We all make rules to organize ourselves and others. The essential question though isn't if the rules are just, its knowing when to make, break, bend, and mend them at will. Architects seem to be rather wary of rules and organization but deep down they do appreciate them. After all, how else could they manage such complex generative forms in the their own microcosm digital world? Why not this same attitude be taken to the urban level.
However, the 21st century cities are simply too complex for an architect to be making their own rules. Past ego-centric visionary cities may certainly have been logically robust were but were exclusive of other rule making entities. No entity perhaps better illustrates this than the speed and adept abilities that the logistical operations of multi-national corporations have had on the city. Perhaps the biggest player to arrive in the city, Wall-Mart is already campaigning its own logic into the urban fabric while its trademark PR smile pleasantly awaits in front of bureaucratic lines for admittance. This is not to say that we should stop being visionary or be politically correct in the way we shape our cities. Instead, we are ought to be more cognisant of the capacities of other rule making entities in the design of our cities.
Current thesis working titles:
coding logistics
coding urban logistics
coding conduits
coding conveyance
conduit city
conveyance city
lawless logistics
ruling on logistics
logistical rulings
unruly logistics
logistics and the law
urban logistics
the logistical city
logistics city
hacking logistics
the logistical hacker
hacking landscapes of logistics
the logistical urbanist
the urbanist's guide to logistics
the urbanist’s guide to the logistician
the logistian’s guide to the urbanist
the hacker's guide to the logistical city
the logistian’s guide to the urbanist
the logistician and the city
the hacker, the ubanist, the logistician...
a hacker, an urbanist, and a logistician walk into a bar...
urbanist + logistician = hacker
urban logistical loopholes
lonely logistics
loophole logistics
redisplaced logistics
Many of these working thesis titles inevitably bring up the question of agenda. Is it to make people aware of current urban conditions as part of a rhetorical point that logistics do impact our cities? Is it to amplify or exaggerate latent urban conditions so their different trajectories of the city can be foreseen? If these conditions are anticiapted, then is it this thesis’ position to propose interventions for or against these possible futures?
Perhaps a more radical thesis position is to simply not to propose anything. After all, doing nothing is something but only be suggestive of the architectural agency opportunities. This kind of thesis would act as a digital voyeurism sifting through urban codes and Excell spreadsheets of GIS data but becoming more productive at transmitting this knowledge across the discipline in a visual spatial manner. This seems to be the relative position that Keller Easterling takes in Enduring Innocence. She is not the on-the-ground anti-globalization protester, but she is an activist in her deft and poetic writing that a journalist might have on elucidating the complex globalization issues to bizarre but mundane specificity-hinting at architect’s agency in opportune moments.
For the initial part of this thesis, the agenda is to play both those roles of a deft quantitative and anecdotal observer. However, to design and finish thesis, you need to play the game. The observer will become a player and in a few turns will inevitably inform the designer what kind of player he is.
A few turns will also reveal the implicit and explicitly defined rules of the game. The agenda is to be the analyzer that Easterling was but exercise agency in a more pragmatic and participatory way by anticipating these scenarios in a game full of rules and making design proposals. Beyond analyzing and suggesting the various streams or trajectories that the current urban logistical condition could take, the objective of thesis then is to selectively synthesize or hybridize them into a responsive design scenario.
Another question to ask for this thesis is the 'tone' of the polemic and design to be proposed. This thesis is not the playful but indifferent and sarcastic tone of the late Dutch hypermodernist architectural theories and proposals. Similarly, it is not the techno-bureaucratic approach of a SimCity objective of winning points with the push of a button or import of a cheat code/script. As of now, this is still not well defined due to the lack of context (i.e., site, city, urban demographic) for this thesis to react to. The thesis as a player with all of its attitude will emerge from the research phase. If anything, the tone will be more of unscripted negotiation of Monopoly that deals with various entities (i.e. people, organizations, randomness, or rules themselves).
Having said that, I think it is still use full to refer to the perhaps overly simplistic Dutch logic of dumbing down things and asking pertinent questions like:
Q: What if...we take the same kind of logic that Wall-Mart has and build a city? modify the city?
A: It would look like this.
Q: Great!...but wait, why isn’t this already like that?
A: I dunno
Q: What about other rules? some rules are explicit and implicit, right?
A: Oh
Q: How about zoning, covenants, physical conditions of the site? If you take into account all of these other rules, what kind of city would you get?
A: You would get this!
A: Great!!!
Initial seminar projects such as the 4 panel cave drawings and storage facility were all indicative of broader interest that this thesis has finally come to grips to in the area of logistics and urbanism Not a post-rationalization, but realization that caves were of interest to me because of the overt element of control in the form of rule making that were taking place to create ever so smaller discrete worlds unto themselves. Everything had specific function to be displaced and closed off, only to be forgotten. I tried to visually narrate this at the level of a house starting from a tour of the images and line diagrams of basements, closets, attics and back to the garages. Similarly, investigations into automated storage units was waiting to revealed of the widespread logic of urban logistics. Methods exhibited in these two projects: a visual narrative, cu ration of images, will also be helpful in further developing the gaming techniques and rule-making approach to thesis.
Thus, the first half of the research will be a mix of quantitiave and anecdotal evidence decoding the organizational logic of logistics at the urban scale of a city. GIS mapping will certainly be of help here but equally important are outside sources of city codes, news headlines, gossip columns, and press releases (market, industry, govt). The evidence collected here will slowly start to reveal the implicit logic of logistics and will serve as dialogue for the development of characters to be demonstrated in a scenario. The second half will then be the generation of rules to be in play by the various players in the thesis design. At this stage, a specific site needs to be chosen and the number of players identified.
Outputs for the thesis project include:
+paradigm map
+figure-ground mapping
+logistical brochures
+booklet of urban rules
+site massing models of various zones, envelopes, and bldg. typologies
+3 scenarios being played out in detail from urban sections, renderings, to the urban material language.
Critical Texts/Blogs/Precedents thus far:
Free Association Design (F.A.D.): Product Placement and Cargo Cults
thiswill_this.net
Self Storage Association
Self Storage Self by NYTimes article
Grand Urban Rules
Sub + Plan
Visionary Cities
Reality Properties
The Landscapes of Contemporary Infrastructure
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