Monday 23 November 2015; Shenzhen University, Architecture Building, Lecture Hall, C205
This lecture investigates, albeit briefly, a history of urban paradigms and tools with which, over time, the formation of cities has been guided, with an emphasis on the context of urbanization in China. Within the current context of a transition in the conceptualization of cities as mechanized, towards their understanding as living, dynamic constructs, this shift is one from mechanical reproduction, to biological speciation, mutation and evolution. The Modernist city’s dependency and causality upon Fordist mass production is challenged by today’s emerging methods of non-standard production – this lecture and the projects presented will highlight the design repercussions of this transition in industrial paradigm at the urban scale. Following the presentation of a theoretical foundation, Tom Verebes will present a series of design projects by OCEAN CN Consultancy Network. This lecture locates a research problematic on the limitations of masterplanning, and investigating the intersection of the ubiquitous uniformity of cities, and the possibility of prototyping multiple futures, specified to local contingencies and constraints.