Aug 3, 01:50 am
Emerging Synthetic Urbanism
by George Katodrytis
Urban and other networks
Urban thermal photography by Ahmed (in the design studio of George Katodrytis)
Screenshot from the film Blade Runner
Both images above are projects by George Katodrytis / STUDIONOVA ARCHITECTS
Modernist planning has become synonymous with separation. Traditional settlements are characterized by informality and organic growth, yet they have now been abandoned for the global city, which is caught up in developments of digital media and communication. While the historic center is becoming a tourist attraction, suburbia is becoming a fragmented and thematic playground. Both modernism and traditional planning seem unable to deal with the new sets of challenges presented by the 21st century.
This text focuses on the new emerging Synthetic Urbanism. Synthetic Urbanism is based on an operative approach. Such a dynamic field is always in a state of transition in anticipation of production, always in the process of becoming. Recent ideas in urbanism pay greater attention to the role of external forces in the shaping of our cities. The network of these forces affects the rules of the operative system, incorporating both near and far, visible and invisible, local and global. Sections are created by weaving, superposition and overlapping, rather than through stacking.
The new field of emerging Synthetic Urbanism is at the intersection of architecture, landscape and urbanism. This condition will be described in its multiplicity and ability to deal with programmatic mixing, relate to global interchanges, accommodate formal complexities and employ advanced digital and evolutionary processes.
•Programmatic Mixing: Complex interactive events unfolding in time and involve movement, connectivity and exchange.
•Global Interchange: Patches and corridors that form larger networks of nodes and paths that allow communication, interaction and adaptation.
•Formal Complexity: A radically horizontal, field-like urbanism, with infinite geometric patterns as spatial concepts. These topographies that are folded, warped, bent or striated.
•Digital and Evolutionary Process: A loosely structured frameworks that grows in and changes over time. These are immersive environments, diagrams subject to only partial control.
Filed under: Texts-CITY+ NEWS
The anime “Metropolis” has some interesting examples of synthetic urbanism. I think it contrasts the futuristic urbanism of “Blade Runner” and presents an apparent golden utopia on the surface, unlike the bleak, desolite Los Angeles of “Blade Runner”