We may have surpassed the point of irreparable damage to
our planet, as science confirms that an ecological
balance may only be achievable now by artificial means.
Anthropocene defines our geological era,
understanding
the environment as mostly affected by artificial human
action. While the environment is understood
as a large dynamic self-regulated ecosystem without
borders, the causes and effects can be traced
everywhere. But the consequence of the ecological crisis
is mostly politically measured in cities where large
economic interests are concentrated. While the
ecological crisis draws attention back to the center, it
cannot disregard the regional periphery where ecological
forces may emerge. This problem presents a reciprocal
continuous project as opposed to the separation between
city / environment, city / landscape, and center /
periphery.
Slavoj Žižek's recent statement "Nature does not exist"
has questioned several assumptions and implies many
concepts. One such assumption questions the
environmental stability of our planet as 'natural'
processes reconfigure landscapes out of crisis, such as
earthquakes, volcano eruptions or hurricanes. One
implication of his statement is the artificially
projected signification of the word 'Nature' in our
language to the object of study. But in the context of
this studio, another implication may also be extended to
computer languages and the simulation of environments
through fluid dynamics, projecting another layer of
signification.
To face these issues, the studio initially proposed to
avoid environmental preservation.
Dually purposed as an urban design and as a landscape
design studio, students were asked to study social,
economical, biological and ecological landscape-urbanism
alternative strategies for the systems of bays, rivers,
shores and ports that surround and that affect New York
City. Areas of study included New York City's Upper and
Lower Bay, East River, Hudson River, Jamaica Bay, and
Flushing Bay which were analyzed through both computer
assisted and analog simulations. New York City and its
surroundings were studied by structuring natural
feedback, exchanging information and energy. The studio
framed this approach through mega-structural visions as
radical interventions that affect the entire region.
Students were asked to consider relationships between
the architecture of the city and the artificial
structuring of surrounding territories as well as the
constitution of form indexed through time, and to study
fluid forces through dynamic computational processes.
Students mapped, tested and worked both urban and
landscape strategies through processes of sedimentation,
erosion, and tidal or hydraulic energy, to extend and
recode the architecture of New York City.
Students: Yu-Chun Lin, Jeon
Jaebong, Nan Lei, Ming Yan, Hsing O-Chaing, Heather
Nan-Zhang, Yi-Chen Li
THE
COOPER UNION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT
OF SCIENCE AND ART, ARC 411
The urban and landscape strategies of the studio were
guided by the following principles:
Fluid Dynamic Representation
The ecological concern in architecture has produced many
displacements to the discipline, but the most relevant
is the representational shift activated by fluid
dynamics. Today, the structuring and recoding of an
environment constitutes another disciplinary expansion
activated by the possibility of formalizing fluid
dynamics. Big data, dynamic representation, dynamic
simulation, and computation allow us to represent,
analyze and manipulate fluid dynamic energy, projecting
at the same time a different kind of signification to
our discipline. The result of such signification can be
measured in the elements that constitute such
architecture, demanding a specific disciplinary
reformulation. Therefore fluid dynamic representational
interfaces are understood as initiators of emergent
orders, that structure and frame in specific terms the
ecological concern. Rather than simply actualizing
interdisciplinary knowledge, the studio understands
architecture as an opportunity to inform the sciences
from a cultural point of view.
Space-Environment
The disciplinary shift from space to environment, or the
consideration of a space-environment, proposes a more
specific and relevant disciplinary definition of the
role of architecture with regards to the formalization
of environments. The consideration of dynamic
environmental forces challenge the static definitions of
an architectural type, as well as the consideration of a
space-environment that challenges the relationships
between interior / exterior, container / contained, or
spatial-envelope / environment.
Re-coding
the City-Environment
The city is the result of several relationships and
tensions between its organizational principle, which in
the case of New York City is the grid. The zoning code
and its exceptions, social interaction, the economic
fluctuations of the real estate market and its
speculative manipulation, among other parameters
continuously tension the organization and form of the
city. As a result of this tension, the city continuously
produces typological prototypical conditions as
solutions to the varying levels of fluctuations of these
parameters.
Therefore the studio proposed a recoding of New York
City in relation to environmental forces. The recoding
of the city was based on the redefining of generic
prototypical building types, experimentations on urban
morphology and time-based massing strategies that by
considering environmental forces could then propose new
parameters for a new zoning code. The studio critically
cross-related urban type and landscape topology
inverting its usual methodological means to organize
their constitution. The studio explored the architecture
of the city and its infrastructure displaced
topologically by exchanging information with
environmental forces. The result is that the landscape
of the city and the typology of the surrounding
environments become active by structuring and organizing
natural forces.
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