This is an ambitious studio looking at the ground up or The Purpose-built Capital city intended to be a traveling studio. Due to the global pandemic (even with the situation relatively under control in China), we have been limited in our ability to travel to any notable extent. As an opportunity to look beyond the physical world to travel - we have resorted to virtual travel. In turn we will be resorting to virtual explorations, and thus documentation as an outlet for our creative efforts.
We will be considering historic, technical, and theoretical aspects of purpose built cities. Even the cliche statement: “form follows function” still holds significant merit due to the fact that it is almost futile attempting to consider form with the challenges of the function demanding consideration. It is for this reason that a large focus will be put on technical aspects of the city. For example one key element of focus for the studio is the mundane need to integrate housing into the solution set for any urban condition. Yet these are not the only technical aspects we are interested in covering. Conceptions such as Arcology or more concrete instantiations such as Mazdar have taken on the impact of human development on “spaceship earth”. Thus sustainability will be an important part of the studios objectives and foci.
Throughout time many cities have been premeditated, purpose built, planned cities. As we live with globalization and rural flight, we are seeing much more of a precedent for ground up, purpose built or planned cities; particularly in Asia and China. We have seen ‘Special Economic Zones’ announced throughout the recent past. Some of these have been less successful than others, yet we do see the overwhelming and unignorable successes of others, such as Shenzhen, etc. But China also has a long history of emperor decreed cities rising out of a designated plot of land, and China is not alone in this act. For example, recently we have seen several successful examples in the Middle East, including the current effort in Egypt (The new administrative capital).
Yet when considering purpose built cities, should we only consider built ones? Can we expand our definition of ‘city’? Looking at the origin of the word: “from Old French cite, from Latin civitas, from civis ‘citizen’”(Oxford). Does a citizen have to only be human? How about a termite mound, does it have citizens, a video game, or cellular automata?
Much of what drives design are performative aspects of the outcomes, yet if we are only driven by the utilitarian requirements, we will never allow ourselves the opportunity to imagine alternatives. By pushing beyond what is possible we enable new possibilities for the future. This can be referred to as the development of possible futures. This studio builds on the heritage of the digital studios pioneered by Bernard Tschumi. We see the legacy of that effort going on to create such projects as the digital Guggenheim, New City, and has even influenced Hollywood world building see examples from Alex McDowell and the World Building Media Lab at the University of Southern California. Yet this is not the only lineage of computation influencing the future of urban conceptions. We have seen, particularly in the last ten years, the influence of computational methods such as parametric, procedural, and machine learning rework the possibilities of creativity to incorporate computation as a collaborator. Beyond those technical aspects driving creativity and innovation there are other stirrings including more cultural ones such as the post-digital movement which has worked to flatten and colorize predominant conceptions of our future.
