Intitulé du cours que je vais enseigner à l’ESA ce prochain semestre.
Design
Lecture – GME
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Presenting the neo-nomad research to students of Tokyo Denki University next week. Will discuss about Genetically Modified Environments i.e. the impact of mobilities on the built environment and practices of the city. Thank you to Professor Yoshito Tobe, I look forward to catch-up with the Osoite project – Osoite means “address or place” in Finnish.
FlashTaTu
Le personnage de FlashTaTu est né d’une réflexion sur le corps et l’espace augmenté. FlashTatu est un super héros qui a le pouvoir de numériser les P. I. G. S. – les People, Information, Goods and Spaces. Flash fait référence aux QR codes aussi appelés flash codes que l’on scanne à l’aide d’un téléphone mobile et qui renvoient à un url. TaTu rappelle l’origine tahitienne du mot tatouage : ta pour dessin et atouas pour esprit. Interpretation littérale mais aussi humoristique de l’individu augmenté et hypertexte, FlashTatu donne corps au zeitgeist bio-numérique. FlashTaTu navigue dans des univers parallèles, le physique et le numérique, et les met en relation. FlashTaTu est aussi un agent bio-politique qui se mêle des questions d’aliénation dans la ville augmentée. C’est un avatar, un médiateur, prétexte à des expérimentations sur les espaces hybrides – physiques et numériques.
Les activités mises en scène au cours de cette exposition qui réunit artistes, penseurs et innovateurs ont pour but de questionner l’identité des espaces hybrides de la ville – le corps est aussi un espace – et d’envisager les lieux hypertextes de demain.
Yasmine Abbas, Direction artistique
Marion Daeldyck, Design
Nadine Branellec, Design
Corps – technologie – habitat – peau – information – mobilité – néo-nomade – identités hybrides – espaces hybrides – hypertexte – interface – ecotone – architecture – urbain – numérique – augmenté
Body – technology – habitat – skin – information – mobility – neo-nomad – hybrid identities – hybrid spaces – hypertext – interface – ecotone – architecture – urban – digital – augmented
PIGS in 3D
PIGS stands for People, Information, Goods and Spaces… Preparing two lectures (it’s all in the book! Read it :-) that will happen at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA) in Paris, France – Architecture des milieux post-master (end of January) and Tokyo Denki University, Japan (mid February). The image above is an avant-goût. More details will come. Come say hello!
Image 1 _ Etienne-Jules Maray, Saut de l’homme en blanc, Chronophotographie sur plaque fixe, vers 1887 © Couval/musée Marey-Beaune
Image 2 _ May 1941. “ Dymaxion house, metal, adapted corn bin, built by Butler Brothers, Kansas City. Designed and promoted by R. Buckminster Fuller.” Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott.
Image 3 _ A random avatar picked for its visual quality.
Image 4 _ The Hug Shirt by Cute Circuit.
Image 5 _ Cécile de Cassagnac, Chose à l’anneau, 2009, aquarelle et encre sur papier 76 x 58 cm
Image 6 _ Cedric Price, Generator, 1976
Human – Non-human
Currently writing a piece on hybrids and explaining why it is relevant to space analysis and design, architecture and urban. In fact hybrids embody what I label as “mental mobility”. They live in “ecotones”, in transition zones between two ecosystems, in fluid and liminal spaces. We often relate hybridity with power or with cosmic power. In the “spaces of flows” and in our “liquid society”, looking at hybridity, however fictitious – we are all hybrids after all – is a way to argue for a design that is open to re-assembly and re-configuration.
The photograph above is from a temple that I visited when in Sri Lanka. The Makara “has the lower jaw of a crocodile, the snout or trunk of an elephant, the tusks and ears of a wild boar, the darting eyes of a monkey, the scales and flexible body of a fish, and the swirling tail feathers of a peacock.”
DAZZLING 2012
SymbioCITY
Preparing my talk at the University of Geneva this Thursday –
Néo-nomadisme – The book is out!
Check it out! Wonderful work by @fypeditions power team!
La mobilité d’aujourd’hui se conjugue au pluriel. À la fois physique, numérique et mentale, elle induit une condition nouvelle, une forme de nomadisme parfois imposé, souvent voulu, parfois jusqu’au-boutiste, pas toujours bien vécu. Ce néo-nomadisme donne naissance à des modes de vie autrefois atypiques qui, désormais, se généralisent. Il apporte aussi un état d’esprit générant transgressions et situations inédites, qui nous amènent à nous interroger sur ses conséquences profondes.
Quels sont les nouveaux liens qui se tissent entre les personnes, les objets, les données et les lieux ? Quel est l’impact de ces mutations sur l’identité des individus, autant connectés qu’isolés, sur les territoires et les espaces ?
Dans un contexte néo-nomade, les technologies de l’information sont-elles libératrices ou aliénantes ? Que deviennent le rôle de l’urbaniste et celui de l’architecte, confrontés à une instabilité qui oblige à redéfinir les contours de la ville et son accessibilité ? Comment ces transformations peuvent-elles s’inscrire dans une dynamique de durabilité, au plan environnemental, économique et social ?
Cet essai critique porte un regard sans concession sur les transformations issues de ces nouvelles mobilités, et fournit les clés pour en comprendre les risques et mieux les appréhender.
Yasmine Abbas est architecte DPLG, titulaire d’un master au MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) et d’un doctorat à la Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Hybride et néo-nomade, elle a vécu, étudié et travaillé au Maroc, en France, aux États-Unis, au Danemark et aux Émirats arabes unis, dans des domaines aussi variés que l’architecture, l’ethnographie commerciale ou le développement durable.
Une expérience qui lui apporte un regard aiguisé sur les changements du monde contemporain, en particulier sous l’angle de la recherche et de l’innovation en design.
#Lift11 Teaser
Snowed under with the book… But a #Lift11 Marseille wrap-up will come in August. Meanwhile, enjoy Bastille Day, and the picture below of our AR #memfeed workshop :-) Thank you to all the participants and thank you to @liftconference!!! <3
Bucky’s essay: “I Figure…” What is Total Thinking in design?
Reading Bucky’s Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure…
The visionary had a particular understanding of mobility. He saw the new generation growing with the airplane and the rapid technological developments. In 1942, he wrote that, “[…] In reality, the whole globe will become every man’s backyard” (p.141). The world has become indeed “every man’s backyard,” but with all the implications that we know: stress, waste, pollution, multiplication of identity, etc. Although he did figure out inadequacies of industrialization, Bucky has an unlimited faith in technologies and the ability of particular men (the “industrial businessman” or the “engineer” — both personas he embodies) to use these (war) technologies for the betterment of the society.
I have been analyzing his essay on postwar housing “I figure…” written in 1942 and never published until its re-integration into the book Ideas and Integrities two decades or so later (p. 111 – 147). (1) Find below a screenshot of the .xcel sheet I have been developing to get a better understanding of what Bucky meant by “Total Thinking.” His essay consists of 157 paragraphs (the footnote p. 116 mentions 155 “stanzas” in the original text). According to Bucky, postwar housing is a wrong concept as the shortfalls of housing construction are rooted in history, when men decided to literally anchor housing (stone buildings, codes, real estate, mortgage, etc.). Design should do more than just sheltering people.
I have categorized each of the paragraphs to find out that in general, Total Thinking means:
- Identifying the proponents of design.
- Setting straight the principles of design
- Looking for the applicability of design (mobility, risk of wars, changing needs, individuality, etc.)
- A construction that is light, transportable, that can be assembled and disassembled (in mechanical terms)
- Including research and technology, so to limit risks of failure and foster innovation
- Sound economics including the sharing and circulation of resources.
- Resource (building material) management is crucial (re-used, recycled, redistributed, etc.)
- Design with agency. If mechanized design should participate to freeing people of everyday tasks, it should enable people to engage positively with their environment.
I find this exercise and the resultant table useful as an element of comparison to think about design for today’s mobilities, with all the drawbacks we now know and in the context of climate changing (there is a high risk of wars due to climate change).
(1) No wonder! Bucky also has a caustic (and complex) writing style. The passage on the Bauhaus (earlier in the book) is corrosive — and such a delight: “What convinced me that the Bauhaus international designing was of secondary rank and limited to interior furniture sculpture…” (p. 54). His critic of the industrial designer is no less powerful: “This superficial rather than fundamental design function will be effected by a new industrial showman, to be called an industrial designer.” (p. 100).
