One of the most refreshing articles I have read recently: a full on comparison between two people; two projects and two conflicting ideologies. But, most importantly, a reflection on how design decisions are informed and in turn inform our thinking and living under the underlying -and quite ironic if I may add- contradiction between ideals and the real world. Excellent read.
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/enzo-mari-ikea-design/
So excited that our ProfEd Circular Building Products for a Sustainable Built Environment is up for a second run, starting on March 31! Watch our new teaser video to see what the course is about and who else is involved.
For more information and registrations please visit: https://online-learning.tudelft.nl/courses/circular-building-products-for-a-sustainable-built-environment/
Looking forward to working with you in turning your product into a circular one!
Big thanks to Peter Van Assche (@PrettyPlactic), Casper van der Meer (BetterFutureFactory), Olaf Blaauw, Laura Rosen Jacobson (@Buurman), Martijn Veerman (@Alkondor) & Monique Fledderman (@VMGR). And thanks to @HansdeJonge from @Oculus for the great work in making this video!
DORA Aims:
Dora Goals:
Reference: https://sfdora.org/
Just watched 2011 Adam Curtis 3-episode BBC series under this title of a poem by Richard Brautigan. I strongly recommend that you watch this documentary (link available here); Adam Curtis is a master at creating consistent narratives (remember ‘the century of the Self’). In the meantime, here is the poem the series owe its name to, dedicated to all my friends the cyberneticists.
I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Well, it was worth the wait and the effort! Competition Culture in Europe 2017-2020 is now openly available! Big thanks to Architectuur Lokaal and Indira van Klooster for making it happen and a big thanks to Katerina Moustaka and Stelina Portesi the two students of NTUA who worked so hard for the research!
Abstract: Research, activities & educational outputs from the 2017 International Competition Culture in Europe (CCIE) conference, & the wider CCIE programme, are assembled here to provide invaluable resources, knowledge, & guidance. 25 European countries were involved in the programme & in 6 research programmes were set up. The 1st part provides an overview of CCIE international convocations & their outputs. The 2nd part reports on University master students research from Tirana (Albania), Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina), Sofia (Bulgaria), Athens (Greece), Dublin (Ireland) & Portsmouth (United Kingdom). These country’s outputs cover the history, development, application, & opportunities of competitions in an international context. This publication is an Architectuur Lokaal project realised with Project Compass CIC & A10 New European architecture Cooperative.
SoPHIA D1.2 report has now been released. The report presents with the mapping of gaps and shortcomings of current impact assessment models towards the creation of new, holistic tool. Join SoPHIA website and subscribe to receive the program’s regular newsletters.
The ‘paradox’ refers to the cases where people share personal information even when they attest to highly valuing their privacy. This article originally points to a series of studies where individuals chose to disclose personal information in order to gain either a small discount or for no reason at all. The author discusses two arguments: the ‘behavior valuation argument’ [when people’s behavior is used to measure how much people value privacy (revealed preferences) instead of attitudes (stated preferences)] and the exact opposite: the ‘behavior distortion argument’ (when behavior does not reliably reflect people’s preferences) only to deny both. In fact, Solove argues there is no paradox at all. “The privacy paradox,” he says, “emerges from conflated issues, unwarranted generalizations, and leaps in logic.” Full article available here
Art and eco-design belong together, the idea of the building itself becomes the object of art (…) people never want an aesthetically inferior building near them (…) most eco-friendly architecture is really quite ugly (…) the ecological challenges are extremely complex (…) One of the goals of architecture for the post-pandemic era must be to stop forcing people into a world where everything is decided for them (…) The greening of buildings should be a collective design process in which choice, chance and change work together (…) If architects and designers want to continue to play a role in the future, they have to adapt their aesthetic values to these changed conditions: what we actually need now is invisible architecture
Full interview of James Wines, available here
The ‘digital’ as an influence in each field: “each time the ‘digital’ is used as a modifier or as a
qualifying term in any of the senses suggested above, it exerts a normative effect.” Digital poses as progress, develop, change; it implies the transformation of current practices at a fundamental level, but it also stands for machinist, automated and impersonal.
Digital Citizenship: the right to participate online or how the digital facilitates new forms of participation, “digital acts involve interpreting multiple streams of local and global information, and, in the age of datafication, anticipating unknown consequences.” However, marginalized groups still struggle to be included, digital citizens are less reliant to the nation state for democratic expression, while at the same time, new forms of discipline made possible because of ‘digital’ increase control over citizens. Digital Rights: intended here as protection against ‘standard threats’: there is an inherent tension between free exchange of ideas and protection of abuse or harassment. There is a discrepancy between the universalized human subject and the locally situated one. Digital rights for some actors can be thus overlooked, they have a strong reliance on institutions rather than states, however, they bring context. Digital Literacy: intended as knowledge assembly, however, literacy is ‘an established frame in response to changes in communications that normalizes and explains the relationships between individuals and society.” New strands of literacy have emerged due to datafication like ‘critical data literacy’. These in turn provide a foundation for the both digital citizenship and rights.
So what is their common ground? Promoting agency in the digital context by enhancing the individuals’ power to change the world. However, there are limits to bottom-up collective responses. Future research should test their limits and to also consider how they can resist the pervasive aspects of control.
Reference
Pangrazio, L. & Sefton-Green, J. (2021). Digital Rights, Digital Citizenship and Digital Literacy: What’s the Difference?. In Journal of New Approaches in Education Research 10 (1), 15-27. Full paper available here. (First seen in Stephen Downes blog)
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment has created 12 new positions for PhD researchers. For information on the topics please visit the vacancies webpage.
I am happy to announce I will be supervising one of them along with a team of excellent colleagues. The topic considers the social relevance of circularity and its potential in driving participatory planning or -better yet- self-organisation processes at community scale. You will be involved in real-life experimentation and analytical prototyping through an anthropological approach. You will help plan, coordinate, and monitor circular initiatives at neighborhood scale in collaboration with locals. Furthermore, you will be part of a series of design workshops that will explore design with locally harvested materials and how that ultimately affects the designers’ role.
Deadline for application is 19/02/2021. For more information on Circular Community Challenges please visit this page
STS addresses the role of deliberative democracy and citizen participation in science and technology management where boundary organisations* can play an important role: traditional forms of deliberation have failed to engage forms of emotive and affective storytelling to make dialogue more inclusive or minority cultures and worldviews/ There are many technologies of deliberation: consensus conferences; citizen juries; participatory budgeting; science shops and deliberative polls/ these are more focused on citizen appraisals than citizen-based initiatives/ focus has turned to the three areas of concern:
01 micropolitics of deliberation: concerned about how issues are framed-design and facilitation of processes-recruitment of participants-management of consensus and about issues of representation and inclusivity/ Deliberation organizers often aim for a demographic, rather than political, sampling of community members/ An inclusive deliberative process accounts for both demographic and social group representation/ inclusive deliberation requires formal opportunities to speak, as well as diverse communication styles that include ‘‘other’’ ways of cultural knowing like music and dance (Young, 2008)
02 macro policy impacts: measuring impacts of deliberation on policy processes/ it is difficult to connect citizen deliberation with meaningful global policy
03 reassessing the role of substantive engagement: citizens engaged as subjects rather than as objects of discourse/ consider the direct short-term policy impacts, but also the personal and social impacts of ‘‘learning, thinking and talking’’ together/ the goal should be ‘‘to make explicit the plurality of reasons, culturally embedded assumptions and socially contingent knowledge ways that can inform collective action’’/ work on reducing the epistemic distance of objects and processes under debate’/ scholars must create tactile spaces where participants can see, taste, touch, smell and hear for themselves the phenomena around which knowledge claims are being made
*A boundary organization is a formal body jointly generated by the scientific and political communities to coordinate different purposes and promote consistent boundaries and mutually incomprehensible interactions (…) Guston put forward the idea of boundary organizations to stabilize the boundary between scientists and policymakers (…) Boundary organization serves as a secure space can be established through good relations and procedures for negotiating disputes (wiki)
Reference
Phadke, R., manning C. & Burlager, S. (2015). Making it personal: Diversity and deliberation in climate adaptation planning. In Climate Risk Management 9, 62-76
Andersen (imagined communities): power of nationalism to define and prescribe a sense of community that transcends physical nature, but is located in mind and heart
Wenger (communities of practice): community is about working together as a practice
Nursey-Bray: community has been defined as a place; as in a territory or place-based community where people have something in common, or there is a shared geography
Cohen: communities are formed via attachment, and they are communities of meaning
Tonnie: community related to gemeinschaft, thus a group of people that share common bonds around traditions, beliefs or objectives
Bartle: community as a collection of human individuals organised as a socio-cultural system within six dimensions relevant to community and culture (i) technological, (ii) economic. (iii) political, (iv) institutional (social), (v) aesthetic-value amd (vi) belief-conceptual.
Lee-Newby: community as a set of interrelationships among social institutions in a locality
Kaufman: community is first a place and second a configuration as a way of life, both as to how people do things and what they want, to say their institutions and goals
Johnson: community as a collection of people who share a common territory and meet their basic and social needs through interaction with one another
Reference
Nursey-Bray, M. (2020). Community Engagement: What is it?. In Dominique Hes, Christina Hernandez-Santin (Eds.) Placemaking Fundamentals for the Built Environment, Melbourne, Australia: Palgrave macmillan, pp. 83-105
connecting data to information to knowledge 