Urban Imprint | A/D/O by MINI, Brooklyn / Greenpoint, New York.
In our urban environments, space is constructed through static boundaries; through definitive forms and unmoveable walls... for the self to inhabit;.though permanently defined grids and mapped trajectories... for the self to travel through.
Our individual self is asked to adapt to this predefined plan, this imposed design and is asked to live within its boundaries.
As we adapt to this static plan, the presence of our self is muted, instead of amplified and celebrated in its individuality.
In a ‘concrete and glass jungle‘ spaces remain mostly unresponsive to our presence. Multiple selves interact in a crowd poured in the vessel of the city to travel through predefined trajectories of motion.
This muted self inevitably seeks a sense of presence in a digital and disembodied form that feels boundless, but that is yet untethered from its physical nature.
”The self amplified in its presence
as it reconstructs the fabric of our urban architecture”
I recall, my SELF
minding a gap to inhabit a space in a tube - London
looking up to a square of sky to navigate a grid - New York
entering a cube to travel in a vertical trajectory - Singapore
shielding from light reflected off a stark flat wall - Athens
squeezing through a crowd bounded by walls - Japan
“If there is to be a “new urbanism… it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent … but for the creation of enabling fields....that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definitions, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of infrastructure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions – the reinvention of psychological space.”, Dutch architect + Harvard Professor, Koolhaas 959, writer of Delirious New York .
URBAN IMPRINT is how we design a piece of this new urbanism, an augmented materiality , as we define it. An environment that is a ‘blank canvas’ to be reshaped by the future self.
We construct this canvas by the most static fabric of our urban environment - concrete and glass - yet allow it to be actuated by human presence and design it to respond to motion and action.
As Bauhaus Artist - Oskar Schlemmer reveals how body draws the abstract space, we invite designers and visitors to draw the physical space - through their movement individually and in interaction with other.
When we live mostly in this digital realm, our self has no physical context. Yet, by decoupling from the physical reality we also lose our ability to be present and experience the world through the full pallet of our senses.
What constitutes a natural environment for the future self to be present in?
In nature space is constructed as the result of the combined function and needs of all living organisms in its ecosystem. It is the result of many selves and an expression of them all.
In nature the human self is also a part of this ecosystem and an architect of the constructed space.
The human self in its embodied presence and motion reforms the shape and boundaries of the natural space.
In this way, in nature the presence of our self is amplified as we leave a unique imprint in each step and mark our own paths and trails. In nature we reconstruct the space in dialogue with the living agents that are embedded in its fabric.
In nature, space results from mutualistic interactions within a community of living agents, an ecosystem, that includes the human selves and evokes a sense of belonging