Master in City & Technology 2019/21 – Term I
Workshop Name: Strategic Urban Design
Faculty: Jordi Vivaldi
Credits: Actar Arquitectura + GICLab Genova: “Barcelona, Multistring Central Park” from the concept of Super-Blocks (Agencia de Ecología Urbana de Barcelona) in Manuel Gausa, BCN-GOA, New Multistring Centralities, (Trento: ListLab, 2013). Images of the model and general plan
Syllabus
The last few decades have confirmed the evidence of a striking change of paradigms in the definition of our urban spaces of relation, interaction and sociability. These transformations are intimately associated with the current and accelerated growth of the technological capacity to process information, increase communication and multiply differential definitions of our environment(s).
This paradigm shift reverberates with a new urban approach that is underpinned by a singular technological transformation: rather than accumulating discrete ratios of information, we are dealing with continuous flows of information. The seminar will critically reflect on the challenges of a cross-linked thinking related with the complex processing of information and its evolutionary and dynamic projection in the urban realm. More in particular, the seminar will instrumentalize the thesis project of the students in order to build urban narratives and strategic proposals that are able to (1) identify a key topic associated with the urban realm, (2) understand which is the contemporaneous debate that this topic has produced and (3) build a critical approach that permits the student to solidly position him/herself within this debate and within the cultural landscape in which s/he is operating.
Learning Objectives
At course completion the student will:
- Familiarise with the complexity of the different phases of the whole process of an academic investigation, with particular focus to urban design.
- Understand the debate in which the proposal is operating in order to establish a critical position.
- Develop analytical thoughts, conclusions and reasoning during the investigations.
- Know- how necessary to build a design narrative.
- Present with clarity, order and precision the project.
Faculty
Jordi Vivaldi is a writer, philosopher and architectural theorist based in Vienna.
PhD Architect (IOUD, Austria) and PhD Philosopher (EGS (cand.), Switzerland), Jordi’s areas of research include 20th and 21st century’s theory of experimental architecture, art and technology, as well as various forms of Speculative Realism and New Materialism. In particular, his current field of investigation orbits around the notion of “Limes” together with associated terms such as “finitude”, “determination” and “reduction”, both in its philosophical and architectural registers.
More specifically, Jordi’s work applies Eugenio Trias’ ontological theory of limits to Graham Harman’s Object Oriented Philosophy in order to construct a liminal approach both com-pressive and ex-pressive. From an architectural perspective, Jordi’s research focus in articulating the concept of “Limit-Space” as a contemporaneous form of space associated with our current subjectless condition, particularly in relation to the design of the floor as an architectural element.
