This Volume is realized as a condensation of the findings of the
Connected project
Volume #43, Self-building City
There is a theory that the more organized (read: developed) a society is, the less self-sufficient it becomes. All sorts of services and amenities, from housing to energy, from culture to justice, are centrally organized and distributed. But is that necessarily so? Or are we heading for a new order in which decentralized and self-reliant become the norm? The credit crisis made us more aware that we, as individuals, but also as global community, have new options to work with. There are new production technologies available, there are new ways for social interaction and collaboration, there are new ways to finance. The challenge now is how to connect these dots.
This Volume issue zooms in on housing and self-building as field of (inter)action.
With contributions from: Barnaby Bennett, René Boer, Eric van der Burg, Adri Duivesteijn, Stefan Ghenciulescu, Constantin Goagea, Cosmina Goagea, Maarten Hajer, Léon Heddes, Javeria Masood, Timothy Moore, Nelson Mota, Alex Retegan, Jan Rydén, Matthew Stadler, Jacqueline Tellinga, Friso de Zeeuw
CONNECTED. Things about future, cities and people
The project investigates the future impact of the new technologies upon the European urbanities. Developing concepts like smart city or smart community, the research seeks to reveal the future social and cultural mutations that tend to better valorize individuals and communities together with their human, creative and entrepreneurial potential. As proposed through narrative and dramatized visions, the European space appears like a dense interconnected territory defined by complex rules and sophisticated standards of human interaction. While the linguistic barriers are probable to be spectacularly overcome through technology and the spaciousness
to be diversely perceived due to highly increased future mobility, how this immense space is going to look like and how could Europe be redefined from the cultural and urban points of view? Given this framework, how are we going to use the cultural richness and diversity of Europe, when the globalizing technologies bring progressively more alienations as well as comportments’ and practices’ levelling? The project includes an exhibition opened simultaneously in Bergen, Amsterdam, Bucharest and Stockholm in the autumn of 2014. The 4 parallel events will be interconnected through video transmissions. The members of the trans-disciplinary groups
involved in the project will keep lectures and debates (on City Thinking, Futurology, Art, Architecture, Technology) in those places as well as in other cities relevant for the NS axis of the project. A trans-disciplinary documentation on this subject will be produced and disseminated through a collection of articles published in magazines and on web platforms. A booklet distributed in partnerships with international transport lines will help collect additional ideas and opinions from the general public, which will be presented in the exhibition. A mobile app will stand for the exhibition guideline.
