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Interesting observations, and in general I agree. However, I would add that another powerful part of this film is the dystopian idea that in a "dis-aggregated" world of suburban limbo, violent death is inevitable, and often emerges out of sheer boredom.
Hello
Thank you Mathieu.. I find myself lucky to come across your articles recently when i really needed knowledge about theory of emerging cities..
Its my master's project and I was going through few references when I came across this particularly..
Haven't read it, but it's going on my list.
I've been keeping your blog as a personal reference in the last two years and I'd like to congratulate and to thank you. It seems we have close interests... I was wondering if you know "The Self-Organizing Universe" by Eric Jantsch.
I don't see such a need. We need only observe ourselves to arrive at this conclusion. We are not studying animals, but our experience of space.
Citations are not necessary, if in fact we can construct a model that is emergent and reproduces the behavior we observe in history, then it becomes almost inevitable that this will happen somewhere.
Vivid and well written text, Mathieu. I am writing from a city which should be appointed as a "huge non-place treasure", Brasília. But it is not so easy: the city works, in a way.
I appreciate the content on complexity, but I think many of the initial presumptions are unfounded, assumed, or contended. For example, when shall we assume that cities became "a normal, ordinary aspect of civilized living"?
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I recently learned why the vernacular architecture pictured in your post will never be shown in architecture school. The people who built them, did so only for themselves, they have no need for academic support. For this reason alone, academics hate the 'untrained' independent. A classmate of mine recently left school because a side project he was working on went into construction. When he told the teachers he was leaving to build a project, they all became mad. They said he was not able to build yet because he did not have his degree yet. He said 'construction starts next week'
Do you think Louis Kahn would like those works?
This actually draws the line between the mainstream stuff you see coming up everyday.Brilliant collaboration.