SLICES THROUGH SPACE studio at Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, March 5 to April 20, 2012 USING COMPLEXITY AS INVESTIGATION TOOL: THE PLAN AS DYNAMIC PROCESS By Magdalena Haggärde and Gisle Løkken, architects at 70°N arkitektur,Tromsø, Norway In a hereditary modernistic search for clarity and simplification, today’s planning is often too incomprehensive, hierarchic and linear, and therefore produces plans that are not always expedient for the real needs and challenges. Handling complexity and otherness and preparing for an incalculable reality in fast and constant change, is a challenge for planning - and finally a matter of survival. Within our own practice, we have been experimenting with investigation and collaboration as a strategy for an open and adaptive planning seeing the city, and the landscape, as an interconnected and living organism. The method launches ideas and strategies for surveying, discovering and evaluate, with the intent to make the plan continuously receptive for changes. Not only are we accepting complexity as crucial for the contextual understanding, but also as a tool for a comprehensive and elastic process. A new language for expressing planning is developed, and openness and invitation are used as underlying methods to graft the plan with meaning and competence. The method is confronting traditional ideas about the appearance of a plan, and comprehends the possibility for a plan to be open and still operative in its lifetime. The method opens for deep investigations in parts and details of natural and cultural phenomenon, and at the same time analyzes the impact from global forces, and economies in local and regional contexts. The method is highly visual, and is intentionally showing analyzes, ideas, and consequences of interventions as graphics and illustrations - for further communication and debate with the citizens, and with experts in different fields relevant to the plan. As a part of an extended strategy we have developed the concept of Points of Departure (POD), which defines what can initiate a plan to make it relevant, resilient and viable. In our discussion of PODs lays an analysis of the last decade’s opposition between good intentions for urban development, and what often is the factual result. PODs come into being as elements of inherent information or added knowledge of a different type than the ‘developer carpets’ that are usually rolled out in new urban developments. These PODs become incidents of opposition that the new (or old) town must relate to. These may be natural elements, social structures, cultural heritage, actual structures or other elements of nearly any type one may allow to disturb the image of an ‘ideal’ urban development, and become meaning in itself – no matter what direction the further development takes. Making the plan an open process and a work in progress, it will never give a sheer answer, but add pieces to a complex understanding of the context and the possibilities. By combining small-scale knowledge with global tendencies and by trying to understand the underlying natural, political and economical conditions and forces behind city developments – we intend to make the plan more durable, complex and comprehensive to be relevant in an unknown future.
The 7 weeks studio will introduce alternative methods for planning and architecture that open for discussions about planning language, hierarchies, participation and relevance. Through literature studies and exploratory research and rethinking we will gain new knowledge that enables us to approach a concrete situation in the city for a profound understanding of the context. We want to use a blog to communicate the learning and collect the findings from the process, and also for the students to present their work as a continuous process. The studio does not demand fixed scenarios or fancy images, but will expect curiosity and an open-minded effort from the students to learn, and to experience and express knowledge that is not obvious - and that has to be carefully investigated to be operative for the planning process. MH/GL
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