September 2015
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The moving forces of trajectories have followed the winding path of human existence in a variety of ways. The most common form of trajectories, or moving forces, in our past, current, and evolving culture have relied on the moving parts and mechanics of technology.
Technology is now the forefront of every household, and the conversation and discussion by every group of people. It has begun to emerge as a crucial element of design, and the fundamental basis of how to contemporarily understand people. To understand each other, we can see our reliance on the unnatural, and rather synthetic mediums, and to exist, we must conform to an industrialized mold. However, it has held a historical and societal significance since its beginnings in the Industrial Revolution, negotiating the relationship of man and the machine.
The age of the Industrial Revolution regarded machinery in an even more obtuse way, with the commencement of such mechanics that brought humans out of the natural realm, and heavily contrasted to the cultural norms of the time. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Western world still held the ideals of control over nature seen in the sweeping manicured landscaped palaces, with a borrowed classical manifesto brought from the age of antiquity of the Greek and Roman empires. This relationship with nature is what upheld the great significance for design, and inevitably architecture. The landscape became a sort of architecture in itself, being that of a blank canvas for the impression of planned influence over time. Alone, the ancient architecture of symmetry exhibited throughout the ages, in the days of Aristotle, in the days of Palladio, and further into the inspiration of Indigo Jones for example, was the value of the culture, one that constantly desired stability, and therefore chose a representative style.
Without the deep conversation of architectural style, and the subjective approach to aesthetic understanding, machinery was soon rationalized to deliver the more efficient democratized society pre-conceived in the revolutionary periods. Stability, perfection, precision – were the values sought in architecture, nature, and in man, and eventually leading to the natural progression of turning to non-human devices for such production. Moreover, due to the ages of hard working labor, and the rise of scientific study and analysis, natural resources were carved and used for the rise of industrial means and infrastructure, bringing with it a renewed economic outfit, as well as a capitalistic venture.
Although technology brought humanity towards a more stable condition through various conditions, its effects on our role with nature as people is a more separated one. The trajectories and moving parts that brought us all to the modernized world, are the same ones that have distanced our own humanity from its original site.
For decades now, and almost centuries, society has watched the evolution of placing technology as the priority, in comparison to all other aspects of urban design. Streets are constantly widened to allow for additional motorized vehicles, with transportation being one of the leading causes of carbon emissions [i]. The contemporary world has now shifted to understanding the deep meaning of natural existence, landscapes, and green spaces with their impact on cities, people, and most importantly, the people living in those particular cities. This has been noted since the age in which machinery greatly emerged when Fredrich Schiller in 1796 uttered, “However, as nature begins gradually to vanish from human life as a direct experience, so we see it emerge in the world of the poet as an idea.” [ii]
Currently, in the overall scope of design, and primarily within the compass of urban planning and development, landscape is the vanguard. With this heavily defined role of machinery and technology, only much more obvious through the vastness of globalization, the locality and context of nature in the built environment is of great consideration. With the macro scope that mass transport and the evolving methods of production have brought forward, the human reliance on the stability of nature has never changed. This is an appreciated quality now by cities around the globe, which decide to evoke their landscape and use the given geography as a source of experience for its inhabitants. This ravished experience creates towns, cities, villages that manifest their circulation, green spaces, and public spaces in creative ways. This is what makes a variation in design, and creates and engaged “collage city”, as discussed in Rem Koolhaas’s novel S, M, L, XL. [iii]
Whether the city is varied with its natural elements, or it is void of them, landscape remains as the future trajectory of design and human study to understand the still of evolving role of nature. While buildings continue to rise with paralleled infrastructure, greenery and landscape weigh heavier as design initiatives and solutions for the modern person. As Alain de Botton in The Architecture of Happiness writes, “Life in the much developed world has become rule-bound and materially abundant, punctilious and routine, to the extent that longings now run in another direction: towards the natural and unfussy, the rough and authentic…” This is truer than ever before, since every city is planning on condensing its Modernist sprawl of the mid-twentieth century [iv]. The boom of vertical cities and urbanized cores, are currently unparalleled with any other architectural trend or initiative. The movement of people to concentrated areas for facilitated means of transportation, and a variety of enterprises that an urban core is able to offer, is what brings landscape, and overall public spaces to the greatest priority in any scheme or development. Public and green spaces allow us as designs, thinkers, and every city dweller to re-think the essence of the human scale, and how small spaces and specific actions can bring us closer to a thriving metropolitan experience. New York City, an expert of time-changing and evolving sites, such as Central Park, to experimental trajectories, such as the Time Square project, most recently done by Jan Gehl Architects[v], it features an innumerable amount of smaller moves that play with scale, since they draw communal quality, in one of the most indisputably largest metropolises of our time.
E N D N O T E S
[i] The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates in their “Overview of Greenhouse Gases” that carbon CO2 emissions are sourced from transportation at 31%. It is the second largest CO2 emitting utility, and remains the most effective reduction strategy.
[ii] Fredrick Schiller wrote the 1796 essay titled, “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry”, which made observations of the Ancient Greeks that developed the scheme of current modernity, with living in cities, and distanced from the very nature they so clearly respected.
[iii] S, M, L, XL by Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau in “What Ever Happened to Urbanism” in 1994 addresses the “dynamic system” of architecture, infrastructure, and landscape.
[iv] Thinkprogress.org features the article “Even Sprawling Cities Could Soon Become Walkable Regions, Report Finds” by Katie Valentine denotes the investigation of a rise in urban communities from sprawl, due to many car-free households.
[v] Architect Jan Gehl studies and works on the relationship between humanity and the built relationship, being a key proponent and pioneering designer of public spaces.
©AlexiaVirue 2016