Emergent Urbanism

Rediscovering Urban Complexity

complex design

The Meaning of Emergent Urbanism, after A New Kind of Science

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 16:09, last updated Mon, 05/21/2012 - 22:16

Stephen Wolfram is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the publication of A New Kind of Science, a milestone in the development of complexity science that is more significant than any other for me, as it was reading through that book in 2007 that gave me the motivation and the sense of purpose to begin writing about urbanism and complexity science.

The genesis of complex geometry

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Sun, 06/21/2009 - 23:54, last updated Sat, 02/18/2012 - 12:21

I don't believe that there is a dichotomy between a supposedly modern and traditional architecture. Instead there exist different geometric processes, and while traditionally builders have employed nesting processes in their work, for perhaps no other reason than it came naturally to them, modern builders have restricted themselves to linear geometric processes due to drawing their inspiration from Cartesian science and engineering.

Design, configuration and natural form

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 20:37, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:05

When did human creations stop being natural? We look at a tower block, a subdivision or a shopping mall parking lot and see the worst of industrial civilization translated into form. We tolerate them as necessary to achieve the material wealth of our civilization. Those human settlements that are still natural we grant special protections through UNESCO and historical preservation laws. We do not have a law that promotes the creation of new historic settlements because we are not quite sure how they are made.

Further comment

Please send your comments by email at mthl@mthl.info, or find me on Twitter @mathieuhelie. The commenting system is closed at the moment as no measures can hold back blog spamming bots.

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