Finished Outline

I had to rewrite part three, but it's done. Now we just have to collect some data, and bang out that abstract. (Due February 12!)

Part 3. The Production of Added Value through Image Disruption

• Within a sociological interpretation of value, the production of added value engages the built environment in the construction of an image of the city, that looks beyond a quantitative notion of the city, towards a qualitative one
• Architecture interventions have an opportunity to disrupt the visual complicity of conventional urban processes by portraying “the complexities of urban reality and socio-cultural and economic characters of urbanised nations”
• creating in opposition what Stefano Boeri has called, ‘geopolitics of multiple identities’
• However the use of image is simply the most tangible manifestation of intangible qualities of the city, that is its collective : memory, identity and values
• The analysis of the city requires a semiological understanding of the city. As Lefebvre has written, one consumes signs as well as objects, and the city receives and emits messages, in multiple dimensions (115, Lefebvre). Typology, form and ornament constrain and define the social processes that occur within it, but beyond this they define the collective image and memory of the city and thus engage beyond physical space to the space of imagination
• The image is the sign, and thus belies more than the built environment expressed as spatial permanences, it is indicative of also the temporal processes of the city
• The rhythms of everyday life within the city is circumscribed within broader flows of economy, social relations mediated by built structures and institutions but transcend the scale of the city to regional, national and global scales and inter-urban connections.
• The city is in fact circumscribed within a broader ecologies both natural and artificial of temporal forces and thus exists as a spatio-temporal entity
• Image and reflections of the collective defined by complexity, multiplicity and elusiveness
• The postmodern city is defined in a word by difference, which would seem to inherently reject any notion of a collective identity, memory or value
• Beyond the simplified images crafted by the state, is it possible to create an image that can legitimately reflect and accommodate the global flows for new rhythms of urban life?
• while respecting old identity and fulfilling requirements of the assignments?

Part 4. Subversive Intervention

• This problem at the crossroads of culture and space can benefit from architectural thinking
• looking for ways in order to diffuse difference within patriarchal networks that intend to preserve the status quo
• Examples: Boeri’s Multiplicity, Markus Miessen’s safe injection sites at King’s Cross Station, and Koolhaas’s attempts to place homeless shelters in the Seattle Public Library
• This projects uses the redevelopment of Termini Train station to construct additional infrastructure that accommodates subversive global flows
• subverts state engineered idea of identity within neoliberal logic of marketizing public space