützte Architektur, Stadtplanung und natürlich und künstliche sozio-ökologische Lebensumwelten vor. Das Buch kombiniert kybernetisch-architektonische Theorie mit Fallstudien reichend von Regionalplanung zu ‚Smart Home’. Neun Kapitel, geschrieben von einer internationalen Autorenschaft aus vier akademischen Generationen, sind in zwei sich ergänzende Buchteile strukturiert. ‘A Concept and a Shape’, mit Kapiteln von Raúl Espejo, Michael Hohl, Paul Pangaro, Liss C. Werner, diskutiert Geschichte und Wissenschaft der Kybernetik sowie ihr temporäres Verschwinden und Einfluss auf die Zukunft. ‚System 5’ (in Anlehnung an Stafford Beer’s Projekt ‚Cybersyn’) mit Kapiteln von Raoul Bunschoten, Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Timothy Jachna, Arun Jain, Kristian Kloeckl, beschreibt kybernetische Praxis, die Rolle des Individuums und ‚Human Feedback’ - ebenfalls mit einem starken theoretischen Fundament. CYBERNETICS: STATE OF THE ART lädt den Leser ein, einen aufschlussreichen Blick in die Vergangenheit zu werfen, um eine kybernetische Zukunft zu genießen und zu diskutieren.
When designing, planning and building urban spaces, many contradictory and conflicting actors, practices and agendas coexist. This book propounds that, at present, this process is conducted in an artificial reality, 'Concept City', characterized by a simplified and outdated conception of space. It provides a constructive critique of the concepts, underlying the practices of planning and architecture and, in order to facilitate more dynamic, inclusive and subtle practices, it formulates a new theory about space in general and public urban space in particular. The central notions in this theory are temporality, experiment and conflict, which are grounded on empirical observations in Helsinki, Manchester and Berlin. While the book contextualizes Lefebvre's ideas on urban planning and architecture, it is in no way limited to Lefebvrean discourse, but allows insights to new theoretical work, including that of Finnish and Swedish authors. In doing so, it suggests and develops exciting new approaches and tools leading to 'experiential urbanism'.
From the Big Apple to the City that Never Sleeps, New York has many identities. It is a melting pot of peoples and cultures, a capital of finance and commerce, and a mecca of fashion, art, and entertainment. It is home to the United Nations Headquarters and Wall Street, and it is the destination for millions of tourists each year. But outside of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty, where does one even start? In this concise and witty guide from a native New Yorker, Elizabeth L. Bradley mixes history with high and low culture to make sense of this city for visitors and armchair travelers alike. Tracing the development of New York City from a Dutch trading post to the cultural capital of the world, Bradley provides brief histories of each of the five boroughs and introduces the city’s most important—and colorful—personalities. In addition to a rich account of the city’s past, she offers a series of ruminations on themes germane to New York today, describing its natural landmarks, unnatural gin joints, immigrant enclaves, and even its many noises. All along she includes thoughtful, eclectic lists of where to eat, drink, and shop, as well as what to see and do. Exploring the features that make New York both inimitable and extraordinary, this generously illustrated guide is a lively and engaging look at this ever-shifting archipelago.
The changing Arctic is of broad political concern and is being studied across many fields. This book investigates ongoing changes in the Arctic from a landscape perspective. It examines settlements and territories of the Barents Sea Coast, Northern Norway, the Russian Kola Peninsula, Svalbard and Greenland from an interdisciplinary, design-based and future-oriented perspective. The Future North project has travelled Arctic regions since 2012, mapped landscapes and settlements, documented stories and practices, and discussed possible futures with local actors. Reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the project, the authors in this book look at political and economic strategies, urban development, land use strategies and local initiatives in specific locations that are subject to different forces of change. This book explores current material conditions in the Arctic as effects of industrial and political agency and social initiatives. It provides a combined view on the built environment and urbanism, as well as the cultural and material landscapes of the Arctic. The chapters move beyond single-disciplinary perspectives on the Arctic, and engage with futures, cultural landscapes and communities in ways that build on both architectural and ethnographic participatory methods.
Mappings explores what mapping has meant in the past and how its meanings have altered. How have maps and mapping served to order and represent physical, social and imaginative worlds? How has the practice of mapping shaped modern seeing and knowing? In what ways do contemporary changes in our experience of the world alter the meanings and practice of mapping, and vice versa? In their diverse expressions, maps and the representational processes of mapping have constructed the spaces of modernity since the early Renaissance. The map's spatial fixity, its capacity to frame, control and communicate knowledge through combining image and text, and cartography's increasing claims to scientific authority, make mapping at once an instrument and a metaphor for rational understanding of the world. Among the topics the authors investigate are projective and imaginative mappings; mappings of terraqueous spaces; mapping and localism at the 'chorographic' scale; and mapping as personal exploration. With essays by Jerry Brotton, Paul Carter, Michael Charlesworth, James Corner, Wystan Curnow, Christian Jacob, Luciana de Lima Martins, David Matless, Armand Mattelart, Lucia Nuti and Alessandro Scafi
Short essays by respected architects and theorists around the question: What is an architect in today's society?
Forget everything you think you know about Nature. Fahim Amir’s award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is Nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political? In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir’s magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fuzzballs into shameless centrefold models for eco-capitalism. As paws, cLaws, talons, and hooves seize the means of production, Being and Swine spirals higher and higher into a heady thesis that becomes more convincing by the minute. At the heart of Amir’s writing is a deep optimism and bracingly fresh reading of Marxist, post-colonial, and feminist theory, building upon the radical scholarship of Donna J. Haraway and others. Contrarian, whip-smart, and wildly innovative, no other book will laugh at your convictions quite like this one.