X-Urban Design Studio works beyond the conventional scales of territorial design, town planning, building or fabrication in designing a multi-scalar habitat. As in the design of ecosystems, each level has its own rules of interaction and relation, and at the same time must comply with certain parameters that pertain to the system as a whole. The Studio focuses on projects that range in scale from the territory to the neighborhood.
The idea of X-Urban Design is related to two issues: on one hand, the understanding of countries and cities around the world with emerging economies and cultures that, by virtue of their regional or economic position, can contribute value to the planet as a whole. In this sense the studio seeks to identify the particular urban and territorial values of these places in order to construct more intelligent territories anywhere in the world, moving on from the western idea that there is a single model of city (be it European or from the United States) to work on the basis of more complex and more open values. The other issue related to X-Urban Design has to do with their creation as intelligent territories that function in a multiscalar way, emphasizing the relationship between nature, networks and nodes and promoting the ‘emergence’ of an urban intelligence through research on the application of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) in different aspects of the urban infrastructure and public space.
Theme
This studio explores the possibility of designing collective forms of urban verticality beyond the logic of the skyscraper. Historically, this building form has operated as a singular, (Manfredo Tafuri´s phrasing) ‘self contained machine’ that a) is based on a now unviable carbon-based model of material construction; b) exhibits a linear or straightforward ‘verticality’; and c) is circumscribed (almost exclusively) to the functional straitjacket of a ´business´ typology (the traditional office tower) and a locational commitment to the ´city´. Reimagining large-scale urban form after the skyscraper, in the age of climate change, planetary urbanisation, and global scale computation then entails, correspondingly, rethinking its coordinates along a) a new construction and structural post-carbon logic, one that fits the demands of the ongoing and fast deepening climatic crisis; b) a new formal, post-vertical typological configuration, one less concerned with iconic representation and more with environmental performance in increasingly volumetric urban conglomerates; and c) a new functional and locational set of spatial demands from the variety of more-than-human (that is, post-human) actants and landscapes that define our infrastructurally-, computationally-, and algorithmically-mediated and expanded urban world.
Method
At the methodological level, the studio will operate through an articulated set of working formats encompassing textual, graphic, mapping, and visual forms of representation. Discursively as well as theoretically, the course will mobilise climate science fiction (CSF) as a field instrumental in productively articulating broader questions about the ongoing ecological crisis (via the critical and speculative endeavour of imagining possible climatic futures) and radical urban and architectural design imaginaries and blueprints (in which the model or spatial artefact of the very tall, extra-extra large building has played a key role) (*). At the same time, CSF offers the possibility to engage with a larger time frame scale for urban design, in which abstract and more systemic problématiques, such as the design of economic, ecological, and technological/building systems (and their associated logics of production, metabolic cycles and flows of energy, materials, and waste) are seen vis-à-vis the design speculation about novel, supra urban segments of the built environment through the medium of large scale urban form.
(*) Indeed, from early novels such as H.G. Wells´s The Sleeper Awakes to contemporary texts such as China Mieville’s ‘The Rope is the World’, urban Science Fiction has provided us with an ample repository of radical vertical cities and experimental architectural and building forms. More recently, so-called ‘Climate SF’ in particular—such as Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 or Ling Ma’s Severance—offers a powerful critical-speculative platform to both disentangle the links between the frantic global construction of increasingly vertical cities and the current environmental and climate crisis, as well as to envision radically other modes of urban verticality, where the relationship between very tall buildings and new material economies, urban technologies, mobility systems, and smart infrastructures is re-conceived in original, thought-provoking, and experimental ways. In other words, when considered as a theoretical discourse, Climate SF can be simultaneously understood as a critique of current forms of urban development—of the spatial effects of a mode of production reliant on urban enclosure, nature’s instrumentalization, and a carbon-based building technology and mobility industry, not to mention of the psychological and cognitive impacts of these on both the social body in general and the individual subject in particular—and as a speculative medium through which to envision spatial alternatives instrumental to rethinking the way vertical buildings, cities, and landscapes can be re-appropriated, re-organized, re-imagined and ultimately re-designed in scenarios of post-growth circular economies, post-carbon modes of urban life, and advanced technological development.
At course completion the student will:
By Frank Lloyd Wright Broadacre City, conceived by architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the early 20th century, stands as a revolutionary urban development concept distinguished by its decentralized planning approach. At its core, each family is granted an acre of land, fostering a profound sense of self-sufficiency and individual autonomy. This visionary design emphasizes pedestrian-friendly … Read more
This project is a critique and an invitation to rethink how a future city like Lynetteholm can be thought. Rem Koolhaas coins the term BIGNESS in 1995 to describe a scale in which the project exceeds architecture itself and the conception of a single building. From this idea, we intend to radicalize the separation between … Read more
A city inside a building; The project articulates an extra-extra large architectural typology that extends beyond the conventional scale of a singular building and aims at becoming a self-enclosed urban form. Mobilizing Buckminster Fuller’s ‘tensegrity’ structural logic, this megastructure accommodates a complexassemblage of typologies, functions, and forms within its differentiated envelope-a geometrically and materially optimized … Read more
A Spreading Organism The project is an innovative scaffolding structure suspended over the water, connecting two banks in Copenhagen – Refen and Nordhavn. The central idea behind Neonostromo, a SF reference that emphasizes the building’s machinic, alien like nature, is to perceive a city as a living organism capable of expansion. The goal was to … Read more
This project seeks to radically challenge the Lynetteholm proposal that is underway on the coast of Copenhagen, Denmark. Going against the grain of theoriginal Lynetteholm proposal (an artificial island), this project displays the possibility of minimal impact instead of detrimental impact on the ocean-scape and lightness instead of the heaviness of a human-made island through … Read more
Waterpixels is a project challenging the traditional approach towards urban futures. It is a project located in Lynetteholm, Copenhagen. Taking into consideration the urban strategies and site analysis the project pertains to the current requirements of a storm barrier in Copenhagen. The following sheets show the process leading to the project. The followings sheets show … Read more
An Exquisite Corpse Report on Urban Form ABSTRACT IntroductionWith our work in this term we produced a multitude of drawings and images, watched and analyzed multiple movies, read multiple texts and came up with iterations and speculations. The common through line of all of these was the exploration of the nature of beyond-vertical forms of … Read more
Discourses of Verticality: Vignettes on (post)Metropolitan Urbanisms It all started from the Manhattanism proposed by Rem Koolhaas in Delirious New York. The theory explains the product of the verticalization of the city – skyscrapers, which stand neatly and compete with each other. The only thing in common is the small squares extruded by the grid- … Read more
A Speculative Catalogue of Programs, Structures, and Forms INTRODUCTION Abstract Skyscraper is a typology occured in specific conditions of capitalism that became a universal tool for urban development or a “large scale architectural machine” as Ciro Najle characterizes it in his The Generic Sublime text. But what are the mechanisms of this machine? Contemporary culture … Read more
A critical, speculative graphic essay in three steps Chapter 01: Critical Analysis A critical analysis of case studies through the lens of Kiel Moe’s ‘A Case for a More Literal Architecture.’ This project seeks to critically deconstruct the element of abstraction on an urban scale through an analysis of readings from Kiel Moe’s “A Case … Read more
In the field of architecture, verticality is often considered the ultimate achievement, the culmination of various attempts, experiments, conceptual speculations, and styles. Architects such as Yona friedman, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Cook have investigated this concept resulting in questionable outcomes. Our analysis explores their work, examining its pure geometry with speculative experimentation. This concept is exemplified … Read more
