designing with intangible city layers
We could posit that the city as a social construct is built upon a series of tangible an intangible layers. A taxonomy of these will bring to the surface, as compound materials, not only in-apprehensible social ‘things’ like habits but also spatial tensions, and human/trans-human fears, needs, stress lines and curves. Average social distancing been transformed by COVID-19. Our personal space bubble has been inflated, expanded, and this is key to design and understanding of the urban, public realm.
Think of a gothic church. Even if you calculate the air renovation for the assistants, you don´t need such high ceilings. Oh, yes, you do. There is something sacred, human, intangible, an invisible tension. This is the core and essence of architecture. This is the tension that a well educated ‘ear’ should be able to ‘listen to’.
Our goal is to identify these intangibles and make them consciously usable. We use a layer methodology to overlap and study them. A city is composed by layers. Layers of tangible and intangible activity. Understanding the interaction of these layers is key to monitor, test and validate scenarios for the cities of the future.
Working with 5th grade Architecture students we proposed a series of exercises in order to learn how to use the invisible layers and tensions to obtain tangible outcomes.
The first exercise would consist of taking a a specific location and overlapping grids to obtain later a composition with different requirements. The layers of this grids have to be:
Two layers/patterns obtained by analysing data of the invisible tensions on the specific plot: sun and shadows, flows, objects/buildings triggering reactions, noise, winds…
Another random layer/pattern brought from wherever, with no connection from the project
One layer/pattern created/invented by themselves
We also performed a soundwalk with the students to create a soundmap layer
The goal of this first exercise is to create a composition, with no functional requirements, to start feeling free to work with abstract layers. We started taking data of the intangible and we ended up with an aesthetic tangible.
In the second exercise the students will use the layers of Exercise one to create a real buildable composition, facing the real materiality coming from a rule-free layer overlap.
The goal of this second exercise is to understand materiality and to be able to use a constructive significance to a given pattern.
In the third exercise, intangible data layers of the first exercise will return to the specific site in order to create a three dimensional topography with the addition of a new intangible factor: COVID-19.
The goal of this last exercise is making designers/students aware of how much invisible/intangible tensions modify and shape the real tangible world we live in.
