AGENDA>>> The fluidity, mobility and dynamism of 21st century network society is transforming the way we design cities. The paradigm shift in architecture and urban design is marked by an intense focus on systems of communication, complexity, adaptation, correlation, intensification, co-evolution, legibility, responsiveness, order, and freedom. This shift towards evolutionary systems thinking takes into account the role of agents in social change, insofar as innovation is driven by individual choices.
Urban design innovation is accelerated by the convergence of natural and artificial life and intelligence (Ai, AR, VR, IoT, robotics), the advancements in telecommunications and mass media, the explosion of real-time decision systems via big data and artificial intelligence, the emergence of distributed peer-to-peer computational networks such as blockchain, and the movement towards knowledge economies anchored in research and development. In this context, the world is a laboratory, and entrepreneurship in an open market is the best avenue for creating wealth and improving quality of life for the greatest number of people.
The topics of Free Private Cities Architecture Symposium emerged from the agenda of Liberland Design Competition 2020, which is now open for registration through August 16. The design competition stems from the conviction that times of crisis accelerate the emergence of disruptive innovations and novel architectural agendas. Titus Gebel’s theory of Free Private Cities is a radical disruptive innovation in cosmopolitan sociality, and Liberland is the first fully autonomous jurisdiction in the world poised to bring it to its full fruition. Free market urban order, which is fluid, distributed, emergent, and ever evolving, is at the core of the architectural and urban design ambitions of Liberland.
Liberland is an incubator and role-model for a society based on the principles of liberty and anarcho-capitalism, powered by blockchain. It is founded on the idea that the societal movement towards individual and collective freedom, prosperity and peace will emerge through the distributed intelligence of autonomous innovators and agents of change through “the politics of discourses” [Patrik Schumacher’s phrase]. Liberland’s ambition to build the most advanced and sustainable 21st century cosmopolitan micronation offers an ideal testing ground for innovative urban design strategies. Its new possibilities for liberty and unleashed free market entrepreneurship powered by blockchain can stimulate a radical transformation of the built environment.
While the vision for Liberland and Free Private Cities offer unprecedented opportunities for radical design innovation, most western urban developments remain mired in a stranglehold of bureaucratic over-regulation via stringent planning guidelines, futile zoning restrictions, and outdated building codes. Combined with economic stagnation resulting from manipulated markets, innovation in the built environment is evolving at snail’s pace. An overhaul of planning and zoning restrictions, coupled with an unencumbered free market, would accelerate innovation exponentially through the process of entrepreneurial market-driven discovery and testing of novel design and development strategies.
From these initial premises sprung the broader scope of the Symposium, which aims to kickstart discursive debate on the transformation of architectural and urban design relative to society’s progression towards civil and entrepreneurial freedom. The symposium will explore a wide gamut of theoretical and speculative trajectories about the design of future cities for a highly agile and technologically networked society of the 21st century.
We will open with keynote speeches by Patrik Schumacher, Titus Gebel and Shajay Bhooshan, followed by two sessions. Each session will begin with position presentations, followed by group debate. The symposium will end with a round-table debate that includes all speakers, followed by Q&A. During intermission there will be a brief presentation launching the digital platform Parametricism.com (curated by Patrik Schumacher, Daniela Ghertovici, and Lars van Vianen), and brief presentations on private cities around the world. The session participants and specific topics are a follows:
SESSION 1: FREEDOM AND URBAN DESIGN
Participants: Patrik Schumacher, Titus Gebel, Shajay Bhooshan, Scott Beyer, Vera Kichanova.
Discussion will focus on freedom, private cities, charter cities, market urbanism, liquid democracy, economics, markets, distributed intelligence, blockchain powered governance and services, urban and architectural design for free private cities, the migration of architecture to cyberspace, and more.
SESSION 2: CITIES AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
Participants: Lev Manovich, Philippe Morel, Neil Leach, Sanford Kwinter.
Discussion will focus on big data, cultural analytics, planetary scale computation, terraforming, complex epigenetic systems, soft systems, artificial life and intelligence, biology as information theory, virtual reality, augmented reality, internet of things, blockchain, robotics, and more.
This symposium is Co-Curated by Daniela Ghertovici (Founder of ArchAgenda LLC and Curator of Liberland Design Competitions) and Bruno Juricic (Founder of Atelier Bruno Juricic, and a Juror of Liberland Design Competitions).
Patrik Schumacher is an architect and architectural theorist. He is the principal of Zaha Hadid Architects, one of the most innovative architecture practices in the world. He joined Zaha Hadid in 1988. He co-founded the London-based Architectural Association’s Design Research Lab (AA DRL), and continues to serve as one of its co-directors. Patrik studied philosophy and architecture, and completed his PhD at the Institute for Cultural Science, Klagenfurt University. He has been teaching at various architectural schools in Britain, Continental Europe and the USA since 1992. In 2011–2012, Patrik published his two-volume magnum opus, The Autopoiesis of Architecture. He has been a Lead Strategist of Liberland’s architectural efforts since its establishment in 2015.
“One way to think about societal progress [is] becoming more free and empowered in the world...We are in this period where I believe that a massive expansion of individual liberties could actually deliver an enormous expansion of material freedoms. But this depends on new technological conditions which make possible the shift from Fordism to Post-Fordism, which is the microelectronic revolution: the computational empowerment and telecommunication empowerment that allow for totally new degrees of creativity...and an enormous capacity for absorbing innovation.”
- Patrik Schumacher
Titus Gebel is the inventor of the Free Private Cities concept, President of the society of the same name and CEO of TIPOLIS. He is a German entrepreneur with a PhD in international law and an extensive worldwide network. Among others, he founded Frankfurt-listed mining company Deutsche Rohstoff AG, retired as their CEO in 2015 and emigrated with his family to Monaco. With Free Private Cities, he wants to create an entirely new product in the “market of living together”. If successful, it will fast-track knowledge and progress for humanity. Titus has written the book “Free Private Cities – Making Governments Compete For You“, where he is stating the theoretical and practical groundwork. At the same time he is working with his partners to make the worldwide first Free Private City a reality.
“I will explain why governance is a market, why a real social contract is better than a constitution and why self-determination is more important than co-determination (aka political participation). I will elaborate why private, not public governance, will be the choice of the future for free, creative and entrepreneurial people.”
- Titus Gebel
Shajay Bhooshan is a Senior Associate at Zaha Hadid Architects where he co-founded and heads the Computation and Design research group (ZHCODE). He is an alumnus and a studio-master at the post-graduate course of Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association (AADRL). There he explores participatory systems of development of the built environment as enabled by advances in digital technologies of design and manufacturing. Shajay pursues his interests in manufacturing and structurally informed design technologies as a PhD candidate at the Block Research Group (BRG) at the ETH, Zurich and previously as a M.Phil graduate from University of Bath, UK. Shajay has published in scientific journals and conferences, along with contributions to architectural discourse through Architectural Design and other magazines. He routinely engages in public speaking at various professional and academic conferences, events and institutions across the world.
"Imagine a participatory architecture and urbanism that pairs a virtual, online space of architectural and urban experimentation, transactions and negotiation with a periodically synchronized physical, offline counterpart. The on-demand and periodic physical realization of urban and architectural forms is powered by maturing technologies of digital manufacturing with their material conserving, ecologically and structurally effective credentials. This cyber-physical reality is possible, now! Nestled in that possibility is a ground-up, socially vibrant, physically sustainable future of our homes, buildings and cities.“
- Shajay Bhooshan
Scott Beyer is an urban affairs analyst based in New York City. He is founder and owner of Market Urbanism Report, a media organization that promotes free-market urban policy. MUR publishes a weekly article, a monthly podcast, and has active social media accounts with a combined following of over 50,000. Beyer is also a journalist who recently completed a 3-year, 30-city cross-country tour to study urban American issues. He now writes as a columnist for Governing Magazine, HousingOnline.com, and the Independent Institute. He launched a consultancy called Beyer Policy in 2020, to build political support around his ideas. BP works with public and private institutions to spearhead pro-market, pro-growth policy in cities across America.
“Market urbanism is the cross between free market economics and urban issues. Market urbanism believe that cities function best not when the government controls them, but when they’re able to grow organically. Market urbanism rejects master plans, public service monopolies, and other top-down government policies in favor of bottom-up market based solutions....Market urbanism is a theory that asks how would Cities function under a completely privatized paradigm...[and] a set of more specific, pragmatic policy reforms that [can] be plugged into the modern context in the United States.”
- Scott Beyer
Vera Kichanova is a professional Researcher at Zaha Hadid Architects, and PhD candidate at King’s College London. Vera’s dissertation is dedicated to private cities. At the age of 20, she was elected to the Municipal Council in Moscow thus becoming the first libertarian ever elected to public office in Russia. Her comments on local government and urban policy were published by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Telegraph. Vera holds a Master of Public Policy degree from the University of Oxford and a BA in Journalism from Moscow State University. Her research interests include public administration, development economics, institutional analysis, land use and management, international development, and regulatory analysis. Vera was a Mercatus Center Frédéric Bastiat Fellow during the 2017-2018 academic year.
“As the world is becoming more globalised, people learn to vote with their feet. Countries, in turn, have to improve their legal environments to attract the most creative and productive ones. The rise of special jurisdictions — charter cities, foreign trade zones, stateless societies — shows that nothing is as attractive as freedom. For many, the idea of a stateless utopia has been a cherished dream for decades.”
- Vera Kichanova
Dr. Lev Manovich is one of the leading theorists of digital culture worldwide, and a pioneer in the application of data science for analysis of contemporary culture. He is the author and editor of 13 books including AI Aesthetics, Theories of Software Culture, Instagram and Contemporary Image, Software Takes Command, Soft Cinema: Navigating the Database and The Language of New Media. He was included in the list of "25 People Shaping the Future of Design" in 2013 and the list of "50 Most Interesting People Building the Future" in 2014. Manovich is a Presidential Professor at The Graduate Center, CUNY, and a Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab that pioneered analysis of visual culture using computational methods. The lab created projects for the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), New York Public Library, Google, and other clients. His latest book "Cultural Analytics" will be published by The MIT Press in Fall 2020.
“Briefly, you can think of Cultural Analytics as [using] the techniques for data analysis and visualization — which are already widely used in sciences, business, government, and other areas of modern society — but haven’t been yet applied to analysis of culture and cultural processes...what kinds of interfaces would you want to have to be able to analyze cultural trends, cultural patterns for individual cultural artifacts.”
- Lev Manovich
Philippe Morel is an architect and theorist, co-founder of EZCT Architecture & Design Research (2000) and initiator and founding CEO of the large-scale 3D-printing corporation XtreeE (2015). He is currently a visiting teaching fellow at UCL Bartlett and an Associate Professor at the École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Malaquais, where he headed the Digital Knowledge department (co-founded with Pr. Girard). He was previously an invited Research Cluster and MArch Diploma Unit Master at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Prior to this he taught at the Berlage Institute in the Netherlands (seminar and studio) and at the AA (HTS Seminar and AADRL Studio). His long-lasting interest in the elaboration of a theory of computational architecture is well expressed in his numerous essays, projects and lectures.
“I define computationalism as a social discourse. I don’t define it as something which has to deal with form or such architecture. I’m not completely interested in that. I’m mainly interested in the relation between a present state of knowledge and what kind of universal and cheap architecture we can attain...Computationalism is definitely related to the idea of this Rousseau question in the 18th century: Does the establishment of advanced scientism ought to contribute to the advancement of the quality of human life?”
- Philippe Morel
Neil Leach is an architect, curator and writer. He is currently Visiting Professor at Harvard University GSD, Professor at the European Graduate School, Gao Feng Professor at Tongji University, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Southern California. He has also taught at SCI-Arc, Architectural Association, Columbia GSAPP, Cornell University, Dessau Institute of Architecture, IaaC, London Consortium , Royal Danish School of Fine Arts, ESARQ, University of Nottingham, University of Bath and University of Brighton. His research interests fall broadly into two fields, critical theory and digital design. In the field of critical theory, he has published a number of monographs and edited volumes, dealing largely with the impact of importing theoretical tools from critical theory into an architectural arena. In the field of digital design, he has published a number of edited volumes.
“For architecture to open up to impulses from other disciplines need not be thought of as an indulgence. On the contrary, the indulgence may lie in architecture’s failure in the past to engage substantively with other disciplines. Architecture is not the autonomous art it is often held out to be. Buildings are designed and constructed within a complex web of social and political concerns. To ignore the conditions under which architecture is practised is to fail to understand the full social import of architecture.”
- Neil Leach
Sanford Kwinter is a Canadian architectural theorist, writer, and editor. He is a professor of architecture at The European Graduate School, Switzerland, at The School of Architecture at Pratt Institute, New York, and at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, where he heads the Institute for Theory and History of Architecture. In 1985 he co-founded the independent publishing company Zone Books with designer Bruce Mau and theorist Jonathan Crary. The publishing house also produced the journal ZONE. He remained editor of both the journal and books until 2001. He was also, until 2001, an editorial member and contributor of the bimonthly journal ANY. Now spanning almost four decades, Kwinter’s publishing career has covered such topics and fields as architecture, science, design, technology, and the humanities. He has contributed numerous essays and articles (many of which have been translated into several languages) to a vast number of periodicals.
“Forms constitute nothing absolute but rather structurally stable moments within a system’s evolution; yet their emergence (their genesis) derives from the crossing of a quantitative threshold that is, paradoxically, a moment of structural instability...All forms are irruptions of a discontinuity, not on the system but in it or of it...All forms of the universe are produced as by-products or maps of particular evolutionary segments of one or another dynamical system. Forms are not fixed things but continuous metastable events... Forms are always new and unpredictable unfoldings shaped by their adventures in time.”
- Sanford Kwinter
8:00am CDT
(13:00 GMT)
INTRODUCTION
Vit Jedlicka, President of Liberland
SYMPOSIUM CURATORS
Daniela Ghertovici + Bruno Juricic
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Patrik Schumacher
Titus Gebel
Shajay Bhooshan
SESSION 1
Scott Beyer
Vera Kichanova
Patrik Schumacher
Titus Gebel
Shajay Bhooshan
Debate 1
10:00am
INTERMISSION PRESENTATIONS
Private Cities Around The World
Parametricism.com Launch
10:30am
SESSION 2
Lev Manovich
Philippe Morel
Neil Leach
Sanford Kwinter
Manuel DeLanda
Debate 2
ROUND-TABLE
All Speakers
+ Q&A
Closing Remarks
1:00pm
Symposium ends
Daniela Ghertovici is an Architectural professional, Researcher, Educator, and Scholar, with over 25 years of international experience as an architectural designer and technologist on complex mixed-use urban developments, such as Burj Khalifa in Dubai and Shanghai North Bund White Magnolia Plaza. She has been teaching for over fifteen years, most recently as full-time graduate faculty and thesis chair at Harrington College of Design. She is the curator and sponsor of ArchAgenda Debates at the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the lead strategist and curator of Liberland Design Competitions 2015 and 2020, co-curator of Parametricism.com together with Patrik Schumacher and Lars van Vianen, and co-curator of the Free Private Cities Architecture Symposium. Daniela holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is currently a PhD candidate in computational and architectural design theory at the European Graduate School in Switzerland..
ArchAgenda.com
Bruno Juricic is an architect, curator, entrepreneur in 3D printing with robots. He is a graduate of the University of Venice Institute of Architecture and is currently completing his PhD at UCLA in Los Angeles. He is the author of the first Croatian IT campus for the Infobip company and the construction sites of the Cultural Center and Hotel XiaKe in China. He is also the author of the current Croatian Pavilion at the 16th Venice Biennale of Architecture. Since 2014, he has been managing the office of "Atelier Bruno Juricic" with an address in Pula and Shanghai, China. From 2011 to 2013 Juricic organized the international symposium series on architecture, art, and science dubbed "PROTO/ E/CO/LOGICS." Symposium participants included Sanford Kwinter, Benjamin Bratton Patrik Schumacher to name a few. Bruno has taught in the post-graduate program in Urban Strategies at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, at UCLA Department of Architecture & Urban Design, at the Mitchell Lab at Texas A&M University and at SCI-Arc in Los Angeles.
Vít Jedlička is a Czech libertarian politician, publicist and activist, currently serving as the President of the Free Republic of Liberland. He was the chairman of the Party of Free Citizens in the Hradec Králové Region, and he is the founder and chairman of a Czech voluntary association Reformy.cz.“Liberland aims to become the model of statehood for the 21st century. We are a global nation with well over half a million people who intends to build our own state with the highest respect for personal and economic freedom for its citizens. We are implementing the latest blockchain technologies to ensure that high standards of transparency and decentralization are met. Becoming the first decentralized autonomous government is the very core of Liberland’s vision, mission and existence.” -Vít Jedlička
Liberland, the world’s newest micronation, is an incubator and role-model for a society based on the principles of liberty and anarcho- capitalism, powered by a decentralized peer-to-peer computational network (blockchain). Liberland’s societal vision is an ideal engine to stimulate a radical transformation of the built environment. Liberland has no zoning restrictions, and no pre-established design culture. The field is wide open for innovation on every scale! The challenge is to envision how maximum design freedom can result in a complex legible order, rather than descend into visual chaos. Free market urban order, which is fluid, distributed, emergent, and ever evolving, is at the core of Liberland’s architectural and urban design aspirations. Liberland seeks the most innovative designs for its advanced network society: A fluid, dynamic “nature-like” ecosystem. Liberland’s aspiration to build the most advanced 21st century cosmopolitan micronation offers an ideal testing ground for novel urban and architectural designs.Registration is open through August 16 2020.
