  |
|
  |
|
  |
|
|
|
|
|
swarm micro-architectures in the rest of the city |
|
ATHENS – SWARM MICRO-ARCHITECTURES in the “Rest of the City” (RoC)
Archsign
(Dimitris Papalexopoulos, architect, prof. School of Architecture NTUA and Athina Stavridou architect, Angela Kouveli architect, Dimitris Papadopoulos architect)
In short…
Between the historical center, continually shaping a globally recognized identity and the shinny periphery, where every building has the obligation to promote its different from the others self, the “rest of the city”, usually represented as an amorphous mass, covering the 80% of the city surface, offers a multilayered complexity, often seen as an obstacle to official strategic planning.
We assume the complexity of “the rest of the city” and invest it with swarm micro-architectures that will appear if and when people want, catalyzing ephemeral or not public events.
The idea came out at 1996 and continue developing at 1999 and 2001 , integrating at 2006 the AmI (Ambient Intelligence) perspective in favor of multiple, ephemeral, ad hoc interconnections at any place, where Swarm Micro-Architectures are active.
In parallel, a number of diploma theses in the School of Architecture N.T.U.A. exploit the possibilities of small, light, micro – interventions into the existing informal Athens ' urban tissue catalyzing practices out of official predictions and norms. Those interventions meant to be reversible, not leaving traces, maybe change their identity thought use, or even perish if nobody invests in them.
We try now to structure the corpus of those theses, give rise to new thematic directions, keep the problematic open and creative. At the end of the present text and the fifth image, we give a hint of the thematic and projects (IMAGE 6) :
MORE ON SWARM MICRO - ARCHITECTURES
“Rationale” (IMAGE 1)
What is the city – space between the one forced identity of the center trying to cover all underlying differences and the many juxtaposed identities architecturally mastered of the shiny periphery?
Naturally, we can find emerging occasional architectures in the center and also locate them in the interstices of the periphery.
But the present aim is to see nearer the “rest”, that is the major part of the city, where we live, the part we fantasy destroying and replacing with strategic interventions, once and for all clear and functional.
This major part of Athens resists to any major planning, proves to have an extreme flexibility, is in constant evolution through a multitude of local interventions with perpetual changes in its activities through small fusions, divisions, extensions, renovations, new buildings, demolitions. It is a morphing area. Everything happens in an urban tissue that has a memory, but does not resists inserted radical localized changes. Public space is getting smaller bur does not disappear. Empty spaces exist but they are dispersed to a multitude of small lots.
It is the part of the city of Athens that has been rapidly constructed at the ‘60 and '70 with apartment buildings on nearly every lot leaving a number of them empty, and then the same part evolved through micro-transformations. An abandoned small parking hosts an open air cafeteria and meeting place for adjacent apartment buildings. People living in the first floors are moving to the upper and those from the upper floors are moving to the suburbs. Emigrants are inserted and form or communities on and under the ground floor. Even the public planning intervention is done in a small scale, with pedestrians streets randomly disposed, a promise of a possible public space.
Apparently we are in the middle, between the one and the many identities, in the space of the multiple, a space of grasping chaotic where any architectural intervention has to see and respond, not to analyze and form. It is the space of the maximum speed, like the middle of a river, where complexity is at work. Any constructed object resists a clear definition; it is a “quasi-object” , a catalyzing factor of events.
What if… (IMAGE 2)
Maybe it is a question of calculus: Supposing the announcement of the future construction of a huge public cultural building in Athens of 64 million euros cost (not totally unreal) and making a division, we arrive at 1000 small interconnected architectures of 64m2 each, designed by 1000 architects' teams, functioning (both the teams and later the buildings) in swarm intelligence, that is forming “ a population of simple agents interacting locally with one another and with their environment. Although there is normally no centralized control structure dictating how individual agents should behave, local interactions between such agents often lead to the emergence of global behavior” . Is it an architecture slightly out of control or a novel form of utopia “inserted” to the uban fabric?
The “quasi-object” / monad
Life cycle
The life cycle of its physical components is fragmentary. It consists of phases characterized by connection and localization and others characterized by the movement in search for a new place: Two distinct and interdependent states and modes of being, that succeed one another.
Activities
Its activities can be related to the activities of the space hosting it, even if it is to make use only of the digital connections in order to accomplish autonomous functions or functions that are connected with other places. In that case, as well as when it is in the process of migration, certain hosted activities could continue developing within the digital space, thus laying stress on the possibility for the existence of a continuous, flowing time, that acts along with the aforementioned fragmented one. For example, if the parasite has its own web site, then its digital substance tends to be relatively independent from the succession of its localizations.
In this remark on time, one should add that fluidity and fragmentation characterize both the physical and the digital space, since physical space possesses continuous, fluid features and the digital space allows for the development of activities which are fragmented in time. What is important to keep in mind is the interweaving, which is simultaneous without clear distinction, of the fluid and fragmented time.
Networking
It is interesting to see a network in its totality, where localized/ permanent activities coexist along with interconnected/ mobile ones. Then, the discussion shifts, from the search for the special features and the fluid identity of one single mobile and occasionally interconnected space, towards the search for the form of a complex network of agents that are digitally connected with spaces as well as with each other. We should note that when the design process moves towards this direction, the digital networks of data exchange can easily incorporate a logic of performance optimization through the distribution of activities in a flexible, changing and mobile network of spaces. In this way, they direct physical space towards a reevaluation of its own limits. “Physical” and “digital” agent / spaces are combined and one can wonder about the kind of networking that might emerge. That is, to imagine a set of ephemeral spaces that are digitally interconnected, acquiring a functionality beyond and through the interconnection of morphological signifiers. The functionality of the whole would then be achieved through digital networking, while the “physical” would try to localize and possibly on a symbolic level to interconnect the signifiers.
This is an interesting case of changing form: A novel type of hybrid network of spaces emerges in contrast to the solitary hybrid space where physical and digital activities simply coexist, even if they are interconnected with other activities, elsewhere.
Density
The monad does not deny density. It catalyzes it and transforms it giving it a new structure.
Structure (IMAGE 4)
A three level structure:
• Structural beams between the existing constructions, posed where they could provide a support concrete column or beam. This randomness defines an informal geometry with possible additions or transformations when needed. A redundancy concept is applied
• Exterior envelop in the form of arcs, promising a sense of “enclosure” to let people gather
• AmI components plugged-in the envelop for any local functionality or translocal connection. Building AmI components are bridges between the physical and the digital
Design (IMAGE 3)
A parametric design tool is under development permitting the production of populations of the above structure for integration into different environments, following different local activities demands. An integration typology is developed seeking possibilities of ephemeral and evolving constructions on the ground, at the first floor level, bridging at a higher level, at empty slots, at the centre of the existing square urban unit or at one of its corners, above the street or attached to an existing building…
A space without qualities
Athens is like an organism that suffocates under too many strata that cannot communicate to each other. They are full by all kinds of qualities that consists the so much-desired city's identity.
Multiples monads within a space without qualities.
Theirs mutation, shift, or change activates the space they occupy, causing different qualities to emerge, temporary fields to be formed, and multiple relationships to build up.
A reference (IMAGE 5)
A reference is made to Takis Zenetos Technotopia of Electronic Urbanism .
The central idea of Electronic Urbanism (1953-1974) is the creation of an extensive system of wire-suspended levels which will host urban activities and especially housing, over a protected and free nature. Communication technologies will allow widespread interconnection of people and social groups. The extensive application of tele-work, tele-management, tele-medicine, and tele-education will reorganize human environment in the direction of free communication and creative engagement.
Although Electronic Urbanism has the characteristics of a total proposal and at first sight appears to be seeking a clear shift with the present and a parallel projection into the distant future, we will support further down that time and change are its main ingredients. In Zenetos' mind this technotopia will come about through continuous evolutions of the existing. Furthermore, what is most interesting is that, for Zenetos himself, Electronic Urbanism is a laboratory of ideas which accompanies him throughout his professional activities as a parallel structure . Many of the central concepts of Electronic Urbanism we shall meet implemented in his constructed work. In a mirror image, it looks like a refuge where he designs the ideas which neither the Greek nor the international construction environment could materialise.
A “what if” transformation.
• Erase the levels that support Zenetos' capsules and let them fall on the city.
• Replace the suspended slabs by the existing fabric of the city.
• Land on the existing, what Zenetos has ungrounded.
• Establish a dialogue with the radicals of the sixties.
• Keep intact and active the reference: ”The centre is materialized at the moment and in the place of the action”
•
D. Papalexopoulos, “Athenes: entre centre historique et aires peripheriques, la ville de l'entre – deux”, Forum International de la Jeune Architecture , eapvm, 1996, pp. 33-38.
D. Papalexopoulos, “The quasi-object city – in – between”, Architecture in Greece 34/2000, pp. 142-144.
D. Papalexopoulos, “Parasites, their Receptacles and Digital Interconnections », Announciation , Athens D.O.E.S., International Architecture Competition Ephemeral Structures in the City of Athens , Cultural Olympiad 2001-2004, Athens, 2003, pp. 54-57. Also http://www.archsign.gr/writings/parasite/Parasites%20in%20english%20dplxs.htm
2 nd International Conference on Intelligent Environments, I.E.T., National Technical University of Athens , Achilles Kameas and Dimitris Papalexopoulos General Chairs. Workshop on Architecture and Ambient Intelligence
Projects by Yuki Nikitaki, Angela Kouveli, Panayotis Mihalatos, Yannis Organos, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Leonidas Oikonomou, Natalia Roumelioti, Katerina Chrysathopoulou, Kleopatra Malama, Maro Spanou, Grigoris Stavridakis
See Felix Guattari, “On Machines”, Complexity , Journal Of Philosophy and the Visual Arts No 6, p. 10.
http://www.archsign.gr/writings/tales/TALES-DPLXS-04.htm
The simplest definition from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swarm_intelligence
Dimitris Papalexopoulos, Eleni Kalafati, Takis Zenetos, Visioni Digitali - Architetture Construite , Edil Stampa, Serie The IT Revolution in architecture, ed Antonino Saggio, Rome, 2006.