Informal Formality by James Ma

INFORMAL FORMALITY

RUNYU MA

Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

Table of Contents

Prologue

12.

Polemics

58.

Ideologies

106.

Formality

156.

Informality

298.

Notes

Prologue The future of cities and urban lifestyles are talked about in this book, and even though these assumptions are highly based on studies and researches, they are not predictions or prophecies. This book is simply pointing out the directions where city developments are leading us, and the possibilities that people might face in the near future. Then, this book concludes with a new theoretical ideology and an alternative urban typology that is relatively adaptive to current urban environment. Again, it is not a design excises to address and accommodate all the existing or potential issues mentioned. Instead, this could be seen as a manifested reality that tries to prevent important issues and negative possibilities from being ignored.

Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, both their political and economic systems started to crack. Almost everyone in the nation knew the society was falling apart, but they had to pretend it was normal because no one could envision any alternative system other than communism since the free information from the western world was blocked off by the government. This phenomenon was described as “Hypernormalisation” in Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation, “You are so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it.” This accurately describes the urban environment we live in nowadays in terms of urban planning and urban design. There are thousands of cities in the world that more than 60% of the global population lives in, however, only a handful of them are considered truly great cities. Since the globalization of economy and culture, many cities share the same cityscapes and skylines of modern high-rises and massive traffic spaces, especially the cities developed recently. People living in these cities are constantly suffering from problems such as overcrowding spaces, skyrocketing housing prices, air/water pollution, large carbon emission, cramped public spaces, terrible traffic, as well as lack of visual identity and regionalism. The worst of it is that even though there are so many obvious problems in these cities, people choose to compromise and accept them as a part of urban lifestyle. Gradually, the abnormal becomes normal, and everyone is trapped in this problematic urban typology. For example, the city of Beijing and San Paulo look almost identical from both the street side and from above. Their cityscapes are largely influenced by the internationalism and economic exploitation; therefore, much of the integrity and culture of the city is lost. The illusion of economic growth and propagandized media coverage only show the positive aspects that happened during the urban development. Before they realize it, the city in their memories has long gone, replaced with concrete columns and glass glazing. In these developing countries, the real estate market is rapidly increasing with a fast growing economy, which gives developers much more power to control the market. This imbalance of economic power causes terrifying consequences: single family housing sometimes costs a lifetime of savings, but the architectural quality is only worth a fraction of it. As a result, urban real estate properties have become more of investments for wealthy than homes to the urban population. This distortion of economic stability has often resulted in unbelievably high housing prices, vacant developments, massive ghost towns, and even real estate bubbles.

Although there are serious problems with urbanization, it is unwise to abandon the urban development plan as a whole. It is far more sustainable to have the majority of the population live in cities, plus it is an easy solution to the growing population issue. In last few decades, history has proven that decentralized population and resources have huge environmental impacts and largely reduces the efficiency of all infrastructures. Vast landscape and spread out settlements create enormous possibilities for systematic waste. Despite material waste for building the infrastructure reaching that far, it is a fact that one water pipe leak just the size of a dime will waste nearly 6,300 gallons of water a month. In addition, about 14-18% of water treated in the United States is wasted through aging and damaged infrastructure, as well as faulty meters. According to the global trends, as well as many other obvious facts, the urban lifestyle will continue to dominate the planet in the future. To maintain the position of urbanization, many authorities such as urban planners and politicians have been trying to solve these problems, but their minds are too trapped in the system, and more importantly, some of them often benefit from this crooked system. What they have done to try to solve these everlasting problems is using methods that only scratches the surface: they start to plan projects that seem right like adding parks to residential area, replacing old buildings with new ones, or constructing iconic buildings in a city center. Even though some of these solutions are effective, much of their goal behind them was to increase the attractiveness of the area and the real estate price for developers and global investors. They seem to pay more attention to the public image created by renderings and statistics generated by computers than what these projects’ real effect on people’s lives. Eventually, some cities with fast growing economy turned into the mess as we see them today. It is much like the story of Frankenstein: by adding all the parts that make sense and are attractive together, in theory we should have an ideal result. However, in the end, nothing more than a monster of city is created. Citizens see these horrifying problems with their own eyes, and sometimes complain about it, but they have absolutely no control over it. The disastrous urban environment is gradually reshaping people’s way of living. They would continue their days by moving from one building to another by driving through terrible traffic, then coming back the same way. They would continue to live in their condos with a window looking out to millions of other homes looking just like the ones they have. They would continue paying mortgages for home whose value is mostly a giant bubble. They would continue hanging out with their online friend inside without knowing any of their neighbors. They would…

Sometime you may wonder: how did we get to this point that everyone is stuck in the same problematic urban typology? Is there really no alternative other than accepting it? What if there is a complete rebellion from the very bottom of this fragile system? Living in the age of the internet, no one asks the fundamental questions like “where does the internet exist” or “what is open source code” anymore. The concept of free sharing and open source information is not strange to the public. It is very interesting that the terms open source code or open source software were not popular terms 20 years ago. Before 1990, the software world was dominated by giants like IBM and Microsoft. These companies kept their source codes very secretive because they were extremely concerned about people copying or cracking their systems. At the time, only a few pieces of software published by these companies, mostly business software, were able to run on home computers, which very much limited the power of them. In 1991, a freely modifiable source code called “Linux Kernel” was developed by Linus Torvalds. It was published and later used internationally, which broke the limit set up by traditional software packages that forbid anyone except for the publishers to modify or distribute the software. This breakthrough on open source codes made people realize the power of computers; the idea of open source laid the foundation of the information technologies that we have now. The concept of open source, unexpectedly, did not ruin the business of these large corporations, but instead stimulated their sales since computer products became much more desirable than they were before. The real estate market and the information technology market are extremely alike from a macro perspective. The real estate giants are the rule makers of the game, and they do not want anyone to threaten their profit margin. Similarly, early large software superpowers were trying to protect their profit margin this way. However, the real estate business requires more capital and it is more of a necessity in most cultures. The history is surprisingly similar. Again, this new ideology of open source urbanism would be terrifying to the large developers and politicians because it is unknown: they cannot predict how much profit could be extracted from the new system, and how stable the system is, that they could lose their control over the market.

Open source urbanism could gradually break down the limitation, such as corporate trusts’ bureaucracy and zoning complication, in the economic system set by these large corporations, and liberate the urban animals who are trapped in the system for too long. This new system shares many similarities with the concept of the open source aspect of the internet: free remix and redistribution, access to the source, a higher degree of cooperation, and the end to predatory vender lock-in. This new system could transform urban spaces and lifestyles by using modular building components to form larger societal hub. The design and structure of each separate module was actually quite simple, but when they were grouped in a high density algorithmic pattern, they formed a new, highly rational urban system well-suited to the complexities of modern individuals and societies. The module design possesses amazing customizability and is able to adapt to multiple urban environments, geographic cultures, individual lifestyles, and technological advancements. Its adoption will lead to new discoveries that will help us solve existing problems and influence future trends in architecture. With infinite possibilities, open source urbanism could be the revival of new individualism, as well as a new infrastructure system for further development. Georg W. Hegel once said: “Whatever is reasonable is true, and whatever is true is reasonable.” One thing Kowloon Walled City taught us is that highly informal communities could be extremely disciplined and reasonable. Thus applying Hegel’s logic, existing programs in this informal dwelling are not only rational, but also irreplaceable. In that case, if there needs to be a convenient shop on the 5th floor of building 12, there would be one, or the resident living in the unit would become one; if the unit does not need to be a restaurant, even if there is one opening up, it will not last any much longer. Informal urbanism without macro control does not mean complete anarchy and chaos because there will always be relatively more efficient micro management. As the alternative to the current broken system, a highly efficient new urban typology would be formed. Although the open source urbanism is systematically informal, it remains highly rational. Finally, cityscapes of the future will be shaped by unique individuals.

Polemics One thing we have to address before this chapter starts is that, no matter how many problems there are in the current environment, cities themselves are not problems. Instead, cities are the solutions to far bigger problems. Humans in different cultures and locations all forms settlements and cities through out the history, and claim them to be very much necessary in human development. Humans are not getting rid of cities for sure, and also we are not running away from these problems. The goal here is to acknowledge the city problems, to understand them, and then try to solve them.

One can never argue about the problems of cities without trying to understand cities first. To begin with this topic, the first step would have to be examining what a city is, and what makes a city. For most of the history of modern Homo sapiens, we have been constantly relocating homes for hunting and gathering food. Only about 10,000 years ago, agricultural technique and home breeding was discovered by humans, and then came the first settlements. However, limited nutrition and water content in the soil requires relocating the farmlands, which made these settlements semi-permanent. It is very important that, due to these early semi-permanent settlements, people started to understand the concept of architecture. Around 3000 BC, our ancestors from both Middle East and Eastern Asia developed efficient irrigation systems that made sure there is sufficient water and nutrition for large amount of crops. Thus, as the productivity of food nearly stabilized, these settlements became more permanent; and food as a resource defined these earliest towns and cities. Even though the main reason permanent settlements exist is food as a resource, the most important factor of locating these settlements is natural resources. Natural resources like water is necessary for cooking and drinking, flat land and rich soil are important for farming, wood and stone are required for constructing shelters, and appropriate climate is essential for living hood. For example, the city of Jericho was built around Elisha’s spring as its most important water resource, and thousands of cities were built this way later on; only until Roman times that people invented aqueduct system to overcome the limitation of fresh water. Again, natural resource defined the location of early settlements. Associated with the technology advance, food productivity dramatically increased soon after irrigation systems were invented, and much less labor was required for agriculture and food production. As a result, other professions other than farmer started to grow rapidly. These early cities with large population became places with the concentration of crafts, arts, decoration, clothes, accessories, gastronomy, and so on; and integrated into their unique regional culture. These cultural products as resources became the drive for trading between cities, and defined the identity of each of them. Since enormous amount of trading routes were connected from city to city, the development of small towns and trading stops along these routes was heavily stimulated. These settlements were different than cities, they only provide necessary re-

sources such as water and food for travelers. The typology of these places is more like early human settlements that most people are working as food providers that raise and collect food from around the town. Although some of these settlements grew out of its original typology due to growing population and unique geography locations, most of them remained very similar to other settlements. Again, these towns were places of necessary resources. The relationship between towns and trading routes introduced in the previous paragraph is surprisingly similar to the fabric we have right now. Highways connecting big cities stimulated the economy of smaller towns by providing traveling consumers and recognition, which allows them to grow. These places often has many gas stations, hotels, and convenient shops, and they are necessary resources for travelers. In larger scale, any town or city is a place of resources. There are many more small towns because they provide necessary resources for daily needs such as, in today’s standard, grocery store, pharmacy, gas station, fire department, and police station. However, because necessary resources such as hospital and car dealership are less visited, they often only appear in larger towns, as well as other resource needed in daily bases. The same rule applies to cities, which is why resources like airport and large amusement parks only exist in cities. More international cities like New York City and Tokyo not only has to sustain the population around their own radiant area, but they also have to export services for the global population, which makes them much more unique places to hold resources like large investment banks and international convention centers. The same rule of resource distribution applies to all different scales of urban models. Even though these cities were connected with global trading system, because of the slow transportation and geographic differences, each of them developed their own culture. Most of these cities or regions have their unique cultural resources to contribute to the global trading system, making the trading goods more diverse, and providing more recognition of unfamiliar regional cultures. Since the long distance transportation opened up the new global trading network, the cultures of different places started to fuse and blend. Ancient Egyptian obelisks started to appear in the skyline at city of Rome, paper-making and printing technology originated in Chinese Empire were widely used on the publication of Catholic Bibles in western world, and German modern industrial design was heavily influenced by imported African folk art. With the advancement of technology, the synthesis of different cultures sure created enormous amount of new possibilities. However, the

harmonious balance between regional culture and newly created modern culture soon began to fall apart since the application of mass production in the mid 19 century. After industrial revolution, the modern culture dominantly took over the traditional cultures in Europe and America. Starting with Ford Motor Company’s concept of assembly line, global capitalists began to excessively mass produce their products to maximize their profit. Of course, it created convenience and more affordable products for the public and emerging middle-class, and heavily stimulated the growth of global population. But at this time, the importance of economic profit was put in front of that of culture. With more and more products being mass produced, less people were needed in crafting and manufacturing industries even though the population was increasing at the time. As large corporations produce the daily and life sustaining products of people’s lives, it was obvious that large amount of unrelated people were using the same products and living the same lifestyle. This phenomenon was reflected in George Orwell’s 1984 that everyone in the world is wearing the same outfits in the near future from then. It is not difficult to find out that red peppers in supermarket mass produced from Brazil are less expensive than ones grew locally in farmers’ market. The same rule applies to building materials: standardized building materials shipped from China are much cheaper than locally customized materials. This is one of the main reasons that the movement of mass production heavily influenced the building industry and even global city scape. Gradually, traditional architecture started disappearing in modern cities due to the overshadowing force of capitalism. This phenomenon is more obvious in developing countries desperately pursuing economic advantage. With the policy of “economic development comes first”, China’s capital city Beijing has almost changed completely in last 30 years. Economic growth created millions of job opportunities in newly emerging cities, the largest population migration and urbanization started to happen in China. In order to accommodate such large amount of population influx, tens of thousands of new buildings were built within few years. Housing was such a necessity that people would pay high price for any architectural quality and housing condition as long as they are in the city. Because the geographic location in the city is the main factor determines the housing price rather than the apartment itself, a large number of apartment buildings built had the identical floor plans and same façades in repetitive patterns for efficiency and economic profit. During its fastest developing era, even until now, buildings were built faster than any normal architectural designed period: the construction period for a mega size building complex project only takes a few

Beijing 1908

Sao Paulo 1915

months. Responding to the fast constructing speed, many design of new buildings were done by large state-owned corporations. They apply almost same designs for tens buildings, sometimes even hundreds, to keep up with the city developing pace. Tens of thousands of construction workflow was done this way that created gigantic amount of poorly designed buildings, and this is the reason why the skyline of Beijing is boringly repetitive. Another city had undergone almost the same boring cityscape as Beijing. From far away, it is hard to tell which city is which. However, this city is located on the other side of earth. Sao Paulo in Brazil, a city with drastically different cultures and geographical features. How do two cities that are thousand miles apart share almost the same cityskyline?

Beijing 2010

Sao Paulo 2010

It turned out that these two cities had experience rapid development in the same period. These buildings in the cities were built to accommodate the fast developing real-estate market and to house the massive amount of population increase. In this period, both cities sacrificed there identities and cultures for economic growth. It is understandable on a macro perspective. However, people would not be happy about this as just average citizens in these cities. Kevin Lynch describe cities as places to host memories, but these citiescape with no character can hardly host any special memory about the cities. These are just two typical cities. There are thousands of cities like this all over the world. When every real-estate developer put the profit in front of the city experi-

ence, or when all the architects are competing to build the iconic buildings, the city becomes chaotic. One Chinese architect Yung ho Chang describe modern cities as the “Frankenstein”, that the creator wants to create the perfect city by putting all the best parts together instead of setting some sort of hierarchy or order, and the city later turns out to be a disaster in design. What Chang said was that the cities area not the image of what planners originally intended. However, when we are complaining about current cities looking repetitive and similar, we should look into the earlier imagination of future cities to find out. In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, the city is fill with high rises and expressways. Looking at the city of Metropolis’ cityscape, it reminded me of the cityscape of both Beijing and Sao Paulo. Meaning the early ideologies of what cities should look like has great impact on later designers. Since the age of automobile, average citizens are experiencing a worse urban environment. The cities became a place of danger, and even inequality. One painter illustrated the city streets as cliffs, where people will be killed if stepped in. Speaking of inequality. Current city façade is all about the inequality, enclosure, and privacy. These are mostly private corporations with large amount of financial support that no one has saying about what they do. The problems of the cities lies beyond just city itself, it is intertwined with the political and economic system.

Poster for the Film: Metropolis (1927) Fritz Lang

New Building Type In the mid twenty century, a new building type emerges: shopping malls. These malls are the social and economic centers for American suburbia. These malls usually have large parking lots because people usually drive to these malls to shop, and they leave with their car as well. For the suburbia residents, these malls are more of their shopping destinations than something they would enjoys staying for long. However in recent years, these mall are taking places in the cities, and transforming into even more ambitious developments. They contain cinemas, shopping centers, recreation spaces and many restaurants. These large developments started to pop up in the cities, and they have large parking garages as well. Gradually, these developments became people’s destination that people would travel by car and spend more time there, then leave by cars. These developments are usually really large that the facade of these building are just very large surfaces of glass glazing. More and more people are “trapped” in these developments instead of spending quality time on the streets. These developments are extremely similar to what Robert Moses was trying to do to do to the city of New York. He was proposing new building types such as massive public housing units and large infrastructures that would benefit the upper class. These large developments are destroying the city streets, and the worst thing is that it is not realized. Jane Jacobs once said :“A city street equipped to handle strangers, and to make a safety asset, in itself, our of the presence of strangers, as the streets of successful city neighborhoods always do, must have three main qualities: First, there must be a clear demarcation between what is public space and what is private space. Public and private spaces cannot ooze into each other as they do typically in suburban settings or in projects. Second, there must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented

Robert Moses with a model of his proposed Battery Bridge in late 1930s

to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind. And third, the sidewalk must have users on it fairly continuously, both to add to the number of effective eyes on the street and to induce the people in buildings along the street to watch the sidewalks in sufficient numbers. Nobody enjoys sitting on a stoop or looking out a window at an empty street. Almost nobody does such a thing. Large numbers of people entertain themselves, off and on, by watching street activity.” When the streets are dead, the entire city is doomed as well. Luckily, the online shopping is replacing these large developments. However, it is not helping in terms of the city experience. Maybe some thing need to be done, but no one has any idea yet.

Modernist Cities After the industrialization of Europe, many cities turned into fully inustrial cities, and more and more issues raised, especially the health and life quality problems. For example, the city of Manchester became a city of air and water pollution, where the industrial workers can barely sustain their live in very small and non regulated sheds. Luckily, the technological advancement enabled the birth of modern architecture. Also, many remote colonies of European countries became the testing ground for the modernism, which accelerated the development of the modernist movement. The modernism embraces the technology, and believes that technology advancement can solve all the urban problems including inequality, sanitation, infrastructure, and growing population. In the modernists’ mind, everything can be explained rationality, and the deigns are supposed to be extremely rational, and functional. In one short wording: Form follows function. Paris undergone the haussmannization, and transformed itself from an medieval city to a city of modernity. Vienna built the ringstrasse on the site of old city wall, and established its modern city order. Casa Blanca became the place to develop the very first model for dual city for social separation. After the CIAM’s 1941 meeting, Le Corbusier established the ground rule for modernist cities in the Athens Charter. It explains that: Housing is supposed to be well lit by natural light, and it has to be ventilated. Working space needs to be separated from the living district of the cities. Recreational spaces have to be created in the cities for public as a necessary program. Then the traffic needs to be completely separated from the pedestrians to maximize the safety for citizens. The new city would contain prefabricated and identical high-density skyscrapers, spread across a vast green area and arranged in a Cartesian grid, allowing the city to function as a “living machine.” His later design for the Radiant City strictly followed the rules he established in Athens Charter. However, with projects like Pruitt Igoe and Robin Hood Gardens, the modernism architecture and modernist cities seem not to be the solution for current urban development issues.

Urban Morphology Morphology is a study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features. Since the 19th century, more and more planners started to focus on the overall look of the cities. It is a good thing in terms of the overall circulation. Also, the scientific master plans had directly stimulated the idea of zoning. However, this enables architects and urban planners of being obsessed with the geometric and topographic features of the city instead of think about urban spaces in a human perspective. Massive drawings were made for city master plans through out the years. As Le Corbusier explains: “The city of today is a dying thing because its planning is not in the proportion of geometrical one fourth. The result of a true geometrical lay-out is repetition, The result of repetition is a standard. The perfect form.” However, none of them have considered human scale. Brasilia as one the most relevant example, designed entirely based on an urban morphology idea, that can not even fully function as a society.

Old and New Old and new, the most permanent topic in architectural design both academically and practically. Vitruvius once said in ten books of architecture that architecture is the highest expression of culture, which defines architecture’s tie to the culture and history. However, international famous architect Norman Forster also said: architecture is the highest expression of value. I agree with him and think that historical preservation is certainly overrated, and architect as a social profession should bring new values to the society. But since modernism, the ideology is buildings something that is completely irrelevant to the traditions, and it turned out to be Urban development has been skyrocketing in recent years especially in developing countries, and there are vast amount of historical buildings that are less important to the culture, but taking over a more economical important real-estate. For most buildings that are decades old, they tend to carry some memories and history. However, every other new buildings would be a part of the history as well. Selectively, they need to be transformed or demolished for economic growth. Old buildings that are still serving as they original functions are not only inefficient, but also extremely non environmental friendly. In many city’s central business district, there still are a few old buildings existing due to the zoning, and they are usually a lot shorter than the surrounding buildings, which means they are less efficient in terms of land use. Also, the floor plan and space inside the building are less efficient to fulfill modern needs. Moreover, old buildings with older building systems usually leaves much larger carbon footprint and consumes more energy. Admittedly, there are drawbacks from demolishing old buildings for economic growth, and it is important to protect what is important for our history. No one could imagine Pisa without the lining tower, or Rome without the pantheon. As I said, the process of substituting the old buildings needs to be selective. In architectural design aspect, the designers could bring out the history of the site, or try different ways to give back some memories to the community when they are dealing with historical sites. It is important to remember, but for the urban development and economic growth, planners and architects need to look ahead into the future.

The American Dream and Emerging Suburbs Following the modernist era, the United Sates became the superpower, and the pioneer for new models of urbanism and urban design. Also, the new development is highly based on the pride of Americans, as well as the ideology of the American Dream. The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, the set of ideals (democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity, and equality) in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility for the family and children, achieved through hard work in a society with few barriers. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” With the wide spread of home loan and the better rural living environment due to the regulations set by Regional Planning Association in America, American suburban housing became the new American Dream. The new idea of the American Dream is based on the personal mobility, urban sprawl, individualization, and homogeneity. The ideology was all about creating new typology called suburbia. The forms for American suburban area takes ideas from the broad acre city by Frank Lloyd Wright, where every family is given one acre of land in the city suburbs. Within the communities, all the houses are inward facing, and highly rely on ground transportation and telephone. The cities are places where people work, and they usually have greater density with many high rises. Large hopping malls and shopping centers across America gave people who live in suburbia chances to experience urban shopping and services. After the Highway Act of 1956 for the rapid transportation of military equipment such as nuclear bombs and tanks, American suburbs were truly made viable. Until now, the suburbia is still the major typology of the entire country.

Bigger Houses, Bigger Blocks, and Bigger Cities The is an interesting phenomenon, that the personal vehicles are getting bigger and bigger through out the history. Of course one reason is that people tend to have more needs of moving bigger objects. Also, for superficial reasons that people used to think bigger cars represents wealthier family background. But there is another important reason, that is, people nowadays have to drive to the destinations where they are intend to go. So car actually became much more important than before. For most urban citizens, personal ride should be an option instead of necessity. If people living in an urban area have to drive to their destination, there is something wrong with the city. For example, the city of Los Angeles is defined by the major highways going through the city, and majority of its population drive to work on these highways. A city that encourages automobile will have really low efficiency of land use. People usually need three places to park their one car: homes, workplaces, and shopping malls. Thus, the houses need to be built bigger to accommodate larger cars. Building blocks are getting bigger to accommodate parking. Also, since the cities are no longer walkable anymore, larger buildings are built as people’s destinations. In conclusion, the cars are getting bigger because of the urban typology, and the urban typology is changing because of larger cars.

Density Although the lifestyle illustrated by American suburbia is comfortable, the urban model for it is extremely inefficient. Massive amount of traffic are pored into interstate highways during the rush hours causing inefficient traffic. In the cities, the office buildings are empty for more than half of time. In the suburbs, the vast amount of land taken by suburbia houses and neighborhoods are endangering the natural habitat for various species. Personal vehicles for reaching to each house release large amount of green house gas collectively.

Metropolitan Area Density Diagram

Levittown, NY 1957 37

Modern China, the New Testing Ground The recent booming of China’s economy created a brand new crowd of middle class and rich, leading to the largest urban migration on the planet earth. Millions of people moved from rural areas into urban centers, causing the dramatic growth of large metropolitan centers and hundreds of emerging cities. Following the migration, unimaginable amount of apartment buildings, office tower, infrastructure, and recreational spaces were built within a very short amount of time in order to host the massive amount of population moving into the cities. In terms of urban growth, the cities were growing in both horizontal and vertical directions. Unlike developing countries with rich regional cultures, China had experience the Cultural Revolution, which is a sociopolitical movement happening all through China from 1966 to 1976 that almost completely wipe out the traditional cultures and replaced them with the Communist ideology. In this ten-year long movement, anything that was related to the imperialism had to be destroyed, including books, weapons, architecture, and even human lives. Thus, most of China’s traditions have been abandoned. By the end of 1976, most families were under educated and they were left with no private properties. After the Cultural revolution, China completely reversed its policy, and opened up the country’s ports to global trading. Within the country, China started its thirty-year long reconstruction just like what Europe did after the war. Soon after, due to the revival of China’s economy, the reconstruction turned into the modernization of the entire country, and then the Chinese urbanization now. In the process of modernization, the fact that China lost a large part of its culture became very valuable because this made Chinese people more open to the unknown world. A large amount of people in China even became accept and adapt to western values. This is also one of the reasons China is very much dominant in the globalization. The Cultural Revolution turned modern China into a blank paper forty years ago, but on this blank paper, there is unlimited freedom of what creative people can draw. As a result, the lack of complete social structure and loose regulations made this country the new testing ground for different theories and ideas in both architecture and urbanism.

New Fushun:

Construction Site of Residential Towers that Will Soon House Millions

The Absolute Quantification of Regulation Most people think that designers and architects influence the cityscape by designing different buildings and parks. However, the designs are highly influenced by the regulations set by city planners. Simply speaking, every single piece of land in the cities can be quantified in different index and norms. The most important factor influencing these quantifications is the economic drive. In New York City, early regulations of Skyscrapers shaped some tall buildings’ distinct

look. For example, the Barclay-Vesey Building in lower Manhattan has the step back design responding to the zoning regulation, which was limiting skyscrapers’ shadow over the street side and on the lower buildings. The goal of the 1916 zoning law was to prevent the city’s streets from “devolving into gloomy, darkened canyons in the early days of skyscrapers. This zoning law had great influence on some early, and most important, skyscrapers designs such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the Rockefeller Center. In 1961, a new zoning law sought to address those plans by creating incentives allowing developers to add extra floor space so long as plazas were incorporated into their plans. By the year 2000, over 3.5 million square feet of public space was created in New York City under the influence of this zoning law. Due to the vast amount of land and the massive amount of urban development happening in China, as well as the lack of experience in urban planning, local government seemed to have very loose and out of date regulations about new urban developments. These regulation are often appear as different index that can be quantified in an very abstract way. With the largest real-estate market and extremely profitable business interests, developers usually propose the most efficient design for buildings that fulfill all the regulation requirements. New Funshun City, a newly constructed city dedicated to high technology and urban lifestyle, is a perfect example of boring cityscape caused by maximized economic profit and overly quantified regulation. First of all, the most important part of the regulation on skyscrapers at Fushun are the floor to area ratio, as well as the daylight time for each building. Under these two very essential regulations, all the buildings were built in the same orientation, spacing, and height for the maximum efficiency. It is understandable that developers want to maximized their profit by having as many apartments in a set piece of land as possible, but the simply quantified regulation can only result in very excessive amount of repetition and order, creating mind numbing sameness of buildings. Not only in New Fushun these monstrous urban development exists, but also in many other newly developed or fast expanding cities. In theory, these regulations are reasonable for urban development. However, the quantified nature of these regulations turned out to be disaster for urbanization.

Office for Property Management Apartment Buildings Underground Car Parking Bicycle Parking Convenience Shops Public Playground Outdoor Gymnasium Vegetated Garden Kindergarten Internet Cafe Clubhouse Sentry Box

Typology Case Study: Modern Chinese Real-estate Development

Cultural Impact of Globalization The globalization has always seen as a positive thing on global economy, and cultures although received many critics though out many years. Yes, without the globalization, people would not even know that there are other cultures on this planet. However, from a local citizen’s perspective, the globalization might be that glorious as all. There are a number of negative impacts globalization has had on cultural diversity, including the influence multinational corporations have on promoting a consumer culture, exploitation of workers and markets and influencing societal values. This increased availability of commercial media and products can “drown out” local cultural influences. Loss of individualism and group identity occur when globalization encourages a ‘Western ideal of individualism’. This promotes a homogeneous set of values and beliefs. The adoption of Western Culture and ideologies is seen as many computermediated technologies are developed, marketed and processed via western markets. The dominant population and culture of the day determine the next greatest technology along with the next commercialized gadget that will be offered up to the masses and longed for by those who are at arm’s reach of financially obtaining these devices. Heather Kanuka from University of Alberta also cites that electronic learning technologies perpetuates colonization by designing curriculum that mimics the cognitive styles of the dominant culture. Not having access to technologies that are present in the classroom, combined with an education system geared toward the dominant society can be a lethal combination for non-dominant cultures. The present education, legal and power structures reflect western ideas and philosophies. These western ideas are easily assimilated into other cultures and paradigms with far reaching effects. There is an assumption that the values and ideologies of the Global North will provide a suitable framework for the new knowledge economies of the developing Global South. In last few decades, there are many exciting projects came out as the internationalism. These projects do not share any regionalism or culture reference from where the architects are from. The question is that: is there a right or wrong on the impact of globalization on the architecture and urban design?

Skyscrapers and Enclaves In both Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture and Rem Koolhaas’ Delirious New York, they share the same idea that the new typologies of skyscrapers have endless capabilities. In traditional sense, tall buildings are the result of stacking floors, and they are simply the more dense version of offices or houses. The difference between traditional low rises and newly emerged high rises are volumetric difference, however, as well as the floor to area ratio. As an architect and a socialist, Le Corbusier contradicted the traditional view of skyscrapers. In his book Towards a New Architecture, he pointed out that because the dramatic volumetric differences in these super tall buildings, they are capable of being more than just stacked floors. Corbusier used the cruise ship as an example: in these massive cruise ships, there are swimming pools, hotel rooms, restaurants, and shops. In this case, the difference between a cruise ship and a fishing boat is not only the volume, but also the programs. Compared to the fishing boat, the cruise ship is closer to a miniature floating city. The large high rises could have function the same way as the cruise ships. In these large volumes, people could live, work, and entertain in different floors and sections. The design of Unite d’Habitation strictly followed the ideology of his, and contained not only housing units, but also restaurants, schools, and work recreational spaces. By the time Rem Koolhaas was writing Delirious New York, skyscrapers became much more complex. He defined “programs” as the essential elements of tall buildings, and they pretty much would determine how people interact with the buildings and with each others. Some of large scale mixed-use or complex development in downtown area are called HOPSCA, which refers to hotels, offices, parks, shops, clubs, and apartments. In these more modern high rises, interior programs are sometimes more complex than just these programs. For example, the Global Center in Chengdu, China, a massive mixed-use building with the volume of 18,000,000 square feet, hosts hundreds of restaurants and shops, multiple shopping malls, a five-star hotel including rooms with a beach view, several class A office towers, a water park, an ice rink, an aquarium, a theatre, and even an entire Mediterranean town for high-end shopping. Further more, this building has its own fire department and hospital. The amount of activities people could do is far more than a town or a small city.

Unité d’habitation, Marseille

Even though these skyscrapers have access to the street, they are somehow isolated from the city fabric. The original idea was separate people from weathering, so people were able to be comfortable inside at any time of the year or day. However, this isolation cut off the connections these buildings with the streets as well. Gradually, these buildings have become more of a enclave rather than a part of the city, completely distinct from the surroundings. Although isolated from the city fabric, these enclaves largely effects the urban design and city experience in an indirect way. These large buildings became destinations of thousands of people during the day, and then turned into an empty volume at night. This sudden change within short amount of time dramatically increases the load of city traffic, leading decision makers and planners to widen the streets in order to accommodate the rush hour traffic. Also, the energy consumption at night is still very high for these buildings since all the systems keep running in the after hours, which leaves a gigantic unnecessary carbon footprint. Despite the energy efficiency and increasing urban density, the isolation created by these tall buildings in the cities is a negative forces of making ideal urban spaces.

Concrete Texture Detail of West Village by Jiakun Archtiects

Endlessly Boring City Facade

Urban Development under the Globalization The globalization directly influenced the urban development in current cities in terms of architectural design and even the entire city skyline. First of all, the global standards of materials has completely changed the architecture industry. . For better trading environment and convenience, most of manufactures in different fields have came up with many universal standards and units. These standards did make general productivity more efficient and more precise, especially for those products on the automated assembly lines. Under the framework revolving these standards, mass produced goods shipped around the world are much cheaper than individual produced ones in local market. Because the architecture construction market is highly adapt to the benefits of global standards, although many architects are considering local material and craftsmanship, they have to surrender to the extremely high prices their client might not be willing to pay. For example, the West Village in Chengdu, despite its eight years of construction, exceeded the budge more than five times overall due to its adoption of local materials and craftsmanship. The same as other works of Jiakun Liu, the Chinese pioneer and practitioner of critical regionalism, the West Village turned out to be a masterpiece. But the amount of money and time invested is absolutely enormous comparing to other commercial projects. Secondly, the globalization and clash of cultures eliminated local traditions. Nowadays, due to the information technology and the internet, more and more people are interested in western pop culture instead of regional cultures. Thus, many local traditions are dying out. Plus, the global terrorism is splitting the general population and human thoughts in two extreme directions. The cultures that western world considers foreign are less tolerated, especially for Islamic cultures. With less people being interested in their local cultures, architecture and design became less resistant to the globalization. In China, numerous Eiffel Towers and Big Ben were built in different cities which have no direct relationship from the local cultures. Thirdly, the biased media heavily influenced people’s perception of architectural aesthetic. In digital age, building facades can be easily copied and pasted, and for a while, the advanced technologies and high rises in western movies seems very tempting for developing countries. As a result, many Asian cities ended up having mind numbing cityscape of skyscrapers and glass glazing facades.

The New Individualism When Internet was born, we were expecting to have a whole new dimension of world where infinite amount of activities could be done, and everyone was going to be brought much closer by the global social network: The idea of website made sure that information was shared freely over the internet; the invention of email opened up a new way of communication between two people apart from anywhere in the world; internet video calls amazingly connects two people face to face with no time difference; social media enables people sharing their ideas, thoughts , and culture on a much more massive dimension that can be heard or seen by millions of people. The dream of the Global Village finally was becoming true under the framework of internet. In this dream, the world was finally flat: everyone was no longer separated by their geographic locations, and eventually linked to the global information system that advances the communication, database of knowledge, and so much more. Over 50 years has passed by since the dream of global village, the world has developed into a radically different reality away from what people expected. In that dream, the internet was supposed to bring everyone closer together. As a result, the world should have been unprecedentedly united. However, as we see, the world is as broken as it was before the internet. With the development of information technology, one person is able to learn about the world on just one digital device. Instead of the real window in this person’s room, the digital device is the new window, with better accessibility, to the outside world. Evidently, the world one person sees could be largely different from other people’s world in their device. For example, if one person watches decent amount of cat videos on YouTube, the website will continue to forward cat videos to the home screen of this user. The same rule applies to everyone, that every user has its own unique feed that differs from any others’. In this case, YouTube is a web company that provides free online video sharing and watching services, but realistically, it is a data processing company. Because the way these corporations make money is to collect users’ personal information and advertise towards them with selective information. The real money in this business is time: the more time people spend on these websites, the more advertisement they can absorb. To have people spend more time on their sites, these web companies came up with algorithms to make websites and apps an infinite loop system that keeps feeding information that interests these people. As a result, people’s windows to the world gets distorted by the information generated by algorithms and themselves, and eventually turns into

The Social Network (2010) David Fincher

mirrors that reflect themselves infinitely. As people get more detached from the rest of the world through this window, they becomes more independent as themselves, and the new individualism arises. The social network did bring people closer together as originally designed, however, these people come together and formed their own groups and communities that further detached from rest of the world. People that share the same interests and similarities would form their own groups, and exclude anyone that undermine their beliefs. This phenomenon completely reversed the traditional value system mankind has being trying to keep: we have practiced and worked hard to behave the way society wants us to be, and tolerate people that are different, so we can live under the same roof. This new internet world allows us to interact with other people virtually, and selectively. Traditional social skills can be completely abandoned, and traditional bonding is greatly weaken. Silent diner table has become a common phenomenon: people sitting in the same dining table, possibly sharing somewhat a social bonding, stare at their own smart phone screens silently. The internet has given them freedom to break away from their physical bonding, then virtually spend time with their own online circle. Eventually, all we see and hear is ourselves, and no one would be able to understand, to agree with, and even to know each other anymore. All we care is ourselves. In the age of internet, human being as a species becomes

never before so isolated. The human history is based on discoveries and findings that makes us understand the world better. We were told by teachers and parents that the more we learn, the more knowledgeable we are. However, the network engineers and algorithmic mathematicians told us a different story: that sometimes the more we know, the more detached we are from the truth. Large internet corporations like Facebook and Amazon have figured out how to make more money by feeding people enormous amount of selected information matching their interests and needs to trick customers into purchasing products. The same with news media, they only show people what they want to see in order to have viewers spending time on it, and to promote advertisement. If one person likes searching cat pics online, and gradually, there would be more and more cat pic suggestions showing up on his feed. Eventually, this person is going to be buried under millions of cat pics he like. Cat pic is just a metaphor for things people are interested in; but this example tells us the way how people spending hours on YouTube without planning in advance, and then end up being regretful. In this age of information explosion, there is no way anyone could learn everything that is happening in the world. It seems like it’s our own choice of what we see, but what we see is all filtered information calculated from big data. The algorithms of the internet select information we like and brings it to us limitlessly. The elite culture has made people so full of themselves that everyone thinks what they see heard is true. The more they think so, the more internet feeds them what they think is reality. The computer screen has become a giant mirror, and all we see is our selves, nothing beyond. Deep down, no one cares about the reality anymore, and all we care is what we think is the truth. In 2016, Brexit happened, unpredictably. Then, Donald Trump was elected as the president of United States of America, contradicting predictions from all the major media and think tanks. More and more unpredictable results is happening challenging our beliefs. Does it mean democracy is falling apart like everyone was afraid of? Or, just as terrifying, does it mean no one really knows each other anymore? Where is individualism going? Architecture used to be the means of shaping people’s lifestyles. But now, the computer algorithms are re-shaping people’s identities and the way people live in the society. The question is: Why is this happening?

Ideologies Cities have come a long way in history that many different ideologies had governed the urban forms. In the past century, the industrialization, modernization, and globalization had created many problems in the urban environment. One the other hand, cities and urban areas had change dramatically in last century as well. There are so many important theories and ideas about how a city should be, or how are people should approach urban problems, came out of some masterminds. Some of them are extremely influential in terms of urban development of cities in the world. But here I am going to talk about some of theories and ideologies that are influential to the concept of this project.

In early 2016, the artificial intelligence AlphaGo beat the Go world champion Lee Sedol, meaning the final frontier of human brain has been taken down. Many people thinks that computers are the screens on desktop that helps people for data processing, but the recent development of artificial intelligence blew their mind. In SciFi London 48-hour film script writing competition, a competitor entered thousands of previous Sci-Fi movie script into an AI; and the AI output a full film script after a few seconds of processing and learning from the thousands of scripts, and finally won the competition against hundreds of hard scratching heading. This event contradicted the traditional impression of computers; instead of repeatedly processing what we input, they are able to think, learn, and even create. Just like the machine taking over labor intensive work for human after industrial evolution, the AI is going to gradually take over more complicated work, and then follows the dramatic change of existing city infrastructure. Large factories and data centers that requires no human are going to appear at deserts and farmland where the land price is lower, and take over most of people who works in the office towers, especially in data processing and financial field. Office towers are going to gradually empty out, and there will be vast amount of space left over in these towers. In China, most large real-estate firms are still investing in super tall buildings and hopping to turn them into money making machines just like what they did at economical booming a few years back. The central government is planning new districts like UNO City in Vienna and La Defense in Paris in order to give the economy a kick with transforming factory-leading economy into office-leading economy. At this moment, everyone wants the hot money in this new development opportunity, but without a broader vision, these new districts are going to turn into ghost towns. The difference between current low land price and possible future high renting price attracted thousands of development and constructions, which directly led the large overflow of office space. Up until now, the vacancy of offices in the city of Chengdu, one of the major cities in China, is 74%. And the vacancy of its development district Tianfu District and Hi-Tech Zone is over 90 percent. China has the largest population in the world, and 80% of its terrain is mountainous. With all these empty towers in the cities, there lies a large opportunity for transforming the spaces again. The question is how do we do it in this large urban scale? Technical speaking, large amount of space transforming will provide more jobs for design related professions such as architect and interior designer. However, 3D printing and Virtual Reality has lowered the bar for professional designing. Archi-

tects’ ability of spatial imagination is taken over by the powerful 3D generated virtual space that people could walk in. Also, the expertise of building assembly is taken over by 3D printers and robotic arms. With the structural limitation in the space generation software, clients are able to design the dream space they want without architects or construction contractors. As a profession that turns clients’ imagination into reality, architects are not as much needed in the future. So the question here is: How do architects take advantage of the current trending sharing economy? And what are architects going to do next? With so many questions asked and so many problems addressed, ideas and solutions should be examined for attacking them. Throughout the history, there are countless urban problems that was extremely difficult to solve. However, many architects and planners manage to solve these problems through their ideology of what urban environment should look like. Some of them were really successful, some are positively influential, and some made us understand something more about cities. Together, these previous influential ideology are going to foreshadow the later and more advance theories that could make urban space more ideal. One hundred years ago, Jane Jacobs’ asked the right question in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and largely influenced current city grid after the industrial evolution. One hundred years later, at this turning point of times, what is going to be changed in the cities that allows us to adapt the future? In this rapidly changing world, where do we place ourselves? To look forward, we need to understand the past, to understand the ideologies that current cities built upon.

Foreshadowing Ideologies In the past century, the industrialization, modernization, and globalization had created many problems in the urban environment. One the other hand, cities and urban areas had change dramatically in last century as well. There are so many important theories and ideas about how a city should be, or how are people should approach urban problems, came out of some masterminds. Some of them are extremely influential in terms of urban development of cities in the world. But here I am going to talk about some of theories and ideologies that are influential to the concept of this project.

Maison Dom-Ino 1914-1915, Le Corbusier

Combined with the orders Le Corbusier discovered from classical architecture, he created the open floor plan structure. Responding to the housing shortage in the Europe after the war started, his structure was the prototype as the physical platform for mass producing and constructing housing units. Because the units could be aligned in a series like the game of dominoes, this system was named the Dom-Ino House. This system not only was extremely influential to modern building structures, it also became the symbol for an era obsessed with customization and participation.

The Era of Verticality Late 19th Century

With the invention of elevator and modern sewer systems, as well as the steel frame building structure, architects finally were able to build tall buildings to accommodate the ever growing population. With the massive amount of housing built within short period time, the buildings were designed to contain same room units with regulated internal circulation. These housing units were mass produced in an efficient way, and they were the earliest model for the later innovation of modular housing.

Modularity and Composition 1947, Le Corbusier

Inspired by the transatlantic cruise ship Ocean Liner, Le Corbusier put his focus the programs of emerging trend of tall buildings. In his view, tall buildings could be much more than just simple repetition of housing units. The idea of modular units came to his mind that the placement of housing units and other programs, such as preschool and dining hall, can be intersect as long as they follow the same order, which was bounded by the modular parameter he created. For the practice of this idea, he conducted multiple Unite d’Habitation which were constructed in different locations, and their units follow the same order even in different buildings, yet the placement of different programs were different.

New Babylon 1957-1974, Constant

As a member of the CoBrA, and avant-garde movement located in Copenhagen, Brussels, and Amsterdam, Constant had the idea of a city that could transform itself to the city of the future. Elevated from the ground level, the new city would not be effected by terrain, which gives infinite possibilities of its location. The city will eliminate the growing inequality by having all the population under one roof. Also, the has many movable parts that could aid people’s travel. As a shared space, the city is constantly remodeling its living area for adaptation. This design was on a planetary scale that could eventually inhabit the entire humanity.

Non-Stop City 1964, Archizoom Associati

The No-stop City is an instrument of emancipation, an ironic critique of the ideology of architectural modernism taking onto its absurd limits. Branzi explains: “The idea of an inexpressive, catatonic architecture, outcome of the expansive forms of logic of the system and its class antagonists, was the only form of modern architecture of interest to us… A society freed from its own alienation, emancipated from the rhetorical forms of humanitarian socialism and rhetorical progressivism: an architecture which took a fearless look at the logic of grey, atheistic and de-dramatized industrialism, where mass production produced infinite urban decors.” The City frees us with its blankness, its featurelessness, allowing us to be anyone anywhere. The Non-Stop City acknowledges that people are the essential element of cities.

Ville Spatiale 1967, Yona Friedman

The Ville Spatiale is a multilayered structural skeleton on stilts sits over existing city parts that can be flexibly adjusted when needed. The structure is supported by stilts that are situated at an interval of 40-60 meters and which houses the accesses and facility networks. The base of the grid is 6×6 meter module that can accommodate various functions. The natural light can reach the ground level through the arranged free space in between. The inhabitants of the Ville Spatiale are capable of creating and positioning the living space they wanted. Through a program that enables them to self-planning and design their own dwelling without any architect. A Ville Spatiale can be fitted over less used areas in a city like railroad complexes. The goal is to expand the city within its boundaries without demolishing the existing buildings.

Metabolism 1959, Tange Kenzo, Kisho Kurokawa, and Kiyonori Kikutake

Metabolism was an architectural movement that began in Japan. The ideas of Metabolism progressed from being unrealized plans for futuristic cities, and it fused ideas about architectural megastructures with those of organic biological growth. The era of Metabolism includes a wide range of activities from conceptual city plans to experimental architecture like public buildings. In addition to architecture and urban planning, Metabolism became deeply involved in design and art via the term and ideology of environment.

“We regard human society as a vital process - a continuous development from atom to nebula. The reason why we use such a biological word, metabolism, is that we believe design and technology should be a denotation of human society. We are not going to accept metabolism as a natural process, but try to encourage active metabolic development of our society through our proposals.”

-- Metabolism: The Proposals for New Urbanism

Plug-in City

1960-1974, Archigram

Plug-in City is one of many vast, visionary creations produced in the 1960s by the radical collaborative British architecture group Archigram. Its form is a mega-structure with no buildings, just a massive framework into which dwellings in the form of cells or standardised components could be slotted. With interchangeable programs with experition dates such as housing, retail, office, and transportation constantly being replaced by the crane on top, the city is updating its systems with the advancement of technology, meaning the city will never grow old.

“The aesthetic of incompleteness, apparent throughout the Plug-In scheme and more marked than in megastructural precedents, may have derived from the construction sites of the building boom that followed the economic reconstruction of Europe.” -- Archigram: Architecture without Architecture

Borneo-Sporenburg, Amsterdam 1993-1996, West 8

Located at the harbor of Amsterdam, this urban design project conducted by west 8 successfully transformed the docks into a living community. After examining traditional dutch houses, the architects came up with a more efficient design template with limited land use and sufficient space and sunlight. Instead of using this template to design houses themselves, they turned this template into a local zoning regulation, and then invited many other architects to design individual houses in this community they created. By repeating this template in a great variety of dwelling modes and with maximum architectural variation, an animated street elevation emerges with a focus on the individual.

Torre de David, Venezuela Bottom-up strategies are one way to address prevailing urban scarcities. Torre David, a 45-story office tower in Caracas, was almost complete when it was abandoned following the death of its developer and a national banking crisis that crippled the Venezuelan economy in 1994. The housing shortage led to occupation of the complex by squatters led by ex-convicts in October 2007, beginning with over 1000 families, representing about 40% of Caracas’ “informal communities”, started to take over the center core of the tower. Neglected for over a decade, in it became the improvised home for a community of over 1,000 families living in an extra-legal and tenuous occupation that many called a vertical slum. Although the unfinished tower lacks basic infrastructure, these families managed to maintain living in a fairly poor condition. Interestiongly, originated as a slum for living, this tower is undergoing some increase of residents and many more programs. Thus, this informal community in the tower of Torre David becomes more like a vertical city.

Kowloon Wall City, Hong Kong Kowloon Walled City was a largely ungoverned densely-populated settlement. Originally a Chinese military fort, the Walled City became an enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain by China in 1898. After Japan’s surrender in 1945, China announced its intent to reclaim its rights to the Walled City. Then a large amount of Chinese refugees and outlaws took over the walled city. Since then, Kowloon Wall City became a urban settlement that falls completely outside of the government control. With the highest population density, the government’s numerous attempts of demolishing the walled city were almost never successful. The reason why it is called Kowloon Wall City is because the settlement is almost completely separated from the outside. Within the settlement, there is a self-sustaining society. Also because there is no government control, the city became a is constant growing both in terms of population and size. Since the footprint of the city is limited, the only way to increase square footage is to increase its height. It is very obvious that most of its top levels are filled with informal add-on structures. These structures vary from one floor to sometimes five floors, which put a enormous amount of risk of clapsing original building structure. It is very interesting that even in this highly informal community, everything was running smoothly. Due to the limited amount of resources and economic asset, the settlement is actually very efficient, and rational. Without macro-management, the place basically runs solely on the survival game of capitalism. For example, if there needs to be a barber shop in one section, there has to be one, or a resident would become one due to the demand. On the contrary, if it is not necessary to have a pharmacy in another section of the community, the pharmacy’s business will not sustain for long. In conclusion, even the settlement’s social structure is highly informal, it’s development remains highly rational.

Olympic Village, Munich Planned and constructed for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, the buildings and facilities of the Olympic Village were to be used intensively after the end of the Games themselves as housing units for local college students. The village was also intended to serve as a residential complex after the Olympics and a showcase for modern forms of residential construction and urban planning. With in the complex, each of the students is given one unit, and they are allow to express themselves on the facade of their own units. In this way, the individuality of each student could be expressed in an non-disruptive yet obvious way. Thus, massive amount of diversity was brought to this community, and so was new aesthetics.

Open Source Urbanism Living in the age of the internet, no one questions where the internet exists or what the open source code does. The concept of free sharing and open source information is not strange to the public. It is very interesting that the terms “open source code” or “open source software” were very strange terms twenty years ago. Before 1990, computer giants like IBM and Microsoft dominated the software world. These companies kept their source codes very secretive because they were extremely concerned about people cracking or copying their systems. At the time, only a few pieces of software published by these companies, mostly business software, were able to run on home computers, which very much limited the power of these computers. In 1991, a freely modifiable source code called “Linux Kernel” was developed by Linus Torvalds. It was published and later used internationally, which broke the limit set up by traditional software packages that forbid anyone except for the publishers to modify or distribute the software. This breakthrough on open source codes made people realize the power of computers; the idea of open source laid the foundation of the information technologies that we have now. The concept of open source, unexpectedly, did not ruin the business of these large corporations, but instead stimulated their sales since computer products became much more desirable. The existing real-estate market and the information technology market are extremely alike from a macro perspective. In the IT world, the electronic and software giants were the rule-makers of the game, and they did not want anyone to threaten their profit margin. Similarly, real-estate superpowers are trying to protect their interests the same way as the IT giants did. As a result, the cities are filled with large numbers of building projects that lack variety. By variety, I meant the variety of truly customized space for each individual and specific functions instead of the variety of building shapes and designs in city skylines. As a result, people are compromising a major part of their lives into these not –so-ideal spaces because they simply do not have more choices. Prices for housing in urban areas are skyrocketing because the limitation of density in city cores, so many people with lower income have been driven out of the cities. What if we use the same idea of open source code that completely changed the computer world on the real estate market?

Early Computer and Its Operator

Most likely, there would be an even more powerful resistance form the real-estate market than it was from the information technology market. Housing is more of a necessity for average citizens in most cultures, therefore the market for these real-estate monopolies is more stable. On top of that, an enormous amount of capital is invested in this ever-growing and profitable business. Thus, none of the business people in this game want to change the system. The real-estate property differs from electronics and software products in that realestate often requires much more capital for purchasing. This gives the wealthy much more influence and power over the individuals. + Plus, the government cannot predict how stable the new open source system is, so that a change like this could be a disaster to their administration. This make this existing market much less flexible to change for the governmental perspective.

However, because housing is more of a necessity, the general public could participate more in this urban movement -- unlike software coding in late 1980’s, which was only understood by a very small amount of elites. If open source code gave people who understood computer language freedom to create their own software, then open source urbanism is liberating every individual who desires to create his or her own ideal spaces. What open source stands for here is more freedom of making and doing. Looking back at the history of urban design, cities have been constructed to fit the ideologies of small groups of elite. The ideology could be Robert Moses’ grand vision of New York City, Haussmann’s renovation of Paris, Oscar Niemeyer’s constructing of Brasilia, or a group of planners’ design of modern cities. These ideologies and designs are not wrong in nature. They are very well thought out and considerate about people’s needs, which are what planners try to achieve the whole time. Today’s cities reflect the ideology of city planners’ consideration for people’s life quality and the economy of the city. Planners try so hard to figure out people’s needs and try to design for them. They usually think that rationally planning for people is justice -- which is true in some way. However, the problem with designs today lies in the word “rationality.” When Corbusier designed the Radiant City, he was creating a better urban lifestyle for average citizens. In his design, it is obvious that he considered enormous amount of problems of existing conditions and tried to solve them. During its design, Corbusier even studied and experimented both the minimum and ideal space for each individual home. The residential quad became the essential part of the city to emphasize and celebrate human life. Considering the health for the citizens, heavy industry is separated from human activities. Also, a large amount of green space was designed around residential towers. For each unit, cross shaped tall buildings maximize the sunlight. Even though this design fits all the ideal urban models at the time, and it could have been the perfect city, it never ended up getting built for various reasons. The fist one is that it did not feel like a city that people are used to anymore. Human nature is very complicated: what people want sometimes is not what people need. A famous example is the story of Nokia and how their rational decisions doomed the leading cellphone company. For many years, cellphones around the world are getting smaller and more complex in terms of functions. Nokia was very successful on the track of getting their new models slimmer and more complex for quite a while. By 2008, Nokia invested heavily on the new project that fits all cellphone users’ desire: it has a super thin bodywork, a full keyboard for typing, and eyeful different

gadgets on home screen looking just like a personal computer. However, Nokia’s new model did not sell as well as they expected. Why? Because the trend was completely altered by a new revolutionary product: iPhone. Apple computer’s new vision of what cellphones should be like was eye-opening for everyone and soon gained its extreme popularity. Except for making rational decisions, there was nothing wrong that Nokia did at the time. The new model did combine every desirable feature and even made them better as a whole. Logically speaking, it should have been the best seller as a result. However, again, we are unpredictably irrational in nature. Current urban design is a lot like making a Nokia cellphone, planners carefully gather people’s opinions for a better living environment. On the contrary, collective rational decisions might not end up with a great design. Therefore, the idea of open source urbanism could lead to more urban experiments and design conventions. Plus, the city will be able to provide more for their people if people are given more freedom of making their own input in the urban environment they live in. According to the speech on Lendlt Forum 2017 by Thomas J. Curry, director of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency under U.S. Department of the Treasury, there are only two things in the world cannot be avoided: tax and regulation. This means within the framework of tax and regulation, everything else could be determined majorly by the market force, which makes the system much simpler. One other great thing about the market is that a majority part of the market is consumers. Since consumers are the most powerful force in the market, average citizens will be given more power in terms of make changes in the cities. Jane Jacobs once said in the book The Death and Life of Great American Cities: “Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.” When everyone is empowered in contributing to build the cities in their own imagination, the cities would be truly humanized and diversified. This seems like an extreme populous idea. Of course there will be worries about this idea of letting the majority of people taking control of the cities, and letting the society be governed by the market. In fact that the involvement of current state government in people’s daily life is actually not as much anymore: The government agencies set up the regulations and boundaries to protect the interests of majorities. Beyond that, they are as a part of the market as every other individual private entities. The collapse of Soviet Union was a great example for the failure of state ownership and lack of free market in the post-industrial age.

In contrast of the political power, the market force plays a significant bigger role in terms of the development of our civilization. For example, the online shopping corporation Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1996 mostly to extract profit from the existing retail market by providing online shopping service through existing shipping network. However, what Amazon had accomplished was much more than that: it imbedded the idea of online shopping into people’s mind and established whole new industries for e-commerce. Since then, the total revenue for e-commerce is doubling every three years. The possibilities that online shopping brought completely changed many people’s lifestyles that 75% of global population had shopped online before, and it had a great impact on global economic structure. It was projected that by the end of 2017, many groceries stores across America will provide online shopping and ordering service. Looking back to the founding moment of this tech company, its initial intention was to survive in the global market and make profit, but its service had a great impact on our civilization’s development. Not only Amazon is positively influencing our civilization, but many other corporations such as Facebook, Uber, and Airbnb are also finding their own way of changing people’s lives. They are all products of the global free market under the common framework of tax and regulations. Plus, privatized hospitals and prisons are making so much profit in the United States that many law enforcement and fire departments are going to be privatized in near future. In conclusion, the economic force created by free market and consumers are playing an extremely important role in our modern society, and it is possible to hand over the city governance to the market under certain regulations and framework. Under the same framework of tax and regulation, private ownership is revolutionizing under the concept of sharing economy. Integrated with real-estate and architecture industry, the idea of open source urbanism can offer so much more based on People’s decisions. In this case, cities will possibly be even more diverse. Spaces that architects and planners can never think of could be created.

Sharing Economy in Urbanism The architecture and construction industry has always been developing and changing. In the past few years, there have been numerous breathtaking projects and notable events in this innovative field: the CCTV building was built, 1,715 submissions were sent to Guggenheim Helsinki Design Competition, and the Amager Bakke incineration plant in Copenhagen completed its construction. These amazing projects and events are directly related to architecture and design. However, the most important event among them all, although it is not directly related to architecture, is the booming of an online website: Airbnb. Airbnb is the product of the concept of sharing economy, which is based on the internet of things. Incubated by Y Combinator in 2008, Airbnb is an online community and marketplace for anyone to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world. The hosts of homes are able to list their rooms or vacation houses for both short term travelers and long term renters. In just a few years, Airbnb has grown into a giant platform with more than 150 million people in more than 65 thousand cities around the world. Thanks to the internet and sharing economy, Airbnb generates billions of dollars in revenue each year. It is altering people’s perceptions about private properties and complete strangers. Moreover, Airbnb is gradually increasing its influence on the global real-estate market, which directly effects the architecture and construction market as well. Sharing economy, as it reads, is based on people who share their properties, or pretty much anything. It is a term that originally came from of the open-source community to refer to peer-to-peer based sharing of access to goods and services. The term is now sometimes used in a broader sense to describe any sales transactions that are done via online market places, even ones that are business to business, rather than just peer-to-peer. Not only has Airbnb benefited from the new concept of sharing economy, firms such as Uber, WeWork, NeighboorGoods, and MoBike are getting more and more popular. These services are usually run by large tech firms. These firms usually mass manage these products and services through internet and big data, which requires very little human power and maintenance. Plus, while gathering more customers, the companies are collecting more data from everyone. Artificial intelligence and deep learning computers are constantly analyzing the data which shows patterns and habits of the general public that could potentially help these companies improve

Peer-To-Peer Rental: The Rise of the Sharing Economy (2013) The Economist

their services. Therefore, these services are getting better and better in short terms. Despite the aspect of big data and deep learning, the greatest thing about these sharing economy based services is that they dramatically increased the usage and efficiency of each property. Take Uber for example: the typical middle class citizen usually owns a car to drive to work. While the person is working, the car is sitting in the workplace parking lot for most of the day. When the person goes home, the car will be sitting in the garage for the rest of the night. Most of private car owners are only using their cars for less than 10% of the day, and during that 10% of driving time, car owners were very likely to run into traffic jams. Uber provides a solution: a convenient, inexpensive and safe taxi service with different choices of cars and customizable routes. Just with the touch of a button, the nearest private driver will pick riders up within minutes, and take them to their set destination with drivers’ own vehicle on demand. This service reduces the amount of personal automobiles on the roads, and largely increases the usage of those shared cars that are running. By having a somewhat smaller amount of cars constantly running for tasks instead of one car for each task, it eases rush hour traffic which would make these rides more efficient.

Sharing economy sure increases the usage of shared properties, and maximizes the efficiency of different resources, but one could argue that the concept of sharing economy contradicts the idea of the consumer culture based on private ownerships. Current economic structure is highly based on global consumerism and private ownership. When people start to share what they have, much less products and resources are going to be purchased. For example, about 40% of food in an American family’s refrigerator goes straight to trash. On one hand, it is wasteful and disrespectful for our resources. However on the other hand, the wasted supplies are a part of the drive for the trillion dollar retail industry. When people start to share various products and meals in the neighborhood as NeighborGoods envisioned, less food and daily supplies will be needed and wasted for each home. In the past, the unit of ownership for a power tool set or a baseball bat was usually restricted to one family. But in the near future of sharing economy, since everyone is sharing their properties, the unit of ownership might expand to an entire neighborhood as a community. Because the demand for products decreases, many manufacturing and mass production based industries are on the edge of disappearing. With such a great impact on current society and economy, the sharing economy has a large influence on architecture and design as well. Despite Airbnb’s enormous influence on the real-estate market, which stimulated the field of architecture and interior design, the concept of sharing economy changes the way people socialize and the typology of urban communities on a more massive scale. Here, we have to talk about how people live their lives and socialize in a historical context. In traditional settings, cities are divided into units of families or villages where a smaller group of people could form a strong organization to protect their group interests. Stepping into the 21st century, the internet enables everyone to gather information from thousands of miles away and to communicate with hundreds of people on a single device. Average citizens are given much more power to coordinate an amazing amount of resources on a daily basis, and many of their trivial tasks are taken care of by artificial intelligence and automated machinery. Then, the concept of sharing economy made the world population reexamine private ownerships. Forward thinkers used to imagine the world of modular homes being plugged into different structures in different locations so people can have their private homes and all their belongings with them anywhere they go. What sharing economy promised is that people do not actually have to own anything. Under this new concept, people who like to travel could get a home experience anywhere, but with much less effort and expense. Based on the usage of trending apps such as Uber and Airbnb, people, especially from the cities, are accepting this new concept very well. In response, ar-

chitecture and urban design will adapt to this change of people’s perception of ownership. Storage space in homes will be reduced. Instead, more circulation and recreational spaces could be programmed in residential designs. Offices will have less cubicles for each person. Instead, a more open working environment will emerge. Traffic lanes in cities will reduce due to the increasing number of shared automated vehicles running on the streets. Instead, sidewalks will be widened, and even with strip parks and resting areas. While sharing economy revolutionizes city scape over time, the social structure starts to change dramatically as well. Professions with intensive manual labor and repetitive data processing will disappear. Much more work will be done either through computed machines or through socializing between people. Therefore, less people are going to work facing computers or machinery, instead, they will be facing other people. Before artificial intelligence completely replaces human beings, the amount of communication between people is going to escalate to a new altitude. Since people are essentially consuming less resources, and the production level is getting higher, the amount of time people have to work is going to largely reduce. Thus, people will possibly spend more time on recreational activities and socializing instead of working. In some sense, the future working class might not need to be working at all. Meanwhile, with the advancement of medical technology, the entire demographics will shift towards an older age. In an extreme case that author Yuval Noah Harari described, a whole new useless class will emerge when the artificial intelligence outsmart us, and people in this social class are essentially useless to the world. In this case, because tech companies are gathering so much data through sharing economy and humans’ massive amount of online activities, the artificial intelligence will be able to learn at its fastest rate. Very soon, they will be able to deal with everything much better than human beings, even better at dealing with human beings ourselves. When this AI revolution happens, the useless class will not be able to do anything better than the robots and machines. Even though this projection of Harari sounds ridiculous, it is unquestionable that the social structure is undergoing a dramatic change in the age of internet and sharing economy. While the social structure and lifestyle changes, architecture and urban design will have to quickly respond and step forward. After all, architecture and cities are made out of humans; the other way around, architecture and urban design are about designing space for humans as well. The change of lifestyles, and how people inhabit these spaces, will change the functions of architecture and programs within it. On a bigger scale, the change of social structure will lead to the change of cityscapes.

The Post-Taylorism What the social structure would be like in the age of open source urbanism? As most of historians would refer to, the Taylorism emerged soon after the industrial revolution in Europe. Taylorism significantly improved the economic efficiency by specifying workers into different tasks in the production line. In this way, each worker is doing repetitive work of what they are very much used to and good at. The workflow under this type of management was extremely fast comparing to other productions types. Most of the jobs existing now are greatly impacted by this theory of management, and they somehow are still part of the Taylorist workflow. However, when open source emerges, most of now existing jobs will not exist due to the rise of artificial intelligence. Human will no longer get stuck in any production related ocupation, even jobs such as data processing and information analysis. Instead, peple are going to engage more creative works such as art and sports. The open source urbanism will escalate this change by bring more individuality and diversity to the social structure. Then, the humanity will enter a new era of posttylorism.

Principles of Scientific Management (1911)

Frederick Taylor

Open Source Programs The Domino house system was such an extraordinary idea that could transform the entire building industry and even people’s perception of lifestyle evolving architecture. However, the projects following this idea was not successful. The architect Le Corbusier empowered himself to influence people’s lives in his own way, meaning people had to follow the lifestyle he designed. After years these houses was built, the residence had constructed multiple additions to each projects to accommodate their own different needs, and these houses looked nowhere near the original design. In Koolhaas’ book Delirious New York, he explained that programs are the most essential elements for the buildings, no matter for skyscrapers or small shed. However, in the 21st century, new buildings are supposed to be able to change its program with people’s needs instantly to adapt to the ever changing political and social environment, as well as the fast-paced world. In recent years, human race has experienced the biggest changes ever in human history. The technological advancement is never so fast that no one can accurately predict what is going to happen in 10 years, not even the top scientists and tech developers. It is the first time that human race has ever experienced the fact that everything we teach at school might be useless when they grow up. Leading with technology, the world is constantly changing at a extremely fast pace. A person can not keep up with the society is he or she is isolated for more than 5 years. Even if the person does, it would take a very long time for he or she to get used to what had happened in just 5 years. How do we build a building that will stand there for over one hundred years? Yes we need monuments. But for everyday building, mostly function based, we want them to be interchangeable in terms of functionality, technology, programs, and even locations. And yes, open source urbanism might be the answer.

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Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972) Rem Koolhaas

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Formality The ideology of open source urbanism might be the solution to the problems in the cities, and even in larger scales. Only practice can examine whether a theory is correct or not. Thus, a physical form must be given to this idea that could contain its possibilities. A form that could integrated in the existing system, a form that could bring order to the chaotic reality, a form that could give hope to people who have lost it. a form with infinite possibilities...

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Although there are serious problems with urbanization, it is unwise to abandon the urban development plan as a whole. It is far more sustainable to have the majority of the population live in cities, plus it is an easy solution to the growing population issue. In last few decades, history has proven that decentralized population and resources have huge environmental impacts and largely reduces the efficiency of all infrastructures. Vast landscape and spread out settlements create enormous possibilities for systematic waste. Despite material waste for building the infrastructure reaching that far, it is a fact that one water pipe leak just the size of a dime will waste nearly 6,300 gallons of water a month. In addition, about 14-18% of water treated in the United States is wasted through aging and damaged infrastructure, as well as faulty meters. According to the global trends, as well as many other obvious facts, the urban lifestyle will continue to dominate the planet in the future. To respond to the concept of open source urbanism, there must be a carrier for the ideas to be rooted. A pre-fabricate based modular system integrated with basic infrastructure that functions as both architectural structural elements and three dimensional perimeter set for different uses could not be more perfect. The modules establish order in the city fabric, and it is an effective way of acknowledging people the concept of zoning and space. Owners are able to build different programs within the perimeter and its structural load limit. The open source concept of Modular system will allow individuals take more control of their idea of ideal city rather than being under control of large developers, thus the urban areas will continue to grow healthily. The standard size of each module is 20’x 20’, which would fit in most of the affordable homes. Owners could purchase more of these as a part of their property. Larger developments are allowed to build their own modules of buildings fitting in the same grid. This allows verticality and movement in vertical dimension in terms of public spaces. Made of high strength aluminum alloy, the structure tubing could be minimized down to just a thin layer of metal tubing. In the hollow tubing, utilities like water and electricity could run though to provide basic functionality for the module system. The horizontal waffle structure is able to take relatively heavy load without deforming, which enables many possibilities for various programs.

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So where did the standard size of 20 feet by 20 feet come from? After a long time’s searching for a right scale for a perfect square footage to house different programs, a formula came across. There are so many different programs that it is not possible for one module to host them all. So the programs were decided into a hierarchy system, and then they became the hierarchy of objects in these programs. For example, a par of the park need to fit in one module. So what is the essential elements of parks? The question came down to which object is the more important ones and it has to be universal important. Then, the conclusion is a middle sized tree. When looking for space for human, it is actually easier since architects are relative more familiar with human scale and human inhabited spaces. Then, when many important things were put together, a rough sized of how big each module should be became more clear. One small unit of public housing, or one to two stories for living are about the same size as the height of a middle sized tree. After numerous tests and debates, the size of 20’ x 20’ was decided.

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Assembly of the Parts As a modular system, the parts that it consists can be considered modular as well. Each module is made out of 12 structural members. There are two different types of members: the vertical ones and horizontal ones. It means a successful assembly needs four vertical ones and eight horizontal ones. Each structural member is hollow inside for different reasons. The first reason to make it hollow is to reduce its own weight without reducing it ability of being an structure member, and it is very successful. Each member weighs only six ponds, and it is capable of support more than a few metric tons of weights by itself. Despite its weight, when the parts come together as a module, it can endure far more impact than a typical house. The second reason is that the members can host basic infrastructures within, such as sewer, fresh water, conditioned air, internet, and electricity. As illustrated, the joints have open ends that these different systems could travel through modules, even for a long distance. Also, the replacement and updating of the infrastructure is made easier this way. Third, the hollow tubes are made for fire resistance. Leaning from the nine eleven disaster, metal structure is not very safe during a high temperate fire incident. In this case, the hollow tubing containing sprinkler system will not only sprinkle the building interior, but also fill up the tubing with water so the structural tubing will not overheat and collapse.

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Parts Coming together All the parts are made possible for hand assembly without any power tools. The corner joint of horizontal members can be snapped together, and then bounded by having the vertical member sliding through, and then lock onto them.

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Aluminum Alloy Structural Member

Three-way Joint with Opening for Embedding Infrastructure

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Joint Detail When all the parts come together, the corners are open ended. A cap or a joint needs to be put on the end to either protect the infrastructure inside or connect to other modules. There are three types of parts can be put on for different purposes. Firstly, the connection joint member. This is the connection between two modules, which holds two corners together. This member also has a hollow center for infrastructure to punch through. Secondly, the open-end member. This one is for connecting to outside systems or exterior hook-ups. For example, the rooftop solar panels will need this opening to connect to the power grid. Thirdly, the closed-end member. This member is purely for the protection of the systems and infrastructures inside.

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Closed-End Member

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Ultra lightweight Waffle Slab The waffle slab made out of aluminum alloy can easily snap onto the vertical structure members.

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Honeycomb Structure Insulated Wall

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Possibilities for Fabricating This design of module is all about the possibilities and customizations. 3D printing as one of the most efficient method of fabricating individually customized homes, can be easily integrated into the modular system. With a large multi-material 3D printer that designed for the module that can print exactly 20’ x 20’ x 20’, a customized housing unit or any other type of architecture can be printed within the parameter in a short amount of time. With the fast advancement of 3D printing technology, soon these printer will be able to print traditional materials such as metal, wood, concrete, stone, plastic as building materials. They will also be able to print none traditional materials as building materials such as rubber, paper, fabric, and even organic materials.

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Material: Aluminum Alloy Pure aluminum (Al) is a soft, lightweight, odorless, non-magnetic, nonsparking, silvery white colored metal. It is also highly reactive and does not occur freely in nature. Instead it is bound up as aluminum silicate in clay, minerals, rocks, and gemstones. Comprising 8 percent of the Earth’s crust, aluminum is the third most abundant element (after oxygen and silicon) and the most abundant metal. Aluminum is also the most widely distributed and used metal in the world. It is malleable and ductile, and its melting point is among the lowest of the metals at 660° C. Household applications are common in cookware, deodorants (as aluminum salts), medicines such as buffered aspirin, and antacids (as alumina). Although aluminum is the most reactive metal in common use, it is highly resistance to weathering and corrosion. When exposed to air, aluminum quickly forms an invisible oxide layer on its surface that protects the metal from further corrosion. This oxide layer is thickened in a process termed anodizing. Anodized aluminum is commonly used to coat cookware.

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Jeremy Clarkson picking up a high strength aluminum car frame with just two fingers Top Gear

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Informality In 1972, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenou wrote one of the most important books on modern urbanism Learning from Las Vegas. Today, the world actually needs to learn from the some of the poorest communities in global south. The eye-opening creations and interventions came out of these informal dwellings gave form to the cities that can vessel the abstract ideology of open source urbanism. The informality of these formal objects might open the door for endless possibilities.

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Architects often regard themselves as creators, somewhat like a god; they create buildings out of their imagination, and shape the way how people live and work within the objects they designed. Architects and designers have been told to focus on making every single small decisions in order to make architecture work. However, the statement is usually not true when they are dealing with projects in urban scales. With no exception, past utopians and urban manifestos have been focused on ideology of creators. The spaces are created for people who live the way imagined and decided by the creators. It is romantic indeed, and there may have been some societal subversions, and innovative social ecologies. However, the entire design is based on the collectivism of a common ideology. The greatest utopia in the history was described in Karl Marx’s Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei, and have been put into practice in several countries for tens of years. It approves a singular value system, and it is the creators’ value system. They think their imaginary state of perfect life is what everyone wants. Eventually, this idea magnified the collectivism in the communist nations which give a very small group of people infinite power over others, and contradicts the relationship between production and consumption in the economic systems. Marx thinks that liberating people from evil capitals and having everyone being equal is giving them the ultimate freedom. The truth is that money, Marx thinks is the root of evil, is the greatest instrument of freedom. Until now, the freedom can be expressed and reflected in an architectural form. The informality of the modular system contains the transformation from an ideology of open source urbanism to a real community with infinite possibilities. Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. Borrowing ideas form cyber world, the concept of open source urbanism brings both formality and informality. Formal in its simple structure, the modular system with embedded infrastructure sets the basic unit and parameter for urban growth; informal in its open source nature, this system could transform urban spaces by using modular building components to form larger societal hub and multiple city layers. Even though each separate module is simple, they form a new, highly rational urban system well-suited to the complexities of modern individuals and societies when they are grouped in a high density algorithmic pattern. The module design possesses amazing customizability and is able to adapt to multiple urban environments, geographic cultures, individual lifestyles, and technological advancements. Its adoption will lead to new discoveries that helps us solve existing problems and possibly influence future trends in architectural and urban design.

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New Urban Typology Traditional urban typology traps people indoors: a report pointed out that average Americans spend 90% of time indoors. Some designers think this could be an opportunity to promote better indoor environment since so much time is spent there. On the contrary, the reason why people spend so much time indoors is the outdoor space is not ideal, sometimes disastrous. With the liberation of ground level, many layers could be gradually added on top of each other’s and create more outdoor space and indoor space. Constructing more and better designed outdoor space could draw people out from their offices and homes, and giving the urban space more livelihood. The self-growing communities would form a new urban typology that drastically differs from any traditional urban typology. The city texture is not designed by any planner or designer, instead, it is the expression of millions individuals, and it is constantly changing. The new urban typology would increase the outdoor space, the land use efficiency, and the sense identity of both the city and individuals.

City in Layers It is well known that cities with greater density are far more efficient than the ones with lower density. One of the best ways to increase density of an urban area without adding traffic to the existing city streets is to create new layers of cities. Traditional cities has only one or two layers of public space for activities, and a large part of each layer used by transportation. Multi-layered cities would be able to increase the public spaces and gain more access to all the buildings. Similar to the skywalk system in Hong Kong, separating traffic and pedestrian could increase the efficiency as well. Unlike Hong Kong’s only layer above the streets, these new layers crated can add multiple pedestrian and even traffic levels to the city. The newly added layers will punch through the buildings, creating new sky lobby spaces for public use, also connecting multiple buildings together just like the street level. These new layers will create a new city fabric that is far more complex with much more possibilities.

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Structure With the modules being the structure of the system, constructing a community is similar to building a Lego model: simply stacking the modules on top of others and connect the power and water systems with standardized hook-ups. Similar to the Lego models, the more the single modular units are, the more stable the system is. The lateral load resistance is often transferred to the adjacent buildings.

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Elevated City By elevating the layers of cities, the government would save enormous amount of budget from building large dam or draining system. Plus, most of units in the structure are owned by civilians or private corporations. When the sea level eventually raised over the ground level of these cities, people could just continue to move up on the existing structure. Since the aluminum alloy hake strong resistance against eroding in water, they could stand sturdy in the water. The new waterways throughout the cities would be the new opportunity to develop new water transportation systems. As a whole, these flooded cities would be the permanent monuments to warn the world of the climate change.

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Space Management Although the spaces created by individual modules are highly informal, there is still micromanagement within the community. Owners of these modules have the absolute power to veto the development happing directly connecting the modules unless it’s pre-existing; and they have right to vote what could happen in their community, as well as the power to bring investment or development. The modules provide the perfect flexibility for the constant changing programs and use of spaces. With smaller chunks of spaces divided informally by people who occupy them, the people become a part of the security system, watching and taking care of their surroundings. In this case, less government funded law enforcement is needed, instead, the community becomes the law enforcement to lower the crime.

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Transit Systems It is not hard to find out that cities nowadays are mainly designed for automobile since it largely increased efficiency of urban activities. A large drawback from this mind set is that the more people use cars, the more often traffic jam appears. Luckily, recent technology could help people solve this paradox. Autonomous automobile allows the total separation between traffic and pedestrian. Since self-driving cars operates on sensors, there will be no sufficient natural light or traffic signal needed. With highly efficient master algorithm for self driving cars, the ground level and even some upper levels could entirely become a massive transportation system without human interference.

City Texture City texture is the combination of countless tectonic forms and their facade. Traditionally speaking, the regulation of city development are mostly two dimensional, which give architects endless opportunities to design and build iconic structures. By dividing the city texture into smaller chunks and restricting the vertical dimension as well as the horizontal ones, the city texture would be more diversified vertically. On one hand, the city looks more unified as a whole standing from far away. On the other hand, there are more layers of detail in terms of what to see and experience at pedestrian level.

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The New Horizon The new layers of cities creates enormous amount of public space away from the ground, these spaces are interconnected by different programs such as running trails, bike lanes, parks, gardens, and even shops. These spaces then connects to the dead spaces like roofs of buildings, creating many new horizons in the urban fabric, making the cities truly multi-layered urban areas. For many buidlings, adding elevation means creating a better view for activities. This urban system will constantly give people great excitement of constantly changing and elevated views into the city.

Individualism Since the modules are the private properties of each individual, and they would take advantage to display themselves. Similar to the Olympic students housing in Munich, where students could take advantage of the large surface of facade on their individual student housing unit to display their thoughts on politics, interests, and personalities. The module gives people even more freedom on ways of expressing themselves. The modules somehow can be treated as the platforms conveying their manifestation of avant-garde.

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Basic Systems The modules have built in space for the basic life supporting systems like water, power, and sewage system to run through. The simple hook-ups allows residence to use these systems in their own modules, however, connecting to these hook-ups require to install an electric sensor for monitoring the usage. These basic systems are connected to the central distribution system underneath each geographic section. Roof top gardens are able to collect rain water and clean it using built-in bio-filters; and roof top solar power stations have the ability to capture the solar energy and store it in the power storage. Sometimes when there is a roof top garden or a solar power station nearby, cheaper filtered water or electricity could apply to the module in order to encourage renewable resources.

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Sustainability There are so many existing “green buildings” in the world, and yes they do have very limited negative impact on global environment. However, even though the green buildings themselves might do not consume as much energy as other old buildings, the carbon footprint on transportation, construction is still very significant. Also, without constructing the building, the land of which sits on could potentially be a piece of forest that absorbs greenhouse emission. On the contrary, even living and working in a less green building in densely populated area would possibly be more environmentally friendly. With convenient public transportation and walkable city streets, the carbon footprint per person could be greatly reduced in a very large scale. Increasing the density of urban space is equivalent to increasing efficiency of energy. Instead of expanding the cities horizontally, the cities could grow vertically to eliminate the impact on land and deforestation. The less land humans take over by constructing parking lots and short buildings, the more land could be used as real green vegetation. Plus, ever growing number of electric cars and environmental friendly urban landscapes would really enhance the sustainability of architecture. In another words, it means that, in terms of sustainability point of view, the location of the buildings may be more important than the green technology itself. True sustainable building is the result of reducing every single element that has carbon footprint. The new intervention of informal urbanism with its own structural support would allow cities growing vertically without too much central planning and over-complicated process from the state’s governance. To attract people to live in the cities, private owned partnership will apply to the new construction and ownership to the new urban system. Also the real-estate market will be more affordable due to the new influx of massive amount of urban space for housing, office, and public uses. Even though living in cities are much more sustainable, the current city models are based on extremely high consumption of fossil fuel, which directly leads to the ongoing climate change. Firstly, the main source of electricity in most countries comes from conventional coal/gas burning power plants which are extremely inefficient in terms of energy transfer, and create massive amount of greenhouse emission and air pollution. Luckily, the climate change has been recognized by public, many countries have started to shift its power grid to more sustainable sources, and solar panels stated to appear on single family house roofs in order to generate power for residential daily

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use as well. With similar concept, new informal communities in the cities will be able to serve large amount of power by using solar panel on top of existing buildings and new structures. The solar panels will be installed by power companies, and the owner of each rooftop will be paid by a portion of electricity production each month. The electricity will go into the local power grid and provide a significant amount of city’s daily electricity usage. The power generated will be a part of their electricity bill collected by power companies; and then a part of it will go back to those who provided rooftop space for solar panels. With rough calculating, a 20’x20’ roof will be able to generate 7200 kWh per month using PV panels with 30% efficiency, which serves about 8 families completely off-grid with average electricity usage. Along with the advancement of technology, the number will only go up. Plus, having people to accept this idea is less challenging nowadays, thanks to successful companies such as Airbnb, WeWork, and Uber, that the concept of sharing economy has being practiced and accepted by large amount of populations in recent years. Secondly, modern urban lifestyle relies so much on automobile that consumes fossil fuel and emits greenhouse gas. With new structure built in between buildings, many layers of traffic will be created. This new traffic system rejects traditional cars running in its lane since the space for traffic is enclosed within the structure without large ventilation for large amount of exhaust gas. The enclosure protects pedestrian, and makes sure that people are completely separated from the traffic. Also, it increase the efficiency of autonomous traffic by eliminating uncertain human influence and increase average speed. The traffic “tunnel” is divided into four sections, two for each direction. The sections on the exterior are drop-off lanes that have openings for people to enter and exit the cars, meanwhile the center sections are lanes for fast traffic. Cars just took off will have to accelerate in the far part of drop-off zone to reach the synced speed in center lanes to join the fast traffic. All the cars in this new urban traffic fabric will be autonomous automobiles linked together under the one network so they will interact with other cars in the network calculated by algorithms after processing collected big data from the system. Most of these cars running on the streets are shared rides driven by artificial intelligence, thus people would not have to buy private cars to feel like first-class citizens. Also, this means the entire traffic system is running efficiently by computer, even though there is no traffic light, traffic jam will almost never happen. Because of the exclusiveness of conventional automobile in the cities and extremely high taxes on motor engine cars in the near future, petro powered cars will become toys for the rich living in the suburbs considered as classic cars.

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Thirdly, efficient connections between cities in the world are often run by airplanes that has great environmental impact. There are over one hundred thousand fights are scheduled every day consuming 5% of fossil product, and emitting about 3% of world’s greenhouse gas goes directly into ozone. On the other hand, this shocking fact incubated the new generation of long distance transportation - Hyperloop. The Hyperloop operating tunnels will be able to be imbedded in the city fabric with newly constructed modular structure system blending in with the city traffic. The new pre-fabricated modules also provide low cost and fast constructing structure and infrastructure for Hyperloop tunnels outside of the cities. Fourthly, many developing industrial countries have existing air pollution problems, and some of them are getting more and more serious. In China, smog has become a part of people’s life that they hardly see clear sky. The bigger problem is the health crisis caused by air pollution that over 3 million people in the world die from inhaling polluted air. Global governments have various solutions, and planting trees on the sidewalks is the most effective solution of all. The leaves on the tree act as filters that cleans the air within the sphere about 100 feet radius meanwhile they generate large amount of oxygen from carbon dioxide absorbed. The air tend to be fresher when plenty of trees are planted on the sidewalks. However, they are not close enough to filter the air for the entire city. By inserting layers between buildings will greatly enlarge public spaces in vertical axis, and give the city much more space to plant trees as air purifier. Also, these “filters” will stretch out on both the horizontal and vertical dimensions in city streets covering much more volume of polluted air.

Regionalism The critical regionalism and world culture are not paradoxical, on the contrary, they both are a part of human civilization. Modern technologies can be used as a expression of regional culture. The most important element in regional or traditional culture is human, and it is the very basic element of cities. Many modern cities took away the traditional cultures by settling people in homes and offices isolated from the public, which resulted in the lack of acknowledging these parts of culture brought by past generations. In this case, the modules are vessels containing the cultures, as well as the windows displaying them.

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Large Developments The modular system is not only suitable for smaller units, larger developers and contractors are also able to purchase large space for multiple units and substitute them with their own projects, as long as these projects fits in the perimeter of the grid system. Most importantly, they have to follow the structural order, that their transfer of load need to match the existing system. For these larger projects to take place, they have to follow the same rule that they have to gain the approval by the communities. This allows larger projects’ existence become more flexible: a stadium could be on top of many residential communities, a concert hall could be on the bottom of a large park, or a farm could be on top of a bunch of office areas. These larger developments would fit right in the three denominational city fabric.

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Succession The architectural elements would act like cells splitting, almost like a chain reaction: at first, there would be only limited amount of modules being installed in the city street; later on, more and more people would discover the advantage of owning one of the units, and they would then generate more and more modules as part of the structure; eventually, the structure would stop growing upwards since the communities simply would not allow more residence or commercial space, it would then expand horizontally in radius that takes over the entire city fabric.

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Portability One big advantage of using ultra light weight aluminum alloy structural tubing as a modular building material is that anyone could pick it up and start to assembly the whole module by setting up the proper corner joint. This largely increases the portability and appliance of the modular.

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Social Justice Not only could the module be a part of the city fabric, it is also capable of serving as humanitarian equipment. For many under-developed countries that do not have basic living infrastructure, these modules would provide them a stable platform to develop their urban system. As basic urban structure, the replacement of simple sheds made of garbage and waste building material, people are able to infill different functionality into it based on their lifestyles and economic capability, giving them a better and healthier standard of life. More than just housing units, these modules are able to provide structure for public transportation to link different cities and villages together as a whole urban system. The skeleton of each module gives them flexibility to fulfill many necessities, their duty could range from health center to military base.

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Global Application The internet of thing had connected the world together very thoroughly, making the efficiency of pre-fabrication to shipping industry inLargely creased. As a strong and lightweight skeleton structure, the module could be shipped all over the world with very little damage. Since these parts are pre-fabricated, they would have the same high standard in manufacturing process, which means there would be no need for worrying about the qualities of building structure or pollution in terms of local factories. With simple installation of corner joints, the modules can be put together even by very little educated people. In this case, it is hard not to consider the modules as either building material or infrastructure for global appliance.

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Known as the Venice of Africa, Makoko’s transportation system is entirely based on water. This community dates back to 18th century as a fishing village, and the waterways and houses are relatively informal in terms of planning and regulation. The entire community is highly based on water, but the water brings many issues as well. Lagos as Nigeria’s commercial capital, more than 70% of the urban population lives in slums, which lack infrastructure and health care. When it floods, foul water containing sewage runs into slum homes, sometimes reaching waist height. Slum dwellers say they repeatedly visit health centers because of sickness after floods, spending scant money on healthcare. A huge proportion say floods deny them job opportunities or affect their livelihoods.

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Along with the urban growth, the population in the city is exploding as well. In last theirty years, there is an over 15-million population increase. It is projected that the city is going to have around 28 million people, as one of the most populous cities in the world.

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Lagos is located in the south-west coast of Nigeria, which is really close to the equator. With more than 14 houses of sunlight in the tropical zone, the average temperature throughout the year is more than 90 degrees. The heat generates serious hygiene problems in the community, causing large amount of diseases and deaths. The image on the left illustrates the essential elements of a single family house in Makoko, as well as the basic belongings of local families. The data is mostly captured from watch documentaries and video footages of Lagos feature scenes that film makers walk into typical Makoko houses. In fact, most of these families do not even have things western world take for granted such as electricity and sewer system. The only televisions at community centers are shared by thousands of people, and their showing schedules are usually written on the blackboard outside. Fishing is the largest domestic industry in Makoko, and most of people under poverty feed on catch of the day. Early in the morning, male or children will fish in the inner harbor of Lagos with very limited tools such as wooden boat and simple nests. Later in the day, the females of families will start to sale grilled fish on a traveling boat steering up and down the waterways. Another part of the catch will go strait of the fish market located all over the city, but mostly the Makoko fish market and Makoko farmers’ market where fishermen are able to sale their fish by themselves. As one of the most populous cities in Africa, Lagos has hundreds of NGOs (NonGovernmental Organization). NGOs and other charities are mostly concerned about the education and health issues of the community since it does not have any formal schools or sewer system. A charity funded elementary school known as “Floating School” was established recently that serves more than 300 students.

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Because this community had existed fro over a hundred years, the community ties a very close relation with the water. New additions on top of the existing community will not only increase the public space and provide more housing units, but also bring in infrastructure such as fresh water, sewer system, and electricity. Another layer of transportation system can be constructed within this new addition to ease the rush hour traffic on the major waterways. Gradually, the houses will be replaced by these additions, and improve the local life quality. This addition can possibly be achieved through the cooperation of local NGOs and local residents.

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Dharvi,Ind

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Dharavi is a locality in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.Its slum is one of the largest in the world; home to roughly 700,000 to about 1 million people,Dharavi is the second-largest slum in the continent of Asiaand the third-largest slum in the world.With an area of just over 0.81 square miles and a population density of over 717,780/sq mile, Dharavi is also one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. When examined closely, the informal community of Dharavi appears to be in a grid order. It is very much suitable for the open source city and the modular system to grow.

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Dharavi is routinely called “the largest slum in Asia,” a dubious attribution sometimes conflated into “the largest slum in the world.” This is not true. Mexico City’s NezaChalco-Itza barrio has four times as many people. In Asia, Karachi’s Orangi Township has surpassed Dharavi. Even in Mumbai, where about half of the city’s swelling 12 million population lives in what is euphemistically referred to as “informal” housing, other slum pockets rival Dharavi in size and squalor.

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For a slum like this, the infrastructure is the most important and should be he first thing to be constructed. With multiple urban centers and openings as infrastructure hubs, the sewer system and electricity line will be built along the lines. These will be the very major lines of the infrastructure system. These systems will have express transportation a well, for a more efficient transportation for both people and lifedepending resources.

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After the major lines of infrastructure was built, the minor lines will be connect to the hook-ups for further development. During this time, more and more modules will be placed in the community as an alternative of housing. Firstly along the major infrastructure lines, and then gradually starts to spread.

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Eventually, the modular system will take over the old slum, and form a brand new community with fresh water, sewer system, and electricity. These new standard housing units will accommodate those who are living in a very poor condition, and possibly help with the health and hunger problems.

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Before the Syrian civil war, Homs was a major industrial center, and with a population of at least 652,609 people in 2004, it was the third largest city in Syria after Aleppo to the north and the capital Damascus to the south. Its population reflects Syria’s general religious diversity, composed of Sunni and Alawite and Christian. There are a number of historic mosques and churches in the city, and it is close to the Krak des Chevaliers castle, a world heritage site. In the ongoing Syrian civil war, Homs became an opposition stronghold and the Syrian government launched a military assault against the city in May 2011. The following Siege of Homs left much of the city completely destroyed and thousands dead. The war in the city ended in 2015 when rebels evacuated the city, resulting in a government victory. It was dubbed the “capital of the revolution” after residents embraced the call to overthrow the president in early 2011 and much of the city fell under the control of the opposition. But government forces launched a campaign to retake the opposition strongholds, laying siege to districts once home to tens of thousands of people. In late 2015, rebels began evacuating the last district they held, returning the city to government hands. By the end of January 2014, the Old City was still being held by the opposition. Up to 3,000 civilians were believed to have been trapped there, without access to food and medical supplies and under repeated bombardment by artillery and aircraft, since June 2012. “There is no food. The last week we lost two innocent people,” an Syrian said. “We have many casualties, many people who are diseased because of the lack of food.” We are on the edge of death, and there is no way to get the injured or sick out. And anyone who tries to escape the siege, we know that he will be killed for sure.” The refugee problem and the starvation became very urgent after 2015 since hundreds dies week due to poor conditions of living situation.

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City Destruction Map

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With the new modular system, each module can be transformed into living units hosting 40 people in each one. These pods requires very little effort to build and very little mantainace during its use. In some case, they can be stacked up to increase the density as well. This will be the perfect living units for refugee camps outtside of the city of Homs. Infrastructure such as electricity and water can be hooked up if possible. To get through the hot summer days, air conditioning can be optional in the units as well.

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Instead of just using these modules for refugee camps, they can be used as military base as well. For its great mobility and durability, these modules can be extremely efficient in the war zones. Extra armor panels can be added for preventing heavy impact and explosion.

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Chengdu,ia

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The Dujiangyan Irrigation System, the project that defined the Chengdu plains and its later developments.

Chengdu is the center of western China and an international hub with a GDP of 1005.7 billion. It ranks No. 1 on Forbs’ The World’s Fastest- Growing Megacities in the next decade. It holds sub-provincial administrative status. As of 2014 the administrative area houses 14,427,500 inhabitants with an urban population of 10,152,632, and it is the fifth-most populous agglomeration in China.

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The Ambitious Urban Development: Tianfu New Area The establishment of Chengdu Tianfu New Area aims at reconstructing a modern international urban area suitable for residence, industry and commerce. It focuses on modern manufacturing industry and high-end service clusters. Adhering to the sustainable development concept of the city with intensive, connotative and green growth, the Tianfu New Area will be made into another “industrial Chengdu” by developing the high-end industries through internationalization and world-class orientation and planning the city with scenery of mountains and water. It endeavors to construct a new internationalized modern city suitable for work, business and living,

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Current Development Pattern

City with Higher Density and a Set Boundary

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where modern manufacturing industry dominates and clusters of high-end services boom, and to shape a demonstration zone integrating coordinated development of “modern industry, modern life and modern city landscape.” The priority of the area is to develop the headquarter-based economy and circular economy, and to speed up the advancement of strategic new industries such as energy resources, new materials, energy conservation, biotechnology, and the new generation information technology and high-end equipment manufacturing. The total area for this project is planned to cover 1,578 km (981 mi ). It is understood that the first 84 projects of Chengdu Tianfu New Area include 51 industry projects with the investment of 169.5 billion RMB (including 27 industrial projects with investment of 82.35 billion RMB and 24 service projects with investment of 87.15 billion RMB), 29 infrastructure projects with investment of 43.4 billion RMB, and 4 ecology projects with investment of 1.5 billion RMB. Further investment on developing the New Area will be put in this project later on.

An Alternative Way: Informal Formality The developments in the city can be seen as the economical rationalism. The new developments took over vast amount of free land that used to be natural habitat for animals. In this case, increasing the city density instead of expanding the city outward seems to be a much better way. It is much sustainable to transport vertically than it is horizontally. The modules will attach to the old building, and even become their structure to lean on. This would increase the lifespan of the old building preventing them from falling apart. Also, new layers of modules will be built on top of the streets, adding much more capacity to the streets and public spaces. In this way, the urban space will be able to accommodate much more citizens, and the vast amount of land outside of the city will most become a safari park fill with nature.

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Global Climate Change The system also perfectly adapts the recent trend of climate change. Climate change, also called global warming, refers to the rise in average surface temperatures on Earth. An overwhelming scientific consensus maintains that climate change is due primarily to the human use of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the air. As measured, the sea level is rising at vital speed that many coastal cities are predicted to suffer from flooding, effecting billions of lives. The infrastructure for preventing flooding from happening is usually extremely expensive, and sometimes not quite effective.

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Threat to the Tokyo Bay As a coastal city, Tokyo has one of the most advanced sewer system and the storm water collecting system. This system had worked extremely well for the past few decades. However, this system was not designed for the emerging issue of climate change and sea level rising. Also, this system cannot protect the city from tsunami or hurricane such as Sandy or Katrina. Also, it is predicted that the climate change is going to bring much more superstorms in the near future. That means Tokyo, and other coastal cities, need to take action to face this serious issue.

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The proposed system is using the modular structure forming a new dam. The dam it self does not have to be very strong since it is backed up by the entire city fabric. The massive water force of the ocean will be absorbed by thousands of other modules connected. These modules will serve their own functions when there is no threat, and they will only used as a defense mechanism when there is a potential flood. These modules will form new layers of the city, accommodating more population in the city, also creates a buffer zone for refugees of those who lost their homes in the hurricanes. These new layers are interchangeable in programs, that can operate as a new ground for the city.

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SHINJUKU

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Looking into NYC’s Problem Through Traffic City officials have intentionally ground Midtown to a halt with the hidden purpose of making drivers so miserable that they leave their cars at home and turn to mass transit or bicycles, high-level sources told The Post. Today’s gridlock is the result of an effort by the Bloomberg and de Blasio administrations over more than a decade of redesigning streets and ramping up police efforts, the sources said. “The traffic is being engineered,” a former top NYPD official told The Post, explaining a long-term plan that began under Mayor Mike Bloomberg and hasn’t slowed with Mayor de Blasio. “The city streets are being engineered to create traffic congestion, to slow traffic down, to favor bikers and pedestrians,” the former official said. “There’s a reduction in capacity through the introduction of bike lanes and streets and lanes being closed down.” The traffic in the New York city revealed its problems. A densely populated area with not so efficient traffic system. Hong Kong is almost twice as dense and New York City, but its multi layered public transportation systems made the city much more efficient. Also, its skywalks made the city a very walkable city even though there are expressways across the city. Something could have been done in New York City to improve its traffic, as well as the city experience.

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This system builds in between buildings to increase the large the density of the urban area, especially in Manhattan. With many different transportation systems embedded within, the traffic on the ground level can be eased. Also, this system separates the pedestrian and traffic on the ground level, making the traffic more efficient. The pedestrians will also have a better experience of the city by non interrupting walkways and shopping streets.

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Elevated walkways and gardens not just increased the land space in the city, they increased the amount of green spaces. This made the city a much better place to work, and live. Trees and lawns are added on the elevated platforms as parks in the air. Programs such as shops, restaurants, and parking spaces are also added for people’s convenience.

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Triptych

The Garden of Informal Formality

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The Exterior Panels The Garden of Informal Formality is a Tantric wood transferred triptych, that is, a digital fabricated large drawing being transferred on the triptych board. Together, this format is an efficient story telling presentation for both the open source urbanism and the form of informal urban typology. On the exterior of the triptych, when both panels are at closed position, one large painting appears. The blue-gray grisaille graphic illustrates the formation of the new garden of informal formality. The center object is a literal representation of the earth, standing for the environment humans are currently inhabiting. Since the center is earth, the dark background would be the outer space. The reason there is no stars is to draw attention of the center, also imply the mysterious nature of the universe. The plane within the sphere can be easily read as the ground level, which contains a story telling graphic about the making process of these frames. Framing outside of this sphere, a white frame stands in a isometric view, which creates a great visual impact composition wise. The entire composition of this drawing encompasses a paradox, that these frames in the graph are manufactured at a location somewhere on earth. It is also made happen by consuming the resources from the earth. However, these frames will later populate the cities, and become a part of earth. In this process, these frames are actually preventing human from consuming more fossil energy and natural resources. Human will inhabit these frames, and turn them into different programs. At the same time, these frames are inhabiting this planet as well. In the end, these frames will contain life within, which is why the entire earth figure is framed within the larger frame. The painting contains strong geometric order for a strong visual hierarchy. The actual wooden frame of the painting is a square divided into two half. Then, the dark background brings out the main element, which is a frame in a isometric view, forming a hexagon. Then the earth like sphere perfectly mounts in the hexagon frame. Looking into the sphere, a section of shows the ground. Even though people read this plane as a round flat ground, the shape in the larger composition appears to be an oval within the sphere.

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On the top left corner of the painting, a satellite overwatches, meaning the entire process is managed through the internet. This is the symbol for the thousands of satellites in the orbit that is contributing the reformation of this new urban environment, and this entire ideology is based on the existence of the internet. Its low opacity of appearance of the satellite represents the free nature of the internet, that it is always serving the society in the background. It resembles the almost unnoticeable existence of the internet in our modern society.

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Far away from the focus of this panel, a city is located across the water. The city represents the global cities, responding to Saskia Sassen’s global city theory, that global cities are tied into a greater fabric of global economy system instead of just the geographically surrounding resources. The water stands for oceans between counties, to be specific, manufacturing countries and counties undergoing urban development. Also, wind turbines are placed in the water to demonstrate the environmental stainability of this urban development.

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Left to the center, a massive factory is placed in the foreground. This factory is a traditional industrial building constructed with brick, mostly for visual recognition. It also has very distinct features such as the chimney and loading docks. The manufactured products in front of the factory are also ones to add visual recognition so people could visually link the factory with these frames. It is obvious that there are many rows of solar panels on top of the factory representing the sustainability of this facility. The environmental friendly process is also expressed by the lush vegetations and trees around the factory.

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To the right of the factory, there are many means of transportation and shipping. First, two warehouses can be identified, and they are the storage for the frame parts before they are shipped all over the world. Then, in the foreground, a crane is moving parts into different transportation systems. Railway system on the right, is mainly transporting these parts to a remote locations or countries that can only be transported by land. The trucks are transporting them to a relatively close location, or a specific location where only trucks can get to. The large container ship takes massive amount of parts to an offshore land.

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The Left Panel When the panels are opened from the center between two exterior panels like a typical window opening from outside, tree panels will be presented. These tree panels are the continuation of the exterior panel, as a part of the story telling. Since the exterior panel features the process of making each module, as well as shipping, in a remote location, the interior panels continues the story in a different location. The left panel illustrates the making of open source cities and the parameters of them. The center panel vividly presents the infinite possibilities of the new urban typology and various activities of people who inhabit it. The right panel proposes an alternative reality where the open source cities were not constructed, and the issues of current world were not realized. Presentation wise, these panels tell a very comprehensive story by themselves. As said, the left panel is a illustration of a new city in making. The picture is taken at the parameter of the city, showing the exciting moments of parts that come together, as well as the city undergoing its density expansion. Due to the size of this painting, it is divided into three parts: the foreground, the middleground, and the background. The foreground is showing how the parts coming together as a individual module. The middleground illustrates the possibility of lush life on the parameter of cities. The the background is the newly built city it self, the city of promise in making. The overall landscape of this panel is heavily vegetated. Lots of natural elements are presented in it. Except for two main characters in the foreground, this panel does not contain another human figure. Instead, hundreds of animals are placed everywhere. In this way, the painting gives the least amount of human environmental impact on the parameter of the cities. Also, the morning mist through out the painting, as well as the dawn in the background, represents for the promise and hope for the bright future soon follows.

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In the background, a city is behind the mists. The city is undergoing large amount of refreshing. Infrastructure, programs, and even city fabric are gradually updating for the new open source urbanism. In some way, this respond to the metabolism theory of city that city programs are constantly replaced by new ones. Behind the city skyline, the rising sun and the light of dawn sets the mood for this entire panel, referring to the promise of this ideology.

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In the middleground of this panel, massive amount of animals appears in the grass area. The illustration came from the Prairie in Africa, which has millions of different animals living together harmoniously, and it is one of the least polluted areas in the world. The nature is returned to what it should look like because the new city is much more efficient and sustainable. With a higher density and capacity in the cities, the massive footprint of suburban sprawl will eventually turn into the natural states.

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On the back of the foreground, a couple of modules sit on the ground. One fully assembled, and one half assembled. These two modules have great details showing the capabilities of these modules. The one on the left shows the joint detail, and how the hollow structural tubing looks like. The one on the right gives audiences a gist of how two modules would come together with the joint. The crane in the back shows how these modules are lifted to higher ground.

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In the foreground, two characters in the process of assembly these parts into a module. This proposes the possibility of hand assembly because the material of these parts are extremely lightweight and durable. Aside from the main characters, many other parts are lying on the ground. In the back, a bunch of parts are at its shipping state. At the bottom left corner, a light weight waffle slab lies on the ground waiting to be assembled.

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The Center Panel The center panel is the focus of the triptych, and entirely illustrates the activities inside of the city. This panel also is divided into the foreground, the middleground, and the background as a story telling representation. The foreground can be viewed as an architecture section, which examines the technical aspect of this modular system. With water, electricity, air circulation systems , and structural members shown in the section, the proposal appears to be more convincing. The foreground also illustrates individual lives within a very close range, as well as very different building programs and various lifestyles. The multi-layer nature of this new intervention can be seen in the foreground as well. The middleground shows a collective picture of how people could interact with this system. Hundreds of individuals doing very different activities in this graphic represents for the rising of the new individualism. Also, it proposes the separation of traffic and pedestrian, which enables people to inhabit any place they want instead of being constantly terrified by the city traffic. With many layers of traffic, the city operates much more efficient and more convenient for average citizens. The background is more of a impression, which show what cities could look like. With the old buildings almost looking like monuments, new modules could grow on them, and even become a part of them. Although these renderings are convincing, the fantastical style of this drawing still informs people that this is an imagination of a city. It is more of a polemic project than it is a problem solving architectural or urban planning proposal.

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On the right of the foreground, there is a snapshot of an individual housing unit with great amount of detail. The owner appears to be an women living in a relatively classic style instead of modern ways. But as seen, despite the decoration, the infrastructure and housing unit are modernly standard. On top of her apartment, a large solar panel is attached to the roof. This responds to the power grid under the framework of sharing economy, that every individual can use, and provide self produced resources through the infrastructure built for share.

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On story below last unit, lies a more modern unit. It seems to be a living room for a modern family with modern furniture, which show another possibility that each units could be, as well as the diversity between just to neighboring units. In this detailed part of painting, the placement of infrastructure is clearly shown in the section. On the left, both power line from the solar panel and the water/sewer system going underneath the floor are presented within the structural tubing. Additionally, the waffle structure of slab supporting floor is visible.

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On the bottom left corner of the panel, a rooftop garden is presented, which shows another possibility of what the roofs of these modules could create. The roof is fully planted with grass since green roofs are highly sustainable. It appears that the rooftop is the terrace of the adjacent office on the left. Glass panels are places as windows and doors. In the painting, people are having an office party which gives the livelihood to the painting.

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In the midground of this panel, right behind the rooftops in the foreground, a densely populated area is on the lower level. It seems to be the ground level, however, it another level of rooftop space. In this section of the panel, all the individuals are conducting drastically different activities, such as swim jug, photography, fish, chat, read, sunbath, and play. This shows the diversity and individuality within the urban space.

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In the back of the midground, there are layers of ground transportation systems. A traffic circle lies in the center of the panel. Human activities and the traffic is completely separated for both safety and efficiency. In the painting, one lane dedicated only to automobile operates smoothly. Also, there are totally three years of traffic illustrated on the panel to indicated the multi layer city’s traffic. Also, the traffic system is intertwined with the city fabric and programs, making the city more efficient in terms of transportation.

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In the background of this panel, a larger scope of what cities could look like is fantasized. The constantly growing modules would stand taller and taller to increase the urban density and diversity. The existing buildings almost become monuments that new structures could attach on. The illustration also indicates that not only ground transportation, but also water and air transportation can be integrated with the new urban fabric. The satellites in the air represents that the entire city operation is so much based on the internet, and even the master algorithm.

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The Right Panel Since the traditional triptych usually gives meaning to the divine of holy trinity, which is western art that represents the intersection of divine energy with earthly life. In the painting The Garden of Earthly Delights, dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch painted three scenes of the inner triptych not necessarily intended to be read chronologically from left to right. The left panel of The Garden of Earthly Delights depicts God presenting Eve to Adam, the central panel is a broad panorama of socially engaged nude figures, fantastical animals, oversized fruit and hybrid stone formations. The right panel is a hellscape and portrays the torments of damnation. Responding to Hieronymus Bosch’s painting, the right panel of The Garden of Informal Formality is an illustration of destruction. This panel is an imaginary future of humanity where the issues of current society are not realized and paid attention. With the speed of urban growth, many forests and natural habitat for various species will no long exist. The ever growing fossil burning will warm up the atmosphere and cause more serious problem instead of just air pollution. Plus, the increasing population will consume more and more natural resources, bring the planet to a doom. On this panel, there is the same mist through out the entire painting. Contradicting to the morning mist on the left panel, this represents the pollution brought by fossil burning and resource digging, which are more of a toxic air. This is obviously an exaggeration of what could happen. However, this also seems to be the better way to draw attention of the existing serious problems. In this way, the right panel successfully creates a better contrast with the left panel and the center panel.

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In the background, a city is behind the mists. Different from the left panel, this city is almost been covered under a large thunder storm. Deadly atmosphere is spread though out entire endless landscape full of super tall building and mind numbing facade. The river flowing through is fill with toxic industrial waste and poisonous water from all the building. No human activity in the city could be seen, and no one is enjoying the environment.

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In front of the toxic river, a large construction site sits on an empty land with no vegetation. The site is on the edge of the city, meaning the city is still growing in size. Although its capacity and size is increasing, its density remains the same. This will never accommodate the ever growing population without sacrificing the nature.

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The center of this panel is a massive mine digger. As one of the biggest machineries on the planet, the digger’s sole task is extracting resources from the earth, which makes it the perfect representation of the industrialization. Around the mine digger, the oil drills are extracting resources as well. Connected to the endless power lines, extract energy as the same time. The farms are abandoned as a potential land of construction and urbanization.

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In the foreground, there finally are some human activity in a smaller scale can be seen. It is a deforestation operation with heavy machinery such as the digger and loader. The trees in the back seems already dead, and these worker are trying to get rid of them in order to expand the urban parameter to house more population. Also, it is interesting that these workers are watched by the military, suggesting the centralization of the state government.

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The Garden of Informal Formality Runyu Ma

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The Garden of Earthly Delights Hieronymus Bosch

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Notes Should I write something here? I guess what I am writing right now is considered a note too. Anyway, this chapter has some other notes about the book, and the thesis.

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Abstract Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody. Borrowing ideas form cyber world, the concept of open source urbanism brings both formality and informality. Formal in its simple structure, the modular system with embedded infrastructure sets the basic unit and parameter for urban growth; informal in its open source nature, this system could transform urban spaces by using modular building components to form larger societal hub and multiple city layers. Even though each separate module is simple, they form a new, highly rational urban system well-suited to the complexities of modern individuals and societies when they are grouped in a high density algorithmic pattern. The module design possesses amazing customizability and is able to adapt to multiple urban environments, geographic cultures, individual lifestyles, and technological advancements. Its adoption will lead to new discoveries that helps us solve existing problems and possibly influence future trends in architectural and urban design.

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Informal Formality

Articles inside

Informality

Notes

Ideologies

Polemics

Prologue