Subject Semester in History and Theory of Urban Design: Resourceful Cities

Abstract

This Research Studio focuses on the role of resources in the history of urban design. Through architecture-specific research methods, it investigates how local and global systems of resource extraction, management and production have historically influenced the aesthetic, construction and craft cultures of cities, and explores how historical examples can inform challenges of today.

Objective

The Research Studio has two main objectives: 1. Archaeology. First, students will develop an ‘archaeology’ of the historical entanglements of resources and the city. In this part, the studio work is understood as an archaeological venture, digging up traces of the past to understand their historical logic. Students will systematically probe specific case studies in how the built environment and its design have been interconnected to resources of various natures. The result will be a geographically diverse catalogue of historical city-resource connections, illustrating how resources are inscribed into architectural and urban figures and had a long lasting impact on the urban fabric. 2. Project for the City. In a second step, students will propose a ‘Project for the City’. Based on the 'archaeology’ and the insights of historical examples, students will speculate about future scenarios for rethinking the connection between resources, the city and urban design. The central idea is that uncovering the logics of historical entanglements, allows to take a better-informed position on today’s challenges. Students will be asked, using the tools of the architect, to explore strategies to represent these entanglements and to suggest ways of creating openings for better future. Thus, with these objectives, this Research Studio aims to develop answers to the following research questions: - How can we engage with a resource-based perspective to understand and interpret urban and architectural histories? - Based on this understanding, how do we envision the future of this history? What logics do we urgently need to question? - How does the history of city-resource entanglements offer us insights to address the social, political, and environmental challenges of our time? - What position do you take, as engaged individuals and professionals, vis-à-vis cities’ relation to resources in the current mode of design and practice? - What role can we envision architects and other producers of the city taking to address these challenges?

Content

Resources and the City Throughout history, cities have always maintained a complex and multifaceted relationship to resources. Cities are clearly places of resource consumption, existing by grace of the myriad connections with their hinterland: buildings and infrastructure are constructed out of materials resourced from the earth and the urban population is fed, clothed and provided with numerous consumer goods through a multiplicity of agricultural and production chains. But cities are also producers of resources and even a resource of and in itself: the various political, cultural and educational institutions they harbor serve as social resources for peaceful coexistence, for cultures to thrive, and for knowledge to be generated. Or by bringing a high number of people together within a small surface, cities allow for various efficiency gains on economic, social distributive or ecological grounds. And lastly, cities are not only places of resource consumption and resource production, but are also places of resourcefulness, where the bringing together of human minds increases the versatility of responding to various challenges, from political protests that lead to the overturning of repressive regimes, to imagining alternative models of shared ownership or fostering less polluting modes of transport. The more the resources of our earth are under pressure, the more explicitly we need to probe this multifaceted relationship between resources and the city. Where once cement, for instance, has radically transformed the building industry, progressive insight into its high ecological footprint forces us to reconsider our heavy reliance on it and to use it more consciously. Where once asbestos fibers contained the promise of a cheap, polyvalent construction material thanks to its chemical and physical properties, progressive insight into its high health hazards forced us to abolish its use entirely. Speaking to more recent innovations, the high reliance on smartphones and other mobile devices to power our connected urban lifestyles, leads us to reflect on the cobalt mines in Congo and the various other rare metal production chains that are required for its operations. The urban implications of the current turn towards an AI society, in its undirected, high-level energy consumption and the numerous anonymous server parks that are increasingly defining our public spaces, are still to be fully unraveled. Urban design as a discipline is inevitably deeply implicated in all these interconnections. Designing the city means de facto co-designing its various connections to resources. For this reason, in the light of today’s challenges, this Research Studio revisits the history of architecture and urban design from the perspective of resources. How have resources historically been extracted, managed and produced? How is fair and equitable access to resources governed, hindered or enabled? More fundamentally, what is a resource? Is it still a valid concept, or is it part of an outdated vocabulary that fails to understand the reciprocal and entangled relationship of humans to the planet?

Resources