NEW FORMS OF COMPLEXITY IN ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN DESIGN
contributions of Andrea Ariano Pascal Federico Cassaro Miriam Confetto
Bora Kelmendi Beqiraj Flavia Magliacani Rubén Pérez-Belmonte Günce Uzgören
Ariano,
Federico Cassaro, Miriam Confetto, Bora Kelmendi, Flavia Magliacani, Rubén Pérez-Belmonte,
Uzgören
Federico
INTRODUCTION. NEW FORMS OF COMPLEXITY IN ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN DESIGN Nicoletta Trasi MANIFESTO OF COMPLEXITY Andrea
Pascal
Günce
EMBRACE COMPLEXITY TO ADDRESS CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES Andrea Ariano ENERGY COMPLEX(CITY). ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND URBAN COMPLEXITY Pascal
Cassaro OTHERNESS AS A RESOURCE IN THE COMPLEX PROJECT Miriam Confetto GATED VS SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES: A RESEARCH ON GATED HOUSING Bora Kelmendi Beqiraj COMPLEX THINKING AND URBAN SPACE: NEW CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES Flavia Magliacani COMPLEXITY AND PHENOMENOLOGY Rubén Pérez-Belmonte COMPLEXITY AND CONNECTIVITY: INTERCONNECTIONS OF TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE RELATIONS Günce Uzgören BIBLIOGRAPHY & CREDITS 07 18 27 43 55 69 85 99 111 123
Nicoletta Trasi
«I think the next (21st) century will be the century of complexity» Stephen Hawking1.
The Seminar New Forms of Complexity in Architectural and Urban De sign2, attended by seven PhD students of the 34th and 35th cycles of the “Architecture. Theories and Design” PhD (Andrea Ariano, Pascal Federico Cassaro, Miriam Confetto, Bora Kelmendi, Flavia Magliacani, Rubén Peréz Belmonte, Gunce Uzgoren) aimed at drawing attention on the chal lenges of contemporary urban transformations by exploring the future of architecture through the key of complexity.
Exploring the city and architecture as a complex system of flows and networks; as an integrated system of man-made and nature; as places con stantly shaped by a variety of subjects, individuals, trajectories; the cities as places of material and immaterial production; as spaces where the human species has the opportunity to reverse the calamitous effects of climate change by regenerating spaces and relations. In all its iterations, the world of architecture plays a fundamental role in this phase of necessary change of course.
Architects need to keep up with the times and the stringent challenges they present; therefore, they should be prepared and gain a full understanding of the complex and interconnected systems we live in; at the same time, they need to adopt a long-term perspective and suggest a range of concrete measures in order to inspire habits and attitudes designed to re-establish our connection with nature, among other things.
The Seminar started with an introductory lesson about complexity, de livered by the curator of the Seminar itself, followed by four meetings, held on different dates, with the authors of the four books selected for study, which offered as many different articulations of the concept of complexity,
Introduction 7
INTRODUCTION. NEW FORMS OF COMPLEXITY IN ARCHITECTURAL AND URBAN DESIGN
man fes
Andrea Ariano, Pascal Federico Cassaro, Miriam Confetto, Bora Kelmendi Beqiraj, Flavia Magliacani, Rubén Pérez-Belmonte, Günce Uzgören
Credits of Manfesto’ images: p. 127
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Along the same direction, the study of the «Urban Morphology and Complex Systems Institute» has demonstrated that working on urban morphology is comparable to one of the rings – each with specific multiplier effects – of a longer “chain” that includes the values of consumption and energy production8.
However, more recent studies have highlighted the need to consider a third factor of an anthropic and social nature that, in the interaction with the other two, directly affects the city-energy system. The goal of LSECi ties’ studies, or the integration of design – architectural and urban – pa rameters more connected to flows of goods and people, to transportation, water supply, energy and waste management networks, in the analyses performed on urban forms, also intervenes in this scenario.
The insights developed by the Agence Française de Développement [AFD] at the 2016 JTD meeting about energy transition, aimed at promoting the study, understanding and planning of the different phenomena concerning the urban realm by necessarily considering the multiple inter action with the socio-ecosystems in which they are – or should be – de ployed, are particularly relevant in this context.
Conclusions
The adoption of a new approach that analyzes the urban environment as a complex system made of several sub-systems – built, social and energy systems – provides the opportunity to analyze and comprehensively repre sent its ongoing evolution and transformations, particularly by considering the feedback loops among their components at the different time and space scales.
The two main features of the study on urban complexity, systemic ap proach and global vision, have guided all the mentioned studies and have proved necessary in pursuing the efficiency of the urban system in the perspective of energy sustainability, in considering the city as an ecosystem and by adopting a global vision that addresses urban morphology, the effi ciency of buildings, the effectiveness of new technologies and of the social component in an integrated way.
The recent developments of GIS and BIM systems and of the advanced systems of climate, thermal and solar simulation have encouraged a
New Forms of Complexity in Architectural and Urban Design50
progress in the knowledge of these complex interactions by establishing an excellent platform for a more efficient design at the building scale.
However, as mentioned before, it is increasingly necessary to overcome merely architectural and technical-constructive choices bu pursuing design approaches at the urban scale aimed at guaranteeing a more incisive impact and long-lasting performances, and at reflecting the achievements of complex thinking in considering the efficient interaction among the different systems that constitute and animate the entirety of urban space.
51Energy comple(city). Energy efficiency and urban complexity
Keywords:
otherness, reception, caring, reuse, bottom-up
OTHERNESS AS A RESOURCE IN THE COMPLEX PROJECT
Miriam Confetto
«The hell of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the hell we live in every day, that we make by being together. Seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space».
Calvino I., Romanzi e racconti II, Mondadori, Milan 1992, p. 497.
Abstract
This essay establishes the urgency and necessity of a critical meditation about ongoing methodologies and design – and at a larger scale geopoliti cal – strategies as its point of departure.
I believe that the inclusion of “alien” events occurring in the territory, even though not structured or planned by professionals, is to be considered as a resource in order to integrate and review the design process in light of the now well-established guidelines of the theory of complexity.
Therefore, complex design becomes effective when it pursues an environmental, social, cultural and economic sustainability through which its own ethics emerges: an inclusive, welcoming process that takes care of the territory.
Introduction: Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?
Manuel Gausa defines complexity «as the ability to combine multiple, simultaneous and sometimes incoherent layers of information […] their power multiplies indefinitely rather than in an irregular and homogeneous way: it is as open as it is plural»1.
55Otherness as a resource in the complex project
As anticipated by Lefevbre in his study of the urban phenomenon, the use of the term information introduces a range of variables that lead to the establishment of complex orders2 the ambiguity of which is recognized by Gausa.
Human activity has become so significant and incisive on the Earth system that Paul Crutzen decided a new era3 had to be proclaimed at the dawn of the new millennium. I believe the same ambivalence recognized by Gausa can be found in the conflict within complex systems, in the very concept of Anthropocene. Such ambiguity is exemplified in the meditation of the philosopher Vignola who wondered before me about such issue:
«What is the humankind defined by the anthropos called into question as the author, not of its purposes, but of its own end?»4.
My proposition relies on the assumption that we need to take respon sibility for the role of leading actors in the Anthropocene, and to become aware of our limits. However, at this point, can we consider humankind,
New Forms of Complexity in Architectural and Urban Design56
The passage of man. Patterns. Miriam Confetto (2020). Personal composition of satellite images from Apple Maps’ Digital Globe
itself a complex system, as equally responsible for climate changes, which are in turn responsible for economic, political, social changes?
A partial answer to such question is provided by Moore, who sees capitalism as the main culprit for the end of global balance. In what the Amer ican scholar calls Capitalocene, submission becomes the paradigm for the hegemony man exercises over the other systems: the extra-human, cultural and tyrannical will to dominate nature5.
The World is falling down, the Earth is falling…EVERYBODY down on the ground!6
As Mario Tozzi underlies in the introduction to Rosario Pavia’s book “Tra suolo e clima. La terra come infrastruttura ambientale”, it is now more than ever proper, and even more urgent, «to bind the architecture of men to the overall architecture of the planet»7.
The use of the verb binding is interesting, as it evokes the idea of two interconnected subjects facing a common fate. I would like, though, to modify this sentence by replacing the preposition to with the proposition with, in order to reinforce this concept. This simple replacement highlights the reciprocity in the relationship [between man and the planet]: agreeing; being fit, being suitable; being consequential8, bequeathing9 .
Besides, as we know from the third law of motion, for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The disastrous results produced by the indiscriminate (ab)use of soil are there for all to see. Major natu ral catastrophes, starting with climate change, have (literally) ravaged the planetary ecosystems over the last few decades; I believe they are widely seen as cries for help an abused and plundered Earth has been sending now for years. I believe such bind should not admit any submission among the playing systems; for such bind to be healthy and coherent, it should translate into an equal relationship that sees the human system, from the individual to the community, take care of landscape10.
In order to restore such balance, rereading the soil and its layers in a trans versal ways is extremely interesting: from the welfare of one depends the sur vival of the other. Therefore, interpreting the emergences and depth of the soil by identifying it as an infrastructure (Pavia, 2019) that actively intervenes in our contemporary life through its spatial formations and intangible features.
Otherness
in
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as a resource
the complex project
Industrial architecture in Rome: Map of abandonment and reuse, the places of art Miriam Confetto (2020). In fieri map of the research work for the doctoral thesis
One of the many open issues we get to address in working on the soil-infrastructure is the urgent reuse of built tissues as a sustainable strategy in a cultural and social, as well as environmental perspective. In the reuse of existing elements, otherness finds a threefold declination.
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On one side, it emerges in the change of the primary and original use. On the other side, it is found both in the hybridization of players and forces acting within the complex process and in the articulations with which such actions manifest themselves and integrate within the established tissue.
Such requirement particularly emerges in post-industrial cities, due to the radical changes that resulted in the reorganization of some elements in their more or less peripheral urban tissues. In exploring exclusively one of the youngest layers in our soil, an emerging legacy of the modern age, I found some interesting food for thought in the reuse of industrial ruins.
Although lacking a distinctly industrial character, the city of Rome can be paradoxically considered as exemplary for the action of a long sequence of administrations that have failed to address the state of abandonment of several decommissioned industrial areas. At the same time, many social movements have often chosen to work precisely within industrial buildings or sites and, in their pursuit of a denied collective dimension or housing opportunities, have achieved successful results thanks to the spatial versa tility of the industrial typology11. Being bottom-up, such processes find a breeding – although now contaminated – ground in layers exploited in the past and eventually abandoned in pursuit of a new alternative use of the territory that can actually restore a status of common property12. The forms of otherness in the city transform its original pattern of solids and voids into that of a hybrid city.
A wider visual scope, from the local dimension of the city of Rome to the global scene, makes it clear that the actions recognized as emergences and layers in the Italian capital find different articulations and inclinations across the world, including the Western, developed and neoliberal one (Ceccarini, 2010; Lussault, 2019; Cellamare, 2019; Pavia, 2019).
Many such realities are remarkable forms of self-affirmation that translate into self-organization through which citizens find a solution to their either social, cultural or housing needs. They are alternative forms of adap tation to distortions of the present time, to the deficiencies local administrations are unable to address and of reconstruction of the broken – social, political, physical – relationships that inevitable lead to the production of places full of experiential density.
Such actions often collide with institutional planning, while in some cases a convergence of interests leads to a successful cooperation or negotiation among different agents. Precisely for this reason, I believe they
Otherness as a resource in the complex project
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3. Kiasma. Finnish National Gallery. Helsinki (Finland). 1993. Steven Holl Architects. Source: Steven Holl 1986-2003. Publisher: El Croquis, p. 250
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Steven Holl’s answer
According to Steven Holl, in the lived space there is a tension between the empirical and the rational that architecture must be able to combine through touch, light, smell and sound, like an “environmental medicine”. Therefore, architecture must be conceived as an “experiential continuum” in which the subjective qualities of material, light, color, geometry and detail form the basis of a “complete perception”, merging them all as a cinematic experience of complex space. Perspective, light and shadow, sound, tactile realm, proportion, scale and perception, place and idea are the concepts that Steven Holl applies to his projects. «The above “phenomenal zones” function like a manifold of parts, presenting the question of a whole more substantial than any of its components. Each challenge in architecture is unique; each one has a particular site, a circumstance or program; and for each one, to fuse site, circumstance, and a multiplicity of phenomena, an organizing idea … a driving concept … is required. The unity of the whole emerges from the thread that runs through the varie ty of parts; whether it be one discrete idea or the interrelation of several concepts»7.
Steven Holl explores multiple possibilities that redefine the design pro cess of architecture by focusing on the creation of spaces according to the emotional criteria of the human being as a central theme. The experience of space, light and material results from a developed idea. When the intellectual realm, the realm of ideas, creates a balance with the realms of experience and phenomena, the form of complexity can be conceived with meaning. In this balance, its architecture has an intellectual and physical intensity with the potential to influence the mind, eye and soul.
In the project for the D.E. Shaw & CO. Offices [4], Holl experiments this balance through an interesting complexity of light and color.
In the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki [5], he uses the con cept of “Chiasma” (“contact between chromosomes”) to create multisensory spaces for the user to experience, spaces that are also the result of the intertwined superimposition of urban landscape geometries, thus managing to create a slightly deformed central gallery intended for art exhibitions. Holl views architecture as a total art capable of competing with all the other arts, such as music (sounds), sculpture (physical and tactile reality), painting (colors), poetry (messages) and cinema (the experience of space
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Complexity and phenomenology
