[P2P-F] Paracity Article

[Eric Hunting]

Some details are still left to work out here with infrastructure and such but one can imagine a variety of ways things like water and sewerage can be handled. Some frame systems of this sort can be made with a hollow core allowing for utilities to be run through them. ( http://www.quadranthouse.com/#/the-system/4533281076 ) Use of on-demand water heating eliminates the need for second hot water supply from a central source. Alternatives like marine incinerating toilets can eliminate the need for blackwater sewerage lines. Inner dark areas that can't be precluded in space use management can be alleviated with heliostats and fiber optic lighting. 

But the big question is, most certainly, how can such evolvable habitats be created bottom-up without star architects? I think the answer to that question can be suggested by changing its context. For instance, how can a custom personal computer be built without the benefit of a bunch of computer engineers? Well, we know the answer to that because people commonly build custom PCs ever day; PC components are designed to a set of common interface standards such that, no matter who manufactures them or where, affords them interoperability and skill-less assembly. You don't need to be an engineer to build a PC. A child can be taught to do it in an hour or so. The engineering has been compartmentalized and encoded in the topology of the components. They can go together in a great many ways offering an endless variety of options, combinations, and physical configurations, but are more-or-less precluded by their discrete design from going together in functionally 'wrong' ways. We see this works every day. The most amazing thing about the contemporary personal computer is not that we now have so much computing power so cheap in such small packages. It's that a child can take a bunch of parts, each made by a completely different company in a completely different place in the world, put them together in minutes into what is arguably the most complex and sophisticated machine humans have ever devised, and 9 times out of 10 this thing will boot up and run the first time you turn it on. That is the single-most amazing feat in the entire history of human industry, the hallmark of a second industrial revolution, and we completely take it for granted. 

The architectural equivalent of this is called a 'vernacular building method', which is a term usually applied to old technology that we associate with a particular regional culture and often disregard as anachronistic. But vernacular building methods are, in fact, extremely sophisticated in the same way the design of PC components is. They encode a great deal of 'experiential engineering' in their methods and conventions. The difference is that their knowledge evolved bottom-up through trial and error over very long periods of time, not top-down through a lot of mathematics, simulation, and staged experiment. But the end result is a similar encoded physical knowledge with a big benefit; follow these simple rules and techniques dictated by tradition and you can design and build functional and attractive buildings without any special talent or difficult skills. With the establishment of the 'ken' measurement system and standardization of building elements in old Japan (specifically for the purpose of easing the rebuilding of communities after war and natural disaster), the construction of entirely custom houses was done in a direct conversation between homeowner and carpenter with little difficulty in predetermining time, materials, and costs. The homeowner might not have the same woodworking skills as the carpenter, and the carpenter might not have a complete understanding of the homeowner's needs, but they were on equal terms in a basic knowledge of how things were built and so could collaborate as peers on design. Sadly, the Industrial Age systematically destroyed much vernacular building knowledge on the presumption of anachronism before the new formally educated professional class really understood it. 

The fact of the matter is that there were no architects or engineers for most of human history and, somehow, we managed to stay alive and, to the present day, most of the world's built habitat is not built with the aid of these people. Sure, there may be problems where tradition lags behind in contemporary standards and in exploiting the benefits of new technology, but for the most part, at modest scales, vernaculars work. It's only when we develop this compulsion toward extreme scales of construction, extreme structural performance, for the 'processing' of people in masses, or communicating state/class power and mythos through the psychological impression of design that we start needing ad-hoc design, engineering, and building method performed by a professional class. And now that we've systematically destroyed so much vernacular knowledge, we're increasingly stuck with this way of doing things and a trend of disempowering and disenfranchising the inhabitants of an increasingly alien built habitat. It used to be every human being had a basic knowledge of how to shelter himself and to cooperate in a group on this. We all had some degree of vernacular knowledge, a basic understanding of the composition and creation of our habitat passed down through culture. We're nesting animals. Building things, creating villages and cities, is a fundamentally human schtick. Now, who knows what the hell is behind the plasterboard! 

I think the role of 21st century architect is not so much in the design of specific structures with an anachronistic idealized function, perfection, and permanence. Rather, it is like the role of the genetic engineer seeking to realize emergent forms through the development of systems/platforms/vernaculars conveying a particular aesthetic genome. It's OK to produce objet d'art, but the ultimate objective should not be to produce pretty perfect buildings but to empower inhabitants and communities--to enable habitation--in the same way a computer empowers a user. I often say 'city' is a verb. 'Housing' is a verb. They're not things/products, they're applications of systems. They are the desktop on a computer screen that, like human consciousness, only exists insofar as the system is on-line and running. This is why the past attempts at the industrialization of housing were such a failure. They treated it as a product--an appliance--shoe-horned into a production paradigm that, in practice, has never sustainably manufactured anything bigger or more diverse than the automobile. That missed the point, the same way the dedicated word processors that once, very briefly, competed with personal computers missed the point. 

Eric Hunting
erichunting at gmail.com



On Mar 17, 2014, at 8:54 AM, Fabio Barone wrote:

> While I see the idea of paracity very interesting, 
> a few questions arise:
> 
> - How will water and sewage be organized? It seems it's up to the "occupants" to deal with
> - It will result in a maze of stairs and access ways. Could be fun/beautiful, but maybe difficult?
> - Would it not result in a lot of dark spaces inside the cube?
> 
> But most importantly, I am interested in shedding light on this question:
> - How can "organic" "p2p" "evolvable" "adaptable" city spaces be created where there are no star-architects involved
> or where no favorable city-planners are around?
> 
> I mean sort of a bunch of individuals decide they want to create such a structure (let's for simplicity sake assume they have some basic funds for that...).
> 
> I know that especially in Europe industrial areas in neglect / disuse could serve this perfectly.
> How about cities in Latin America, Asia or Africa, where these spaces are not abundant 
> (that's where production takes place...)
>