[P2P-F] Fwd: Re(2): [P2P-URBANISM WA] a debate on country-city (dis)urbanism, moscow 1930

Fri Apr 22 07:28:40 CEST 2011

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at>
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: michelsub2004 at gmail.com, salingar at gmail.com

 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"Global Village" Design (you can find his unpublished book at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

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