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urban (de)resolution:

environments and counter-environments

urban (de)resolution: environments and counter-environments Masterâ€™s Degree Project Prepared by Adam Lazar Onulov in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Master of Architecture in the Faculty of Environmental Design, The University of Calgary Supervisor: Josh Taron External Advisor: Eric Baczuk

Abstract

This Masterâ€™s Degree Project (MDP) is rooted in the following question: why do we do shit we hate? Consumer culture is everywhere and everything we have become. Our experiences have become manufactured and predictable - our relationships are mediated by ubiquitous network technology and as a result, have transformed the traditional understanding of public space and human interaction. Our public realm is in a state of decay. This project challenges the existing phenomenon of the pervasive infiltration of mobile technology into the physical public realm, and the consequential effects on the ways in which people exist and interact within the city. This project also questions to what extent our identities, experiences and relationships are mediated and manufactured by the culture industry and the impacts this has had on the quality of our public realm. Aimless engagement with the aforementioned mechanisms is futile This design exploration is about inducing moments of connectivity and consciousness with and within the built environment - not by detaching ourselves from the mechanisms of the culture industry, but by embracing them. Through techniques of identity design (branding), recombinant design and programmatic hybridization, the intent of this project, urban (de)resolution, is to synthesize a critical urban framework with the hope of creating a rejuvenated awareness and engagement with our public realm. urban (de)resolution questions the modes of apprehending the world, which become characterized by intense moments of being part of it, rather than outside looking in (or, as we have become guilty of, not looking at all).

Key words: Technology, Culture, Public Sphere, Branding, Urban Framework, Network Culture, Control

Table of Contents Introduction

001

The Culture Industry

008

Empire... and more specifically Ether

012

I n t e rc h a n g e a b l e S a m e n e s s : A n Analysis of the Culture Industry

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Precedent Analysis: Shopping as Spectacle

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Commercial Debris: The State of the Publuc Realm Precedent Analysis: No-Stop City by ARCHIZOOM Technology and the Public Realm Precedent Analysis: Facestate by METAHAVEN

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Chapter 04 A Timeline

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Sex x Technology = The Future (Design Strategies

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The First Question...

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Initial Experiments

069

Identity Network

082

Systemic Collapse / Systemic Saturation (Conclusion)

132

INTRODUCTION

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The historical public realm is deteriorating. The confluence of a dynamic culture industry 1 and emerging network technologies has fundamentally altered the relationships and links between people and their environment. Our urban landscapes are dominated by generic non-places, and our relationships are mediated and simulated by alwaysaccessible network technology. As a result, the homogenization of our social and urban experiences puts into question the quality (and perhaps even the existence) of our relationships with and within the physical public realm. The mutation of our socio-cultural environment has come from an irreversible tendency towards an ever-greater formal and operational abstraction of elements and functions, and their homogenization into a single virtual process of functionalization (Baudrillard, 1988). Public space has increasingly evolved from being a place that facilitates opportunities for spontaneity, uncertainties and connectivity to the richness of the urban fabric. Today, our â€œpublic spacesâ€? are non-places - spaces of speed and transition, specificity and regulation, centered on consumer consumption and mediated by technology (Baudrillard, 1988; Auge, 1995).

Introduction

“Information is less the product of discrete processing units than the outcome of the networked relations between them, links between people, between machines and between machines and people.”

-Kazys Varnelis, Place: The Networking of Public Space (2008) Our urban experiences are becoming more homogeneous. The evolution and proliferation of late-capitalist2 apparatuses, such as the screen, create connected strings of graphics; emblems of franchise and infrastructures of light, LEDs and video, describing our twenty-four-hour market world and creating a tendency toward interchangeable sameness. Less and less terrain remains unclaimed and unregulated by the culture industry – less and less terrain falls outside of the regime of the logo and its image. In fact, when thinking about what lies outside of the culture industry, one quickly realizes that it is omnipresent - manufacturing our physical and virtual selves. The mass production and instantaneous dispersion of information throughout the network society dominates the physical spaces we inhabit. As a consequence, we are inundated with media and messages that regulate and mediate our relationships (or lack thereof) with and within the public realm. While fully embracing the culture industry (and it’s by-products), this Master’s Degree Project (MDP) uses techniques of recombinant design3 and programmatic hybridization to synthesize a critical urban framework. The result: change by virtue of participation - a rejuvenated awareness and engagement within the public realm. Using the pedestrian blocks of Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary as a case study, this design exploration will attempt to extract, analyze and understand the visible (and invisible) flows and networks that have (in)formed our very specific and homogenous socio-cultural condition. To wander is to explore with an open mind, with no constraints and no pre-requisite. One wanders in order to escape social order where regularity and conformity are required (Mayer, 2010). Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur wanders and probes his surroundings for clues and distractions to awaken consciousness about the built environment and establish a momentary intimacy with it; one can simultaneously wander apart from, yet so much a part of the city if and only one is freed from

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the constraints of contemporary society (Mayer, 2010). We must ask ourselves: is it possible to detach ourselves from the mechanisms of organization that manufacture our experiences? Has the act of wandering been appropriated by the culture industry? From surfing the Internet, to leisurely shopping, wandering has become mediated by programmed specificity - technology has made the reach of the culture industry inescapable.

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The culture industry is everywhere and is everything we have become. Technological mechanisms of content deployment and connectivity have replaced the traditional understanding of human interaction (and for the most part, we have embraced this new interface of communication and connectivity almost intuitively). The convergence of these conditions has created an inexorable mechanism of control. As such, this design exploration is about inducing moments of connectivity and consciousness with the built environment - not by detaching ourselves from the mechanisms of the culture industry (impossible), but by embracing it. urban (de)resolution questions the modes of apprehending the world, which become characterized by intense moments of being part of it, rather than outside looking in (or, as we have become guilty of, not looking at all).

Introduction

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Barbara Kruger, Untitled (I shop therefore I am), 1987

urban (de)resolution NOTES 1

The culture industry, as defined, by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer constitute the culture industry as all mass culture (film, radio, television, etc.) as a mechanism of control. This topic will be further discussed and defined in chapter 01.

May 1968 marked late capitalismâ€™s attainment of the world stage. As theorist Fredric Jameson describes it in his seminal essay â€œPostmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,â€? after World War II, capitalism entered a new, purer stage in which it came to permeate all forms of human life. 3

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In genetic engineering, recombination refers to the artificial and deliberate recombination of disparate pieces of DNA, often from different organisms. In the context of this MDP, the process of recombination and hybridization allows for the formation of new programs and the negotiation of pre-existing boundaries.

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THE CULTURE INDUSTRY

The Culture Industry

“The world wants to be deceived”

-Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (1991) Our experiences within the public realm, that is, humans interacting with other humans, and humans interacting with the built environment, are so pre-conditioned and manufactured that all social interaction has become homogeneous and predictable. In the socio-cultural realm of late-capitalism, relations are mediated by flows of capital, and by the media with its omnipresent simulations of how we ought to exist within our public realm. Compared to the classical city1, the public spaces of today are sedated, and usually perceived from a sedentary position (Koolhaas, 1995). We are desensitized and disengaged from the built environment – rather than being active participants within the city, we have become passive spectators (Bratton, 2009). How do we wake up? Do we want to wake up? Is it even possible to emerge from the heavily sedated state of existence we have (not) found ourselves in?

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Empire - and more specifically Ether “Along with the global market and global circuits of production has emerged a global order, a new logic and structure of rule – in short, a new form of sovereignty”

-M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (2000) Empire2 is the emerging power structure(s) of our contemporary globalized society. As our world becomes more and more globalized and interconnected, fixed boundaries are simultaneously becoming obsolete. Increasingly, sovereign nation states are unable to regulate economic and cultural exchanges. Empire is a decentralized apparatus, where power comes from the global network as opposed to any one place. As such, empire establishes itself as a decentralized mechanism that incorporates the entire global realm. Empire has no geographical center of power, but manages emergent hybrid conditions and flexible hierarchies through modulating networks of command. Empire is a result of the “irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges.” (Hardt & Negri, 2000)

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Philosophers Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri present empire as the simultaneous functioning of distinct, global and absolute mechanisms: the bomb, money, and ether. Empire is manifest as a world governed by systematic alliances between political (the bomb) and economic (money) power that uses a corporatized culture (ether) to manufacture a compliant public. Ether is the realm of the media, communication and the structuring of culture, and is the most pertinent to the explorations within this MDP. Is the pervasiveness of the contemporary media (and their mechanisms of deployment) a characteristic feature of Empire? Culture is a mechanism of control; it is a form of capitalist production in which capital has succeeded globally. In effect, capitalist production has submitted global society to its regime, suppressing all alternatives. (ibid.) In this sense, ether manufactures and pre-conditions our everyday experiences: “Traditional cultures and social organizations are destroyed in capital’s tireless march through the world to create the networks and pathways of a single cultural and economic system of production and circulation.” (ibid.)

The Culture Industry

“The space of communication and culture is completely deterritorialized.” (ibid.) The space of communication and culture is everywhere and we cannot escape it3, “…whoever ignores its influence out of skepticism for what it stuffs into people would be naïve.” (Adorno, 1991) The mechanisms of communication and culture are smooth and frictionless – they are not restricted to a single affect, program or form, nor are they restricted to the physical realm. The space of communication and culture has the potential to negotiate, evolve, hybridize, or metamorphose – it can become something else, anything else. In our socio-cultural realm, the space of communication and culture has taken the role of capitalist production and control, “Communication has become the central element that establishes the relations of production, guiding capitalist development.” (Hardt & Negri, 2000) We are within a new society of control - flows of information (both visible and invisible) are received as quickly as they are distributed. Network technology has enabled unprecedented levels of inter-connectivity and control. Marketing is the emerging instrument of social control4.

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Interchangeable Sameness: An Analysis of the Culture Industry All culture is mass culture and all forms of popular culture (film, radio, television, fashion, etc.) make up a single culture industry whose purpose is to ensure the continued obedience of the masses to market interests (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002). The culture industry is omnipresent and adaptive – it structures everything we are, everything we do, and everything we want. The culture industry perpetuates a tendency towards sameness – a homogenization of wants, desires and perspectives about the world (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). The culture industry removes real choice, so that people are only offered the freedom to choose what is always the same. (Louw, 2001) “Culture not only mirrors society, but also takes an important role in shaping society through the process of standardization and commodification…”

-T. Adorno & M. Horkheimer, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (2002)

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Based on the theories of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer5, the standardized products (and by-products) of the culture industry were originally derived from the needs and desires expressed by consumers; the culture industry simultaneously mirrors and shapes society – always adapting so society does not have to. The standardization of consumer desires (and perceived needs) has allowed the culture industry to manipulate the masses and induce the desire and pursuit of the specified products of capitalism – the outcome: mass production feeds a mass market, and the identities of what should be a dynamic population becomes minimized into a few different categories of consumers. We are left with highly specified and hyper-manufactured experiences. The commercialization of culture has created a standardization of behavior by individuals. Producers are aware, ensuring that the mass reproduction of the mind does not transform into the expansion of the mind. In other words, consumers are essentially told what and how to consume without being offered alternatives. If Freudian therapy6 involves encouraging a people to “confront” themselves and their circumstances, the culture industry does exactly the opposite; it encourages people not to think about themselves in the pre-arranged

The Culture Industry

harmony of distractions, escapism and manufactured leisure (Louw, 2001). The intended end-game? The synthesis of a submissive and homogenous population and the circumvention of rebellious resistance. Contemporary culture is infecting everything with sameness; “… a system has been formed and each branch of this cultural system is unanimous within itself and all are unanimous together.” (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002) Standardization has created a feedback loop of control. “The whole world is passed through the filter of the culture industry.” (ibid.) Consumers begin to demand processes that inevitably lead to the creation of spaces and products that fulfill the manufactured needs and desires at numerous specified locations around the world. In a supposedly chaotic world the culture industry provides human beings with something akin to standards of orientation; a set of imposed criteria for how to exist in this world. The concepts of order, which it hammers into human beings, are always those of the status quo – they remain unquestioned and unanalyzed. Consciousness is replaced by conformity. The culture industry proclaims that you should conform, without instruction as to what; conform to that which exists anyways, and to that which everyone thinks already as a reflex of its power and omnipresence. (Adorno, 1991) “As much as we may deny or refuse it, shopping has become one of the only means by which we experience public activity” -Sze Tsung Leong, …And Then There Was Shopping (2001)

Public space was once established as a space for exchanging ideas, for the facilitation of dialogue, and for influencing opinions and perceptions of our world. Instead, through a series of events since the appearance of modern shopping 7 (read: The perverse infiltration of mass produced consumer culture into our everyday lives), a commercial simulacrum has taken place, where the only activities facilitated are a direct function of the market economy, more specifically, commercial culture and perceived amusement by way of manufactured programs and experiences of leisure. If marketing is the instrument of social control, then shopping is the program of social construction - the means by which we enact our conditioned desires. The marketplace has always been an integral part of the city— flows of goods and capital keep the city alive. Modern shopping

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is an event that is constantly transforming and being repackaged; always finding new ways of becoming embedded intoâ€” and even replacingâ€” almost every aspect of urban life. A challenge: while wandering through our built environment, attempt to identify a publicly accessible space that is not infiltrated by consumer culture or has itself been completely transformed into a shopping experience. As we travel through our hypermanufactured urban fabric, searching for spaces that have not been overcome by consumer culture, we realize that it is everywhere, shaping our everyday lives.

The Culture Industry

PRECEDENT ANALYSIS: SHOPPING AS SPECTACLE In the article, Prada and the Pleasure Principl e, Kazys Varnelis introduces a theoretical framework that is relevant to the forthcoming analysis of the mechanisms of culture (shopping) and their relationship with the public realm. The Prada epicenter in Beverly Hills is an active agent of commercial culture and exemplifies, by way of physical performance, how commercial program (shopping) has the potential to negotiate the physical boundaries imposed by the publicprivate dichotomy through the introduction of spectacle and event into an otherwise in-active streetscape. “…lights ﬂash on either side of the entrance and an alarm sounds rhythmically as the aluminum wall shrouding the shop at night sinks and finally vanishes into the ground…” This is shopping as spectacle. The performance of the opening of the Prada store enables it to become something more. The act is so vigorous and intentional that is becomes (at least for a few moments) embedded into the urban fabric as a programmatic hybrid: a form with soﬅ(er) boundaries that negotiates politically (or commercially) boundaries; a stage that encapsulates potential customers by its theatrical performance and draws their attention to what new products are available and recommended in the never ending journey of shaping class structure and image. If an organism experiences an “inﬂux of fresh amounts of stimulus, such as union with another, it can go on living, or if the stimulus is strong enough, reproduce.” (Freud, 1961) The Freudian theory of the pleasure principle arguably summarizes the surreptitious intentions of consumer culture. In this Freudian perspective, the public domain and its citizens

are perpetually stimulated and aﬀected by the mechanisms of consumerism. Manufactured spectacles, and the dissolution of boundaries (or the invasion of the public realm by shopping) have led to a speciﬁcally formulated relationship between commercial program and the public realm. 01-i_03

Front facade of the Prada Epiccenter in Beverly Hills

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Retail display at the Prada Epicenter in Beverly Hills

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Louis Vuitton flagship retail store in Tokyo, Japan 01-i_06

Louis Vuitton flagship retail store in New York City, United States 01-i_07

Louis Vuitton flagship retail store in Shanghai, China

The Culture Industry

“The decorative administrative and exhibition buildings of industry differ little between authoritarian and other countries.”

-Theodor Adorno, The Culture Industry (1991) Image technology, global brands, and digital infrastructure dominate our open spaces. Today, our only architecture is just that: ubiquitous screens upon which moving atoms, particles and molecules are refracted (Baudrillard, 1988). At all scales, the infiltration of commercial culture and communication has created a banal experience focused on consumption. Popular global brands have found a way to extensively “decorate” the streetscape with their ubiquitous designs, logos and monograms. Experiences are conceivably indistinguishable as differences between any given urban public spaces may simply be the level of content saturation; yet the message is always the same. Superstrings of graphics, transplanted emblems of franchise and sparkling infrastructures of light, LEDs and video describe an authorless world beyond anyone’s claim – a now intensely familiar experience within the public realm (Koolhaas, 2001). This being said, does architecture even matter anymore? “Any dissatisfaction with the contemporary condition has not led to the development of a credible alternative; it has, on the contrary, inspired only more refined ways of articulating dissatisfaction. “

-Rem Koolhaas, What Ever Happened to Urbanism? (1995) As a function of the identification and decomposition of the contemporary power structure within our globalized society, we must become aware of the roles that culture and communication have in the articulation of control and the manufacturing of a single system. We must then understand that we cannot do anything about it.

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“Since we are not responsible – we must become irresponsible.”

-Rem Koolhaas, Whatever Happened to Urbanism? (1995)

The Culture Industry NOTES 1

The classical city in this context being an entity that contains a public sphere that mediates between society and state, in which the public organizes itself as the bearer of a dynamic public opinion. This dynamism of public information has made possible the democratic control of state activities (at least for some time). This public sphere played a crucial, facilitative role in sparking the bourgeois revolutions that eventually dislodges feudal hegemony from Europe.

“Over the past several decades, as colonial regimes were overthrown and then precipitously after the Soviet barriers to the capitalist world market finally collapsed, we have witnessed an irresistible and irreversible globalization of economic and cultural exchanges… [S]overeignty has taken a new form, composed of a series of national and supranational organisms united under a single logic of rule. This new global form of sovereignty is what we call Empire.” (Hardt & Negri, 2000)

Of all three mechanisms of empire, ether cannot be assigned any territorial determinations specifically identify where the other mechanisms of empire (NY, Washington, etc.)

Gilles Deleuze on Post-script on Societies of Control 5 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer founded the Frakfurt School of thought and are known for their analysis of the culture industry. 6

Freudian psychoanalysis refers to a specific type of treatment in which the analytic patient verbalizes thoughts, including free associations, fantasies, and dreams, from which the analyst induces the unconscious conflicts causing the patient’s symptoms and character problems, and interprets them for the patient to create insight for resolution of the problems.

Modern Shopping is defined in the Harvard Guide to Shopping as the program of shopping being subject to technologies of conditioned spaces (forced air and air conditioning) and the speed of the escalator.

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Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

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Are public spaces to be understood as generic open areas that happen to be located within the politically imposed boundaries of a city? Do they exist to accommodate the occupation and transit of groups or individuals? How was public space historically understood and how can we begin to understand the state of the public realm in its current form? This analysis begins with a question: how can we define the term public? The idea of public is often opposed to private. Three main contexts can be identified from the basis of this one opposition. Firstly, public can be understood as what is common and what is general as opposed to private in terms of what is particular and individual1. Moreover, there is the notion of public in regards to publicity and what is visible and manifest, which is juxtaposed with private as that which is not visible and secret. Lastly, we can understand public as something that is accessible and open, which in this case, is opposed by private as that which is limited and closed. We call events and occasions public when they are open to all. In regards to space, the realm of public has too often been considered (or unconsidered) as that which is un-private â€“ or what is left over when everyone walls of their private domains (Mitchell, 1996).

Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

Historically, the public realm was the place to see and be seen, a place to engage with and within the built environment. From the time of the Greek polis, the common, the visible and the open were united in establishing the meaning of public. Objects designed into the landscape created a communal understanding of place, and facilitated an environment of vitality. Varnelis2 identifies the historical public space as not necessarily a physical space or place at all, but as a complex site in which a literate public could act and participate in rational and critical debate; or a common gathering place such as the local watering hole where people could interact and reach out to one another; or a cafĂŠ where patrons could gather and discuss the latest pamphlets, prints or newsletters. According to Jurgen Habermas3, the public sphere was characterized by dialogue and progression, as individuals either met in conversation, or exchanged views via the print media. A vibrant public realm was created in the course of the eighteenth century to offer a space to the emerging self-consciousness of a new literary public. City life with its lecture halls, museums, public parks, theatres, meeting houses, coffee shops, salons, and the like formed a spatial environment for a new mode of association between individuals freed from the observance of rigid political ties. (Habermas, 1962) When we think about space, we have only looked at its containers. We are left with a world without urbanism, only buildings. The allure and efficiencies of buildings are their seduction; they define, exclude, limit and separate us from the â€œrestâ€?. (Koolhaas, 1995) A distinct separation between public and private space came about through the establishment of the state and of the notion of ownership. This model of creating space has been intimately tied to authority and autonomy: one shapes the land one owns, the monarch shapes the castle, the municipal government shapes the plaza, etc. Inhabitants are passersby that are subject to these master plans, confined to the activities and relationships scripted to occur within them (Noble & Smith, 2011). In the figure ground relationship between public and private, one subjugates the other. Public space (that which is left over after the establishment of private boundaries) serves to define, frame and control access to private property. Networks of walls, squares and streets became key elements to the formation of an extensive apparatus of governance (Aureli, 2011).

urban (de)resolution

With the rise of the industrial age, a machine mentality began to mutate the physical forms and networks that make up our cities. Machines of transport augmented the mobility and experience of the pedestrian: trains, elevators, escalators and the automobile. The speed at which the city is experienced was increased and subject to a further set of constraints and organizational mechanisms that regulate the body and the way it occupies and moves through space. Consequently, new collections of urban forms and social behaviors emerged. The predominant physical organization of the post-war city is governed by a vehicle-centric infrastructure that dilutes the vitality of public life within the city. The advent of the automobile inspired segregation and road networks took command of the urban landscape, introducing a new typology of urban form – one of liminality and placelessness. Instead of concentration – or simultaneous presence – in the generic, post-war city, individual moments are spaced far apart to create a trance of almost unnoticeable aesthetic experiences. The serenity of the contemporary city that we constantly find ourselves in is achieved by the evacuation of the public realm (R. Koolhaas, 1995). When an individual is sitting in his or her vehicle on a freeway, they are occupying neither public nor private space – people become truly autonomous units existing in a larger plane.

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Marc Augé4 coined the term non-places in reference to spaces of transition, absent of identity, human relationships, or the traces of history. Non-places are in-between spaces, sites of transit for humans, data and goods (Varnelis, 2008). Examples of these non-places are spaces such as the aforementioned freeways, airports and shopping malls. “The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude.” (Augé, 1995) “Non-places are the real measure of our time; one that could be quantified – with the aid of a few conversions between area, volume and distance – by totaling all the air, rail and motorway routes, the mobile cabins called ‘means of transport’ (aircraft, trains and road vehicles), the airports, and railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, large retail outlets. They are also the complex skin of cable and wireless networks that mobilize extraterrestrial space for the purposes of communication so

Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

peculiar that it often puts the individual in contact with another image of himself” - Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995)

The automobile suppressed the pedestrian, “[t]he urban dweller becomes no more than what he does or experiences in the role of passenger… or driver” (Augé, 1995). However, just as the car ate the city (and arguably killed what was dynamic within the public realm); now the phone is eating the car (Bratton, 2009). “Cities have always represented projected images and fantasies of bodies, whether individual, collective, or political. In this sense, the city can be seen as a collective body-prosthesis or boundary that enframes, protects, and houses while at the same time taking its own forms and functions.” -Elizabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside (2001)

The public realm is something that produces, regulates and structures bodies. Whether by foot or by automobile, the mechanisms of organization and control of the contemporary city ensure that its spaces are occupied in a certain way. The screen is the (not so) new tool for the perverse infiltration of consumer culture into the everyday experience of the city (think: digital billboards and advertising). Networked objects such as surveillance cameras, mobile communication devices or storefront interfaces all affect the way in which people circulate and exist within the city and its spaces: the path an individual might take to engage with (or avoid) an interactive storefront; or the level of engagement with the built environment an individual may have while simultaneously navigating the city and their handheld mobile device. The realm of emerging telecommunication technologies has had a significant role in the re-shaping and re-organization of urban space. It can be argued that as more and more people are navigating and existing elsewhere – through mobile technology and networks – that public spaces are becoming non-places or areas becoming increasingly absent of physical human interaction.

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“A building is given its character by those events that keep on happening there most often.” -Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

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Traditionally, typology and program implies demarcation, the definition of an individual module that prescribes use and excludes other arrangements. Attention to detail, scale, circulation and context within architecture were but a few considerations responsible for the creation of a sense of place. However, spatial organization is no longer defined categorically. Rem Koolhaas’ junkspace represents the antithetical typology of cumulative, approximate identities less about kind and identity than about quantity and capital. Junkspace is the residue that mankind leaves on this planet. It is the by-product of modernization – the remaining debris after consumer culture has had its way within our public realm. Pervasive urbanization (we have built more than all previous generations combined; over 82% of North Americans live in cities5), in conjunction with the relentless infiltration of the culture industry into our everyday lives, has modified the classical urban condition into an unrecognizable entity that almost exclusively functions to manage flows and distribute capital. “The city used to be the great sexual hunting ground. The city as we know it today is more like a dating agency: it efficiently matches supply and demand.” (Koolhaas, 1995) Perhaps it would be more appropriate to begin to describe the contemporary urban condition as being all too recognizable. The experiences that do exist are almost indistinguishable from one another. The public realm has become a hyper-specified and overly manufactured environment of interchangeable sameness. The bland residual spaces of the market economy are the only places that remain for the cultivation of social interaction within the physical public realm.

Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

PRECEDENT ANALYSIS: NO-STOP CITY by ARCHIZOOM “…[T]he introduction of electronic media and all the mechanisms for artificially encouraging consumption guarantees a deep penetration, as Marshal McLuhan put it, not only of the social body but of the territory.” -Archizoom, No-Stop City (1969) There no longer exists a culture outside the urban phenomenon – there is no place left that is not in some way tied to the city and it’s patterns of consumption. The growth of mass production and the social distribution of merchandise have created a new “mobile urban condition”. This new condition is Archizoom’s No-Stop City, “a scientific and deliberately non-ideological analysis of the [late-capitalist] urban product. “ (Branzi, 1984) T h e s w a y o f c o n s u m e r i s m o ve r t h e individual is total, “everyday, industries produce cubic kilometers of city in the form of mass produced articles, and everyday many of these molecular cities enter into circulation, are consumed and are turned into rubbish within the old immobile cities of stone.” (Archizoom, 1969) Without an exterior, these potentially limitless structures are made uniform and optimized to facilitate spatial conditioning (artificial lighting and forced-air circulation) and informational links. “Rather than serving to identify a place, No-Stop City would be a neutral field in which the creation of identity through consumption could be unfettered.” (Varnelis, 2003)

Late-capitalism has no use for the traditional city, nor is it interested in qualities of place. Creation of the subject through consumption would create a less alienated form of homogeneity. The result of No-Stop City is a proliferation of useless objects connoting status and “architecturalness” through the applied facades of postmodernism and fragments of supermodernism. (Varnelis, 2003)

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Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

Public space as it once existed has disappeared. Public space has been flattened and replaced by an omnipresent technology that allows for the deployment, debate and transformation of content: the screen. The globalized market economy and its pervasive digital infrastructures demand a predatory colonization of open spaces (Mau, 2000). However, the screen fundamentally tends towards generality. It is a self-effacing substrate that is increasingly a general-purpose substrate – supposedly unlinked to any specific content type. As the screen itself, recedes into the background in favor of its hosted image, we realize that the messages are always same. The public realm becomes a space of, “weak and distended sensations, few and far between emotions, discreet and mysterious, like a large space lit by a bed lamp.” (Koolhaas, 1995) A space is genuinely public only to the extent that it really is openly accessible and welcoming to members of the community that is serves (Lynch, 1981). However, in its current state, public space should more appropriately be defined as publicly accessible spaces that are subject to the rules of its owner. Public space is privatized. It is less a place of display and discussion for the people, but more a “theatre of consumption” under high security and total surveillance (Varnelis, 2008). The process of modernization, as defined by Habermas, was a rigid progression governed by economic and administrative rationalization. The parallel development of corporate capitalism and mass consumption transformed what was once a dynamic and critical public sphere into a passive consumer public. Once the “laws” of the market governing the sphere of commodity exchange pervaded the public sphere, rational-critical debate (what is arguably a key component to social dynamism and progression) has been replaced by consumption. Our everyday lives are penetrated by commercialized mass media. In effect, the public realm was turned into a site of self-interested contestation for the resources of the state rather than a space for the development of public-minded social progression; the existence of a public sphere is a lie. The public realm has deteriorated. (Habermas, 1962)

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Saturated environment in the Shibuya District in Tokyo, Japan 02-i_12

Scene from the film, Bladerunner, displaying a techno-saturated environment that has become an all too familiar reality

Times Square in New York City - what else needs to be said?

Commercial Debris: The State of the Public Realm

“The world fashioned by the mass media is a public sphere in appearance only.”

-Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962)

urban (de)resolution NOTES

In an attempt to establish a definition of his “public sphere”, sociologist and student of Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas establishes a socio-historical analysis of the meanings possessed by the notions of “public” and “publicity”. The first etymological reference to the public sphere was the German noun öffentlichkeit formed during the eighteenth century. The term signified a part of “civil society: which at the same time established itself as the ream of commodity exchange and social labor governed by its own democratic laws (Habermas, 1962). Moreover, Chantal Mouffe, a member of the graphic design firm Metahaven, asserts that German can “much better help us understand the different meanings of the public” (lecture, January 11, 2007); as öffenlichkeit, public space is directly juxtaposed against “private” and is considered a realm outside of the control by the state, where individuals exchanged views and knowledge. 2

Kazys Varnelis is the director of the Network Architecture Lab at Columbia University. His research is focused on network culture and the implications it has on the physical realm, more specifically, architecture and the city.

3 Habermas, student of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Frankfurt School) who is most well known for his analysis and discussion on the fall of the public sphere due to the infiltration of the culture industry and more specifically, mass media 4

Marc Augé is a French anthropologist whose theories centred around non-place, a phenomenon of super-modernity. Nonplace is defined by Augé as hyper-specified places centred around transportation and consumerism.

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United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Urban Population, Development and the Environment 2011

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Technology + The Urban Condition

Pornography – “because it is forced, exaggerated, just like the close-up of sexual acts in a porno-ﬁlm” -Jean Baufrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (1988)

urban (de)resolution

“[T]he decisive mutations of objects and of the environment in the modern era – have come from an irreversible tendency toward three things: an ever greater formal and operational abstraction of elements and functions and their homogenization in a single virtual process of functionalization; the displacement of bodily movements and efforts into electric or electronic commands…”

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-Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (1988)

With technology’s advancement – things unknown and invisible have become tangible and visible – technology is forever trying to render the unknown perceptible as a means of simultaneously understanding, controlling, manipulating and improvising the world. Emerging technologies are fundamentally altering the relationships and links between people and their environment, both physical and virtual1. Just as the machine made industrialization possible in a rationalized modern society and the programmable computer served a similar role for the flexible socio-economic milieu of post-Fordist society, today network

Technology + The Urban Condition

culture2 not only connects the world, it reconfigures it (Varnelis, 2008). The development and proliferation of mobile technology has transformed the ways in which people come together, interact and even experience public space. Human experience within the public realm is complex and multi-dimensional. One of the goals of this MDP is to decompose and understand the existent phenomenon of the pervasive infiltration of mobile technology into the physical public realm, and the consequential effects on the ways in which people exist and interact with and within the city. Network culture and agency3 within public space frame an ongoing negotiation between the preservation and evolution of the contemporary techno-spatial hybrid4 and its impacts on the socio-cultural domain, as we know it today. The city is a communication device. New mobile technologies (GPS, Bluetooth, mobile connectivity) have transformed the ways in which we interface with the built environment. Mobile technologies of the network culture have enabled new levels of access and connection to information and communication beyond the physical built form. “Always-on” and “always-accessible” (Varnelis, 2008) network systems help users manoeuvre through the generic post-war city. The emergence of this network dependence has led to a reorganization of social coordination, physical mobility and experience within the city. The organization of the city is constantly in flux, always re-organizing and becoming something different. Consider an example: only a few decades ago, being in transit meant being out of touch (Varnelis, 2008); trajectories are no longer fixed and users are no longer inaccessible while occupying the non-places of the freeway. On-board navigation systems have enabled levels of connection to information and communication beyond the vehicle. Satellite networks record and track the speed and location of vehicles and provide alternative routes if users happen to deviate from the prescribed one dictated to them by strange robotic voices. Times and locations of face-to-face meetings can be adjusted in realtime and in accordance with traffic conditions via mobile phones; all possible routes and travel times are calculated and presented to users, enabling people to choose where, when, and how quickly they wish to experience the city (or whether or not they wish to experience it at all).

urban (de)resolution

“Our bodies have morphed into cyborgs – our ambulatory and communicatory functioning has become dependent upon electronic devices.” -William Mitchell, City of Bits (1996)

We are well into the post-human era of the cyborg5. We intuitively enter our exo-skeletal vehicles that automatically adjust their innerconfiguration to our bodies; as a function of human movement, these devices sense (and at moments override human control) based on other users, and navigate the most efficient routes based on our desires. Sometimes we meander the digital realm as no more than an Internet Protocol number, and other times as the constructed image of our ideal selves, version 2.0. It is not difficult to envision mobile digital devices such as bodily extensions – appendages that are almost grafted to the human body and are mechanisms that humans depend on while physically occupying meatspace6. “As things get smarter and smarter, they are ever more likely to take up larger parts of our ‘selves’. An iPod is nothing less than a portable generator of affect with which we paint our environment sonically, creating a soundtrack to life. “ -Kazys Varnelis, Place: The Networking of Public Space (2008)

The hybridization of mobile technologies and their users has created an always accessible, mobile, networked space that is a localized extension of the body, capable of reaching beyond the physical realm and beyond immediate physical boundaries. The result is a personal technological membrane that is constantly creating new territories as users navigate through the physical realm. Mobile technologies are “territory machines” capable of re-defining traditional boundaries of public space (Varnelis, 2008).

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“In striated space, lines or trajectories tend to be subordinated to points: one goes from one point to another.” -G. Deleuze and F. Guatttari, Smooth and Striated (1987)

Technology + The Urban Condition

It is not uncommon for people to simultaneously exist and navigate both the physical and digital realms; the always-on and alwaysaccessible network creates social spaces and places of occupation in the digital realm. On one hand (literally), the handheld mobile device acts as a window, exposing the hidden flows of information encompassing the userâ€™s immediate environment. With the other, the city is discontinuously sensed as the user is oscillating between consciously existing in either the physical realm of the city or the digital realm of the network. Every square meter is now a granular location that can be tagged. The instantaneous access to virtual traces of previous occupants of physical space allows for a speed and efficiency of interaction with bits and pieces of the physical world, with the consequence of a holistic experience of the built environment and the random face-to-face interactions within the urban realm all but disappearing.

As users navigate between the physical and virtual realms they oscillate between being present virtually and physically.

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PRECEDENT ANALYSIS: FACESTATE by METAHAVEN “fpoem just another day in the techno economic superstructure just another day in the ruin of infinite possibilities www.gov.face” “We are interested in the ways in which Facebook and government, Facebook and employers, Facebook and friends, Facebook and enemies constitute a power arrangement, and the way in which this constellation might influence politics, currency, and the social contract.” (Metahaven, 2011)

03-i_13

Facebook currently has so many users, that if it were to be a country, the number of inhabitants would only be second to India and China. Facestate is a research project about the parallels between social networks and the state – a graphic analysis of social networks as a means of distributing the mechanisms of governance across the near frictionless plane of the techno-economic superstructure. “… the meme of standardization that is preponderant in social media.” Branding is an exercise in making things more similar, with its compliance to a standard that gains certain benefits. The visualization of Facebook’s brand is a new standard. Facestate is about exploiting existing infrastructures for the creation of governance via social network(s), “the future of money and currency in social networks, and about the dream of total participation.” (Metahaven, 2011)

The new brand of governance by social media, Facestate

Technology + The Urban Condition

03-i_14

The symbol for the European Union currency is hybridized with new mechanisms of governance via social media - yielding a new form of currency.

urban (de)resolution

“Obscenity is not confined to sexuality, because today there is a pornography of information and communication, a pornography of circuits and networks, of functions and objects in their legibility, availability, regulation, forced signification…” -Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (1988)

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The production of information and its dispersion throughout the network society dominates the physical spaces we inhabit. We now situate ourselves less as individuals and more as the articulations of multiple networks composed of human bodies and the technologies that have come to be physical and virtual extensions of ourselves. The development and proliferation of mobile networks has transformed the ways that people come together and interact. These technologies allow new kinds of information, both actual and virtual, to flow into public spaces and, as such, have rearranged social and spatial practices. Defined as the conditions of early twenty-first century cultural existence, we must understand how we occupy localized time and space as well as how we coexist and communicate with and within the actual and virtual realms. Even within the contemporary condition of shared network connectivity and subsequent physical anonymity and isolation, people still have the urge to gather. Our intuitive quest to be and stay connected isolates us from the public realm – yet we simultaneously seek out human interaction. People are never in a state of pure isolation; the ubiquity and accessibility of networked places ensures that people are never alone, and the physical presence of others eases the disconnection with the local context that the network creates. Studies tracking mobile phone and various other technologies show concentrated activity spikes in the public places that make up our cities. This digital activity highlights the fact that technological advances aside, people still long for physical connections. The socio-cultural condition of late-capitalist society sees people assemble to simply “establish an ambient visual experience of bodies in near proximity…” (Varnelis, 2008). Within the contemporary public realm people are co-present and without interaction. Occupants of varying degrees of public space are actually in another place, a networked place – via mobile technologies and network connectivity. There is a new concept of public space where individuals are in proximity to others (a sort of human relationship) similarly engaged in a place that is networked and elsewhere; “[b]eing online in the presence of others is the new place to be.” (Varnelis, 2008)

Technology + The Urban Condition

`“Contemporary life is dominated pervasiveness of the network”

the

-Kazys Varnelis, Place: The Networking of Public Space (2008)

Since the introduction of instantaneous global networks through cellular phones, satellite networks, and the Internet, how we understand our bodies, and how we situate them in cities and public spaces have been affected. It becomes a question of how we value global connectivity versus local disconnections, physical versus virtual existence and the quality of our experience with the built environment. The consequence of the global spread of the mobile phone and the ever-increasing ubiquity and accessibility of technological networks creates a disconnect from everyday physical existence. “The always-on, always-accessible network produces a broad set of changes to our concept of place…” (Varnelis, 2008). The development and augmentation of mobile social networks is transforming the ways in which people come together and interact in public space (or do not come together and interact in public space). Mobile technologies create new kinds of information, and are capable of making the imperceptible, visible and attainable. The development of the network manifests itself in the paradox that technological advancements lie in the disappearance of physical content. Our relationships are mediated by technology. Rather than communicate, participate or physically engage with the physical realm of the contemporary city, we have become passive spectators within it.

urban (de)resolution

“Ecstasy is all functions abolished into one dimension, the dimension of communication. All events, all spaces, all memories are abolished in the sole dimension of information: this is obscene.”

-Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962)

Technology + The Urban Condition NOTES 1

A brief discussion on the theories that establish a new relationship with time and space due to the creation of comm¬unicative technologies – specifically the reconfiguration of space

Political theorist Darin Barney identifies the “network” as a structural condition whereby distinct points are related to one another by connections that are typically multiple, intersecting and redundant. The logic of the “network” is decentralized and seeks to proliferate connectivity. In regards to social production, Manuel Castells established network culture as “[an entity] made up of networks of production, power and experience, which construct a culture of virtuality in the global flows that transcend time and space” (Castells, 1998).

Definition: the capacity of an agent (a person or other entity) to act in a world

In the context of this MDP, the term technospatial hybrid used to signify the convergence of technology and space, and the emergent social formations and relationships that are facilitated by the products of “breeding” contemporary technologies and existing spatial conditions.

5 The cyborg, as defined by communication theorist, David Gunkel, comprises a reconfiguration of the physical human subject that not only undermines the concept of human subjectivity but also threatens and promises to the transform the study of human communication. (Gunkel, 2000) Donna Haraway suggests that the cyborg not only constitutes a subject of fantasy, but of social reality. She writes, “we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism…” (Haraway, 1991) 6

The term meatspace can be defined simply as the real physical world, as opposed to the virtual world, or cyberspace. (Nusselder, 2009) The term originated in cyberpunk literature such as William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1993): “For Case, who’d lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he’d frequented as a cowboy hotshot,

the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into the prison of his own flesh.”

1968

1969

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When did the culture industry begin to perversely infiltrate our public sphere? Maybe it always did. May of 1968 signals the beginning of latecapitalsm - a new purer state of control (and controlling mechanisms) that came to permeate all forms of human life. This timeline identifies a few significant developments in culture, technology and public space, since (and including) the social uprisings of May 1968.

1972

1989

01. Hewlett Packard releases the HP 9100A - the first mass market personal computer. (1968)

04. STAR WARS - A New Hope (1977), grossed over $700,000,000 worldwide

02. Motorola creates the first mobile phone (1973) 05. SONY releases its first mobile cassette player, The Walkman (1978) 03. IBM releases the first commercially available mobile computer (1975) 06. November 9, 1989 - Fall of the Berlin Wall

2001 12

09 10

publicly accessible i

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07. The Internet becomes fully accessible to the public and the first web browser is developed (1990)

10. Apple announces and launches the first iPod - September 11 attack on the World Trade Towers in New York (2001)

08. IBM releases the first Smartphone (1992)

11. Facebook is launched (2004)

09. ebay is launched (1995)

12. Twitter is launched (2006)

2010

2011

16 13

internet

13. Official launch of WikiLeaks - (2007) 14. Apple released the first generation iPhone (2007) 15. Occupy Wall Street begins September 17, 2011)

16. Stop Online Piracy Act is introduced in the United States on October 26, 2011

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The ďŹ rst question... Why do we do shit we hate?

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This question is rooted in the theoretical notion that our public realm is in a state of decay because of the perverse infiltration of a technocultural hybrid mechanism that has infected it. Social interaction, that is, humans interacting with other humans, and humans interacting with the built environment, is so specified and pre-conditioned that all social experiences have become homogeneous and predictable. Our urban landscapes have become generic non-places; our public realm is nothing more than the residue of commercial culture â€“ the junkspace that is remaining after the culture industry was allowed to run amok. The social contract is usurped by a perfectly instrumentalized mechanism of brand obedience. Our relationships, being mediated and simulated by ubiquitous network technology, all but eliminate the need for face-to-face interaction. As a result, the quality (and perhaps even the existence) of our relationships with and within the public realm is put into question.

urban (de)resolution

“Modernisms alchemistic promise – to transform quantity into quality through abstraction, repetition [and rationalization] has been a failure and a hoax…” –Rem Koolhaas, What Ever Happened to Urbanism? (1995).

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The Occupy Movement, as the most recent symbol of social performance, reclamation of -, and negotiation with space (and how it became manifest – and eliminated) has outlined a pressing need for a new type of public space. Public space, as we know it today, is merely a framed void – facilitating political and economic relationships, the possibility of circulation, and the empowerment of the state per via economica2. (Berg, 2011) The type of space being discussed is more appropriately defined as publicly accessible spaces subject to the rules of their owner – which begs the question: who’s interests are at stake?

Sex x Technology = The Future

This MDP concedes the fact that any overt counter-cultural act against the mechanisms of the culture industry is futile. The outcomes of this analysis are by no means interested in prescribing what is right for the world (nor does the author or this project claim to know what is right for the world). As such, urban (de)resolution is about using the very mechanisms that shape our social and urban experience against themselves in pursuit of difference within the public realm â€“ with the hope of attaining a renewed awareness and engagement with and within our built environments. The pursuit of difference (in the context of this MDP) is not necessarily concerned with the creation of explicitly counter-cultural technologies or systems, but the over-saturation and hybridization of existing infrastructures, more specifically, the breeding of the ubiquitous and self-effacing screen, and specific conditions and programs of the built environment that make up the existing urban hardware (i.e. circulation, static boundaries, etc.)

content saturation in the name of content revolution

PENNY LANE TOWERS

)

SCOTIA CENTRE

First Street SW

HOLT RENFREW

-E

il l> ta ra Re ent nd C -E on gh hi Hi Fas <

)

BANKER’S HALL

Second Street SE

)

TD SQUARE

Third Street SW

Fourth Street SW

WATERMARK TOWER

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HUDSON’S BAY COMPANY

EXCLUSIVELY PEDESTRI AN ZONE

Sex x Technology = The Future

az Pl c pi ym

ro at

First Street SE

y ar lg Ca

be rt a

ea ts

)

l ai

MacLeod Trail SE

) (s nt ra au st

Centre Street S

)

The seven blocks devoted to the pedestrian along Stephen Avenue in downtown Calgary presented itself as the ideal site for the analysis of this MDP. It is a regulated non-place, its visible hardware â€“ or the physical manifestation of circulation (+15), program (shopping) and its boundaries â€“ frames something akin to the epitome of non-place.

EPCOR CENTRE

t ea

Th y

ar lg

Stephen Avenue [between MacLeod Trail SE and Fourth Stree SW] plan

urban (de)resolution

How is non-place currently occupied?

In an attempt to formulate and understand patterns of occupation and movement within junkspace, the existing infrastructure of surveillance (in this case a proxy device was used to simulate technologies of surveillance) was used to gather data.

Sex x Technology = The Future

urban (de)resolution

Interchangeable Sameness

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As one travels through the hyper-manufactured environment of the study site, it becomes clear that, in the case of Stephen Avenue, specificity has bred homogeneity â€“ moments of interaction and occupation are virtually indistinguishable from one another.

Sex x Technology = The Future

“...the real non-places of supermodernity – the ones we inhabit when we are driving down the motorway, wandering through the supermarket or sitting in an airport lounge waiting for the next flight… have the peculiarity that they are defined partly by the words and texts they offer us: their ‘instructions for use’, which may be prescriptive, prohibitive or informative. This establishes the traffic conditions of spaces in which individuals are supposed to interact only with texts…” - Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1995)

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Sex x Technology = The Future

Initial Experiments

The production of information and its dispersion throughout the network society dominates the spaces we inhabit. The de-resolution of the built environment and the rendering visible of invisible flows is paramount in the process of creating a system of hybridization of things that make-up our society.

Iteration One

The first hybrid in the process of materializing a recombinant technique was concerned with the pervasive development of superficial building systems as an apparatus of disrupting urban occupation and movement patterns. The system was intended to create different conditions of visualization and the aestheticization of content deployment. Tests revealed that users experienced more unique perceptions of the built environment where the system was deployed, and claimed that the nature of the screen allowed the system to fluctuate between specificity and ambiguity simply by changing the content on the screen.

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Issues with this system are its superficiality. It is in fact, not a hybrid â€“ but two very different systems superfi cially appended to each other. It is clear that this media faĂ§ade has the potential to affect space, but it cannot claim any space as its own. It was destroyed.

urban (de)resolution

Iteration Two

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Experiments evolved to produce new relationships with the boundaries of the existing context. This system of screens began to infiltrate existing boundaries, consider the voids between itself and the context and create its own occupiable spaces.

Sex x Technology = The Future

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Sex x Technology = The Future

Deployment along Stephen Avenue created hyper-saturated immersive conditions of semi-habitability. Users again claimed that the screen enabled a dynamic perception of the non-space, and the formation of the â€œribbon-like structureâ€? was beginning to create its own spaces. However, existing boundaries and programs still govern the attempted breeding of the two systems. The compound was destroyed.

urban (de)resolution

Identity Network

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Aimless engagement with the mechanisms of the culture industry that tell us how to look, what to buy and how to occupy space is futile. In attempt to truly hybridize the systems of the screen and the built environment, a third entity was introduced to the breeding process: a corporate identity.

Sex x Technology = The Future

urban (de)resolution

// Holt Renfrew Private Members Club

// Holt Renfrew Fashion Laboratory // Holt Renfrew (Branded) Infrastructure

// Holt Renfrew Shopping Penthouse

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// Holt Renfrew Plaza

Sex x Technology = The Future

Holt Renfrew presents itself as a cultural entity that takes on the role of establishing image, identity and class structure. Instead of a continuous system (as explored in previous breeding experiments), this hybrid establishes itself as a framework of nodes that allows for the appropriation of an identity (the exercise of branding now plays an important role in the creation of a design methodology) and a more intentional and cohesive production of information, program and space. The new system, of multiple hybrids, behaves analogous to a sort of urban acupuncture (Baczuk, 2011) â€“ not only activating specific, localized pressure points â€“ but also the spaces in-between.

_Identity Network along 8th Avenue <Stephen Avenue> plan

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Sex x Technology = The Future

// sous les pavés, la plage

01 HOLT RENFREW PLAZA If junkspace is the residue of consumer culture – the leﬅ over space aﬅer the establishment of private boundaries and modern infrastructure (i.e. road networks) - then Holt Renfrew Plaza is the new type of public spaceTM that simultaneously engages and deteriorates the very systems and boundaries that created it. It truly manifests itself as a beach beneath the street.

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D AGRAM HOLT RENFREW PLAZA

underground unde g ound LRT sstation a on

Ca ga y s so-ca ed p em e pub c p aza s no mo e as s ep aced w h he newe and mo e seduc ve Ho Ren ew P aza Ad acen ďŹ‚ows a e no onge v ewed as some h ng sepa a e hey a e ns ead g amo zed and u y n eg a ed w h n h s new space The syn hes s o Ho Ren ew P aza has n used p og am n o wha was once an unde u zed non-p ace

observation obse va on pods HR administration m

gallery

sou heas entrance ent ance en southeast

theatre

southwest sou hwes en entrance ance

Observation Pods

Western Entrance

Stephen Avenue

0 1

Eastern Entrance

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PLAN_01 HOLT RENFREW PLAZA

First Street SE

MacLeod Trail SE

01 - LRT Station 02 - Auditorium 03 - Art Gallery 04- Conference Center 05 - Open Space 06 - Theatre

PLAN_00 HOLT RENFREW PLAZA

Western Entrance

Eastern Entrance

0 1

HRP-LO1

HOLT RENFREW PLAZA-LONG SECTION_01 <HRP-LO1> 0 1

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// EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF HOLT RENFREW PLAZA

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// INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF HOLT RENFREW PLAZA

// visual connections to the public sphere

02 HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE SHOPPING PENTHOUSE The second activated pressure point is located at the top of a hotel along Stephen Avenue – its formation being predicated ﬁrst and foremost on creating framed and intentional visual connections with the city, and second by providing users with arguably the greatest shopping they will experience. Although not physically located directly at pedestrian level, the Private Shopping Suite provides unique visual connections with the study site. While deeply immersed in luxury, users have the opportunity to experience the public realm from a unique perspective – ultimately creating new levels of engagement.

DIAGRAM PRIVATE SHOPPING SUITE

Framed view towards Holt Renfrew Plaza

Framed view towards Stephen Avenue

urban (de)resolution

01 05

PLAN_PRIVATE SHOPPING PENTHOUSE

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01 - Viewing Tubes 02 - Fitting Room 03 - Gallery/Display Area 04- Lounge 05 - Storage

Sex x Technology = The Future

// EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE SHOPPING PENTHOUSE

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// INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE SHOPPING PENTHOUSE

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// INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE SHOPPING PENTHOUSE

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Public Realm as Canvas

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// EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE (BRANDED) URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE ALONG STEPHEN AVENUE

// a dispersed presence throughout the public sphere

03 (BRANDED) URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE What would it look like if the city became a canvas? The third node within this urban framework presents itself as multiple objects within the public realm. Acting simultaneously as public infrastructure within the urban landscape, and as small-scale retail displays, this (sub)-system of branded urban infrastructure functions to further distribute the image of Holt Renfrew, and disrupt the speciďŹ ed ďŹ‚ows throughout the public realm by means of desire and communication. Using everyday objects in the urban landscape (garbage containers, street benches, public washrooms etc.), this new (branded) infrastructure puts on display the latest Holt Renfrew products and propaganda - truly making the streetscape a canvas.

urban (de)resolution

// dissolving mechanisms of public realm segregation

04 HOLT RENFREW FASHION LABORATORY In a gesture that basically epitomizes that of nonplace, the local +15 walkway system has forfeit ones interaction and engagement with the street for an unauthentic replication of the experience of the notion of publicness 15 feet above reality. In an almost parasitic way, the Holt Renfrew Laboratory of Fashion has broken this vertical segregation, not by destroying the systems responsible for decaying the public realm, but by feeding on them â€“ exploiting the ďŹ‚ows that exist within it and immediately outside of it.

Sex x Technology = The Future

// INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW FASHION LABORATORY

LEVEL 00 <Material Studio>

s_FL-02

s_FL-01 LEVEL 01 <Workshop/Photostudio>

+15 LEVEL <Circulation>

HOLT RENFREW FASHION LAB_ PLAN

0 1

urban (de)resolution

leďŹ…

elevations

front

right

chapter title

+15 walkway

workshop/photo studio

material studio

section _FL-01 0

+15 walkway

workshop/photo studio

material studio

section _FL-02 0

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surveillance image of +15 LEVEL <Circulation>

// EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW FASHION LABORATORY

urban (de)resolution

Existing Retail Store <Holt Renfrew Main Floor>

Existing Display

// creating active storefronts

05 HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE MEMBERS CLUB Both exclusive members club and active storefront the Holt Renfrew Private members club negotiates and redefines the boundaries and relationships between storefront and street. The multidirectional form creates unpredictable perspectives and emulates an escape from our rationalized everyday routines.

Sex x Technology = The Future

Touch-Screen Interface

Pedestrian Walkway

Eighth Avenue SW

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Those lucky enough to occupy the space are simultaneously subject and object â€“ in an almost flaneuristic way, they observe from within something that is both a part of and separate from the street. Meanwhile, in the interest of creating and maintaining desire, users themselves act as mannequins, on display for passers-by. Albeit through the lens of an augmented reality screen, users can observe the public, browse the latest material objects that define social structure and image, or check-in on what is happening at other locations within the Holt Renfrew network.

// INTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE MEMBERS CLUB

urban (de)resolution

// EXTERIOR PERSPECTIVE OF THE HOLT RENFREW PRIVATE MEMBERS CLUB

existing condition

isolate

Sex x Technology = The Future

extend

breed <add sex and technology>

urban (de)resolution

// being everywhere without being everywhere

06 GLOBAL IMAGE INFRASTRUCTURE The old image infrastructure is familiar to us – it typically involved large-scale, materially concentrated capital projects that were oﬅen physically prominent symbols of power and control. The new infrastructure is ﬂexible, dynamic and dispersed throughout the network society. Exclusive memberships ensure that the identity and its message is spread by word of mouth, while mobile applications facilitate communication between user and network. In an attempt to be everywhere without having to physically be everywhere, the Holt Renfrew Identity Network manifests itself in the virtual realm – instantaneously available and ready to distribute content and propaganda. Meanwhile, in the physical realm, initiatives calling for public art installations throughout the public realm allow the global image infrastructure to showcase how Holt Renfrew is really giving back to the public.

Sex x Technology = The Future

>>Virtual applications allow users to navigate the digital Holt Renfrew Network

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// PUBLIC ART AND INTERFACE IN THE PUBLIC REALM

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Systemic Collapse / Systemic Saturation

Systemic Collapse/Systemic Saturation

As things became less distinct, the public realm fell victim to a process of homogenization whereby all forms began to look the same – all experiences became manufactured. There is no longer any engagement, contrast, or history – only the sameness of imploded private spaces and the residue they leave behind. The culture industry is everywhere and is everything we have become; network technologies have fundamentally altered our physical links and relationships. The public realm has entered into a state of decay. This MDP attempts to address the way things are – not by being overtly counter-cultural, but by inducing an accelerated development and recombination of the shit that already exists. This is urban (de)resolution – an urban framework that creates moments of awareness and interaction within the public realm. In much the same way that Roman cities were first established by literally tracing the center of two perpendicular axes, and letting them guide the development of the city; urban (de)resolution establishes a type of DNA – a framework for the development of the public realm – however, it remains to be seen whether or not the city will accept or reject it. urban (de)resolution is not meant to last in its proposed state. It will evolve and grow. Is this the first step for more and different corporate entities to establish themselves and their identities in the public realm using similar (or more pervasive) techniques? Will the apparent gender differences in advertising (and advertising techniques) begin to manifest as specific gendered spaces? Or is urban (de)resolution, in fact, a framework that will induce social uprising as the public realizes the absurdity of how deeply manufactured their lives are? Will the system finally collapse? If it does, is there even such a thing as post-consumer public space? The City of Sao Paulo in Brazil implemented laws against public advertising. Is this what we want? And at what cost? As our digital selves would be inundated in even more customized and concentrated ways. The future is unknown.

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sao paul 134/ 135

05-i_17

lo, brasil

urban (de)resolution

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136 / 137

The Future is Unknown...

Systemic Collapse/Systemic Saturation

A scene from the film Fight Club (1999)

urban (de)resolution

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urban (de)resolution

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Image Citations

urban (de)resolution

Unless otherwise noted, all images are created and edited by - and belong to the author. 00-i_01: http://www.barbarakruger.com/art.shtml 01-i_02: http://www.hm.com/ca/dressingroom/LADIES?lid=Look_0016245 01-i_03: http://www.flickr.com/photos/20599992@N00/5061185791/lightbox/ 01-i_04: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelohrn/6165528483/sizes/l/in/photostream/ 01-i_05: http://blog.neoamusement.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Matsuya_Ginza.jpg 01-i_06: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Louis_Vuitton_Fifth_ Avenue_New_York_City.jpg 01-i_07: http://maosuit.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/DSCN3477.jpg 02-i_08: Andrea Branzi, The hot house : Italian new wave design (1984) 02-i_09: Andrea Branzi, The hot house : Italian new wave design (1984) 02-i_10: Andrea Branzi, The hot house : Italian new wave design (1984) 02-i_11: The World Today, Volume 65, Number 3, March 2009 02-i_12: Scene from Bladerunner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott 03-i_13: http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/2011/12/13/gdnip-13-metahavens-facestate/ 03-i_14: http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/2011/12/13/gdnip-13-metahavens-facestate/ 05-i_15: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Without_Ads.html 05-i_16: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Without_Ads.html

05-i_17: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/73/Sao_Paulo_A_City_Without_Ads.html 05-i_18: Scene from Fight Club(1999), directed by David Fincher