The Urban Islands Project is part of an ongoing project SPACEPILOTS introduced in 2009 under the title of Unlocking the City, aiming to excite young people about their city, engage them with their environment, and to empower them to get involved in the actual shaping of places.

We are inviting young people aged 16-25 from all over London to participate in the research and development of design ideas for Urban Islands.

- Join us on www.urbanislandsproject.net to receive the latest news and to help us detect existing or potential urban spots, overlooked and/or ignored, and revive them into Urban Islands!

We will launch the project in form of a small pilot at this year’s London Festival of Architecture [LFA'10], 19th June – 4th July 2010, in the Borough of Southwark, South London.

dates: 19th June 2010, project start;
4th July 2010 @ The LFA 2010, finale

place: Southwark, Southbank

theme: ‘reviving places through urban interventions and architectural
actions’

method: creative, collaborative exploring, mapping, filming, making,…

Barking from Without was part of the 2010 Cities Methodologies exhibition and conference organised by the UCL Urban Lab. The exhibition took place at the Slade Research Centre on Woburn Square from 5 to 7 May 2010.

Barking from Without is an interactive installation presenting material from an ongoing case study of the new Barking Town Square in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Part of a broader research project on design in the contemporary public realm, the case study is supported primarily by participant-observer methods that draw as much on ethnographic fieldwork as on Bakhtin’s theory of dialogism. The research is presented in the form of an open dialogue which visitors are encouraged to join by leaving written comments.

All material from the installati0n is posted on barking-assemblage.org under the category Barking from Without. Comments are still very much welcome! Please participate by sending your comments to comment@barking-assemblage.org

Art historian Giulio Carlo Argan formulated his famous sentence in the nineteen-seventies, when then the modernist grand narrative of “good design” had already long disintegrated, leaving something of a semantic vacuum in the designed object, an empty space that had been promptly occupied by a micro-narrative of immediate satisfaction by indiscriminate consumption. Looking at the ease with which designed objects can be used to carry extremely different meanings and values forces us to reflect on the communicative power of design and its information value. Forms generated by design represent a presence in space that doesn’t end in the fulfillment of its function, but continues in force of their mere existence, in their relationship with the rest of the environment.

“Critical minds: critical spaces” is a one-day symposium organized by a group of UCL research students gravitating around this blog, as Gabriele Oropallo and Wesley Albrecht. The event is conceived of as an occasion to look at the work of architects, planners and designers and its social and cultural relevance in stimulating awareness and criticism of the contemporary. Very often, at the heart of cultural production, there is a practice shaped by a rational or existential response to material, technical or cultural constraints. This practice generates products that are designed as tools to enable the rest of the community to critically understand and question messages, objects and environments, rather than taking them for granted. The colloquium will feature some presentations on current research in design theory and history and on recent design projects. A final panel discussion will follow, with Justin McGuirk, editor of the Icon magazine, and Mark Cousins (Architectural Association, London Consortium). The event also marks the closing of CitiesMethodologies, an interdisciplinary event on innovative methodologies across the arts and humanities at the Slade Research Centre (Woburn Square, 5-7 May 2010). Speakers include Mark Cousins (Architectural Association), Annelys de Vet (Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam), James Auger (Royal College of Art), Jimmy Loizeau (Goldsmiths), Teresa Stoppani (University of Greenwich), Eyal Weizman (Goldsmiths), Jonathan Hill (Bartlett School of Architecture).

The colloquium will be followed by a wine reception in the Wilkins Building Haldane Room. Participation is free and open to all (for information email: g.oropallo@ucl.ac.uk, wesleyaelbrecht@gmail.com). Critical minds: critical spaces is supported by the UCL Grand Challenge of Intercultural Interaction, the Graduate School Research Project Fund and the Department of Italian Studies.

But, wait a moment. “Problem-solving is the driving force”. Actually, this sounds quite similar to the old “form follows function”. So, what’s the difference?

According to Patrick Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects, author of the above quotation the difference is in the direction of the design intervention. So far we’ve juxtaposed Eucledian structures in order to create space or harness portions of it into environments. The rationale of the design is in the concept that links these solids. The reader may be familiar with the house Ludwig Wittgenstein designed in Vienna in 1927 for his sister, today seat of the Bulgarian cultural institute. There is maybe this concept expressed at its best, mind you, by a non professional architect. Volumes in Wittgenstein House develop from each other in an orderly albeit ambitious manner, as in a logical deduction. It’s like shedding light in the dark and acknowledge space.

A variation to this deductive way to building was dubbed “deconstructionism,” and consisted in disassembling  these configuration of solids before they were even erected, to show their relations in a more honest way.

Parametric design, on the contrary, is nothing about deduction. It is an attempt to let structures grow systematically, according to their relation with the environment, as a living organism would do in order to survive. Everything is interconnected, and to take into account everything, sophisticated softwares are necessary and do much of the work. Instead of “spaces,” Schumacher actually speaks of “fields,” which fluidly articulate themselves to accomodate the complexity of contemporary life.

Parametric design therefore bears a striking resemblance to organic forms. Curiously, it’s visually very close also to surrealist decoration patterns. Both styles share an oblique, decadent appeal. This is because organic structures are economical: organisms – as also computers if they are so programmed – always try to find the shortest way between A and B. This is why living forms are usually curvilinear and not square, Cartesian or Euclidean. A parametric city would resemble a circulatory system, rather than a modernist grid. Every element would be interconnected and the complexity of functions would lead the growth of the system.

Transition and fluidity are greatly praised by Schumacher. This makes one remember of the “natura non facit saltus” (nature does not make sudden jumps) motto by Lucretius. Also Gaudì’s architectures were supposed to imitate nature – and in the process praise divinity. The Sagrada Familia designed today would look a lot like a building by Zaha Hadid.

I like the idea of an architecture whose form develops according to fractal geometry (the geometry of leaves, plants, clouds and all natural structures) instead of being constrained by platonic solids. And yet, all this organic matter makes me feel like a virus, a parasite, as though I shouldn’t be walking along these circulatory systems. Or, in the best case scenario, I feel like a part of the system, inextricably linked to it and forced to give away some individuality.

I’ve taken some time to reflect upon this, and now I think the underlying reason for this awkward feeling is that this ideal biomimicry in architecture eventually eschews one crucial aspect of design I am otherwise used to. This is: confrontation between built space and human being, borne exactly of the artificiality of the constructed space.

This is a structural confrontation in which one usually develop a critical, informed understanding of things. It may just be premature to say, but parametric architecture to me feels like being sucked back in an ideal utero, in which the spatial sense that characterizes human beings as a species is dimmed and left unripe. No wonder it is actually the favourite style for international airports, the most iconic non-spaces around these days.

• When: Wednesday 20^th January at 4:30pm
• Where: Room 5.17b, Wates House, 22 Gordon Street, London WC1H 0QB

All welcome

Contact information: Amparo Tarazona Vento, a.vento@ucl.ac.uk

Since then, there have been very few significant contributions, among them Lofland and Gehl are worth mentioning, that came to reassert once again the importance of the field of public-space sociology and to broaden its theoretical and analytical scope. But still a lot more could have been done, specially from a spatial perspective!

For those interested in or already busy with exploring the ‘sociology of public space’, please contact me. I will be very interested in discussing further since I am working in a project for an edited book and i am looking for future collaborators.

The first talk was given on 3^rdDecember by research student Kiavash Soltani, on the ‘Cities of Iran’. Following a thread defined by the classification of the 5 selected cities according to their main features (the Environmentally sustainable city, the Religious city, the Cultural city and the Modern city), he provided an informative insight into the characteristics, spatial practices and planning issues of Iran’s urban areas. In short, we were delighted with a polyhedral view of Iranian cities that included Iranian traditional music, ingenious solutions for cooling dwellings and their (mis)interpretation in contemporary architecture, major ancient urban developments to improve the image of the city, Western influences on planning, and spaces for social interaction such as public baths, sport venues or even cars, as Kiarostami brilliantly depicted in his film ‘Ten’.

The next Lonely Planner talk will take place in January, on the Spanish region of Galicia. We look forward to seeing you there.

www.writing-pad.ac.uk

See also the new Journal of Writing in Creative Practice

Visiting the David Chipperfield exhbition at the Design Museum (”Form Matters”, 21 October – 31 January 2010) and navigating with the camera the many maquettes made and used to research the urban areas on which he was commissioned interventions. The second picture refers to a museum under construction in Naga, Sudan. His forms are solid, euclidean, yet they seem to give way or to adjust to the surroundings, instead of making space around them and offer glossy shooting opportunities for photographers. Others prefer to concentrate on fantastically fascinating roof structures, while Chipperfield is actually concerned with creating space. After all, it’s architecture, but it’s easy to forget what it’s all about.

A site-specific intervention on the building by a local resident

"3 Km Europe" reads a writing on a house between the Peace centre and the new, gentrified side of Jaffa

The Peace House, whose building began in 2005, is now almost completed

The idea of the Peace House was originally launched by the late Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres. Named after the latter, it’s part of the seafront redevelopment of the mixed city of Jaffa and was designed by Massimiliano Fuksas as a dramatic spacial progression of pale green concrete slabs interspersed by glass panes, which offer an unconstrained view on the open sea – in the words of the Italian architect “a symbol of the state of emergency”.

Text and photography © Gabriele Oropallo, 2009.