---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Franz Nahrada <[email protected]> Date: Fri, Apr 22, 2011 at 2:10 AM Subject: Fwd: Re(2): [P2P-URBANISM WA] a debate on country-city (dis)urbanism, moscow 1930 To: [email protected], [email protected] tried to post this today seems it never reached the list Nikos, I will try to reach you by Skype! *----- Original Message -----* Dear Nikos and all, I can rarely intervene here due to my current professional and health situation, but I followed the latest posts and also Nikos warning concerning the images of green high tech buildings. Maybe he also refers to projects like Entangled Bank in Dallas, Maybe also the futuristic Visions of Vincent Callebaut etc. I like these visions of floating habitat, but currently they are only thinkeable for a few people. But there must be a solution for the vast majority. When I did the Global Villages Conference in 1995, I had three special people with me for a retreat to the countryside: it was Richard Register, Tony Gwilliam and Joseph Smyth, I do not have to introduce the first. Tony Gwilliam is a former member of Archigram and had layd out the first "Global Village" Design (you can find his unpublished book at www.tonygwilliam.com under Highlights 1995 "Bring your Mind Home"). It was a huge organic Structure that he named "Synchroni-City" - That could really expand widely but yet was fractal, complex, when you looked deep into the neighborhood level. The Book is downloadable as pdf. Joseph Smyth is a masterplan-directed type of architect who seeks to combine beauty with sustainable patterns. He currently works in central Arizona, where after his retirement he continues his work in planning, designing and developing ecologically sustainable communities. There was a very interesting controversy going on between the latter two, which could not productively be dissolved and ruined much of our reunion, but which I think has very much to do with the controversy discussed in this list right now. Joseph blamed Tony of simply justifying suburbia by creating the outline of a green city as a meshwork of pedestrian greenways and miniaturised service ways as you can see in parts of his book "Bring your Mind home" To cut the story short, I think there are entirely diffenent languages spoken. Tony tried to create a pedestrian oriented circumstance even within the framework of existing larger urban areas that really work as human habitat. The point is that even within the so-called suburban structures circumstances of wholeness and completeness can emerge, and it is this microcellular model, this microcosm of cells and neighbouring cells that we should study. Thats why I insist on the paradox concept of "Global Village" as architectural pattern, which ultimately also meant for McLuhan that the electronic media have the potential to give the smallest space an incredible wealth of human experience and endavours. Biophilia, the wish not just to be near plants, but also live in an organic structure, protecting, nurturing, exciting, soothing, is indeed an important element of this relation. Technology can mediate autonomy, and the best way to achieve this is to build it on P2P principles. The interplay between life (which is itself the ultimate technology) and the artefacts of human ingenuity should be governed by the common interest of thriving in any corner of this planet, not by economical competition. The fractal microurban neighborhood is the best biotope for global networks of problem - solution. Its an incredibly intelligent cell that we have to imagine, augmenting its capabilities by the very process of knowledge exchange, shared experimentation and local application that the P2P Paradigm proposes. Imagine communities, but not only single persons as the peers. Our friend Gleb Tyurin is just starting up the first practical projects of this micro-urbanism in Russia. I hope he can report more on that, I urged him to use the opportunity to show that there is historic ground to all this - thank you all for diiging into this matter. Franz -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens