Probably the best way to start this blog is with the studio syllabus. I know it is a bit formal, but at least it is the starting point of the research.
Knowledge City Shanghai - Beijing
Professor: Frederic Levrat
Teaching Assistant: Mazdak Jafarian
Collaborative Studio Tony Sun, Tonji University Shanghai
Takashi Yamaguchi, Osaka Sangyo University
Theory - Knowledge City
It is projected for the beginning of the XXI century that over 50% of the world population will be living in urban centers. But what is the actual purpose of a high density City at the beginning of the XXI Century? With the advent of new technologies the storage, transmission and management of information has become quasi spaceless. So, with a brutal contraction of time and space, not to say a complete disappearance of the notion of distance for data transmission in the Information Age we have arrived again to the notion of Delocalization. So why are we paying so much rent to live in the center of cities like Paris, New York, Tokyo, Mumbai or Kyoto?
What is the city of the XXI century offering to us that we believe is so valuable?
And in that regard, what is the model of the new city of the XXI century?
My fascination for this semester subject comes from two consolidating poles:
1. What is the relationship between the stored Knowledge of the Virtual and the constructed Physical environment?
2. How do we strategize the development of fast growing cities?
If the future of the city is the “Knowledge city” what form and shape does such a city takes? Is it a human oriented Network, or an information oriented network? It brings us back to the initial question, regarding the relationship between the Virtual and the Physical in architecture. If the main “raison d’être” for a city is its production of immaterial information, how does the physical constitution of the city encourage and enhance this non physical production? There is a paradoxical relationship between the build environment and its attempted finality. On the other hand we all accept this condition, as our current experience of the city is a condition of "interface” where the build environment allows us to understand better abstract “information”. Personal experiences and shared experiences in the city becomes a decoder of the artificially produced information and Architecture finds a new role as an Interface between the Virtual/ Immaterial and the human body.
This is where we need the city; as a physical interface contextualizing Virtual information into a Physical space, negotiating between dimensions, and in return producing information and knowledge. The future of the city in the information age is not the dissolution of the physical space into the ether of digital bits, but rather an essential tool to understand and interface information: It is what I call the “knowledge city”. The City should be considered as an interface between stored knowledge and active users, as well as between active users themselves, and between active users and the surrounding space. It is the place for the possibility to exchange knowledge, to learn from each others. It is the place for chance encounter, the un-programmed, the unexpected.
So how do we design it? Can we enhance a city to improve its knowledge capital? Is Paris, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Mumbai, Shanghai, Beijing, New York or Tokyo better suited to become the next leading “Knowledge city”?
Project Site: Shanghai - Beijing
These two major urban centers of China have been investing heavily into becoming the not only some large modern cities, but potentially the future leading city in the world.
We will have a specific site in each city and the studio will compare the different strategies each city has developed and intervene on the different sites. In the hypothesis the studio has 12 students, we will have 6 students per city, proposing a new “Knowledge City Center” for Shanghai and Beijing.
Shanghai is the industrial and financial power house of China. With a population approaching 20 million habitants it is the research and production center of the fastest growing economy in the world. It has some huge university campus near the center of the city as well as some new research and development campus on its periphery.
Beijing is the capital of the most populous country in the world. It is an essential center of power and culture, as well as economic and research center. Beijing has tried to position itself as the leading urban center in the XXI century by investing in highly recognizable building such as Rem Koolhaas CCTV or Herzog&DeMeuron Olympic Stadium.
The projects will address a multiplicity of scales, from the Urban Network strategy to the specific “interface scale”. In this regard, does culture exist only in designated areas or is it a network culture? Can major influx of money create knowledge and culture?
Ultimately, the studio is a research in contemporary culture and the future of the urban city center. In this regard, does culture exist only in designated areas? Does the residential and commercial city/neighborhoods to be excluded from the ambition to generate a cultural “product”? Isn’t culture and creativity rather a resistance process, encouraged more by reaction toward a better world?
Program - Knowledge City Center - Architecture as an interface.
The program for the “knowledge city center” is an interface, between stored knowledge – such as written information, digital information – and the human body. It is a mix between an interactive library, a public space and a museum. Some sort of a cultural Times Square grafted on the Seattle Library and the Pompidou center; basically, an urban condenser.
The first part of the semester will be oriented toward the different types of urban interfaces, from public libraries to campuses and public squares. The question of the different forms of densities – digital, multimodal, pedestrian and vehicular – will raise the notion of the current formula for a culture of congestion, so well developed and embraced by OMA.
The second part of the semester will involve designing the specific building or Network – médiatheque, cultural center, café, city square - as well as its relation with the outside space surrounding it. A special emphasis on the membrane of the envelop, separating/connecting the inside and the outside of different environment and its potential “hypersurface” quality, as a vehicle to transmit and potentially generate information/ knowledge.
The project could be a building or a complex network of elements spread out through the city.
Collaboration
The studio will be working in collaboration with a number of actors in Beijing and Shanghai. The Graduate program of the University of Tonji in Shanghai will conduct a parallel studio and provide us with some information, constituting a rich dialogue between academic research and the fast evolving reality on the ground.
In addition, the last Knowledge City Studios generated an important Symposium in Osaka, Japan, with the participation of Mark Wigley, Beatriz Colomina, Preston Scott Cohen, Fumihiko Maki, Xu Weigo, Takashi Yamaguchi and I. We will be able to analyze their point of view and their lectures.
Trip
The studio will be traveling to Shanghai and Beijing, visiting both cities and their respective type of Knowledge City development.
The trip will occur on the first week before Spring break and can be continued in the region during the Spring Break.
Technical Support
The first part of the semester will be oriented toward building an “information based” architecture. We will be using Grasshopper to generate formal strategies to interpret information. The TA will be assisting you to understand better the software capabilities, during the week as well as offering additional technical classes on Saturday, for the first three weeks.
