Augmented Urban Service Vector-Nissan Competition

Creating vectors of augmented infrastructure, the AUSV provides a solution to the ever growing demand for parking within the city. Its objectives lie in the unification and accessibility of urban services such as lighting, surveillance and communication.

A piezoelectric system forms the basis for elevated parking. Utilising the vehicles potential energy in its weight to produce sustainable power, a vehicle will be placed onto a gyroscopic platform. This slowly lowers throughout its stay, harnessing said energy to power street lights, hydraulic arms and surveillance equipment.

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The Three Ecologies - diagram of three ecologies

Felix Guattari is one of the most important writers over the last 40 years, he was a french activist, institutional physiotherapist, and founder of schizonanalysis and ecosophy (relevant to the three ecologies). He also collaborated with Gilles Deleuze with important texts such as A Thousand Plateaus and Anti-Oedipus

Guattari starts the three ecologies with a concise paragraph describing how the world is in a ecological crisis which could threaten life on the planet. This crisis is best described as the regression of human subjectivity, its cause being globalization and standardization or as Guattari describes “a period of intense techno - scientific transformations”. Human subjectivity is constantly being segregated from it external origins and reestablished in a simplified media controlled scope, devoid of any real feelings or meaning.

In equal measure the environment is also a part of this ecological crisis which is also put aside and handled with a one answer attitude. for these reasons political groups have failed and have supported capitalism over the people and the environment. As this is regular practice Guattari explains that current political groups are unable to understand the problem that faces them let alone tackle it appropriately. The type of political thinker that is required would be as Guattari describes a ethico-politician or which he calls “ecosophy”. The theory of ecosophy gives a understanding that there could be a strand of thought that is capable of considering in equal the three following ecological subjects:

1. The environment (as it is a given and humans rely on it for survival)
2. Social Relations
3. Human Subjectivity

These three subjects are the Guattari’s Three Ecologies. If globalization continues with its current pattern which involves the crushing of subjectivity and the standardization of society it is foreseeable that it will not succeed (what ever its goal maybe). Even if the current course of things did change, Guattari stresses that the two following factors must not prevail in social makeup:

1. Those of the imperium [Latin ; ‘authority’] of a global market that destroys specific value systems and puts on the same plane of equivalence: material assets, cultural assets, wildlife areas, etc.
2. Those that place all social and international relations under the control of police and military machines.

If neither of these is to prevail then it is clear to see that it is near impossible for one political party or hierarchy to understand and act accordingly to the solution, “Therefore this revolution must not be exclusively concerned with visible relations or force on a grand scale”.

This immediately then throws up the question of how can subjectivity be produced, and more importantly how can it come around with out contradicting itself and becoming standardized. Guattari explains that The super egos of the hard sciences have failed to recognize the creative power of subjectivity, “it is no surprise that the human and social sciences have condemned themselves to missing the intrinsically progressive and creative and auto-positioning dimensions of processes of subjectification”. Science is only good at answering certain questions and it is currently beyond human or machine capability to understand or predict the extents which subjectivity beholds.

If such a pan ecosophic society were to exist guattari explains that the power of subjectivity would be harnessed through re-creation, with the mentality of an artist, “Its ways of operating will be more like those of an artist, rather than of professional psychiatrists who are always haunted by an outmoded ideal of scientificity”. This then creates the idea of society having a ecosphic ethos in line with the three ecologies in order to sustain or stabilize mankind.

However is it not conceivable that naive human nature will always imitate or desire to recreate what ever the upper tiers of social hierarchy are experiencing and will the upper tiers not instinctively attempt to crystallize influences of the past. So if any part of a society were to thrive on subjective creative power then it would soon be repeated and thus contradict its self, even if the foundation set out not to. Architecture is a major contributor to this as forms of historical significance gain collective sentimentality and then get protected up held and repeated out of context, this may be something that architecture can never overcome. This cycle of creative subjectivity and false imitation can be explain in the following diagram:

As Subjective power can sometimes be volatile a entire society would soon lead to discourse or controlled, and then would no longer be a subjective society. This is really where the three ecologies come into play, the struggle of freedom and control set on the stage of the environment must be balanced in order to truly live and flourish on this planet. Although Globalization has devastated cultures and exploited the planets resources it has also revealed the emergence of international awareness and understanding, through this scope a global society is fast being born which may or may not lead to the unification of morals and ethics and then ultimately act as a platform for expressive freedom. This new epoch will grow and move away from repetition as it will become even more meaningless that it is now, in this process a new way of living may be formed with out environmental guilt and capital oppression. This will only prevail if the global community has the three ecologies as a locus of intention through out all levels of society.

All quotes taken from The Three Ecologies

Geological History 1000-7000 a.d - De Landa, Manuel

Manuel De Landa is a mexican born Writer, artist and philosopher who now lives in New York City, throughout his career he has addressed a wide range of subjects and focuses on current issues around philosophy and science.

Geological history 1000 - 7000 A.D starts by describing everything was just a biological mix of chemicals which produced a great variety of combinations, some of these giving rise to the living organisms; one which would evolve to become the human race. Part of this evolution for some was the introduction of rigid bones into soft bodies, this gave a certain freedom as De Landa Describes “freeing them from many constraints and literally setting them into motion to conquer every available niche in the air, in water and on land” and conquer the human race did. Amassing in groups to survive the eventually growing to dominate the surface of the globe for self interest humans have fort hard to define themselves as collective societies, cities are the embodiment of the history and identity which make up said societies.

De Landa points out cities have become the rigid bones that support and free society's soft temperamental body. However contrary to a humans endoskeleton cities act as a exoskeleton protecting humankind from the elements of the globe, the very elements that have been there from the start of evolution.

In order for Cities (Our collective identities) to flourish with life and ideas a certain density was required this density meant that the city had to dominate the land around it to please it appetite this has been achieved with the invention of money. This automatically led to Value and created hierarchies in and out of the city centers, De Landa quotes Howard Odum in saying that “Money is like energy, only it runs in the opposite direction: energy flows from agricultural villages to the towns they feed, while money flows from town to countryside, to pay for the food “The flow of energy makes possible the circulation of money [including the energy spent on paperwork, banking, closing deals] and the manipulation of money can control the flow of energy””. As money can be manipulated in this way the city has become home to the elites (the controllers of the flow of money) and in order to enforce some kind of equilibrium the populace has forced its collective power upon them which takes the form of government, this government is in constant conflict and cooperation with the elites. It is this which will allow a city to grow or decay, of course some central places may have certain geographical advantages such as a abundance of sought after resources or a central location with the network mesh which will give them a much better choice of how they survive.

So De Landa paints a scene where there are the highly regulated cities, countries or conglomerates ( E.U or the newly emerging pan pacific nations) that have a rigid nature in order to control its inhabitants and reinforce or destroy social identity, contrary to the more flexible realm in between these bodies of authority which which have the capital power and control of money. De Landa Describes these two entities as Central Places and Network Systems, both can be seen as vital to the survival and growth of one another.

Under the operation of capitalism with help from industrialization and the computer age this system has now grown to a uncontrollable size, cities boundaries lack definition and spill out into the network. in turn the network has penetrated deep into the heart of the cites, even the most historic and cultural quarters giving way to mass tourism and turned into a profit making machine for their owners.

In the rush to grow, modernize and populate a great deal of negative dept and anti markets have occurred, in this process standardization and drive for efficiency has lead to a capital monopoly help by a small number of elites. this combined with environmental awareness has led to a emerging social crisis. It is apparent that as long as this monopoly holds the whole process of capitalism will inevitably collapse or stagnate. De Landa explains that Capitalism will be unable to grow at its usual rate because it lack the novation to do so, the innovation that first set capitalism in international motion was produced buy the interfacing of small shops and businesses with the desire to grow. only on this small scale does a operator have the ability to work around regulations implied buy the city, also the scale of such a small operator does not directly rely on so much energy input from the material system.

De Landa offers a possible way out of the emerging crisis buy saying that we need to emphasize and concentrate on the dynamics of many interacting decision makers not individual ideas. If so would we then start to see the mergence and diffusion of governments in order to enforce a ethical basis for a global society? In such a scenario the central places and the network mesh would become one, architecture being the only absolute reminisce of central places.

All quotes taken from Geological History 1000-7000 a.d

From the City to Urban Society - Henri Lefebvre

From the city to urban society was written in the 1970s and has acted as a fundamental piece of text in circles of urban theory. Lefebvre was a french socialist and considered a neo marxist, he also was involved in the french resistance.

In the text he talks of the hypothesis of society being a completely urbanized one.

This can be defined as when all of the earth has been brought to complete control buy the city and it serves society alone.

This can already be seen in agriculture, much of the worlds agriculture is fast becoming run like a efficient machine to feed society a wide ranging pallet of food. it is seen that the unification of agriculture as a industry bring economic advantages for society and the farmer. it is thus under control of the economy which means under the control of urban societies unified or not.

The subject of industrial and postindustrial is raised. what happens in a postindustrial society?points like consumer society and leisure society can be appointed to a postindustrial society, be that as it may they can still be considered part of the global industry, the industry has just taken on a different form and the capital centre of the world are just a different cog in the machine, the also rely on the smaller suburbs surrounding them so they to become significant in the global industry. A town that once many have had a thriving industry but is now just housing and shops still has some significance to the labour pull or it would not be there or survive, some places might also have such a tangle of different purposes and connections that it is impossible assign them a name. This is a major problem that some local councils in the U.K are facing, always looking for a identity or sense of place and sometimes wrongly emphasizing something that was not really culturally significant. Contrary to this even places that have strong historical significance and have turned to tourism as a identity and this is there means of survival and integration with the global network. canterbury alone is a fine example of this.

Once society as a whole has reached complete urbanization Lefebvre describes it as the critical point. He describes it in the following diagram:

0------------------------------------------------100%

Lefebvre describes pure nature as being 0%. Pure nature before humans took dominance of any material is quite hard to perceive. 100% the critical point is when complete urbanization has occurred. In-between the two poles can be described as the transition from agrarian to urban.

This critical point of complete urbanization could be thought of as Lefebvre describes a virtual model. and something that can become a common goal of which a urban epistemology could grow. This could prove of fundamental importance to globalization and could withhold possible social collapse or regression on a grand scale.

Towards the end of the text he makes two for and against arguments for the street and the monument, this is a toll to illustrate the complexity of the critical phase. It leads to the conclusion that there is a variety of ever changing fundamental components which form urbanization (such as streets and monuments), and how these are deployed and used buy society as a whole will have substantial effects on the perception of complete urbanization.

This again may be where architecture’s job lies.

All Quotes taken from From the City to Urban Society

The Space of Flows - Manuel Castells

In this text Castellis outlines a theory that the world is on its way to becoming a space of flows made up of the three following layers.

1. The space of flows is the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows.
2. The second layer of the space of flows is constituted by its nodes and hubs.
3. The third important layer of the space of flows refers to the spatial organization of the dominant, managerial elites.

• Castellis talks of there being a few major control cities for example New York, London and Tokyo. will these cities loose their power status or adapt in the space of flows? New York and London may try to maintain the dominance as leaders in the global economy and the form of their inner cities will stay pretty much the same. New york due to the geography of manhattan island and London due to the rigidity of its historical context. However already seen and to continue to grow on the outer zones of these cities are dense residential districts, commercial centers and remote industrial estates, with the support and networked integration of these these centers may become more able to survive in the space of flows. Tokyo in my view has a better chance of surviving as it is already a has the make up of a continuous decentralized urbanism, if it continues to expand it may as Castallis stated merge with other cities such as Yokohama, nagoya and osaka becoming the largest urban area on the planet. this means it would loose its identity as tokyo in the space of flows and become a vast poly-centric urbanism and rely greatly as it does now on the global economy.
• The space of flows seems to suggest the death of culture, culture may become a process of efficient cultivation and evolution on multiple levels. Which indeed would be of a truer nature than the false reproduction of culture seen today.
• Architectures task may lay in this process of culture, the architect ensuring that each component of the space of flows is designed with a equal measure of Guattari’s proposed three ecologies. These are the environment, social relations and human subjectivity. If these components are well designed they will blend and perform with the space of flows and become true culture.

All Quotes taken from The Space of Flows

Space as a Key Word - David Harvey

Harvey suggests that space has a much deeper meaning and importance than just absolute, he states from his prior writings that “it was crucial to reflect on the nature of space if we were to understand urban processes under capitalism”. He then puts forward a theory that space could be categorized as absolute, relative, relational or any combination of these depending on the circumstances. This approach to space is important because there are amounted urban experiences and memories that can only be analyzed inside the dialectical tension of these titles.

However he then explains how this method alone is not capable of articulating the complexity of human subjectivity “the point about grappling with space as a keyword is therefore to identify how this concept might be better integrated into existing social, literary and cultural metatheories and with what effects”. In order to help clarify this he refers to how other philosophers have referred to space as a experience, Cassier distinguishing between organic, perceptual and symbolic space and Lefebvre with experienced, conceptualized and lived space. to explore the complexity that these categories add to the understanding of space he stacks Lefebvre’s definitions up against his original three in a matrix as seen below:

Although the matrix has its limits is obvious to see the true complexity that space imposes and also how it is impossible to understand it without accepting that time is of equal significance to it. Also seen from the matrix is how space and time have relational qualities.

Harvey then expresses how capitalism does not engage relational feelings or subjective views, in fact the function is to stand away from relational space for its own privatization and reproduction. The nature of capitalism means there must indeed at some point in space and time meet its demise, whether the recent credit crisis will be its the start of its last reproductive cycle remains to be seen.

Harvey then turns to Marxian philosophy in saying that it is a political genre that does embrace relational thinking “Yet Marx himself is a relational thinker”. To help exemplify this Harvey put the Marxian theory through the same spatial matrix as seen below:

Only by engaging with relational feelings can one start to understand marxian political economy. With the marxian theory put into the matrix it can be seen that capitalist wage labour is incapable of fitting into all the categories of space at once. buy giving labour a value it creates social hierarchies and creates alienation. Marxism on the other hand works relationally and is capable of fitting in dialectical tension over the entire matrix, the third point of marxism is when the people seize control of the government on a international scale and abolish privatization and value. If this were to happen space could be realized and explored outside of capitalism on absolute, relative and relational levels.

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed”

(Mahatma Gandhi)

Images and quotes taken from Space as a key word