189 Detail of a typical lashed connection in Big Bambu; You Can’t, You Won’t and You Don’t Stop constructed in the fall of 2010 on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, in NYC. (Copyright, D+M Starn, 2011)
“…locally specific / globally complex system can be seen in a variety of other biological systems at an equally diverse range of scales…” Big Bambu. (Image copyright, D+M Starn, 2011)
of flexibility within the system—it can be moved, used, and reused in multiple locations. The method of construction (lashing branches) is locally simple and globally complex, that is to say, specific, simple construction techniques that produce a complex, dynamic global arrangements. While not typically characterized as an “efficient system” it is defined by the new three “R’s”— redundancy, repetition and resilience. Scaffolding City is an architectural system that responds quickly and flexibly to internal and external pressures, be they urban, economic, or ecological. As such, it cannot exist on its own, it must rely upon our solid urban structures. Faced with these
scenarios, it becomes a second, complimentary system of urban habitation—a system of disaster—preparedness, of thickening urban edges, of redundant habitation and easily accessible construction materials. Much like the work of those avant-garde architects nearly fifty years ago, Scaffolding City attempts to reposition architecture as a flexible strategy of urban habitation, and not as a prescriptive solution to an unknowable problem. It will come to more closely resemble a type of semi-living system characterized by real-time change and adaptability found in flexible construction techniques. Scaffolding City is a place where citizens hold the potential to reshape their cities and
where the built landscape becomes collectively more active, agile and soft. It is a radically heterogeneous city—part superstructure, part favela, part bird-nest and part tree house—where many different urban animals can roost, camp, and live. It is, at times, a parasitic or a symbiotic structure, latching on to other structures or borrowing resources for a short amount of time. In return, Scaffolding City capitalizes on underutilized spaces and generates micro-economies of alternative resources. This city has never been seen before but might look strangely familiar. It is a city from the future past.
3. Tate, Melissa L. Knothe, “Wither Flows the Fluid in Bone?,” Journal of Biomechanics. Volume 36, Issue 10, October 2003: 14091424.
GOES SOFT
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