Zenon's City - Prolegomena to a Critique of Urban Reason

Hot Spots :: der Stadtentwicklung

Klaus Wassermann
wassermann@arch.ethz.ch

Zenon‘s City
Preliminary Suggestions on Urban Reason

/ ITA / Institute of Technology in Architecture / Faculty of Architecture / ETH Zurich / Chair for CAAD / Klaus Wassermann / Leipzig Hot::Spot / 10.12.2010 / v2.14 10.12.2010 1

Hot Spot :: Perspective

ONE personal
MANY formal
ANY medial

/ ITA / Institute of Technology in Architecture / Faculty of Architecture / ETH Zurich / Chair for CAAD / Klaus Wassermann / Leipzig Hot::Spot / 10.12.2010 / 2

Preliminary Remarks
methodological issues

Critique of Geometry
as a figure of thought in Architecture

Critique of Urban Reason
Which is the Essence of City?
Proto-Schemata:
Growth-network-Complexity-Information

Potential Elements of Construction


Begin of the first Part:

Preliminary Remarks
and a short methodological warm-Up

((( aspects )))


Is it possible to plan „CITY“?
Is it possible to plan „URBANITY“?
theoría: Anschauung, Überlegung, Einsicht

theory = (ortho-)regulation of the genesis and
parameterisation of models


City Development – Linguistics of a Figure
Theory

time
Engineering of a

Performance
Evolution
the City
Development

plainly
Individual
of

-like
city
Plan
Growth run of
Logics „events“
space


Methodologicals (I)
challenges & constraints by
Disziplinary Perspectives
analysis of power, conflict-/consumism-analytics (Weber, Durkheim)
Normative (naturalistic) Fallacies
Romanticisms and Idealism (Feldtkeller, Mumford)
Reductionisms, Ideologicalizations
Materialism: statistical (Hillier), naturalistic (Mitscherlich),
formal (L.Wirth, Burgess), cybernetic (Luhmann)
„Projectionism“
Import of highly integrated Theories: knowledge (Matthiesen),
evolution (Schamp)

Aspects become und ihr Wechsel exchange
Aspekte visible only in their


Methodologicals (II)
„City“ is obviously difficult to grasp
?Heterotopia Koolhaas/Foucault
with strong symbolistic Components
Structure cave definitionem !!!
no existential questions please ... What „is“ ...
Element Synthetic
Mechanism Comparatistics
serious story telling

Begin of the First Part:

Influence, Reach and Overloadings


The Holiness of Geometry
first procedure, which promised correctness of
a construction ...
independent of ...
in opposition to
symbolisation
location
l s narration, poetics
time
sa ti on
?

person
e r ju st ifi ca

..
i
.?
v n e!
Safety was achieved through the

are
th
e re

Un e re
a re
n o
linkage o structure (axiomatics) and
T h values (Sinnanspruch)

Fatal inherited Disease
role of geometry first heureka-experience by
the power of „ideomatics“
by Euclid quite unsuitable positioning of axiomatics

things, that are directly (unmediated) clear
What, if there is no epistemic directness ?
Primacy of Interpretation
... then axioms would moult into interesting rules of games.
complementary: Primacy of Modelling


Inherited Disease (II): Phenotypical Foldings
Geometry
Conditional Juristerei IT
control technology

Luhmann
causal chain

Cybernetics
Axiomatics Shannon
Proof
Mathematik

If -
Causality

Definition
Center
Frege Then
Science
navigator Frankfurter Schule
Positivism

Towards the Sun in a straight Line...

Karlsruhe mid 17th century
City (?) as a kind of Accidens

Obsessions on Centers
Palmanova

„London“
Palmanova: Inhabiting or Freedom plans for new garden city,
18th century

Nowa Huta (Pl) – City (?) for Heroes of Production


geometry just yesterday


The Roaring Twenties...

bold utterings
serious issues


geometry today: according to human Measure?
progressive? well developed?

urban?

of course, Bucky-Boy won‘t miss...

The
straight-line
Obsession


Logistics: the straight regime of Causality


CCD Registers: Logistics of Information


the total triumph
The APOLLO of the global
Story 1969 equation

the the Atlas-
Oh holy Grale steady pole phantasm of
of geometric Modernism the fixed point


The never only ONE,
Story 2009 though not yet
just MANY,
but ARBITRARY
(as YOU<!> like)
Fixed Points

the first and (so far)
the only
Compass for

topo-
Owner: logical
Sparrow, Jack
Spaces

Zäsur


What can not be drawn (any more)...
...has to be calculated, may be rendered

at

Scenographia
Orthographia
what the
Ichnographia

The end of Expressibility
we End
About Formalisability
of
cannot
Axiomatisability
Geo
speak
Metry
/ ITA / Institute of Technology in Architecture / Faculty of Architecture / ETH Zurich / Chair for CAAD / Klaus Wassermann / Leipzig Hot::Spot / 10.12.2010 / Michael Hansmeyer
27

just a different rendering
Subdivision Mechanism

What can not be drawn (any more)...

freezed to state
freely choosable point in time
not an algorithm any more
semi-open results

Michael Hansmeyer

Reaction-Diffusion Mechanism

What can not be drawn...
Schuytgraf, NL

120 clients real-time
1000‘s of constraints
constraint
hierarchy of goals
optimization



Globus Zh, CH
pre-specific
design
das differential of
architectonic
matter
ethz caad


End of the First Part:

The End of axiomatic Universals


Begin of the Second Part:

Conditions for a Thinking of City-Becoming

((( which are the essences of any thinking about
the City, beyond of any specific theories? )))


Layout (genealogy) of our Critique
Category
Self-Organisation

Operation
Growth Efficacy
Information Causality
Complexity
Network
Associativity
formalisable structural models


::by attachment (from the outside)

das einfachste Wachstum
entlang des Atomgitters: Mikro=Makro
repräsentationale Symmetrie

vollständig de-individualisierte
„atomare“ Module


::by attachment (from the outside)


::by attachment (from inside)

the principle:
fixing of singular points & differentiating & repeating
finding of a particular point: 2-Component System
fraktal growth

welwitschia

Welwitschia – a living fossil

Growth in Plants
2-Component-System at singular mikro fields (meristeme)

self-affine replication
Plant
Plant (-like)

added complexity by
repetition of processes


::by attachment (from outside & inside)
primitive division of labor

swarm

added complexity by
standardised regulation


::by attachment (from outside & inside)

Caglioni & Giovanni, 2003 Michael Batty, 2008


::differentiation towards the inside



Kowloon 1993
Kowloon 1972



vertical
vertical


::differentiation towards the inside: embryo

locally-induced growth, fractality establishes
foldings AND only lokal any more
Apoptosis !
„blue prints“

Koolhaas, an embryologist?

elt i ng
m


Embryonic Growth
added Complexity
Differentation
by deeply layered
towards
the inside and embedding
regulation
gain of
adaptivity emergence of
and contexts and individuality
potential

::differentation towards the inside ...
Zuweisung von
„innen“ / „aussen“
muss immer wieder
neu verhandelt
werden

innere Kompartimente können umarrangiert
werden: potentielles schmelzen,
Fusion von Räumen und Membranen

Growth, Differentiation: Immaterial
Growth unfolding
changes in
Evolution structural dynamics
morphology
Training scaling

changes in behavior precede changes of morphology
Konrad Lorenz

Learning, Memory, Habits, Virtualisation, Mediatisation
immaterial differentiation


Interestingness and Patterns of Growth
anorganic, crystalline
which patterns
organic
are the most
swarm-based
frequently used? plant-like
embryonic
which are
informational
the most logistic, optimizing (leafs)
promising? associative (as a „body without organs“)
learning & behavior


interim result
Growth
temporal dynamics of the transformation of structures
typology of differentiation processes (epi/genetics)
transition to evolutive processes
overcoming of the „contingency-hypothesis“
new questions: regulative factors, e.g. for continuity, melting
factors

Genealogy of our Critique: Part 2
Category
Self-Organisation

Operation
Growth Efficacy
Complexity
Networks
Associativity
formalisable structural models


social issues

living things


Complexity: Bestandsaufnahme
clear and dark
bright and labyrinthine
dark and convoluted
Complexity as a cipher for non-understandability
fo r
ible Luhmann, Sozial Systeme: „Complexity is that information, which is

e l ig missing for the system, in order to measure, comprehend and

in exts
describe its surrounding environment completely.“

i ly externaltthreat
te con
Complexity als inevitable
d e f in l
a
Self-preservation develops into a problem, „since for any

r e system the surrounding environment is more complex than the
system itself."

Complexity as a syntactic-algorithmic entity

Context of Complexity
makroskopich
properties are not
complexity is not reducible describable on the
mikroscopic level
in principal

complexity involves strong emergence

strong emergence is indispensable for adaptivity


What is the minimal, sufficient
(and necessary)
description of emergence ?


Turing Pattern
weak, far

strong, close

micro-antagonistic self-referential
2-component system

Elementarisation of Complexity
(1) Dissipation flow of entropy, consumption of energy
a mystical-opaque concept
(2) Antagonistic Forces reaction-diffusion-system, dialectics as population

(3) Standardisation is being transformed
sign theoretical: semiotic, algorithmic,
geno-/phenotype, code, rule

(4) Active Compartmentalization into a non-deterministic
transition from order to organisation;
demands for: left-overs, death, reduction

(5) systemic Knots parametercontrol provokes latent
internal model-based
space
antagonisms, „self-sustaining complexity“

RD-Prozesse: Besonderheiten

absolutely
„impermeable“ categories can NOT be applied to
descriptive makro

epistemologic mikro

separation the other layer mutually!
molekules, cells, ants, words,
events, human individuals, actants in a network


interim result
Critique of Urban reason
Complexity
Elementarisation allows for Operationalisability
of creative Processes

objective diagnosis / prognosis of
stasis, Adaptivity or chaos-like melting


Genealogy of Critique U.R.: Part 3
Category
Self-Organisation

Operation
Growth Efficacy
Complexity
Networks
Associativity
formalisable struktural models


Networks
Cities are networks, ok, so what? a TRIVIAL remark?
Concept had not been in use before 1980.

Network
Knots and Links (everything is network, isn‘t it?)


From different Worlds
effect-orientiet::basic typology of networks

Logistic Networks
geometric-causal
temporally neutral, „real-time“

Associative Networks
algebraic-informational
actualizes just as operation = as sth temporal


hubs, scale-free
fractal
deterministic

hierarchical


random density
rhizomatic
redundant
recurrent
probabilistic

Growth ?
Learning !


self-organizing map (SOM)
mapping of n-dimensional descriptions
onto a m(2+)-dimensional map
... a powerful and scalable formal model


Associativity in the Space of the City
Meta-Stability of Neighborhoods

“Once set up, a city is a great sorting mechanism
which ... infallibly selects out of the population
as a whole the individuals best suited to live in
a particular region or a particular milieu.”
Robert Park, 1952: Human Communities.

not reducible to the
Zürich Augustinergasse, reasoning power of individuals
Farbraum Stadt, 2010


Associativity and Memory


us
Logistic Networks ef
ul
are the great Optimizers
of identified Relations

in (quasi-)material contexts


in
te
re
Associative Netwerks st
in
are the great inducers and inventors g
Randolations
of potential Relations,
yet to be constructed
in purely informational contexts

The Manhattan-Syndrom
the „Urban“ & the Web share important properties
an urban- material-proto-inter-net in steel & glass

high density, intensive flows

abundant heterotopias
information as essential driver

associativity
mediagenicity


web(b)ed Urbanity = Wurbanity
the new mash-up: the Urbane und das Web
descriptional scheme: abstracting from both = WURB

development of cities not (anymore just) as built substance
Internet of Things (150 web devices/person by 2015)
local semi-virtualisation of physical processes
extending social realities as kind of „mixed reality“

New Media, new Spaces, new habits, new densification
New kinds of „Urbanity“


interim result
Associativity

description of dynamic aggregations
dynamics of qualitative properties becomes accessible
„collective“ memory processes are rendered explicable


Schemata of a Critique of Urban Reason
interdependent Conditions for Thinking the Costruction of the City
Category
Growth
formalisable

Operation
Networks skalogen
Associativity operationalisable
active Comparatistics
complexity
formalisable Struktural Models

End of the second Part:

conditions for a thinking of constructing the city


Begin of the third Part:

Potential Elements of Construction
(semi-)abstract conditions for a City-becoming

((( getting operational )))


Conditions of the Possibility of Urbanity
irreducible dimensional construction
Logistics material as well as immaterial, visible body of rules,
organisatorically adaptive, „real-time“ function
Continuity organisatorical-(quasi-)material
Heterotopia informatorical-ordinal, open, manifold and
mediatised antagonisms
Participation real-time, „mixed-reality“, and densified

„Abundance“ local, accessible, due to suitable scaling

Entwicklungsfelder Urbaner Vernunft
residential tradition-bound order of individual roles as
areas predecessors of institutions, often centralistic,
oligarchic or autokratic

Stadt densified potential for the creation of
organisation from order, often limited to
physical-material aspects

Urbanität volatilised AND virtualised conditions for
„Citiness“ in the realm of the immaterial;
in the future tendentially more as „Wurbanity“

Zenon‘s City ...
A field made from
differential, volatile, sprouting
inertial reference systems!
... which as a
(semi-)autonomous entity
develop
its own character and
its own power (as potential)

Thanks !


Zenon's City - Prolegomena to a Critique of Urban Reason

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