Dwelling - by Heidegger

It is not by chance that I picked this article by Heidegger, to relate it with my key chapter and area of interest. I was recently reviewing it because it addresses a very basic question that is lost, as we are trying to give new meaning to the architectural body. What is "to Dwell" ?
Architecture might be correlated with different values through time and space, yet there is a basic rule it needs to fulfill, to facilitate “dwelling”. The question that rises is what does dwelling means now days and to whom it addresses.
For Heidegger the real meaning of dwelling is lost. He follows the linguistic yet etymological trail left through history in order to define it again. "To Dwell" begins from being and goes down to be set at peace, safe in our environment, cherishing it and caring for it.There could be multiple interpretations, yet the most important is to find the essence again, since it is attached with diachronic activities such as to built, thus architecture.
Except for the polarities emerging as we are preparing to embrace the Information City, what elements are left the same, what guidelines for the ones designing the future? Except for the differences maybe we should be looking for a constant as well.

Interogation

Display vs Clock
Network vs Line
Anti-zoning vs Zoning
Driving Force vs Mono- Functionality
Project vs Design
Rebuilding Nature vs Far West
Complexity vs Linearity

A past project

The project attempted to create a schematic though dynamic representation of a contemporary urban system, in order to understand and further look into contemporary design and planning techniques. After a certain research towards contemporary concepts and technology, agent based modeling was chosen to be studied and implemented in the context of an urban system. Through this bottom-up approach the challenge was to relate the various realdata with the urban system and behaviors in it. The project was created with Virtools (introduced during the Erasmus studying period by the Hyperbody group) which apart from other is a behavioral engine.
The case study used for the scheme was a sprawled area under development, in the fringes of the emerging metropolis of Thessaloniki. The area was “reed” like a system organized around nodes, attracting agent-entities which move along them through links of a network. In the schematic representation the network was translated in the actual transportation network, the agents into the human moving in that area and finally the nodes into the settlement of work, residence and other uses.
In order to give life to this virtual city the human agents were programmed to behave in relation with every day aspects/ needs. Due to a day divided into three phases they would go accordingly to work, to school, to amuse themselves or return home etc. The end result was a model where according with the data provided human agents would go through their everyday program in the area studied, leaving trail in order for us to better look into the patterns of movement in the system. At the same time the nodes of the system would keep track of their relation with the agents, in order for us to be able to think on their future development.
Through this experiment different future scenarios on the possible development of the area were tried and monitored, giving a possible insight of how the existing system behaves.

Area of Interest

Cities of tomorrow, contemporary urban theory and research


More and more theories are piling up in order to explain the current phenomena in the contemporary urban environments. Through the innovations offered by high standard technology scientists, designers, planners are still trying to understand and predict in order to manipulate the landscape. If a better livity is the ultimate goal, defining “better” now days seems difficult.
Defining in general is difficult since we are experiencing a constant flow. The rhythm of change though is far from our capacity to follow. But then again in might seemed like that every time humanity was overwhelmed, before the outbreak of a revolution (the IT revolution as said).
Yet in order for a revolution to happen, major qualitative transformations should be already going on in the core of the social conscience, the mentality, the perception, system of values, body. Through locating and understanding the changes and the driving force behind them, our ability to explore the future will be enhanced.

"Architecture must burn"

Through this book Betsky manifests the new abilities of the architectural body in the Information Technology era, in the most dedicated way. With a series of paradigms he identifies the present environment without rejecting it or trying to reform it. On the contrary he makes an efford to make sense, to understand, embrace and adjust to the emerging reality, looking for new processes to facilitate it, to work with it - like imagineering.
In his view a seamless entropic landscape is inhabited by cyborgs - our hybrid selves with all these gadgets to keep us hooked on various networks. Our landscape is organized around attractors and the highway becomes a physical manifestation of the change. New values are emerging like access and new symbols of our culture like the mall. Our materials are adjustable to the temporarily that rules.
Finally, we are transformed by this technology that we cannot see and architecture should communicate this to the people, who are confused about where and when.

"The IT Revolution in Architecture"

The book explores the relation of IT technology with a broad group of notions of different quality, dimension and scale (ex space, time, and modernity). Looking into the theory (ex definitions) but also into the praxis (ex modeling) finally makes IT "revolution" sound Justified. The sequential and hypertextual organization might be a little tricky, but at the same time it offers a kind of flexibility. It enables the reader to jump into different kind of notions in different chapters of the book, making interesting interconnections apart from the obvious.
What was helpful was the use of different polarities during the whole book, especially in the chapter of the “City” which was picked for further looking into. The information city emerges through the comparison to the current understanding and practices we use when planning contemporary cities. Through a series of polarities the characteristic of the information city become clear. In this way the mental shift that needs to be made, in order to adjust to the new context of the IT revolution,
is suggested.

"New wombs" review