Postdisastropias: Earth, Air, Fire,Water, Architecture

Visting Professor: Peter Zuroweste, peterzuroweste@gmail.com

Assistant: Agustin Ros, agustin.ros.arch@gmail.com

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Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

School of Architecture and Urban Studies

Advanced Undergraduate Design Research Studio

Fall 2021

Abstract_Abstract

This course performs a critical analysis of urbanism’s relationship to “natural disaster” as the basis for cultivating novel processes of postcarbon city building. An initial survey of “natural disasters” is conducted from prehistory to present and develops into an atlas of events categorized as geological, meteorological, hydrological, climatological, orbiological phenomena. Events are editorially conditioned through the lens of earth, air, fire, and water as elements which define pre-modern systems of knowledgeand precede the scientific development of thermodynamics. Conduction, convection, and radiation are utilized as universal flows to describe theemergence of cities, the disasters which destroy them, and reconstruction. Notions of utopia are strategically collaged with the postdisaster site to elevate its conventionally conservative status towards more progressivepossibilities of social and environmental justice. Precarbon/postcarbon, lowtech/hightech, and permanent/temporary material system dichotomies are cross-pollinated to form multiscalar genotypical models embedded with potentialities of thermodynamic intelligence. Deployed at the postdisaster site, the models exchange energy, matter, and information with local conditionsto initialize, multiply, diversify, densify, and self-organize. Postdisastrocesters (low-density camps) grow into Postdisastroburghs (medium density small cities) and ultimately into Postdisastropolises (high density vertical cities), establishing patterns of increasingly complex interplay between earth, air, fire, and water. Fluctuations, feedback loops, bifurcationpoints, and dissipative restructurings define Postdisastropias and unfold towards a horizon where architecture and its environment coexist in dynamic equilibrium.

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Objetivos_Objectives

The objectives of this studio are to: perform a philologicalanalysis of natural disaster as a critique of notions of “disaster relief” and“disaster recovery” which abdicate the agency of humans in “natural disaster”and promote retrograde status quo forms of fossil-fuel driven reconstructionwhose processes induce or increase the frequency and severity of disaster;develop an atlas of disaster that comprehensively catalogs a history of eventsand corresponding data points for future disciplinary reference; invent systemsof representations for visualizing natural disasters as thermodynamic phenomenadriven by morphologies of conduction, convection, and radiation; rediscoverexamples of passive design intelligence in indigenous precarbon architecture;articulate methods for deploying emerging postcarbon building strategiesat-scale; exemplify the potential of robotic and/or CNC fabricationtechnologies at postdisaster sites (particularly in developing regions);display possibilities for material systems which are capable of evolving fromlow to medium to high density building typologies; generate prototypes ofpassive-design provisional shelter with the capacity to be rapidly deployedacross a variety of climate types; achieve an assemblage of postdisaster designprocesses which leverage thermodynamic principles to create complex internalsystem behaviors that transform energy from the environment into flows of workcapable of replacing fossil-fuel driven building systems.

Fundamentación teórica_Theoretical Foundations

The course embraces the concept of amor fati, or a fallingin love with one’s fate, as the origin for developing an intimate language withdisaster. Disaster is conceived as an affliction which interrupts our otherwisecontinuous daily lives, causing sensations of suffering and loss whichstimulate new modes of thinking. Disaster is the genesis for new lines offlight along which a productive multiplicity of transformations occur. Thetheoretical foundations of the course embraces notions of nomadism to constructan intellectual framework for postdisaster design which is an assemblage ofpost-structuralist critical theory, a historiography of crisis, elementalphilosophy, concepts of utopia, and various subsets of systems theoryincluding: thermodynamics of nonequilibirum systems (with an emphasis ondissipative structures, feedback loops, and bifurcation); systems ecology, andevolutionary algorithms. An initial reading of Reinhart Kosseleck’s “Crisis”provides a primer on the coevolution of Modernity and crisis and theepistemological origins of their codependency. Within this context, the courseposits that there is no such thing as “natural disaster,” only planning andpolicy disasters which disproportionately impact low income communities anddisregard the ability of future generations to meet their needs in favor ofshort term capital interests. The history of earth, air, water, and fire areengaged as elements which ubiquitously figure into the ontological frameworksof the ancient world (including India, China, Japan, Rome, and Greece) anddefine their corresponding attitudes towards “natural disaster.” As the coursemoves from theoretical and spatial analyses of disaster through the lens ofelemental philosophy towards the construction of thermodynamically drivenPostdisastropias, Deleuze and Guatarri’s A Thousand Plateaus (ATP) will beinstrumentalized to support the hinge from analysis to design. Themultiplicities of thought contained in ATP will be distributed amongst thestudio as operative intellectual modes: Rhizomes, Bodies without Organs,Nomadology, Assemblages, and the Smooth and the Striated will be among theconceptual lens through which concepts of far-from-equilibrium thermodynamicsare engaged. Ilya Prigogine’s and Isabelle Stengers Order out of Chaos willassist in translating ATP’s philosophical discourses into more graspablethermodynamic concepts which span disasters and architectural design such asentropy, heat engines, evolutionary feedback, bifurcation, and randomness.Canonical utopian imagery and their associated texts will be selected based onemergent properties of project developments and superimposed as a raster layerwhich challenges projects to relativize computational vector logics andthermodynamical protocols against the city as a cultural image. Therelationship between technology and nature is immanent to every stage of thecourse, the work will function as a critique of and alternative to Modernistmodes of production which leverage technology as an instrument for controllingnature’s fluctuations as a means of establishing dominion, comfort, andsecurity. The ongoing development of fossil-fuel extraction, processing, andcombustion technologies are posited as myopic absurdities in the context ofcity building, with peak oil projected to arrive in 20-30 years and globaltemperatures soaring. The course draws upon the intelligence of ancient andindigenous energy paradigms and emerging postcarbon technologies as the basisfor building systems development, while methods of construction and assemblyfeature the conflation of locally abundant raw materials with robots and CNCmachines to promote notions of highly customizable, rapidly deployable shelterunits. The capacity of units’ material systems to multiply and collectivelytransform as required per densification processes will be central, and informedby the scientific concepts of singular moments, bifurcation, and dissipativestructures found in nonequilibirum thermodynamics and corresponding theoreticalconcepts found in Deleuze’s post-structuralist critical theory.

Contents

The contents of the course are subdivided into weekly modules:

01. Disastrophilology: Ill-fated Stars, the Omnipresent LastJudgment.

We will survey the history of disaster to map, chart, index,and organize events by type. This quantitative database will be conditioned bya historical analysis of earth, air, fire and water as elements which definethe cosmological systems  andcorresponding experiences of disaster in the ancient world. Our atlas willtrace the evolution of these elements through medieval, renaissance, and modernperiods and note how the scientific revolution drove a categoricalproliferation of earth, air, fire and water into contemporary understandings ofchemistry (which features our periodic table of 118 elements) thermodynamicalcategories (namely conduction, convection, and radiation), the transformationof energy, the harnessing of combustion, and the development of the steamengine as the basis for an industrial revolution and ultimately Modernity andits corresponding fossil fuel economy.

02. Disastratlas: A History of Earth, Air, Water and Fire.

The creation of an atlas of natural disaster categorized bygeological, meteorological, hydrological, climatological, or biologicalphenomena. The Disastratlas will contain a selection of events ranging fromprehistory to present, with an emphasis on selecting an assemblage of eventswhich equally represents western and eastern cultures across northern andsouthern hemispheres. Events are annotated with quantitative datas (e.g.geographic location, date, number of deaths, costs of damages, etc.) andqualified by the provisional cultural meanings given to earth, air, fire, andwater (e.g. floods in ancient India being define through the concepts of waterfound in the texts of the Vedas, plagues in medieval Europe being explainedthrough worldviews of alchemy, etc).

03. Thermodisastrodynamics Simulacrum, Part 1: Case StudyConstruction.

Archetypal examples of each disaster type are selected,choices are limited to events which severely impacted urban areas. The affectedcities (or parts of cities) which suffered loss are digitally reconstructed asthey existed before befallen by disaster.

04. Thermodisastrodynamics Simulacrum, Part 2: Conduction,Convection, Radiation, Destruction

Part 2 of the simulacrum will visualize the destruction ofour case study locations through the modeling, drawing and/or animating ofconduction, convection, and radiation (or, more archaically, earth, air, fire,and water) as the constituent elements of natural disaster. We will resist thetemptation to mimic the conventional systems used to represent disasters andrather aim to invent new forms of representation aimed at qualitative ratherthan quantitative accuracy.

05. Thermo-disastro-dynamics Simulacrum, Part 3: Inter- andIntra-territorial Displacement, Migration, Aggregation

The final stage of the simulacrum will map the movement ofpeople and material following the destruction of the case study city: howpeople displaced from their homes move within and across territories (i.e.their paths of travel), the conditions impacting their migration (e.g. speed oftravel, mode of transport), where they settle, their type of provisionalshelter (e.g. trailers vs tents vs gymnasiums), and the organizationalprinciples (or lack thereof) governing their aggregation.

06. Postdisastrutopias: Canonical Projects of Crisis

The concept of utopia will be explored through the lens ofcertain key thinkers, assigned to each group by the instructor for topicalrelevance. Authors may include but are not limited to T. More, Foucault,Jameson, Tafuri, Adorno, and Fuller. We will conceptualize the history ofutopia as projects of crisis which promise salvation from conditions ofsociospatial disaster and offer evocative images for a future – but refrainfrom describing the incremental revisions of ideology required to arrive there.Case studies will be selected for their conceptual potency in the context ofpostdisaster dynamics, and analyzed for their ability to offer speculative,suggestive, and seductive forms of urbanism when overlaid on the postdisastersite.

07. Postdisastrentopias: Collaging for Aura

Shifting from a concept of utopia (meaning “non place”) toDoxiadis’ concept of entopia (meaning “in place”), we will collage imageryextracted from canonical utopian projects with imagery of the post-disastersite developed during the simulacrum stages. We will situate non-place imageryinto the place of our case studies, i.e. we will combine reproductions oficonic utopian images with our simulacrumatic (post)disaster images to arriveat a new originals with distinct auras that oscillate between authenticity andabsurdity.

08. Postdisastrotech, Part 1: Precarbon / Postcarbon,Lowtech / Hightech, and Permanent / Temporary Material Systems

Post-carbon: The studio will not use any structural ormaterial system that cannot currently be realized at-scale without fossil fuels- this includes: concrete, steel, aluminum and glass. Instead, students will beasked to develop post-carbon conglomerations built exclusively oflocally-sourced materials whose processes of extraction, manufacturing,assembly, and installation rely on renewable resources, plausibly localbuilding skills and construction craft capacity in line with the region’s humancapital.

Pre-carbon: The demountable jungle cities of the Tukano inthe Amazon, the radically calibrated densities and porosities of ancient Incansun cities, the concentrically terraced landforms for inducing microclimates atMoray: we’re curious whether systems which predated the fossil fuel economy arealso plausible in the post-carbon context.

Low-tech / High-tech: An emphasis will be placed onassemblies which utilize the advantages of robotic fabrication toinstrumentalize locally available materials into building systems. Rapidlydeployable prefabricated technologies (modular, flat-packed, inflatables,collapseables, jammables) and rapid prototyping machines such as cutters andprinters will process and manipulate regionally-sourced materials to discovernovel tectonic logics capable of serial multiplication and adaptation.

09. Postdisastrotech, Part 2: Genotypical Models ofThermodynamic Constitution

We will build generic models as abstractions of systemsencountered during Postdisastrotech, Part 1. The generic models will bedeveloped and categorized according to scales: s (device, room), m (room, bldg),l (bldg, block), and xl (block, city). The models will be governed byparameters of thermodynamic performance (or, more archaically,earth/air/fire/water) with an aim towards ultimately working together as acatalog of parts capable of self-organizing into totalities which maximizeinternal differentiation and the production of feedback loops.

10. Postdisastrocester: Low-density PhenotypicalProliferations of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water

Utilizing the English place name suffix “-cester,” meaning“camp,” we set out with an intention of creating low-density proliferations.Prior to instantiation of our genotypical models of thermodynamic constitution,however, we must first prepare our site-as-environment. While many elements ofthe site will have been predetermined by the case study (topography, hydrology,solar access/exposure) there are others which must be critically defined.

11. Postdisastroburgh: Medium-density PhenotypicalProliferations of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water

Utilizing the English place name suffix “-burgh,” meaning“city,” we set out with an intention of creating medium-density proliferations.As our systems densify from low to medium density, we will consider themorphologies of thermodynamic disasters for guidance on dividing, multiplying,adding, subtracting, scaling, moving, rotating, and otherwise transforming thephenotypical expressions of our genotypical models.

12. Postdisastropolis: High-density PhenotypicalProliferations of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water

Utilizing the English place name suffix “-polis,” alsomeaning “city” but with suggestions of verticalism, we create high-densityproliferations. It is anticipated that at this stage conditions ofgroundlessness begin to emerge, feedback loops are established as certainthresholds of relationships are exceeded, and new forms of dissipativestructure emerge to negotiate increasingly intense systemic exchanges.

13. Postdisastrographs: Drawings

Final production of drawings.

14. Postdisastrographs: Large Physical Models

Final production of models.

15. Postdisastrographs: Visualizations

Final production of visualizations

16. Postdisastrographs: Web

Final production of website

17. Final

5x Postdisastropias are presented as Postdisastrocestersbecoming Postdisastroburghs becoming Postdisastropolises. Each group(geological, meteorological, hydrological, climatological, or biological) willpresent large printed drawings, a large model or models, large printedvisualizations, and the digital presentation of the semester’s work by module.

Metodología_Methodology

The studio methodology is Rhizomatic: the above assemblageof modules, while presented here in sequential numerical form, may berearranged sequentially, fragmented into constituent parts, plugged into othermodules, or dissolved entirely and reformulated into emergent multiplicities.Or, each module may be considered a mini machine which performs a role withinthe larger machinery of the overall studio. The machinic modules are qualifiedas processes (verbs) rather than products (nouns) whose components andsubcomponents may be reconfigured by the Professor and/or students towardsalternative outcomes. Like a slinky, each week will hinge into the next,carried by the impetus of its previous steps along steady gradated rhythms ofmovement and rest. In this way, the studio will be in a constant state ofbecoming which integrates moments of discrete singularity with a continuousflow.

Operatividad _Operativity

The studio will meet Mondays and Thursdays 2:30pm – 7:00pmand will operate on a weekly rhythm of modules. Every Monday, the students willpresent the outcomes of the previous week’s module, and the Professor will inturn share the roadmap for the next week’s module. In this sense (and with someexceptions), Mondays will be days of exchange characterized by studio-widepresentations, and Thursdays will be days of process development characterizedby desk crits. Each module is conceived as a prompt which informs and enrichesthe flow of projects and contains a collection of images, a synopsis,guidelines for developing the work, and resources (books, book chapters, weblinks, other). The studio will be supported by periodic technical workshopshosted by the studio Professor and/or Assistant, including tutorials on how touse GIS, Grasshopper, and Webflow.

Formas de evaluación y régimen de asistencia_Forms ofevaluation and attendance requirements

80% attendance is the minimum class requirement, attendanceof the mid-term and final review are mandatory. Students will be evaluated forthe richness of their engagement and corresponding productive processes.Students will not be judged by a final product, but rather on the level ofinvestment made into their personal progress. Evaluations will be givenindividually based on each students degree of inner growth, as opposed to theircapacity to take on acquired manners. Participation in group discussion iscritical; students that remain quiet will be invited for a personalconsultation with the Professor to discuss ways in which participation can besupported. It is understood that English is a second language for all students,and low levels of proficiency may results in low levels of confidence whilespeaking in a social group context. In this case, students are encouraged tocontact the Professor to potentially arrange alternative modes of studentexpressions. The final grade will be based on an aggregation of weeklyperformances which gauge students’ levels of overall participation andcontribution to module completeness.

Día y horario de cursada_Course days and hours

Mondays and Thursdays 2:30pm – 7:00pm.

Horario de consulta_Consultation hours

Thursdays 7:00pm – 8:00pm.

Bibliografíaobligatoria_Required bibliography

Deleuze, Gilles, and Guattari, Felix. A Thousand Plateaus:Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 2nd ed. Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press, 1987.

Koselleck, Reinhart, and Richter, Michaela. "Crisis." Journalof the History of Ideas 67, no. 2 (2006): 357-400.

Macauley, David. Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, andWater as Environmental Ideas. Albany, NY: State University of New YorkPress, 2011.

Prigogine, Ilya and Stengers, Isabelle. Order out of Chaos.New York, NY: Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, 1984.

Bibliografía opcional_Optionalbibliography

Baudrillard, Jean. Utopia Deferred: Writings from Utopie,(1967-1978). New York: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Benjamin, Walter. On the Concept of History. CreatespaceIndependent Publishing Platform, 2016.

Bloch, Ernst, and Anthony A. Nassar. The Spirit of Utopia.Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2009.

Borradori, Giovanna, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas. Philosophyin a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida.Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, and Brian Massumi. A ThousandPlateaus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, Hugh Tomlinson, and GrahamBurchell. What Is Philosophy? London: Verso, 2015.

Harvey, David A. Spaces of Hope. Edinburgh: EdinburghUniversity Press, 2000.

Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of LateCapitalism. London: Verso Books, 2019.

Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form. Princeton, N.J: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1980.

Jameson, Fredric. "The Dialectics of Disaster." Dissentfrom the Homeland, 2003, 55-62.

Koselleck, Reinhart. Critique and Crisis Enlightenment and thePathogenesis of Modern Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015.

Leach, Neil. Rethinking Architecture A Reader in Cultural Theory.New York, NY: Routledge, 1997.

Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Malden, MA:Blackwell, 2016.

Martin, Reinhold. Utopias Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism,Again. Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010.

Odum, Howard T. "Trophic Structure and Productivity of SilverSprings, Florida." Ecological Monographs 27, no. 1(1957): 55-112.

Oudenampsen, Merijn and Miguel Robles-Durán. “Mobility, Crisis, Utopia:An Interview with David Harvey.” Open, no.11 (Im)mobility (2011): 92-105.

Ricoeur, Paul, and George Taylor. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia.New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1986.

Rudofsky, Bernard. Architecture without Architects: A Short Introductionto Non-Pedigreed Architecture. Albuquerque, NM: Univ. of New Mexico Press,1964.

Simmel, Georg. Soziologie. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,1958.

Tafuri, Manfredo. Architecture and Utopia Design and CapitalistDevelopment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.

Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology.South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2006.

Worster, Donald. "Hydraulic society in California: An ecologicalinterpretation." Agricultural History 56, no. 3 (1982): 503-515

Nota sobre plagio, copiay otras faltas académicas_Note on plagiarism, copying, and other academicmisconduct

El plagio es cualquier forma de reproducciónde textos ajenos, en el idioma original o traducidos, sin cumplir con lasreglas citatorias, sea que tales textos figuren en soporte papel (libros,revistas, escritos inéditos, documentos privados, etc.) o en soporteelectrónico (publicaciones en Internet, CDs, etc.), y sin importar la extensióno la cantidad de palabras del texto reproducido. Se presume, sin admitir pruebaen contrario, que los estudiantes conocen las reglas citatorias aplicables. Encaso de duda sobre las reglas citatorias aplicables, el estudiante deberáutilizar cualquier sistema de citación que no deje dudas sobre la autoría delos textos o pasajes escritos en el trabajo (comillas, formato de cita, etc).

También es una forma de plagio tomar ideas oproposiciones ajenas sin citar a los autores o trabajos pertinentes outilizando formas de citación capaces de confundir al profesor o al lectorsobre la real contribución intelectual realizada.

La copia es la reproducción o uso noautorizado de textos ajenos o propios en exámenes escritos (parciales ofinales), trabajos prácticos, monografías, tesis y otros trabajos escritossujetos a evaluación.

Constituye asimismo una falta académicacualquier violación a las reglas establecidas por el profesor para larealización de trabajos escritos sujetos a evaluación. El profesor anunciarápor anticipado si existen formas de colaboración permitidas para la realizacióndel trabajo; si no hay un anuncio específico, el estudiante debe presumir queel examen o trabajo es estrictamente individual. También comete cualquiera delas infracciones mencionadas en esta sección el estudiante que intencionalmenteproporciona, en el contexto de un trabajo individual sujeto a evaluación, lostextos o elementos utilizados para la infracción, o que facilita la infracciónen cualquier otra forma.

Si algún estudiante incurriera en cualquierade estas faltas, el profesor podrá reprobarlo en toda la materia o en una partede ella; en cualquier caso, el profesor conservará la prueba disponible delhecho y lo comunicará al Director de la unidad académica correspondiente, quienevaluará la gravedad de la conducta y remitirá los antecedentes a la SecretaríaAcadémica.

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