2 SECONDS CITY
Sabrina Morreale, Valerio Massaro
LONDON WITHOUT A PLAN London is a city without plan. Historically, from the failure to implement Wren’s post Great Fire project, London has developed as an agglomeration of towns, buildings, streets, churches. Every urban episode has its own ideology and its own history. Those flows of ideas coexist in space and time, creating the image of the city. Our interest is to discover those ideas and creating alternative narratives for them. We want to sample, choose and twist those ideologies because London is a city that embraced its fragmented reality and we want to do it as well. CITY, MAPS AND TIME The way a city is understood is defined by the images through which it is represented. Maps and drawings, are always the still pictures of an urban condition. Yet, they are also a memory destined to be betrayed by the inexorable passage of time. The transformation of a city is not delineated in its images but in the time time span between two consecutive “shoots”. Any representation of a city betrays its ever mutating condition. From the invention of the print press, technology influenced the reproducibility and dissemination of images, hence also the way information is gathered and understood. The way in which streets, buildings, monuments and infrastructures have been drawn deployed new way of understating new urban conditions. In the era of Internet, Google Maps and GIS software, maps are virtually reproducing every complexity of the city becoming scaleless. Yet, they are also becoming contentless, since is the act of searching, browsing and choosing of a user that defines their content. Which is today the time span between two consecutive representation of the city? It is constantly reducing, virtually reaching the theoretical zero. How do we understand a city where every possible update of its image is already a fragmented memory? COMPRESSING TIME AND SPACE: MOMENTS Today we use moments as narrative. We want to embrace the reduced timeframe of augmented reality, of the gif, of the tweet, the enlargement, the compression of a file. While on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, we all edit, curate, squeeze and put together fragments of time and urban space. We want to embrace this condition. We think this is not precariousness; it is the contemporary condition of an individualistic pret-a-porter city image. We want to explore the possibilities produced by the interactions of these images. The Greenwich parallel define the “0” time zone as a conventional time-space framework where angular measurements are translated into time shifts of hours. We believe that this conceptual relationship between time and space can be pushed to its limit: can smaller and shorter space-time frameworks describe urban changes? Which are the spatial changes displayable in the time span of a selfie or a 2 seconds GIF? Everyone now is looking for a moment to remember, to build up a statement, or an agenda. Are we producing only never lasting moments? Can we create and design the memory of a “moment” in the city? DESIGN TROUGH MOMENTS Our mission is to redefine the image of the city embracing the shortest possible media able to convey transformation. Our aim is not to produce an image of London, yet to produce the image of a London’s moment using GIF and animations no longer than 2 seconds. We believe that this can be achieved only thorough a discussion around authorship, perception and how an architect understand a city. If it is true that a moment can be described only though the judgment of a single human being, the question arises: can an architect design a moment?
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SCHEDULE 4th July- 8th July RECORD The first week serves as a data collection from all types of online platform. The students are invited to choose moments and fragments which they they can relate to the city of London and to the idea of time. The research will take place through different tools: mapping trajectories, taking pictures or recording videos. Each student will build its own argument choosing only one element. What is your momentum? What is your time span? 11th July- 15th July CONNECT The second week is the moment of weave the pieces within each other. The students are invited to exchange moments and to find a thread throughout them. A new map will be created with the new data accumulated. Where do you place your moment within this new city? How do you deal yourself, as a architect within this continuum? 18th July- 22nd July CREATE The third week is when the students will put forward a proposal using the media and instruments used to investigate the city. Whereas a speculation or an actual proposal, the aim is to create a collective knowledge of a city which is changing every day, every hour. The final output will be twofold. On one hand we have the ambition to produce a collective image of a London’s Moment. The Class will be asked to produce a collective document able to describe a specific moment of their London experience. On the other hand, smaller group of students will produce spatial proposals that should be argued and described through their ability to create new moments in the city. Therefore, those proposals should be described and displayed with coherent media: GIFS, Status, Social Media profiles etc. Those media will be complemented by “traditional” media (models, plans) with the aim of showing idiosyncrasies and miscommunication between the different formats. BIOS Sabrina Morreale AADip graduate 2016. Her projects have always been related to the idea of fragmentation, using different media, enhancing the process of how things are made and assembled together. She worked in several offices as architectural assistant in London and she is still collaborating with the Oxford Press as illustrator. She is currently working on the construction of a hand-crafted pinball machine. Valerio Massaro Architect. Currently 2016 MPhil Candidate Projective Cites, AA School of Architecture. His current research revolves around housing in London; how embracing neo-liberal ethos can allow a different form of ownership; and rethinking of services provision and infrastructures. He holds a Professional Degree with honours from DIDA (Dipartimento di Architettura), University of Florence, Italy. In the university of Florence, he collaborated as tutor in urban design and landscape courses and in computer aided design. He worked as architect and 3d modeler in different practices in Italy and the U.K. and founded and supervised as art director the webzine NIPmagazine.it from 2010 and 2015.
REFERENCES http://www.eamesoffice.com/the-work/powers-of-ten/ http://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-history.html https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/global-culture/conceptual-performance/a/vito-acconci-following-piece https://www.instagram.com/?hl=en https://www.tumblr.com/ https://www.snapchat.com/l/it-it/ https://twitter.com/?lang=en-gb https://www.facebook.com/ http://barbaslopes.com/np4/31/%7B$clientServletPath%7D/?newsId=139&fileName=COLLAGE.pdf http://giphy.com/search/giffy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDpKzaKcmYA
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Mapping the activity or process of creating a picture or diagram that represents something
Fragments a small piece or a part.
Linking a connection between documents on the internet Happening Events and occurrences
Digital showing information in the form of an electronic image
Bridging something that makes it easier to make a change from one situation to another Analogue Recording sounds and images
Time the part of existence that is measured in minutes, days, years, etc., or this process considered as a whole Gif Graphic Interchange Format: a type of computer file that is often used for images on the internet Past in or to a position that is further than a particular point Lapse a period of time passing between two things happening Interaction an occasion to communicate with or react to each other Future a period of time that is to come Ideology Ideas, concepts and theories Compression Squeezing and grinding Real things as they really are, not as they exist in the imagination, in a story, on the internet, Span etc the period of time that sometimes exists or happens Alteration a change, usually a slight change, in the appearance, character, or City Unit structure of something Geographical places a standard measure
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