(DuYorkHai by Joshua LAU, Ambigious City of Imperfection)
What Rem talked about "the Generic City"... if we also look at work of Archigram, Walking City, the notion of transferring individual, placelessness is coming to reality in the force of globalization. In our time, instead of city that walks, tech allows information to flow much like the analogy of a walking city already.. Culture is being transform, transfer, transplanted and translated. Like Obama said we are at the era of Change, to me, the phenomena is an observation, I think we could project what is next to cities, politics and economics. Cities as physical entities provided environments reflecting similar cultural feeling is already happening in our lifetime, with SOM, KPF, ZAHA, REM, HERZ building in China, cross culture in architecture space is prevailing, affecting individual definition of identity- in a positive way. My thought is that, politics will also undergo a huge transformation in the coming 10 years since the fall of american. Power will be splited equally amongst the 4 key regions, Euro, US, MidE and Asia spreading the financial risk in future as what we learnt this time. the world will be ever flatter. How that affects cities will definitely be the small scale. a Scale that singular human being can sense by himself. We are talking about microclimate, air quality, leisure space, workplaces. Like u said, one would feel home wherever he goes. In Macro urban scale, we are talking about politics and economics. with fast infrastructure to future enhance and speed up the process of flattening, and more compacted cities with short , 15-30mins traveling time for individual.Globalization (implies already economics, flattening of culture, borders, power, money), which in turn is reflected in Architecture. Globalization is a phenomenon now, as it is already happening, its in your daily objects, food, smell, sound, transportation, news etc etc. Likewise our conversation here is already part of it and part of the process. Inevitable, but the direction is clear. Although the true flattening of the world will take about 20 years at least, as far as i can imagine, where economics, culture and politics needs a second class creature in the world in order to do that.. That is Technology... very much the idea of Matrix when Human Class as ONE singlar class over Robots, and all countries unites. This is an ideal thought on one side. Another thought is that much like the process of Modernism, and its opposing thought from post-modernist. We can view Globalization also is a way to unify/ becoming totalitarian of One World, One Culture and One System. What we are talking here now maybe the very hint of a post-globalization talks. To me what is happening now is like in the end of Enlightenment but in larger scale where now East and West collide philosophically If logic is right, sooner or later Post-Globalization movement will come about and people will start asking for return of multi-dimensional world again. With many renowned architects dotting around different cities of the world, speeding up the transformation process, pushes globalization to another pace, sooner or later human will be "bored" of cities which are the same, tourism drops, and culture becomes demanding again. At some point, I feel that there MUST be a balance somewhere in this process of Flattening, i.e. the true flattening will end when a balance is reached. And that is Utopia "again" maybe.. when Human lived in a primitive and simple state, but at the same time one of perfect happiness and fulfillment.... Here I totally agree that it is Not an Extreme case.. so my next question is.. where is that harmony? My thought would be based on the idea of.. Ex-Change unlike exchange, is an ambigious action.
- Cultural Ex-Change (flattening of life)
- Political Ex-Change (flattening of power/ equality)
- PresentFuture (ambigious state of present)
- Ex-Present (current state of present)
- Politarchitects (Dreamers/ Actualist)
- Arteconomics (Arts makes money, not Stocks) Wall street becomes Art Galleries!
- Urbsuburb (suburb with high speed transportation, shortening the time travel and therefore there is little difference living in suburb and in actual city centre)
In other words, whatever we will do maybe an exchange between the idea of Globalization. in order to facilitates and push towards a Harmonized World with Balance if History, Culture, Power, Economics etc etc so, no matter how flat our world will be, the idea of Binary Opposition still exists in order for the world to function in harmony. Yes so I do belief in a flat world, but only in balance state.. yet may seem ambigious.
It would be very interesting indeed to explore the new role of architect as active political agent. Le Corbusier's dictum Architecture or revolution seems to have reoriented architecture in the 1950's and 1960's, although there is little doubt that architecture took on the task of providing decent housing as early as the late 19th century -until then it was engaged only in designing public buildings and amenities and the residences of the powerful. What is really new in this respect is that architecture nowadays attempts to influence not just the physical world, by providing new forms of built environment, but also the way we perceive it. It acts on a substratum of a culture dominated by images, and it can be therefore much more effective in changing our views on reality than changing reality itself. To some extent architecture has always influenced the way people perceive of their environment and of architecture itself: Seneca relates that from the moment on that the new, huge, bright thermae were built, the old ones were considered fit just for rats. If we think of the millions and millions of buildings around the globe, we become aware of how little impact can the erection of a building have in terms of changing our environment (reffered to above as "reality"). If architecture wants to actively shape our environment it has to turn political; it has to focus on changing people's minds: images and buildings may be the best means to do it.
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