introduction to urban tactics isolated actions, blow by blow
Often, architects fail to recognize the complexities of the city, which results in architects and urban planners attempting to impose order on a system that is, inherently, unordered. Rem Koolhass promotes ‘Lite Urbanism,’ wherein architects support and promote - rather than restrain - the dynamic complexities of the city. He argues: If there is to be a “new urbanism” it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation of territories with potential; it will no longer aim for stable configurations but for the creation of enabling fields that accommodate processes that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions […] It will not be about the civilized, but about underdevelopment.9 This statement questions the agency of the architect and asks how one can support – rather than restrain - the development the urban. In discussing the theory of unitary urbanism, Situationist authors note that their "first task is to enable people to stop identifying with their surroundings and with model
9 Rem Koolhaas, “What Ever Happened to Urbanism?” In S,M,L,XL, OMA with Bruce Mau (New York: Monicelli Press, 1995), 971.
The library is most often considered a highly organized and structured system. A new approach is needed, however - one that welcomes the uncertain and the unpredictable.
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