Here is my latest dissertation abstract. Please feel free to ask questions or comment.
FOR A MILIEU THAT MAXIMIZES AND REALIZES NEW POTENTIALITIES:
An alternative role for the architect for a Creative City as a player of the multitude in self-organizing mesh-works
A creative city?
Cities are dense - with people, resources, ideas and problems etc. Cities are complex- they are a multi-layer of systems and scale. The human mind is often the most creative in a difficult situation. Cities are frequently the most mentally-challenging of environments and often the most rewarding as well. The city is the apex of skills, intelligence, creativity and the adaptability powers of people.
Creativity in the city is more than divergence from the norm, radical autonomy of the self and or problem solving. Creativity in the city entails not just an exchange of information/ ideas, a recombination of and/or a building-upon of previous ideas.
Creativity is latent in everyone. Sometimes to activate it, one needs the need to and the reason to; sometimes an avenue to realize and actualize is needed as well. Cities as a societal construct of people are similar. The buildings, the sidewalks, the organization of buildings if given the chance to, will adapt and change when the end state is a more favourable state than the initial one.
In fact, anyone can be creative anytime anywhere. The city with the density and heterogeneity of people and knowledge thus makes it highly plausible for creativity to happen. A creative city or environment can thus be better described as a milieu that provides people (and the city) with many possibilities to accumulate and recombine knowledge and to actualize their potentialities.
Reaction to existing literature
The thesis on the existence of a ‘creative class’, the classification of a subgroup named ‘creative industries’ and the idea of ‘creative cities’ implicitly mean the existence of the non-creative. This allusion revealed that any mainstream discourse on harnessing human creativity still revolve around outdated Darwinism, systemic stasis and bi-polarity in thought.
Also, the prevalent thinking of architecture and cities as objects in a Barthesian semiotics urban condition has led to the aestheticization of the built environment in a mass proliferation of symbols. The other mainstream view is to think of architecture as a container for information exchange; leading to built-up spaces and places where people are ‘supposed’ to meet up and exchange ideas. Architects or urban planners may not be able to will creative processes but their contribution should not just stop short at creating the physical environments to do so. Why the third person? Why the non-involved party?
There are two imbalances the paper aims to redress. Creativity is not the exclusive domain of a select group and that the diversity and heterogeneity of the multitude should be harnessed. The role of architecture or urban design should be one where it empowers this multitude not just by giving it a form but also by informing it. In short, architects are part of the players and not just facilitators in the city’s creative and evolutionary process.
The importance of mesh-works
Much has been written about diversity and heterogeneity in cities citing them as a factor or a property of ‘creative’ cities by observing and studying model ‘creative cities’. Singapore is no less heterogeneous and diverse in people and culture. Why the difference in potentiality for new knowledge and urban forms? (The model ‘creative city’ is much more capable of maximizing and realizing potentialities compared to Singapore.)
“To simply increase heterogeneity without articulating this diversity into a meshwork not only results in further conflict and friction, it rapidly creates a set of smaller, internally homogeneous nations.”
Mesh-work is not just about getting endowed with connectivity to these other heterogeneous elements. Mesh-work means there are multi-directional flow of knowledge. Some elements change, evolve, some stay the same, some recombine to form new elements, some die off. It is important to imagine mesh-works as non-static and beyond their connectivity but their ‘activation’ of diverse and heterogeneous elements.
Why the architect in the multitude?
Architects have tended to remain in their designated strata in the urban, social and political strata. Either we ‘design’ in mind for the community/ people or we document the bottom-up elements in the urban fabric and propagate their forms and their idea of unplanned-ness in opposition to the prevalent top-down forces. This is not wrong per se but this is insufficient. The current architect thinks and acts for the multitude. I propose that the architect thinks and acts with the multitude and do so with knowledge of the workings of the stratum context in mind.
“Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of de-territorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.”
By acting and thinking with the multitude, the architect shares the tools of architectural competencies and processes and invents cross tools. This sharing of methodology and hybridization increase potentialities for new knowledge and open up unexpected possibilities of thinking and acting in the public realm. By providing a possible outlet for the multitude to realize their potentialities to the physical environment is perhaps more effective than having ‘iconic’ buildings to ‘inspire’ them. Architects can act as a coagulating force.
The architect is now delimited from the constraints of the ‘professional’ designation and now able to act in a mesh-work by hybridizing, interacting and learning from the multitude. The architectural expertise is now opened up to be shared and informed by other expertise.
The urban elements created by this new synthesis can perhaps now react more effectively in response to existing top-down interventions and at the same time contribute to the urban ecology by improving biodiversity and competition.
Corinthian clay roof tiles are the result of such a process. It did not happen because some genius architect created an ‘interaction and exchange’ space for the architect and the potter to meet. Architects do not will creative processes and do not just provide physical environments for them to happen. Architects participate in the creative processes in the city.
Architects are part of the probe-heads in the system as well. Previously, architects are just acting either within a hierarchical or mesh-work framework.
This is the proposition of my paper for how architects, the multitude together with urban elements can create a milieu that maximizes and realizes new potentialities.
An alternative role for the architect for a Creative City as a player of the multitude in self-organizing mesh-works
A creative city?
Cities are dense - with people, resources, ideas and problems etc. Cities are complex- they are a multi-layer of systems and scale. The human mind is often the most creative in a difficult situation. Cities are frequently the most mentally-challenging of environments and often the most rewarding as well. The city is the apex of skills, intelligence, creativity and the adaptability powers of people.
Creativity in the city is more than divergence from the norm, radical autonomy of the self and or problem solving. Creativity in the city entails not just an exchange of information/ ideas, a recombination of and/or a building-upon of previous ideas.
Creativity is latent in everyone. Sometimes to activate it, one needs the need to and the reason to; sometimes an avenue to realize and actualize is needed as well. Cities as a societal construct of people are similar. The buildings, the sidewalks, the organization of buildings if given the chance to, will adapt and change when the end state is a more favourable state than the initial one.
In fact, anyone can be creative anytime anywhere. The city with the density and heterogeneity of people and knowledge thus makes it highly plausible for creativity to happen. A creative city or environment can thus be better described as a milieu that provides people (and the city) with many possibilities to accumulate and recombine knowledge and to actualize their potentialities.
Reaction to existing literature
The thesis on the existence of a ‘creative class’, the classification of a subgroup named ‘creative industries’ and the idea of ‘creative cities’ implicitly mean the existence of the non-creative. This allusion revealed that any mainstream discourse on harnessing human creativity still revolve around outdated Darwinism, systemic stasis and bi-polarity in thought.
Also, the prevalent thinking of architecture and cities as objects in a Barthesian semiotics urban condition has led to the aestheticization of the built environment in a mass proliferation of symbols. The other mainstream view is to think of architecture as a container for information exchange; leading to built-up spaces and places where people are ‘supposed’ to meet up and exchange ideas. Architects or urban planners may not be able to will creative processes but their contribution should not just stop short at creating the physical environments to do so. Why the third person? Why the non-involved party?
There are two imbalances the paper aims to redress. Creativity is not the exclusive domain of a select group and that the diversity and heterogeneity of the multitude should be harnessed. The role of architecture or urban design should be one where it empowers this multitude not just by giving it a form but also by informing it. In short, architects are part of the players and not just facilitators in the city’s creative and evolutionary process.
The importance of mesh-works
Much has been written about diversity and heterogeneity in cities citing them as a factor or a property of ‘creative’ cities by observing and studying model ‘creative cities’. Singapore is no less heterogeneous and diverse in people and culture. Why the difference in potentiality for new knowledge and urban forms? (The model ‘creative city’ is much more capable of maximizing and realizing potentialities compared to Singapore.)
“To simply increase heterogeneity without articulating this diversity into a meshwork not only results in further conflict and friction, it rapidly creates a set of smaller, internally homogeneous nations.”
Mesh-work is not just about getting endowed with connectivity to these other heterogeneous elements. Mesh-work means there are multi-directional flow of knowledge. Some elements change, evolve, some stay the same, some recombine to form new elements, some die off. It is important to imagine mesh-works as non-static and beyond their connectivity but their ‘activation’ of diverse and heterogeneous elements.
Why the architect in the multitude?
Architects have tended to remain in their designated strata in the urban, social and political strata. Either we ‘design’ in mind for the community/ people or we document the bottom-up elements in the urban fabric and propagate their forms and their idea of unplanned-ness in opposition to the prevalent top-down forces. This is not wrong per se but this is insufficient. The current architect thinks and acts for the multitude. I propose that the architect thinks and acts with the multitude and do so with knowledge of the workings of the stratum context in mind.
“Lodge yourself on a stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers, find an advantageous place on it, find potential movements of de-territorialization, possible lines of flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions here and there, try out continuums of intensities segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at all times.”
By acting and thinking with the multitude, the architect shares the tools of architectural competencies and processes and invents cross tools. This sharing of methodology and hybridization increase potentialities for new knowledge and open up unexpected possibilities of thinking and acting in the public realm. By providing a possible outlet for the multitude to realize their potentialities to the physical environment is perhaps more effective than having ‘iconic’ buildings to ‘inspire’ them. Architects can act as a coagulating force.
The architect is now delimited from the constraints of the ‘professional’ designation and now able to act in a mesh-work by hybridizing, interacting and learning from the multitude. The architectural expertise is now opened up to be shared and informed by other expertise.
The urban elements created by this new synthesis can perhaps now react more effectively in response to existing top-down interventions and at the same time contribute to the urban ecology by improving biodiversity and competition.
Corinthian clay roof tiles are the result of such a process. It did not happen because some genius architect created an ‘interaction and exchange’ space for the architect and the potter to meet. Architects do not will creative processes and do not just provide physical environments for them to happen. Architects participate in the creative processes in the city.
Architects are part of the probe-heads in the system as well. Previously, architects are just acting either within a hierarchical or mesh-work framework.
This is the proposition of my paper for how architects, the multitude together with urban elements can create a milieu that maximizes and realizes new potentialities.
6 comments:
hmm sounds like ure pushing for a dialectical design process? maybe i have misread or over simplified ur intentions, but how would that set your proposition that architects should act and think with the multitude, from other architectural experiments which have similarly cross-disciplinary dialectical approaches?
This was a very initial draft and I am working on some refinements which I would post soon.
The fundamental differences with other cross-disciplinary dialetical approaches is perhaps 1. The users are to be involved, with everyone an equal stake in the production of space 2. previous approaches are about macro-political consensus, elimination of difference. The new approach is perhaps about micro-political disensus. 3.The previous experiments end involvement of users when consensus is reached or when the project is built. This new approach should be about the constant creation, re-creation of space.
It not seeks the replacement the current method of production of space. In matrix analogy, the current mode is the production of space FOR us. (ie the matrix) The premise of bottom-up production with CONSULTATION of citizens are just like Zion, to satisfy dissidents. The aim is to reach the machine world like Neo- for each of us to be interested to be in the PRODUCTION of our OWN space..I wonder if I am further confusing anyone..Thanks for the feedback by the way. More please!
basically its thinking OUT of the matrix. in the matrix therein lies th inevitability of the computer requiring human batteries. henceforth the resource holders are WITHIN the system.
wuks idea is thinking that a truly bottom up participatory design wld be one that is fully freed from such restraints and grounded on an aesthetics of "bottom up-ness" (think rural studio).
in other populist theories like yona friedman or lucien kroll, where the architect's role is to educate and therefore impart his skills to the public and decidedly take a academic/nonacademic dialectic, wuks prob is thinking of recognising latent aesthetics and ideas where pple's design dreams can be realised.
at least that wat i think he is talking abt.
I would choose not to use "bottom-up". Not just because it implies the hierarchical framework we are induced to think in and act upon. Bottom-up denotes an act of resistance against the top-down,and perhaps it seeks to replace the 'seat' of power. My proposal does not.
I think i should explain the limitations of a hierarchical way of thinking. It presuppose a strata a certain individual is suppose to think or act upon. At the same time, it is limiting on his/her acting on their own wealth of potentials. A butcher cannot be a dancer?
I am thinking more on how participation could play the role of a stimulator of diffused creativity and imaginary production. What it produces is the common, and that common we share serves as the basis for future production, in a spiral, expansive relationship. Ie to say, learn to live without the batteries.
hmmm sounds interesting but i wonder if the non-designers are truly able to think out of the box? i mean they too are surrounded by this bombardment of semiotics and may also have similar notions of what constitutes the proper as compared to designers themselves. dunno, maybe im a bit narrow minded at that, haha
but in any case r there any contemporary examples of such approach to design?
agree with remy on that point.
unless u are working with artisans or pple who actually still retain some sense of hand-brain coordination, like mechanics, metalsmiths, odd job labourers...or CHILDREN! marvelous little angels and devils.
whilst it is idealistic to think that every person has the capacity to think and conjure imageries in their head, but the reality often shows us how self censored and how warped their applied realities are!
eg, u wld believe that everyone in army has the capacity to achieve a simple mission. then one day u meet one scholar company who wld rather sit down and tell u "how stuff liddat cannot be done." first of all, i guess u need to find pple who wld naturally grp together with their wants and whims in place first.
but then again, u are looking at a general flow of tot whilst remy and me remain damn skeptical pple in spore cant see anything beyond $.
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