“If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”(2) the narrator asks us.. Our question, after taking a good look at our society’s achievements in a globalized scale , could or better still should be; if we were to wake up in a different time and in different place, could we awaken in a whole new civilization?...
The concurrent crisis is not merely an economical one. Economy is only its withering façade; the whole structure that the western world had been dreaming and constructing for the better parts of the 19th and 20th century, is at its knees. The global wealth and commodity distribution network, is showing its limits and its real intentions. As David Harvey has stated, the name of the game has transformed into “Accumulation by dispossession”(3). People all over the world are stripped away from their basic rights, and of course left with no means of reacting, in order for the wealth to be accumulated by the “havs”. Wealth is not being mentioned here only as pure capital, but every form that it can transform itself to, from major firms to real world resources… We have really entered the stage of capital- cannibalism…
To continue with Professor Harvey’s theory, he makes clear that a revolutionary theory is needed right away. In his proposal it is stated that social change is attributed through the dialectical unwrapping of relations between seven stages within “the body politic” (sic) of capitalism, as viewed in an ensemble of activities and practices.
These stages are
1. technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption
2. relations to nature
3. social relations between people
4. mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and cultural understandings and beliefs
5. labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects
6. institutional, legal and governmental arrangements
7. the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction
There is no macro scale for architecture away from today’s realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilization’s foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world.
We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.
Bring the obligations, the duties and the responsibilities back to the people , and not to institutionalized departments that operate under the umbrella of representational democracy. People should be “citizens” rather that “consumers”.
Architecture must once again re-play a vital role into the society’s shaping. Not to be cornered as expensive tool for just a few. It could set the framework into which, as some time ago H. Fathy suggested, peoples, cultures and whole societies would be able to define their space.
So in order to conclude our scenario in a macro scale, it would be set into a future not much further than today. When the situational awareness of the society would call for a critical rethinking of the way we inhabit our cities. The infrastructure would still remain relatively intact from the class war that would have erupted, but civilization would have to cope with the new questions that would have risen.
The concurrent crisis is not merely an economical one. Economy is only its withering façade; the whole structure that the western world had been dreaming and constructing for the better parts of the 19th and 20th century, is at its knees. The global wealth and commodity distribution network, is showing its limits and its real intentions. As David Harvey has stated, the name of the game has transformed into “Accumulation by dispossession”(3). People all over the world are stripped away from their basic rights, and of course left with no means of reacting, in order for the wealth to be accumulated by the “havs”. Wealth is not being mentioned here only as pure capital, but every form that it can transform itself to, from major firms to real world resources… We have really entered the stage of capital- cannibalism…
To continue with Professor Harvey’s theory, he makes clear that a revolutionary theory is needed right away. In his proposal it is stated that social change is attributed through the dialectical unwrapping of relations between seven stages within “the body politic” (sic) of capitalism, as viewed in an ensemble of activities and practices.
These stages are
1. technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption
2. relations to nature
3. social relations between people
4. mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and cultural understandings and beliefs
5. labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects
6. institutional, legal and governmental arrangements
7. the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction
There is no macro scale for architecture away from today’s realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilization’s foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world.
We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.
Bring the obligations, the duties and the responsibilities back to the people , and not to institutionalized departments that operate under the umbrella of representational democracy. People should be “citizens” rather that “consumers”.
Architecture must once again re-play a vital role into the society’s shaping. Not to be cornered as expensive tool for just a few. It could set the framework into which, as some time ago H. Fathy suggested, peoples, cultures and whole societies would be able to define their space.
So in order to conclude our scenario in a macro scale, it would be set into a future not much further than today. When the situational awareness of the society would call for a critical rethinking of the way we inhabit our cities. The infrastructure would still remain relatively intact from the class war that would have erupted, but civilization would have to cope with the new questions that would have risen.
There is no macro scale for architecture away from today’s realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilization’s foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world.
We need to find w
ays that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.
The micro scenario will of course be a more in depth view of the macro scale. So in this base we will use the urban context of the city of New York, and more specifically the borough of Manhattan, that has long served as the showcase of new liberalism and the profit “uber alles” concept. We will look into a specific building, and see how it could interact will all the new concepts and ideas that would be formed around it.
The sustainability of the city, even in scales of buildings will play a great role to the whole project. After all, nobody would somewhere without food and water… The micro society and the way it would organize itself inside the buildings, not as simple tenants but as active ingredients of the built environment is also a critical element of our project.
Using the examples given by S. Latouche and T. Fotopoulos, we could use the “localities” to establish a new kind of ecological, immediate democracy. Especially Takis Fotopoulos pursues a critique of representative democracy :
“The introduction of representative ‘democracy’ had nothing to do with the size of the population”: it “was intended to act as a filter, i.e. as the very antithesis of isegoria, which means equality of speech ―a necessary requirement of classical democracy […]Representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state”
We need to find w
ays that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.The micro scenario will of course be a more in depth view of the macro scale. So in this base we will use the urban context of the city of New York, and more specifically the borough of Manhattan, that has long served as the showcase of new liberalism and the profit “uber alles” concept. We will look into a specific building, and see how it could interact will all the new concepts and ideas that would be formed around it.
The sustainability of the city, even in scales of buildings will play a great role to the whole project. After all, nobody would somewhere without food and water… The micro society and the way it would organize itself inside the buildings, not as simple tenants but as active ingredients of the built environment is also a critical element of our project.
Using the examples given by S. Latouche and T. Fotopoulos, we could use the “localities” to establish a new kind of ecological, immediate democracy. Especially Takis Fotopoulos pursues a critique of representative democracy :
“The introduction of representative ‘democracy’ had nothing to do with the size of the population”: it “was intended to act as a filter, i.e. as the very antithesis of isegoria, which means equality of speech ―a necessary requirement of classical democracy […]Representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state”
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