URBAN TECHNIQUE III / Networks 2007-2009
There is a theory that everybody in the world is connected to each other by at the most 6 intermediary persons. The frequent experience of surprise at how small the world truly is becomes the basis for a theory which not only describes how social groups are interconnected, but also shows how efficient patterns of relationships are structured.
The question “Who am I speaking with?” has been replaced by “Where are you?”
Wolf D. Prix / Jeffrey Kipnis / Patrik Schumacher / Reiner Zettl
Guests: John McMorrough, Rainer Pirker, Max Rieder, Sanford Kwinter Teaching: Andrea Börner, Brennan Buck, Matias DelCampo, Robert Neumayr
Networks
There is a theory that everybody in the world is connected to each other by at the most 6 intermediary persons. The frequent experience of surprise at how small the world truly is, becomes the basis for a theory which not only describes how social groups are interconnected, but also shows how efficient patterns of relationships are structured.
At least since the formulation of the theory of the so-called “Small World Phenomenon” and its remarkable resonance, it has become clear that the idea of the network also belongs to the set of concepts, like for example entropy, non-linearity, complexity or self-organization, which have had a broad influence beyond the specific area in which they were originally developed.
These central concepts represent scientific theories or hypotheses which offer orientation for science in much the same way as they do for everyday experience and with this both represent specific research and also a source of inspiration for many other areas of science and practice. Beyond the grid, networks stimulate the production of new concepts and parameters, and herein lies an area of research for the logic of organization for both the scale of architecture and city planning.
Networks are based on the different media of communication. In Los Angeles, for example, one only takes part in the city with all of the breadth of its possibilities if one has a car. In much the same way, whoever doesn’t have a mobile phone or access to an internet connection is not present in large portions of social life in developed post-industrial societies.
The classical network was trade with material goods which was formatively influenced by the technologies of transportation. New nets destroy older discrete elements as long as they function on the same physical level. The railroad tore apart the physical body of the city and the automobile made its edges indistinct. The railroad took away each city’s individual temporality and organized a new network by means of a standard time. This simultaneousness becomes further sped up through the development of the mobile telephone in connection with GPS and “on demand” services, and one of the questions which the program poses, deals with the effects of new networks on the city, understood as infrastructure, as material body, as social space, as atmosphere. Following their own trajectory, virtual networks optimize the length of their duration and should for this reason be understood beyond this program as the coming into being of new urban spaces.
We are inhabitants of a mixed reality. Up until now we have had addresses with street and house numbers. This is where all of the material things with which the urban structure supports us are delivered. Now, apparatuses expand our bodies and we ourselves are our own IP address and our own telephone number.
The question “Who am I speaking with?” has been replaced by “Where are you?”