CONTROL - REM KOOLHAAS' 'WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO URBANISM' AND KWINTER'S 'POLITICS AND PASTORALISM'

Koolhaas discusses the pretext of failure within urbanism, and the scapegoat of urbanism as its reason. Are we loathe to claim the failure as our own, or have we devolved so far into our own minds that we can no longer see past our own apparent mistakes, negating the truth, forgetting the eidos of architectural urbanism. See it as not a failure but as an evolution of man, an evolution of intelligence, of naivety, of history and culture.

Modernism did not make the mistake, but it is our own innate inadequacies that forced the dissolution of control in the city. Forced it to comprehend its own failures, and seemingly accept that we have failed.

Control has always been an invention of mind over matter in any respect. We believe in control and that we are able to control what we design. However we are designed by it. Urbanism, as a totality, a holistic expression of all human interaction with the physical environment is us. We are controlled by its magnetism, its gravitational pull. We are forced to stand rather than float, we create machines of counteraction to create flight, however, we must always return back to earth. The relationship between urbanism and nature exists as a balance, perhaps in favour of either, but it is a balance nonetheless.

We have perhaps forgotten the innate properties of design, the nature of the designer. We create, but what do we create? Control? The idea of a wall, creates the illusion of separation, however we are neither separated nor in control. I may exist in space, but so do you. An absolute expression in space is merely a concentration of particles arranged in a form that prevents sight, sound. But not existence.

The human exists as an entity of space, influential and effectual. We make a choice that then effects the binding of other relationships in space, causality occurs in every instance of architectural discourse, and design.

As designers, our prerogative is not in the invention of control, but in the..... more to follow...

There is a belief amongst architects and urban designers that we have failed already, and that the process of reconfiguring urbanism, or the city, lies in the total dissolution of what exists, and the creating of a new, utopian ideal. A City or form that emerges from the mistakes of previous generations, (never our own). It apparently lies in the depths of architectural knowledge and our pugilistic intellectual abilities. It is the narcissistic ideology of the city. Each to their own belief and their own tendencies, we design a City. The ultimate contradiction. Surely our vast knowledge of ancient and modern human and social history, Hegelian process, Greek dialectics, and modern philosophy dictates to us that it is impossible. It will not work, and cannot work.

Urbanism is born through the field of adversity and the emporium of absolute choice. Every human existing within the space of Urbanism or the City makes a choice based upon a memory or historical fact, a relationship physical or metaphorical, perhaps metaphysical, a force of nature, a force of requirement, politically or economically, an eccentricity, a whim. Any reason for any choice creates causality. Any choice one makes within the dynamics of the urban environment creates an effect. Therefore, by designing the City in its absolution we are creating a concrete absolution, a system unaware of the rebellious triggers and anarchic phisms we have created in its parallel.

The Urban fabric cannot be a designed, Kwinter describes it as a torrential force that cannot be tamed.

more to follow....