IaaC bit 3.2.1

Implementing Advanced Knowledge

bits

3.2.1 Global Summer School

Conversation with Luis Fraguada

Conversation with Luis Fraguada (Conversation prepared by Jordi Vivaldi, 03 of may 2015)

If in the nineties Rem Koolhaas proposed the “generic city” as the model that was imposing itself on the rest of urban traditional typologies, more than 20 years later the new technologies posed by the Third Industrial Revolution permit us to work with other informational paradigms: the specific, the particular, the singular. A register that without any doubt is highly convenient, because it gives rise to include the diversity in time and space as a key parameter of the project, something essential in our accelerated and open urban becoming. The emergence of the information as a main actor in the scenario has converted in obsolete most of the project tools that were used by the industrial society that was driving the city, producing a radical transformation in the urban epistemology: it is no longer about the discontinuous accumulation of big amounts of knowledge, but about the continuously process of small amount of binary urban data.

These transformations underlines the need of reformulating our urban thought, establishing a metropolitan agenda design in conformity with the new “zeitgeist”. A configuration that is capable to be emancipated from the “generic”, uniform and imprecise, in order to plunge in what is radically “specific”. An specificity that force us to develop energetic topics, interactive mechanisms and social resources, and that can only be explained through new representacional methods.

From this agenda and through a computational, multiscalar and transdiciplinar approach, all the Global Summer School editions are proposed as short and intensive periods in which the students focus their research in particular focus applied to a specific site. In the 2014 edition, the Torre Baró neighbourhood was the chosen territory along with the topic “The Next City”. The lack of infrastructures, the low habitability quality and a certain social uneasiness are some of the well known problems that the location is suffering, along with a suggestive topographical peculiarity that converts the neighborhood in a great opportunity to develop new urban mechanisms.

Cover - Global Summer School Final Presentation, IaaC Archive Figure 1 - Global Summer School Presentations, IaaC Archive Figure 2 - Global Summer School Presentations, IaaC Archive 2

In order to face all these particular characteristics of Torre Bar贸 from the Urban agenda proposed by IaaC, and after assuming the need to comprehend and analyze the social, environmental and urban conditions of the territory, the research has been mainly directed towards 3 directions. First, it seems obvious that nowadays an energetic reflection is required, but even if this reflection neither can nor should forget technical fields, it cannot be reduced to them: the city, and specially the public space, are contexts where the spontaneity and the unexpected cannot be eluded according to any technical optimization. Second, the urban interaction is probably on of the most central topics in the metropolitan reflection, but without any doubt in the last times it has been deeply transformed with the arrival of the newest technological artifacts of communication: the wereables. Finally, in any case is necessary to answer the following question: how should we represent this new city? If the representational methods of the classic period were based in the use of the perspective, subjective and centralized, while through the Modern Movement were predominating objective and aseptic visions as plans or axonometries, which one should be the representative mechanism of our era?

About all these questions we will speak with Luis Fraguada, director of the Global Summer School and computational expert architect, that will shed light on these topics throught his intervention.

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To start, Luís, in the urban development of all the projects of the GSS there is an element that is repeted and that seems to have a crucial role in the design: the energetic optimisation. However, if any feature characterises the urban phenomena and the public space where the first develops, is the need to host and celebrate the hazard and the spontaneity. In this sense, how several deterministic processes as the ones that belong to the field of optimisation, can be synchronised with a certain degree of freedom, disagreement and even uncertainty that the public space should embrace? How can we avoid the reduction of architecture from a cultural problem to a scientific-technic one?

I don’t think that the idea of optimizing energy and the aim of keeping an organic kind of public life are mutually exclusive. First of all, what we try to do is to understand what exactly is in Torre Baró. It is not that much about optimization but about opportunity. An energy protocol and the idea of spontaneity are not exclusive concepts, I don’t see that trying to be as optimum as possible, taking advantage of the energetical possibilities of the place is an operation that goes against the spontaneity of the site.

In this sense, it’s a bit back and forth. In a way we cannot deny that architecture is also a technical discipline, because at the end you have to organise certain elements and place them in a certain way. But beside that, nowadays it seems that in our culture is always important the effort of quantification, and architecture is not an exception. Understanding gradients, measure behaviours and above all, evaluate potentials is crucial.

However, I fully recognize that some things are not quantifiable. To properly quantify a social behaviour you need mountains of data, and from it you can start to stablish inferences. However, recently some investigations are opening new perspective on this field. For example, the case of neuromarketing is quite suggesting: When you launch a new product, usually it is important to make some tests before, and one of the problems is the veracity of the answers, what requires to increase the amount of people tested in order to provide a more valuable answer. However, with the new neurological test you can check the information that is going straight to the brain in terms of signals, what gives you a completely sincere answer. In this sense, this answer is completely honest even if being a piece of data, and of course is something that you can quantify.

Figure 3 - Global Summer School Production, IaaC Archive

Paying attention to some of the GSS works, it seems quite obvious that the “wereables” are one of the main actors in this scenario. From my point of view, one of the basic consequences of the warbles and the “ubiquitous computation” that proposes is the following one: the human being moves from being a subject that uses a set of tools in a deliberated and discontinuous way, towards a subject that (in)corporates a set of prothesis that continuously operates independently from the consciousness state of the person. In relation to the urban aplication of this phenomena, it seems evident that among the consequences we can find opportunities, as a certain degree of democratization, optimization and personalization of the urban processes, but we cannot forget the risks that this technology implies, specially in relation to privacy and freedom reduction. How were you dealing with them in the workshop?

There is a point on time when people start to think in what is private or not. Privacy died 50 years ago: if you have a phone, you are connected, and you decide to give up about your privacy. It is black or white, there are no gradients. If you choose to participate in internet, you end up giving all the information. Of course you get back benefits, like connectivity, vast pieces of information… I don’t consider this something bad by itself, but in any case you have to be aware of this circumstance. And once you are aware of it, you can really appreciate it, and your relation with the city can really be reformulated. For example, when I see in the city the Urbiotica operation applied, somehow it makes me feel that in a way I’m connected and, therefore, I can find tones of information that could be very helpful for my urban activity. I really like the fact that the city is computing, because at the end it means that the city is also made by tools and hardware that are continuously operating for your benefit. We should definitely understand that technology is not something that has nothing to do with our nature, but on the contrary technology is us, is our creation to deal with our needs, and I also understand it as something mainly organic.

Beside this intimity among technology and humanism that you describe, one of the most relevant characteristics of the work that you have done is, without any doubts, the representation mode that you have chosen, that inevitably contrasts a lot with the traditional method that 6

is being used in architecture until today. In this sense, in my opinion is crucial to underline that it is not just about a mere sensationalist or scenographic trick, but the unavoidable consecuence of a specific understanding of the urban phenomena.

In this regard, if the Renaissance prioritized the subjective and axial perspective and the modernism celebrated a certain positivism through the neutrality and objectivity of plans and axonometries, could you explain us which are the intersection points among this new metropolitan ideology and its peculiar representational mode?

In this last Global Summer School we decided to choose a different media, and we did it for many reasons. One of them is that if we are looking this place with different eyes, we should also try to come up with new ways to represent information: motion graphics, projection mapping, prototyping…

We felt that just presenting all the research through static media wouldn’t be sufficient, because if something is characterizing information is its flowing nature.

Beside this, you are right, it seems a commercial way to present the project, but actually that’s why it is for, to communicate an idea in a way that can really engage the audience also by its provocative and effective appearance beyond its content.

It would be an incredible exercise to take the research and information gathered during these workshop and force yourself to explain it just with different methods. In the past we have seen many times a rupture in between the content and the representation of a project, and I’m thinking in particular in some postmodernism projects like the proposal for La Villette of Bernard Tschumi, where it seems that was required to frame the project in a representational method that was not helping to properly explain his intervention. In our case, could we represent our project in a different way? Sure. Is it the most efficient way to do it? In terms of Zeitgesit, in terms of our techonological and cultural moment I think that our method is appropriate.

Finally, from the Institute you decided to land all these reflections in a site like Torre Baró. It is well known the critical situacion of this location,

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beside its connectiviy, service and infrastructural needs. In the last years the neighbourhood has received several aids, but in an insufficient and discontinuous way, beside being focused in areas that were not that affected as the Eucaliptus square. In which way the informational, energetic and interactive reflection that is proposed from IaaC can be also usefull in contexts as specifics and devaluated as the one that represents Torre Baró?

Well, I don’t know if Barcelona knows how to deal with this situation, and even if it seems evident that the city is trying to integrate Torre Baró in its urban fabric thorught different operations, their success has been quite relative. Our position towards this situation and the way we face the project pretends to start from scratch, trying to understand which are the specificities of the site, something that our tools are able to analyse with great levels of precision. Which are the forces that govern the site, which are the opportunities, how can we learn from these circumstances and what potentially and specifically can be done here.

Being that said, we focus in energy in general and energy production with algae, sun, wind and water in particular because Torre Baró, by its particular natural conditions, offers us a bunch of opportunities very different from the rest of the city. And, overall, energy autonomy would be an amazing opportunity for Torre Baró to develop itself and reduce its dependences from other institutions.

Figure 4 -Global Summer School Final Presentation, IaaC Archive Figure 5 - Work in Progress, IaaC Archive

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DIRECTOR:

IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

EDITORIAL TEAM Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean Mathilde Marengo, Communication & Publication Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Silvia Brandi, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts

DESIGN: Ramon Prat, ACTAR Editions

IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands

Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of Barcelona Willy Muller, Director of Barcelona Regional Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

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