the Use of Space in the Information/Communication Age @ Infodrome

This paper presents an introduction to the questions raised by the developments in information/communication technology (ICT) and their interaction with the urban.

It also addresses the challenges of urban/regional planning in the early stages of the information/communication age.

This “issue paper” is intended to be a basis for a workshop within the framework presented by Infodrome, dealing with the theme of the “use of space in the information/communication age”.

The paper is based on our long-term research and work in the development of a new field of planning and design that combines urbanism and architecture with information/communication networks and media spaces (“Soft Urbanism”, “Networked Architecture”).

Publication the Use of Space in the Information/Communication Age @ Infodrome, Amsterdam, 1 May 2000

Infodrome is a think tank for the Dutch government on the information society.

The objectives of Infodrome are gaining insight into the social consequences of the information revolution, organizing and feeding the public debate about the role of government in this, and advising the government on relevant strategic choices.

the Use of Space in the Information/Communication Age

 

Processing the Unplannable

Information/communication networks and media spaces do influence “real” place. ICT contributes to the transformation of the urban into a more heterarchical network structure (“network city”) and supports the specialisation of “real” space as a space for physical encounter and experience.

Information/communication networks and media spaces also interact and fuse with “real” space, generating series of new “hybrid” (media and “real”) networked environments, ranging, for example, from the networked home to the stock exchange, etc..

In this “dark age” of the information/communication era, we have limited experience and understanding of (the far-reaching consequences of) these phenomena. However, at this early stage, the situation is open for a “social shaping of the telematics”, for the strengthening of the public dimension of these media communication spaces.

Public actors (including the state planning institutions) should therefore influence these developments. They should support research within this new field dealing with the interaction between urban/regional planning and architecture, not only with information/communication networks (a technology-based approach) but also with the media (a content-based approach, also considering spatial, communicational aspects). Experimental virtual planning zones should be investigated. “Hybrid” (urban and media) networks and “hybrid” spaces (architectural and media) spaces should be designed.

In addition to scientific research and higher education (combining scientific with artistic fields), ideas and proposals should be tested in project-based experiments. As for the development of such a new, dynamic field, the methods of scientific research and experimental testing do present limitations (of following on developments); these should be supported and complemented by speculative, artistic research, being an innovative, creative method to process and generate the ‘new’.

Holland could be an excellent experimental environment. It combines a tradition of social tolerance, a high level of education, a cultural atmosphere that has a positive attitude towards modernisation, a (European) creative approach with experimental architectural/urbanistic practice. Holland has the potential to develop into such a laboratory “for the unplannable” (for the generating of the ‘new’).

Within the context of the “network”-paradigm, the potential of information/communication networks as tools for urban/regional planning should be considered. By facilitating public involvement, ICT is supporting transformations in the process of urban/regional planning itself. Thus, with the influence of ICT and media, planning will change and ‘exteriorise’, being transformed into a public debate for obtaining consensus and developing visions on our environment.

Urban/regional ‘un-planning’, transformed into an event-communication (space), could develop into a central element of the increasingly mediatised, regionalised and globalised politics of the future.

Infodrome

related PRESS

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The result was one of the most exciting buildings of the post-war era, the Philips Pavilion, in which the electronic composition and the building form interrelated parts of a total work of art in which the elements of light, colourful images, rhythm and sound combine to form an organic synthesis.

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To reinforce the significance of public space we have to deal with at least two “public”, the global and the local public, by creating spheres where local and global public space can fuse and interchange.
“The new city presupposes that the cables of the interhuman relations are switched reversibly, not in bundles as with television, but in real networks, respons(e)ibly, as in the telephone network. These are technical questions; and they are to be solved by urbanists and architects.“
Vilém Flusser 1990

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Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001), who was originally trained as an engineer and was working as an architect in the office of Le Corbusier and who later was to become an internationally known composer, designs in co-authorship with Le Corbusier the “vessel containing the poem”, the shell structure of the Philips Pavilion.

Publication Iannis Xenakis @ Werk Bauen Wohnen, Germany, November 2001

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