ROUND-TABLE : Log#001 - Our City, Our Culture

O U R

C I T Y ,

O U R

C U L T U R E

B A N G KO K , T H A I L A N D 2 0 1 6 . 7

ME E T I N G

L O G

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A N R E S E A RC H / D E S I G N R E S E A RC H R E P O RT & P R AC T I C E S O N T H E C O N T E M P O R A R Y C I T I E S A N D A RC H I T EC T U R E

t h e W o r k s h o p we serve space

TAKE#1 - OUR CITY AND FOOD CULTURE

R O U N D A RESEARCH / DESIGN REPORT & MEETING LOG OF PROGRESSIVE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN STRATEGY & SPATIAL OPPORTUNITIES

IN OUR CONTEMPORARY CITIES AND ARCHITECTURE

- TA B L E

BANGKOK, THAILAND

001 002 003 004 005

INTRODUCTION

Our City, Our Food Culture.

CRACK OF URBANITY + URBAN TABLE

Order CRACK OF URBANITY + URBAN TABLE

Context CRACK OF URBANITY + URBAN TABLE

Program CLOSINGS

INTRODUCTION OUR CITY. OUR CULTURE.

ARCHITECTURE AS MAIN STAGE 'DIVERSION' OF VISIONARY URBAN CULTURE FOR OUR CITY

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Giuseppe Arcimboldo - Summer(1563)

O

ur cities today, the supernaturals, are growing boundlessly and our urban cultures are globalised generically by ‘Divine’ urban phenomena as they are deviating from the formers.

“ (...) but with regard to the material world, we can at least go so far as this. We can perceive that events are brought about not by insulated interpositions of Divine power, exerted in each particular case, but by the establishment of general laws. (…)” <Origin of Species>, Charles Darwin

With our cities expanding its growth as if ‘sky’s no limit’, 35 megacities which exists today are expected to expand to 30 megacities in Asia alone and 3.5 billion urban population to 5 billion by 2030, whereas New York City was the only urban area with population over 10 million in 1950.

We believe our cities are opt to grow like every living things. Although, our cities are not growing physically rapid as it was in 1950s of New York or as China and Dubai in start of new millennium, but it is intangibly changing in its function as our neighbours, our friends and I, myself are opt to change in adaptation to the our global “economic”, “politic”, “social”, “environmental” climates.

From the “rise & fall” of our escalated cities and cultures, new cities are still rupturing spontaneously, as if, our cities are ‘hotspots’ of tectonic plates of our mother Earth under the entity of competitive global city(of divine power).

Whilst these cities have generically expanded in its figurative urban growth size and power, like inertia, mediocre urban cultures & values have emerged upon the users like built-in supplements of today’ contemporary cities.

Beholding the state of global issues such as; global economics, global tourism, gentrification, migrations, poverty, ageing society, unemployment, global warming, and so forth today which may behave embossed our cities to rapid urbanization, setting our foot on three of the most dynamic cities in East Asia Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, we are verge to ask,

1. What truly makes our city and urban culture?

2. How did our urban cultures form before this great wave of globalgeneric culture emerged?

3. What can be possible key fundamentals/necessity that we can acknowledge/be aware of in advancement our urban culture?

Cafeteria in Bangkok, Thailand copyright ⓒ 2016, Piya Limipiti

W

e believe that cities can be defined in many different ways as vast number of elements economic, political, technological, cultural values that shapes today’s global cities are under rapid transitions in complexity.

City noun, often attributive \ˈsi-tē\ : a place where people live that is larger or more important than a town : an area where many people live and work : an inhabited place of greater size, population, or importance than a town or village - Merriam-Webster Dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/

As defined and through our improvised meaning of a ‘city’, a city can be generalised simply as “where people ‘live’ and ‘work’”. But how did our city become the city of today? how will our city shape up tomorrow? and why asking these questions matter to us and our city?

Todays, our cities are measured in various indices to determine ‘the quality’ of the city by various corporates and media; such as QOLQuality of Life Economist, Mercer, A.T Kearney, Monocle, World Better Life Index OECD and Global Power City Bank, UN Index and etc.. Inuit from these ranking indices, how we ‘live’ and ‘work’’ are generalised and determines how our city should be shaped in future.

PROJECTION ORDER

WE USE OUR

5 SENSES SEE, HEAR, SMELL, TOUCH, TASTE TO ACKNOWLEDGE & EXPERIENCEOUR CITIES. THUS, A CITY A PLATFORM FOR INDIVIDUAL(S) OR A MULTITUDE IS OPT TO COMPILE DIALECTIC CULTURE, IN ITS UNIQUE ORDERS.

Project <Crack of Urbanity> proposes necessity in advancement of urban culture by reciting/enhancing perceptions of our “basic fundamental necessity of living Food, Shelter, Clothing” for our cities and city users.

By investigating and visualising possible re-adaptation of the basic fundamentals necessity of living in our global cities and urban users in fast transition of culture, we wish to re-imagine and extend new typologies of public and private domain.

We believe, designing these new fictional layers, gestures of transcript reconfiguration/design, will activate urban users’ perception to re-scope and re-vision how we can explore new possibilities in our cities in advancement of the urban culture. Recognition of how we can perceive our basic fundamentals will

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create new friction & possible interventions for our urban culture and urban users through advancement of our daily urban life.

As a fictional layer & boundary, the <Crack of Urbanity> will conjugate as contextual posture as well as habitual orientation of urban users . And <Urban Table>, as a spin-off motif to design physical relationships within urban contextual/cultural condition, will perform as an element/object to create friction on our fictional layer.

Through specific arrangements and postures in relation to urban context, <Crack of Urbanity> & <Urban Table> may be compositions of objects, points, planes, patterns, paths as function of a space but also as an act or null.

PROJECTION CONTEXT

FICTIONAL PLATFORM IS A CITY WITH PEOPLE, A REAL IS SPACE USED

BY PEOPLE AS FORM OF PLACE.

T

oday, the figures and compositions which may have identified the characters of our global cities in the past are becoming incomprehensible as vast number of programs and indices although they are not ‘absolutely’ new are generated and integrated into a scale/level, which, urban users can no longer perceive discrete figure of their dwelling city. In consequence, our cities today are dashing to operate new services online/offline and tools which enables urban citizen to customise their own city-figure into smaller entity of mega-scale city or unions of user-oriented/localbased operative interfaces.

These customisation process of ‘built-on’ interface is an archival/editorial operation which involves collecting and re-compositions of information from ‘fictional’ city as sources of Big Data to consolidate the base for ‘user’s optimised’ database. Through reorganising and transcription process of collected data, ‘fictional’ platforms are developed and based on these optimised ‘fictional’ platform, a real, cultures are generated.

From these generic production phases of the ‘fictional’ cities and ‘real’ culture, we believe that our cities today; urban citizens and cultures, are encountering “More is More / More is Better” sequel where limitless; context-less, scale-less, user-less

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productions of cities and programs are spontaneously positioning as the main stages of our city. As a result, generic cultures global trend/pseudo culture which emboss from succession of capital achievements of Capital cities, are dominating in our old and new cities globally as if they are the fundamentals of our cities’ development and users.

From this diverted interpretation of our cities, project <Crack of Urbanity> is projection of theoretical dialectal device, which acts as a fictional platform layer to incubate radical urban culture, based on somewhat paradoxical statement: in this age, “a city is fictional, but a culture of the city is real”. By penetrating discrete gestures or so called design on urban context, we intend to articulate and create frictions for urban users, connecting urban culture with new scope to vision our advanced urban culture with fundamental programs of our lives.

Contrary to fictional platform of <Crack of Urbanity> & <Urban Table> imposes physical ‘on-ground’ design which provokes a fictional identity of urban cultures programs. In another words such as ’Social’, ‘Network’, ‘Connections’ which may resemble fictional infrastructure in fictional city virtual reality today, will be integrated in scaled on urban context.

Illustration of Victoria Monument Station, Bangkok, Thailand Street Food Area Related with food (Restaurant) Shop Franchise (Restaurant) Local (Restaurant)

PROJECTION PROGRAM

OUR CULTURE, OUR COMMON, OF CITY

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ur basic fundamental necessity of living FOOD is one of the most oldest media which have bridged us to socialize; communicate and create new & common value, in various and integrating forms of space and habitat,

a culture.

The topic of the basic fundamental necessity of living are less regarded as interactory systems in our cities, since they have inherently merged or obese in our daily lives that it is in someway/where/ how integrated in almost every aspects of our lives. As result, we have and it is natural to become unconscious of its value, eventually. Like one refers about consciousness;

Food, Shelter, Clothing

“Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious.

Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

- Karl Marx

For thousands of years, we, humanity have tried through phases of evolution to explore and settle in better living city; such as geographical, economical, political conditions of the world. Along with these explorations, not only there was advancement of the purposed but also necessities purpose to explore lead to great technological, cultural, anthropological and many other interventions as chain reaction.

The project <Crack of Urbanity> & <Urban Table> lies on this fringe of exploring and defining ‘what our necessity is to advance our urban culture extension of spatial domain ’ and ‘ why our consciousness of what/how fundamental value can be important’ in today’s fast trending fictional cities.

Illustration of Victoria Monument Station, Bangkok, Thailand

Street of Bangkok, Thailand

Street of Bangkok, Thailand

FOOD ELEMENT REQUIRES ARCHITECTURE SERVE ARCHITECTURE PLATFORM REQUIRES FOOD CULTURE CONSEQUENTLY, VICE VERSA. FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE SERVING REQUIRES USERS AND ITS PHYSICALITY. FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE SERVED, AS LONG AS THEY ARE USER-ORIENTED, THEY ARE IN HUMAN-SCALE. FOOD AND ARCHITECTURE IN FORM SERVING , CREATES EVENTACTIVITY. AND AS PLACE SERVING, THEY ARE CONTEXTUAL.

photo copyright â&#x201C;&#x2019; 2016, Piya Limipiti

Street of Bangkok, Thailand

Street of Bangkok, Thailand

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is field of perception in dialectic and fictional transcriptions.

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is physical urban element which is contextual to its origin and site.

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is fictional layer which creates non-fictional activity in pattern.

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is place where you can seat, stand, observe, read, and communicate.

is extension of public domain, where urban culture may become distinctively contextual.

is a point, line, plane in form of which identity of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the placeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; becomes temporal culture to serve urban users.

Engraving <Village of Secota> by Theodor de Bry(1588)

CLOSING OUR CITY. OUR CULTURE.

<Crack of Urbanity> & <Urban Table> ARE

CONCEPTUAL

INITIATE

DIVERTED

PROJECTS

TO

ARCHITECTURAL

INVESTIGATION AND DESIGN PRACTICE TO CONDITION

'REJUVENATE' OF

USERâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

PERCEPTION 'FUNDAMENTAL

NECESSITY OF LIVING Food, Shelter, Clothing' IN SEARCH FOR URBAN OPPORTUNITIES; ADVANCEMENT OF URBAN CULTURE AND SPACES of urban users.

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â&#x20AC;&#x153;The tendency to aggression is an innate, independent, instinctual disposition in man... it constitutes the powerful obstacle to culture.â&#x20AC;? <Civilization and Its Discontents>, Sigmud Freud

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e believe our urban cultures shape from the two axis of primitive extremes; very ordinaries of daily life everydayness and supernatural phenomena events.

And from this premise, our project tackles one of the element of the fundamental necessity of living Food as an integration field of our city Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo culture and tries to articulate and narrate how our cities are served/serving for users today.

Through our projection of analysed/narrated urban transcripts, we depict new spatial opportunities

and cultures derived from the former a city, under generic production and fast in transition . Our participatory design in urban context does not demand or forefront as design methodology in opposition to the designs which shapes our cities of today like mass products in markets, due to capital profits and necessity to hold many global population tourist, capital city, global politics and as attractions but objectify narrative visionaries and progressive thinkings of the theWorkshop.

From the projection series in our cities Bangkok, Seoul, Tokyo, we articulate how our cities today are becoming less dialectal culturally but obese in generating new global cultures.

Street of Bangkok, Thailand photo copyright â&#x201C;&#x2019; 2016, Piya Limipiti

We are prompt to state that current aggression of how conditions of cultures are generated in our cities are in state of becoming an obstacles in advancing to next contemporary urban culture/space for urban users.

The project series <Crack of Urbanity> & <Urban Table> are prime to narrate transcription of contemporary urban context based on four basic architectural axes program, order, user, and scale and by filtering our cities through basic fundamental necessity of living: food, it is opt to explore new spatial domain enabling dialectic culture for our cities.

By focusing on how foods

tangibility/intangibility

have

played important role to develop its culture heterogeneity in our cities, and how food as a medium performed to shape our cities in multi-scale; infrastructure, markets, modules as major elements of urban culture, project series critically analyses and specifies urban fabrics of its sporadic growth in our everydayness.

As the goal of this series of projections, we aim to renarrate user-oriented contextual perceptual urban culture, in contemporary global cities, which are being generalized by the global-context in its own power games.

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