My First Post-Graduate Project

Here is a low-res thumbnail of the 1200mm x 600mm drawing we displayed as part of our group work looking at the use of sound to map experience (titled Shifting Fields).  The presentation drawing was done as an all vector illustrator file and looks tight (also colours have gone all sorts of wrong on this uploaded one).  We combined a photo-voltaic charger with a few bits of simple wiring to create a sound directly controlled by the amount and type of light hitting the photo-voltaic panels...  I'll try to get the sound clip uploaded but it illustrates a journey underground in to one of Kent's WWII relics which we attempted to map using torch lights as a kind of photo-sonar (SOUND CLIP ATTACHED BELOW - HIT PLAY ON THE GABCAST PLAYER)...
The main criticism from our review was that the coloured 'sensational' part seemed superfluous so next step is to analyse and illustrate the sound mesh on the left to a greater degree of detail, removing the coloured part to the annals of groupwork past.
Alongside the image, we presented a box which contained all of our paper research in combination with the recording equipment to allow users to interact and create their own sounds using hidden lights under the lid.

Koolhaas and Kwinter

In the Koolhaas essay for Week 4, the Dutch designer sets out the failures of past forms of Urban design, suggesting that there is too much of a solidity of conclusion when making Urban-scale interventions.  The ideas he sets out, fall in to the bracket of 'Soft Urbanism', which constitutes a more pastoral approach to Urban design and management, lessening the importance of 'one-answer' to Urban problems.  The theme of coercion in design as opposed to determinism is repeated with Koolhaas, as he sees designers as managers of the City rather than Modernist or Post Modernist architectural dictators.  Koolhaas suggests that the very idea of an ability to 'control' Urban development is flawed due to the exponential quickening of Urban expansion, creating constantly altering fields of influence, requiring more fluid solutions to the problems of Urban culture and society.

Lefebvre and De Landa

The De Landa text accompanying Week 3, discusses theory of Urban design and development and looks at the opposite forces of 'planned' versus 'organic' architecture/urbanism.  De Landa endeavors to promote a self-policing/development of metropolitan fabric and despairs of the unnaturally forced current system for planning and deterministic design.  De Landa, like Lefebvre, sees a 'systems' type relationship within contemporary society - all things linked and feeding one another but approaches writing with a more microscopic lens, framing specific examples of his research in action.  He sees in contemporary scientific society, a fall-off in the subjective analysis of nature with human society as having an opinion like: 'culture is the made, nature is the given'.  He attempts to challenge the traditional culture/nature divide in conceptual human thinking, again like Lefebvre, promoting a role of overseer for humanity - using coercive methods to extract necessitous resource from the natural world.
He writes too, about the ability of nature to provide stimulus for the propagation of human advancement.  The example of sewer systems resulting from the widespread contraction of cholera is a potent example of nature's ability to exercise influence over Urban society, which De Landa considers a combination of 'genetic' influence and 'learned' influence.

Lefebvre and De Landa

First text in Week 3 concerns Lefebvre’s discourse on 'Urban' analysis from the viewpoint of a Post-Marxist, post WWII commentator. Lefebvre proposes that all elements of a fully 'Urbanised' society are linked through 'flows' of energy. In his terminology, 'flows' can take the shape of almost any relationship between parties i.e. financial, social, labour etc. He considers post WWII society to be in a state of 100% urbanisation whereby no part of human society, whether generally considered 'Urbanised' or not, is linked to the energy transfers invoked by metropolitan areas over their surroundings, both physically and otherwise. Of interest is that his view of 0% 'Urbanisation' requires the environment of the Earth to exist as it was pre-human i.e. that humans cannot reduce their influence on the Earth to (pre-)historic lows now we have reached post-industrialisation. In his view of World capitalism, Lefebvre see's the replacement of heavy industry by service-related business as a major contributor to the (almost total) assimilation of 'Urban' societies. The suggestion in his text is that human society must reach a careful balance with the natural world and to influence it gently through coercion in order to satisfy all needs of the 'Urbanised'.