[Kaupunkitutkimus] CfP | Architectures, Natures and Data: The Politics of Environments | Tallinn, Estonia | April 20-23, 2017

[Sampo Ruoppila]

---------- Edelleenlähetetty viesti ----------
Lähettäjä: *Maros Krivy* <maros.krivy at artun.ee>

ARCHITECTURES, NATURES AND DATA:
THE POLITICS OF ENVIRONMENTS

Faculty of Architecture, Estonian Academy of Arts
Tallinn, Estonia

April 20-23, 2017


CALL FOR PAPERS

Two themes stand out prominently in discussions, projects and strategies
that are at the forefront of contemporary urbanisation. It is, on the one
hand, the question of ecology, where the city and architecture are
reconceptualised in "green" terms, such as sustainability, resilience,
metabolic optimisation and energy efficiency. On the other hand, there is
the cybernetic question, where the futures of architecture and urbanisation
are staked upon the pervasive use of digital communication, interactive
technologies, ubiquitous computing, and the "big data". Moreover, these two
questions have become increasingly intertwined as two facets of a single
environmental question: while real-time adjustments, behaviour optimisation
and "smart" solutions are central to urban environmental agenda, the
omnipresent network of perpetually interacting digital objects constitutes
itself as a qualitatively new environment within which urban citizens are
enfolded. But, as digital networks become our "second nature," we also hark
back to the models derived from the "first nature."

There is growing pressure on architects, urbanists and planners to deliver
ecological and techno-informational solutions, with (self-)monitoring of
citizens "behaviour", optimisation of the buildings "performance" and
smoothing of urban "flows", along with the respective substitution of
democratic politics by automated governance models. As such, it is ever
more important to interrogate the historical, theoretical, methodological
and epistemological assumptions beneath the above set of processes that can
be described, following Michel Foucault, as environmental governmentality.
These questions will be explored under three thematic tracks.

———Optimised urban ecosystems

While urbanisation had for centuries relied on nature as its constitutive
outside—as a resource and as a fantasy—it is only during the 1970s that the
urban-nature dichotomy was subjected to the paradigm of limits and risks.
Protection, conservation and sustainability had been institutionalised as
regulative planning ideas in the following decades and the city itself was
thereby reconceptualised as an ecosystem. More recently, however, urban
"ecosystems" are being subjected to the criteria of resilience, and the
ideals of harmony and balance replaced with emergence and complexity. Urban
planning and development are transformed into variants of metabolic
governance, the objective of which is to optimise energy flows, smooth
eco-infrastructures, and stimulate ecosystemic self-organisation, even at
the price of insulating the optimised, smooth and self-organised from the
labour on which it essentially rests.

What are the histories and futures of sustainability, resilience and
ecological optimisation and how can they be addressed as epistemic
categories beyond their implied "solutionist" imperative? What roles have
architectures and urbanisms played in these epistemic transformations? What
are the broader political consequences of thinking the city as an ecosystem
and urbanisation as a metabolic flow? To what extent is the widely analysed
shift from planning and government to management and governance (or from
Fordism to post-Fordism more generally) itself rooted in the urban
ecological imperative of the last 40 years?

———Architectural turn to nature?

In terms of their relationship with nature, urbanisms and architectures
today are caught in a peculiar paradox. On one side these disciplines
recognise that there is no pure nature, that nature has been "planetary
urbanised". On the other hand, they are drawn to the idea of pure nature as
a blueprint for spatial action. The morphology and morphogenesis of
biological organisms inspire ostensibly resourceful tectonic solutions and
efficient material performance. The evolutionary model and the ecological
cycling of nutrients inspire ostensibly non-deterministic, open-ended
models of urbanisation.

But why and how have biomimesis and ecomimesis come to constitute an
unquestioned ideal for architecture and urbanism in the first place? What
is a more fundamental historical and epistemological stake underneath their
biomimetic and ecomimetic impulses? Why has nature, as described by natural
sciences, been appropriated as a model and a teacher? Why is nature viewed
as inherently efficient and intelligent and how does current architectures'
"turn to nature" differ from earlier such turns? What are the social costs
of urbanisms' green, "clean-tech" imaginations?

———"Big data" and urban subjectification

Similar questions can be directed at the notions of human nature and
subjectivity. As the proliferation of data de-stabilises human
subjectivity, rendering individuals into profiles and substituting
individuation with algorithmic personalisation, the idea of a
human-friendly city continues to inform urban design. While we expect that
"big data" will help us to better design "for people" and make cities more
"liveable", we tend to ignore how these data simultaneously undo the very
meaning of people and life. The ultimate embodiment of this paradox is the
"smart city," wherein puerile idea of a desirable urbanity correlates with
the transformation of life into a data stream.

How have the environmental powers of architectures and urbanisms mutated
since these disciplines started to unfold subjects in cybernetic
environments? Who are the past, present and future subjects of digital
governmentality-through-environments? Who is the "smart", optimised,
efficiently behaving and algorithmically desiring citizen? And, in what
sense, if any, can they be called a democratic citizen? Have social classes
and political parties been replaced by de-territorialised swarms? Has
government been replaced by environmental modulation?

——————————————

Authors are welcome to submit analytical papers, theoretically
well-grounded case studies, or architectural counter-projects for
presentations while indicating their preference for one of the above
tracks. At the same time, we ask that their contributions consider
specifically how natures and data are intertwined in architectural and
urban politics today, how the politics of environments is simultaneously
ecological and cybernetic.

Please submit your proposal (max 400 words) and a short bio (max 50 words)
to architecturesnaturesdata at gmail.com
<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','architecturesnaturesdata at gmail.com');> by
November 1, 2016.

Conference keynotes will be given by Matthew Gandy, Antoinette Rouvroy and
Douglas Spencer.

For further information, please visit www.architecturesnaturesdata.com.