Emerging technologies introduce new sets of problems (Millar et al., 2018). ...... about the future iterations and capabilities of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The challenges facing visual sustainability have therefore moved beyond the .... Visual imagery is processed through algorithms that âfind visual elements, e.g..
Urban Visual Sustainability
Pieter de Kock
WORKING PAPER (Ice-Breaker) 2018
Abstract Forests full of strangers: why visual sustainability matters
As a working hypothesis visual sustainability can be defined simply as the process by which people are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship they hold dear to their surroundings. Aesthetics in cities is only important if it has visual richness, which is only important if it has meaning. Visual meaning is only important if sustainable. Visual sustainability is only important if it serves human life. Every week our cities absorb over a million people. By 2050 over 75% of the world’s population will be urbanised. Cities simply put, are physical manifestations of people: “We are the city” (TED and West, 2011). But as they grow cities are becoming forests full of strange objects that look back at us. The objects and artefacts we surround ourselves with no longer enrich our lives. This study steers away from the developmental and environmental bias of modern-day sustainability. Nor does it propose a new theory of architecture or urban design. It focuses on the absence of meaning. Cities are compression chambers of consciousness, emotion, alienation, and isolation. People are trying to make sense of the scientification of our cities. Now is the time to make the connection that appears to be absent from existing urban discourse between visual richness and sustainability. Reconciling practitioners of sustainability with the authors of our built environment. We must promote the effectiveness, for the builders of our cities, of visual sustainability planning — as well as — the importance, for sustainability planners, of building visual cities.
Keywords: Sustainability, Visual Sociology, Public Realm, Visual Richness, Meaning, Cyborgs, Health, Urban Planning, Cities, UNESCO, Design for sustainability, Artificial Intelligence, BEIS, Constructing Excellence, Design Council, RTPI, RIBA, RICS, UDG, CABE, UKGBC, UKBEAG, United Nations, The World Bank, Worldwatch Institute
Table of Contents
List of Tables ................................................................................................................. v List of Figures ............................................................................................................... vi Introduction .................................................................................................................... 1 Ⅰ Dying is a good thing and why this is important for visual sustainability. ................ 6 Sustainable Meaning Matters ........................................................................... 13 Sustainable meaning today ...................................................... 14 Art and Science in sustainability.............................................. 16 Delving deeper ......................................................................... 17 Sustainable Life Matters .................................................................................. 20 Value in life.............................................................................. 21 Our lives revolve around our visual world .............................. 21 Life’s patterns .......................................................................... 24 A Visual Sustainability of ‘Being’ ................................................................... 25 Mythological, Transcendental Sustainability....................................... 26 The whole................................................................................. 28 The parts................................................................................... 28 The authors............................................................................... 29 Rational, Scientific Sustainability........................................................ 31 Science as an ally ..................................................................... 31 The wilful blindness of design theory...................................... 33 Reconciling the differences...................................................... 37 Visual Sustainability ............................................................................ 38 iii
More than a building ................................................................ 40 Updating meaning .................................................................... 41 Future proves past .................................................................... 42 Rapid urbanisation or: Squashing people into cities ................ 45 The power of meaning ............................................................. 46 Building blocks ........................................................................ 47 Ⅱ Why we see ............................................................................................................. 51 Structural and visual dualities .................................................. 51 Our seven senses ...................................................................... 53 Value first................................................................................. 53 Constructivist building blocks ................................................. 55 Relevancy................................................................................. 56 Ⅲ Buildings that look back at us ................................................................................ 59 Faces ........................................................................................ 59 Facing interactions ................................................................... 60 Facing our shadow ................................................................... 62 Ⅳ When a City starts looking back ............................................................................ 64 Smarten up! .............................................................................. 65 Friend or foe ............................................................................. 66 The object is dead, long live the object.................................... 69 Ⅵ Discussion .............................................................................................................. 72 Methodological considerations ................................................ 72 Fractals at a human scale ......................................................... 73 Conclusion ............................................................................... 82 Bibliography ................................................................................................................ 83
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List of Tables
Table 1.
Complexity of architectural theory ...................................................... 50
Table 2.
Lived densities for European countries................................................ 75
v
List of Figures
Figure 1.
What is, what should be ....................................................................... 12
Figure 2.
Stephenson's Rocket drawing .............................................................. 13
Figure 3.
The Quadruple Bottom Line of Sustainability ..................................... 15
Figure 4.
Trevithick's Steam Carriage 1803 ........................................................ 18
Figure 5.
The Flying Scotsman ........................................................................... 19
Figure 6.
Perception and visual sustainability ..................................................... 26
Figure 7.
Meaning of Past and Future in visual sustainability ............................ 27
Figure 8.
Ontological elements of visual sustainability ...................................... 44
Figure 9.
Looking back ....................................................................................... 64
Figure 10.
Image as a fractal measure of coherence ............................................ 79
Figure 11.
Density LI, 1,947 people per 100 HA: Figure-ground........................ 79
Figure 12.
Image as a fractal measure of coherence ............................................ 80
Figure 13.
Density ES, 53,119 people per 100 HA: Figure-ground ..................... 80
Figure 14.
Lived densities for European countries............................................... 81
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Introduction
There is much to be said for the physical manifestation of sustainability in urban design, yet often overlooked is the value of the ‘in between’ spaces themselves— especially so in terms of their contribution to human health and welfare. This is after all what we measure sustainability by. Visual sustainability may be defined simply as the process by which people are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship they hold dear to their surroundings. In land and construction projects, when the last tradesmen have left site, a process of visual storytelling unfolds over time through an ongoing dialogue between elements that bind the left-over urban spaces. Building uses change, and edges become animated differently. These are the spaces we all inhabit in comfort or, as often is the case, by degrees of alienation. Owners, developers, designers, councils, other guardians of public space, and end users, are all best served by understanding the concept of how well-constructed space adds value and enhances (as well as advances) the concept of visual sustainability of place. Architectural theory has been ineffective in convincing owners and decisionmakers to consider all aspects of sustainability at the inception of a project. This lack of influence over the planning and building processes needs to be corrected if a balance is to be struck “between the requirements of stewardship on the one hand and the desire for a better life on the other” (Kuhlman et al., 2010). A key part of this research will be aimed at trying to prove how visual aspects of city life provide people-oriented solutions at a fraction of the cost and carbon footprint. As a measure of true sustainability city leaders and governments should be
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encouraged to follow the math’s—legislating for more responsible leadership in the way our cities are created and maintained. It has become essential to look through the lens of ‘visual sustainability’ towards bridging the dichotomy between two streams of consciousness: theory and practice. History provides us with numerous examples of a strong correlation between groups of buildings and human activity and behaviour. Urban form and sustainability are mutually inclusive triggers of the concept of ‘Place’. The need for ‘healthy cities’ and restorative built environments is indicative of just how poorly aligned design theories are with real-world business strategies. Essentially there should be no tension between wealth creation, productivity, and visual richness. These concepts are not mutually exclusive. Cullen and Salingaros et al. have identified and warned of a creeping phenomenon in which our built environment is slowly being stripped of visual richness and meaning. This erosion affects our identity. Clayton and Opotow refer in to identity as “how people see themselves in the context of nature”—nature to include “urban settings as well as remote wilderness areas” (Clayton and Opotow, 2003, p.56). Our towns and cities reflect who we are. Our urban spaces are expressions of “boundaries and behaviour”, and of “specificity of place”. This encouraging reflection “that in turn play[s] a role in defining us” (Holmes, cited in Clayton and Opotow, 2003, p.31). “Today the architect seeks to reduce structure to a minimum and the corollary of this is that little but a diagram is left to intrigue the eye” (Cullen, 1995, p.169). Salingaros refers to the concept of an “information field originating in the surrounding surfaces, which permeates the space and connects it to the human consciousness … Information is generated by surrounding surfaces: building facades, the pavement, and
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local nodes such as trees and street furniture”. If the information we seek is not there, or we “cannot connect to surrounding surfaces, then we find ourselves in an alien environment, and our most basic instincts drive us to leave it” (Urban Space and its Information Field, by Nikos A. Salingaros, 1999). Large contemporary developments and master planned environments such as ‘Smart Cities’, ‘Networked Cities’, or ‘Sustainable Cities,’ are reliant on technology for their perceived success. There is little evidence of the metrics given to the process by which people are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship they hold dear to their surroundings. Is it not time that we “adapt the machinery of our economy to influence investments in technology so that they contribute to the social, economic and environmental outcomes that we want” (Why Smart Cities still aren’t working for us after 20 years. And how we can fix them., 2016)? We can achieve this goal if we understand what it is we want to see. The visual outcome. If we identify what sustains us then we can tap into our innate desire to be productive. The rapid rate of urbanisation has led to an increased awareness in what sustainability means. Our cities need to become “well-tempered” through “coherence, circularity, resilience, community, and compassion” (Book Review of ‘The WellTempered City’ by Jonathan F.P. Rose, 2018). “A city that is fragmented physically, through a dull subdivision code, or through a separation between transportation and land use planning, is not coherent” (Book Review of ‘The Well-Tempered City’ by Jonathan F.P. Rose, 2018; Rose, 2016). The lack of specific information in the sustainability field about the role of our visual environment is concerning. Instead sustainability focuses exclusively on issues such as use of materials, waste, energy, water consumption, space heating—all of
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which are important (More than 100 global cities now get the majority of electricity from renewables, 2018), but having limited effect. We need to understand the role meaning plays in humans if we are to succeed with technically based interventions. A key research consideration will be to explore how the physical manifestation of cities relates to the interaction of people. A definition of the term ‘visual richness’ will be one if the key outputs of this research, leading then to a conclusion about the validity of the concept of visual sustainability. Other issues that shape this research include: •
How ‘visual richness’ and ‘visual sustainability’ can better be defined.
•
How visual sustainability unites urban design with the objectives of sustainable urban development.
•
Whether a visual information field can be inferred from visual sustainability.
•
How visual data may contribute to a pattern language of sustainability. We need to therefore preserve those visual aspects that sustain us, that focus
on our identity in this world. We need to cultivate visual sustainability. This research proposal intends to explore the validity of visual sustainability in the strategic development of our built environment.
Section Ⅰ reviews two complementary domains of knowledge: our visual world: searching for elements of sustainability; and our sustainable world: searching for elements of our visual world. The integrated literature review searches for and locates information at any level of analysis: science, fantasy, grey literature, normative theory, opinion, or storytelling. Because this study is focused on sustainability, historical and outdated literature and research matters. Nor is ‘following the crowd’ considered the best method of research in this study. Citation count is less important
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too due to the strong bias against non-visual or perception related considerations in sustainability. The search for knowledge is situated in both conscious and unconscious being, in objective as well as subjective matter. As the search progresses, bridges are built from either end: the objective and the subjective. We meet up in the middle where the concept of meaning in the built environment is constructed. It is the contention of this study that sustainability can only have meaning if our visual world has meaning; while our visual world can only have meaning if sustainability has meaning. Common to both is our built environment, which in turn can only have meaning if supported by both these two domains. Section Ⅱ focuses on vision and perception. How we reconcile value with meaning. The relevancy of value and meaning is determined in conscious thought by what we point our eyes at. Sections Ⅲ and Ⅳ consider our relationship with the built environment. We either dominate the objects we surround ourselves with, or they dominate us. We reach the point where we become intimidated by our objects with the we realisation that we can no longer read them properly. When a book we look forward to is presented to us in a foreign language. Section Ⅵ discusses some of the key research strategies that may be adopted going forward and recommendations for further research.
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Ⅰ Dying is a good thing and why this is important for visual sustainability.
Death, according to Peterson, is a good thing - at least insofar as lessons that can be learnt from mythological transformation go (2017e, 00:51:00). In a metaphorical sense, death and rebirth offers regenerative value of a life lived, of “the “loss and regeneration” of that innocence … exemplified in the phoenix reborn from its own ashes” (Fernández-Morera and Hanke, 2005, p.250). Peterson, in both his Maps of Meaning and Personality lecture series, often refers to the Phoenix as an archetype of renewal or transformation contained in a process deeply embedded in meta-story (2017n, 00:01:50). When we transform from one state of consciousness into another we are shedding the things that we no longer need (2017d, 1:24:24). And what survives is the Self. “The Self is the element of the psyche that remains intact across transformations” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017d, 01:24:24). We transform by moving forward in life — in a landscape of relevance (2017c, 00:44:00), or more forebodingly in relation to obstacles: what is no longer relevant, overwhelming, or unknown (2017c, 00:49:00). In moving forward we confirm our ability to ‘burn off’ that which no longer has meaning or behavioural ‘errors’ that have been holding us back (2017d, 1:26:05). It makes sense therefore, in a visual world that is constantly changing and informing us, that humans should possess this innate ability to make progress and to move forward through life in a sustainable way. What does ‘moving forward in a sustainable way’ mean? And in an ontological sense, what is our visual world
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comprised of? Peterson’s analysis is centred on his observation of the manner by which our perception or “these motivational systems that emerged over evolutionary history … determines what objects manifest themselves to you in the world, or what pattern” (2017c, 00:42:00, emphasis added). Peterson’s assertion that embedded in our unconscious is a motivating force that determines what we see and don’t see, provides some context about how complicated our visual world really is. By visual world one could mean everything we see and experience. The idea that different objects (or objects that have different meanings) can manifest themselves under different conditions is an astonishing concept. What we see has the capacity to grow and transform. It is almost as if the objects we see are just fractals in a universe of fractals and that the process of death and renewal (of thought and action) is just a consequence of fractal (re)generation. So, dying is a good thing if it means our existence merely shifts in fractal increments, that we somehow scale up or down in a constant process, in a dynamic exchange of thoughts and ideas. “We do much more than just “see” in our daily lives” (Grady, 1996, p.16, citing Coulter and Parsons, 1990, p.261); we see with our bodies, our biology (Jordan B Peterson, 2017m, 1:02:10); we see in our unconscious and through our dreams, our stories, and archetypes (Jung et al., 1964); we are able to see even when our eyes are closed (Jordan B Peterson, 2017m, 1:01:20). Our visual perception of our surroundings, according to Peterson, is primarily not that of objects: we do not see ‘Objects’, we see ‘Tools’ and ‘Options’ through a process of mapping and transformation — an interplay between order (opportunity, promise) and chaos (obstacle, recalibration) (2017c, 00:44:45). On the one hand, sustainability appears to align more with a process of ‘mapping’ and ‘positive
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transformation’; while on the other, our visual world appears to be more complex than we first thought and may have more to do with meaning than with aesthetics. The entire process of ‘being’ therefore appears to be based on a fundamental principle of orienting oneself. To experience meaning. The act of transformation is the change we experience in a story from a point A to a point B. In the map or system there is a start point, an endpoint, and in-between lies the subsystem that transforms and monitors progress or deviation along the pattern or story (Jordan B Peterson, 2017c, 1:28:40). Nature provides examples of this process of mapping (Taylor et al., 2007; Seed and Byrne, 2010). Taylor’s research is presented by BBC Two: Episode 2 of Inside the Animal Mind (Are crows the ultimate problem solvers?, 2014, 00:00:10). The following commentary interprets research insights gained from Peterson’s series of lectures and reconciles these insights with the case study presented by BBC Two. The following precis of ethological events gives insight into how humans may see objects such as buildings and urban space: The bird sees tools and options, not objects, and acts out a process of ‘micro-routines’ (Jordan B Peterson, 2017n, 00:19:00), or assimilation through micro alterations (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:07:15). In the experiment the bird navigates from point A to point B through a subsystem Peterson describes as mapping, or story (Figure 1). The bird encounters an anomaly and momentarily freezes, descending into the unknown. Until it is able to recalibrate, recover, and with its eyes see the meaning, the opportunity to move forward positively is lost. When
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the bird does finally move forward it is not for the reason of shape or colour (aesthetics). Instead the stick it has focused on provides the meaning. It focuses at high resolution, leaving most of the information outside this narrow beam of focus completely irrelevant. This then enables the bird to map out the meaning. In the transformation to get to the future desired state, to ‘what should be’, the bird succeeds in accessing the future in a positive way.
Taking elements from this analogy we can start thinking what meaning looks like in the built environment. For Peterson the world is made up of matter (what matters) and objects (2017b, 2017c). The facts are the experience: facts don’t tell you what to do with the facts (Jordan B Peterson, 2017n, 00:05:40). Peterson explains meaning in architectural design where “fundamentally what you’re trying to do is to set up the environment so that it facilitates the actions you intend to pursue there” (2017c, 1:16:20, emphasis added) and avoid “the circuitry … that makes you uncomfortable” in a “place full of obstacles … full of things that get in the way of your goal” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017c, 1:16:55). Jeffery refers to linkage information: “something urban designers would do well to note. When people cross from one space to another, they need linkage information” (Spatial reference frames and the sense of direction | Conscious Cities, 2017). While Jeffery speaks to a physical manifestation of orienting, Peterson for much of his analysis concentrates on the unconscious in relation to behaviour. For humans, there is a direct relationship between the structures that we use to orient
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ourselves in the world, and stories (Jordan B Peterson, 2017b, 2017c). Apart from psychological structures Lynch points out our use of physical structures such as buildings and urban spaces as well as natural structures like trees and other natural landmarks to orient ourselves through a process of mental mapping (Lynch, 2005). For Peterson the concept of orienting is even more fundamental to our existence in terms of meaning. “You can’t really rely on your perception to orient you, but you do orient yourself … [through a process of] engagement. Does this seem meaningful and deep and engaging? Yes … the sense of meaning is instinct that orients people in time and space … it’s the most fundamental form of perception … the sense of meaning is an orienting reflex” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017c, 1:29:00, emphasis added) . Why is this important? Discovering more about how we map on to our built environment leads us to hypothesise about the value of future states of being. Our brain is capable of abstract representations of the future, “it hypothesises potential futures, it runs simulations and it kills them” so that we don’t get killed (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 1:03:08). This abstraction may be key in establishing with more certainty which elements in architecture and urban design motivate and assist us in moving forward positively towards a richer meaning of sustainability. When we go from point A to point B we transfer to “a more complete and efficient” state of knowledge (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:15:20) reflecting constructivist theory by Paiget, who in his work tried to “bridge the gap between science and religion” or value (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:16:00). The discipline of architecture exists in both worlds: science and religion (or value structures). “Your abstract knowledge is actually determined by the structure of your body, and that it unfolds from your body upwards into abstraction. And that’s what happens when infants transform into adults” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:18:00): we start off in
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procedural memory. The difference between procedural memory (how you walk) and representational memory (recalling the past) (2017k, 00:18:20) is also an architectural phenomenon. We do certain things in relation to buildings automatically without thinking; while we gather up and treasure other aspects that we value in buildings. An interesting development is the manifestation, through artificial intelligence, of procedural design which has emerged in recent years with growing influence over our built environment. This is to be expected as we discover new ways to design and build our cities. However, the visual outcomes are controversial (Griffiths, 2018; Brussat, 2018j, et. al). The controversy too can be expected. A colloquial expression rings true: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. The ‘scientification’ of our cities is discussed further in various sections of this study. For Piaget, “the space is the game” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:23:25, emphasis added). The psychological interaction between people playing a game. This is true of the space we occupy between each other as well as in relation to the artefacts that we have surrounded ourselves with. “You might think of a game as the microcosm of the world” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:23:30). It can be suggested that the realisation of meaningful architecture is made possible when we have discovered how to play the game properly: when you are able to make the rules and therefore able to make new games (2017k, 00:24:50). Our built environment can be seen to be comprised of the result (of Peterson’s description) of a hierarchy. A set of nested games (2017k). Meaningful architecture is produced by a game that has meaning and is unambiguous. A game played properly. A game understood by all the players. The information surrounding us, that which we perceive visually, becomes the story. The story carries the weight of meaning from the present into the future. If the
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information is worthless, then how much less sustainable is our existence? How much less sustainable despite being powered by technology? The term ‘rubbish in/ rubbish out’ is true: no meaning produces no meaning. Whether we are dying in the process of moving positively forward or dying in the process of renewal through interaction, dying is a good thing. Our visual world both internally and externally is completely dependent on our ability to shed that which has become meaningless. If a level of empirical evidence can be established to support a hypothesis of the meaning of visual sustainability, this will encourage industry leaders to fully integrate these findings, along with future research, into the theory and practice of a whole concept of sustainable meaning: sustainable meaning that matters.
Figure 1. What is, what should be Peterson’s diagram (2002, p.37) (above) captures the essence of human mapping and how people cope and adapt to their visual surroundings for survival, and for the survival of future generations.
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Sustainable Meaning Matters
Figure 2. Stephenson's Rocket drawing Visual richness = aesthetics + meaning (Stephenson’s Rocket, 2018).
The purpose of memory according to Peterson is not to remember the past. It is to “extract out from the past, lessons to structure the future” (2018). Future that can only be accessed properly through meaning. An analogy with the concept of DNA may help locate the concept of visual sustainability in this study. Let us assume that DNA is the equivalent of modern day sustainability. All DNA does is provide a factual map of physical relationships. Even though the DNA points to a scientific relationship with ancestors, the meaning is gone because the connection is gone. All we have left is the science. Visual sustainability however represents the meaning. The meaning is in our relationship with living family members. The meaning is in the shared wisdom, stories and experiences with those who have passed on.
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Modern-day sustainability consists of processes that address environmental and developmental concerns. That is all. Visual sustainability on the other hand can solve problems before they become problems, through meaning. Sustainable meaning today Meaning however does not appear to make much impact in how sustainability is taught (Academic view: What ‘sustainability’ means in an MBA curriculum | Which MBA? | The Economist, n.d.). However Walker attempts to incorporate the concept of meaning into to a ‘Quadruple Bottom Line of Sustainability’. How we transition from maxims of ‘Form follows Function’ to ‘Form follows Meaning’. Personal meaning, social, meaning, and practical meaning (TEDx Talks and Walker, 2013, 00:10:45; 00:11:44; The Spirit of Design: objects, environment and meaning – ImaginationLancaster, 2011; Design and Meaning, 2011). The visual arts often acts as a prop for the much bigger scientific story. As sensationalised appendage to a more serious scientific matter. By scanning news media and business reports we can often get a real sense of what visual sustainability is not (9 Futuristic Buildings That Are Also Sustainable - The Urban Developer, 2018; A pilot project for a new libertarian floating city will have 300 homes, its own government, and its own cryptocurrency, 2018); and what it could be: a way of thinking (A Surprisingly Sensible Planned City in Oman - CityLab, 2018). Walker describes moving from “a Knowledge Economy, what we can do; to a Wisdom Economy, what we should do” (TEDx Talks and Walker, 2013, 00:16:10). This in colloquial terms, represents half the battle won. The remaining challenge of implementing ‘what we should do’ however appears to be much more complicated: “But, you may ask, “To what end?”… How will we know success?” (Six Things I Learned From World Urban Forum 9, 2018).
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Figure 3. The Quadruple Bottom Line of Sustainability (stuart walker design - quadruple bottom line of sustainability, 2018)
Owen and Dovey note that modern day sustainability, founded in the 1987 Brundtland Report (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987) has a very narrow focus. Despite calls for a more qualitative approach, “Science remains the most powerful discourse in the quest for sustainability” (Owen and Dovey, 2008, p.12-13). Spangenberg notes that“… design is not recognized as a relevant factor in the sustainability discourse” (2013, p.576-577). Notwithstanding the one-sided approach to sustainability there are programs that offer some hope of a deeper integration with meaning. One such by Level(s) is described as an “open source assessment framework”. It aims to extend to citizens an accessible “measurement that goes beyond just energy, which, up until now, has been used as the main indicator of sustainable performance” (Introducing Level(s): A common language to understand sustainability in European buildings | World Green Building Council, 2017). This genre of intervention has the potential to incorporate important visual sustainability criteria in buildings.
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At a macro level, the challenge facing sustainability today is in how politics and economics demand greater success with fewer resources (Mentz and Goble, 2015). Defining sustainability is also a challenge due to the complex and diverse range of disciplines (Cucuzzella, 2015) especially (written in the context of architectural competitions) “questions of architectural integrity [which] are rarely understood as crucial” (Cucuzzella, 2015, p.87). It is not just a matter of how we may we better describe sustainability. More important is that which is missing from the processes described by Cucuzzella as “resource efficiency ; transdisciplinary design ; industrial ecology ; biological-inspired design ; design for economic degrowth ; socioeconomic focus ; and place-based design” (2015, p.87, citing; Owen and Dovey, 2008; Guy and Farmer, 2001; R⊘yseng, 2010, et. al; Spangenberg et al., 2010).
Art and Science in sustainability Art and science complicate the meaning of sustainability further: “In Bourdieu’s terms, these are overlapping fields where the practice of sustainable architecture is like playing two games on the same field” (Owen and Dovey, 2008). New technologies and artificial intelligence (Walsh, 2017) are constantly emerging. Big Data (Grant, 2018; Parise, 2016; Rabari and Storper, 2015; Big data, smart cities, and intelligent buildings, 2018), Thickdata (Smith, 2018), and Blockchain (Future Thinkers, 2017; Rainwater, 2018; Dates and Deliverables from Blockchain, 2018; Blockchain is Making Distributed the New Default, 2018; Why blockchain could transform every industry, 2018; Blockchain Cities and the Smart Cities Wheel – iomob – Medium, 2018; Breaking into blockchain, 2018; Does blockchain offer hype or hope? | Technology | The Guardian, 2018).
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Emerging technologies introduce new sets of problems (Millar et al., 2018). Certainly, sustainability cannot exist as a concept in isolation from “… a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infrmity” (WHO | Constitution of WHO, 2018). Attempts to integrate design include Design for Sustainability (DfS) and DEEDS employing SCALES principles. This focuses on ways to “embed sustainability in design and design in sustainability” (Spangenberg et al., 2010b). These efforts are a response to the general ineffectiveness by design disciplines to have any impact on modern-day sustainability. “The traditional approach to planning and urban design is rapidly becoming obsolete” (Can Big Data Deliver Evidence Based Urban Design?, 2015). The ‘sameness’ of terminology repeated over and over without a sense of real progress is indicative of conceptual faultlines in the building profession. Modern-day sustainability is focused on science and technology in isolation from the concept of meaning. This problem is similar to the problem identified between morphology and design where the “disciplinary schism could be a symptom of something deeper” (Marshall and Çalişkan, 2011). The ‘schism’ in the context of this study appears to be the relationship between sustainability and meaning. Delving deeper For meaning we should delve deeper to another level of analysis. Jung et. al, emphasised the importance of a sustainable state of unconscious well-being (Jung et al., 1964). Could there be a better place to start with the unconscious than Peterson’s insightful raison d'être of meaning: Why he “started getting interested in the phenomenon of meaning as a phenomenological experience: to experience something
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as meaningful. It’s not exactly obvious what that means, to experience something that is meaningful” (2017g, 1:49:55). The idea that Meaning is Being is an important concept to emerge from Peterson’s series of lectures, and sheds light on how one may unpack the meaning of sustainability and visual richness. Can visual richness be described as aesthetics with meaning? Aesthetics can be defined as “something that excite admiration in the mind of the observer” (Cropley and Cropley, 2008). It can be argued that artists and architects create visual richness through artefacts. Do scientists, architects, artists, or designers decide the meaning of things for us? Do we not, ourselves, as individuals; then as groups or tribes; and then upwards in the hierarchy to a cultural level, attribute the meaning to our lives? Peterson et al. suggests we do and have done so in a sustainable manner for millennia.
Figure 4. Trevithick's Steam Carriage 1803 Sustainable meaning: do we accept or attribute the meaning in objects? (London Steam Carriage, 2018).
The steam engine is a good example of how we may attribute meaning. Steam engines were designed as functional objects with little thought given to aesthetics. Yet 18
for many people these objects are extraordinarily beautiful. The beauty is in the practical meaning of every component. The fact that we are able to read the contraption like a book. That we can interpret the meaning of its moving parts. The meaning in how this object transformed over time. Moore refers to an architecture where “not only can observers decode their operation visually, but the visual information is subsequently supported by the haptic experience” of their function (1997, p.29). Perhaps the reason we feel growing levels of anxiety. Our cities are filling up with obscure objects. The scientification of our cities is masking hardware and software hidden behind blank walls.
Figure 5. The Flying Scotsman Objects transformed over time (Smith, 2016).
Attributing meaning has been achieved by passing relevant information on into the future in a hierarchical form of story. And those collective stories that have endured over time have transformed into meta-stories, archetypes, mythologies, even as deeply embedded archaic remnants (1964; 2017a). We are able to use words from other languages to explore new meanings as well as access hidden layers of emotional
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and visual richness offering “a very different way of seeing the world” (Robson, 2017). And we are able to use “The mind’s eye, the locus of our images of remembered reality and imagined contrivance, is an organ of incredible capacity and subtlety” (Ferguson, 1994). To understand in more depth what visual sustainability is, we need to understand what it is not. That without meaning our world collapses. When everything has the same meaning there can be no meaning: our value structures collapse (Jordan B Peterson, 2017c, 1:05:35) and we are faced with the consequences of an unsustainable future. Peterson describes walls marking the boundaries between what we understand and what we don’t understand, illuminated by way of a metaphor in storytelling that refers us to that part of the surrounding landscape touched by sunlight. That which is relevant (2017l, 00:39:20); or in the dreams that call out the mythological awakening of human vulnerability (2017j, 1:51:20). Peterson references various states of being or states of irrelevancy throughout his series of lectures as ‘knowns’; ‘known-unknowns; and unknown-unknowns (or chaos) (2017a, 1:26:00). States of being in which exists the constant threat to our survival. Which is why a sustainable life is less about matter, and more about what matters.
Sustainable Life Matters Life matters when we matter. We matter when we understand value. We understand value when we understand meaning. Our value is meaning manifest in our objects and artefacts. No longer seeing value in our objects and artefacts can only mean one thing: we no longer matter. Havel refers to “large tracts of land that aren't anything” (Havel, 2010). This often-repeated observation of the decline in visual integrity of our
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built environment, is evident even to politicians. “The most dangerous aspect of this global atheistic civilisation is its pride. The pride of someone who is driven by the very logic of his wealth to stop respecting the contribution of nature and our forebears, to stop respecting it on principle and respect it only as a further potential source of profit” (Havel, 2010). Peterson often refers to our value structure as the most important aspects of living a meaningful life, and these values are found in orienting ourselves properly through meaning (2017a). Value in life A slice of life is the analogy used for the value of meaning (Jordan B Peterson, 2017a). Music is described as “an abstract representation of proper being” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017g, 1:51:20). The same abstract representation can be argued to hold true for art, architecture, and urban design. Multi-layered meaning (2017i, 00:09:00). The abstraction “focuses the part of your brain that does exploratory activity. And that’s actually associated with pleasure, that’s the dopamine circuit … [which] provides you with multi-level predictable forms that transforms just the right amount … music infuses you with a sense of meaning, because it models meaning” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017j, 1:13:15, emphasis added). And when we model meaning we live a sustainable life. Our lives revolve around our visual world Art, architecture, and urban design can be represented as modelling meaning. Subjective abstract representation (2017n, 00:05:00) provides meaning at an individual level and can be transferred across time between generations of people. Music, art, and architecture can be said to consist of sustainable stories in time and space. Its abstraction into the future can therefore be said to represent the visual heart
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of sustainability. This is because (architectural) abstraction personifies our existence, while objective matter merely helps confirm our existence (2014, 00:12:05). “The function of art is similar to the function of the brain” to manifest representation (Semir Zeki, cited in Academy of Neuroscience for Architecture and Eberhard, 2014, 00:05:30). In Aesthetics and the Brain, Eberhard refers to Ramachanddran’s theory of artistic experience where artists can “capture the very essence of something” to produce emotion that less abstract representations are unable to do. Beinart refers to this phenomenon where the power of an object lies in its abstraction “cleansed of irrelevance” (Beinart, 2013e, 1:21:45), which is similar to a statement that Jung makes about “the experience of something eternal” (1964, p.209). Abstraction then, can be said to validate the past, validate the future, and gives meaning to our context in the present. Beinart laments how we have “lost the capacity it seems in architecture to memorialise through objects, through forms themselves” that level of meaning that “dispenses with the need for architecture” (Beinart, 2013e, 1:23:00). Essentially, we all appear to seek to validate our existence by surrounding ourselves with our own artefacts which we intuitively assume to be comprised of objective matter. “Intuition is defined by Jung as “perception by ways or means of the unconscious” (ColdWindSage, 2016, 00:03:20). Abstraction is what we use for the walls that we build around our Self. These walls serve to contain order and to keep out chaos. These abstractions manifest themselves in our visual perception as meaning: in the form of sustaining life where in Beinart’s example “the architect wished to excavate memory instead of history” (2013e, 1:59:20). Pietrusko explores the kinds of stories that could be told when historic material is overlaid in conjunction with photographic and data driven visualisations of space. This concept is known as relational space: “the relational view of space holds
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that there is no such thing as a space outside the processes that define it” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018c). This compositing of meaning is a valuable tool for understanding elements of visual sustainability. It mixes metaphors, imagery, emotion, and serves to amplify to us how memory works over time. Memory that allows people to remember historical events in different ways. This enriches the meaning. It is no longer an aesthetic, but visual richness. In the lecture series on personalities (2017h), Peterson provides novel insights into how human perception influences context and other humans. Grady too expands on a similar approach in the field of visual sociology to “empirically investigate social organization, cultural meaning, and psychological processes” (1996, p.10). The significance of human validation is highlighted through a language in which “the "people" of the unconscious are symbols, and the means of communications dreams” (Jung et al., 1964, p.12). The resulting emergence in human psyche of imagistic forms is “so unbelievably rich, that, how could you possibly articulate them … the artists gets there before the philosopher, long before the philosopher … we’ve figured it out. Its represented in art and literature and music and drama and then we’re on the cusp, so to speak, [of] understanding it in an articulated manner” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017e, 00:52:00). “Architecture has a long association with memory” (Beinart, 2013e, 00:56:40). “When memory was not available, through television, or through radio, or through telephone, and so on, it was a very precious commodity” (Beinart, 2013e, 00:59:00). This explains perhaps the blind spot of technology. It erodes us of reasoning through our unconscious. It also explains how we are never fully aware of the implications of new inventions. How for example ‘the pill’, ‘the car’, ‘the television’, ‘the internet’, affected our perception in ways that could not possibly have been conceived of or
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intended at the time of the invention (Jordan B Peterson, 2017a). “Architecture serves as a memory system for ideas about human origins, a means for recording and understanding of order and relationship in the world, an attempt to grasp the concept of the eternal cosmos which has no fixed dimension, and neither beginning nor end” (Beinart, 2013e, 00:59:18, citing Piere Nora; Nora, 1989, p.8). Memory is simply future projection. As the future becomes ‘reality’ our memory takes on new meaning. In an ontological sense our realities at an individual level are all different from one another. Perhaps this is a reason why modern-day sustainability avoids the concept of visual sustainability. It cannot reconcile different realities with the single reality that science and technology offer. Science and technology cannot cause visual sustainability. But visual sustainability, through meaning, can be causal to the implementation of science and technology. We understand the meaning of surrounding ourselves with objects, and therefore engage in science and technology to support that meaning. In life’s patterns the meaning comes first. Life’s patterns Patterns are key to a sustainable life. Both Jung and Freud described the process of accessing our subconscious through the visual richness in our surroundings. Jung articulated meaning in dreams away from Freud’s limitation of ‘free association’. He writes, “after a time I began to feel that this was a misleading and inadequate use of the rich fantasies that the unconscious produces in sleep. My doubts really began when a colleague told me of an experience he had during the course of a long train journey in Russia. Though he did not know the language and could not even decipher the Cyrillic script, he found himself musing over the strange letters in which the railway notices were written, and he fell into a reverie in which he imagined all sorts
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of meanings for them”. This in turn triggered memories in his friend’s own life, including some that had been forgotten (Jung et al., 1964, p.27). Science around the same time as Jung’s writings had determined that: “Patterns are a form of language” (Feder, 1966, p.1). Salingaros, in discussing fractals, distinguishes between “a random array of letters [that] makes no sense to us, but if those letters have linguistic patterns then they convey some meaning” (2014, 00:14:20). Patterns represent the language of architecture (Alexander et al., 1977; Leitner, 2015; Garcia, 2009) and music (Byrne, 2010). The subjectivity of our visual world is as important as the seduction of a scientific world inhabited by “eco-bling” (Cucuzzella, 2015, p.94, citing; Liddell, 2013) or technological wonder. For a sustainable life that matters, visual sustainability of ‘Being’ is arguably best placed to drive our scientific and technological advancement; not, as it appears to be the case today, the opposite.
A Visual Sustainability of ‘Being’ There are two ways of looking at Peterson’s concept of ‘sacrificing the present for the future’ (2017f, 00:58:20 emphasis added), namely the mythological (or archetypal, dreams); and the rational (or scientific, technological). This research proposes a third concept — which seeks to make a connection that appears to be absent from existing urban discourse, between visual richness, meaning, and sustainability — called visual sustainability, and which may be defined simply as:
the process by which people are sustained and enriched in daily life through the visual relationship they hold dear to their surroundings.
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Figure 6. Perception and visual sustainability How tools and options help orient us in our world through meaning, enabling us to make a positive contribution towards visual sustainability.
Mythological, Transcendental Sustainability Quality of meaning is most luminous in a visual world that treasures mythology. This transcendent quality may be defined simply as:
meaning manifest in those you leave behind.
A visual storytelling left behind to sustain and renew those left behind. Peterson describes pragmatic truths as truths “that have functional utility” (2017a, 1:09:18) which are “deeper than scientific truth, … that enables you to act in a manner that best improves the probability…of your existence and reproduction” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017a, 1:08:00, emphasis added).
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“There are different ways of defining the truth” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017i, 1:14:50). Truth always appears to be contextual because truth relates to meaning. Can we create meaning? Meaning seems to relate to memory and history. How can something that is untrue have meaning? How can something that has meaning be untrue? In the way that stories have meaning because they survive over time, truth may be said to exist as a form of inheritance, passed on between generations. Peterson explains sustainability as “a discovery of the future … You make a sacrifice of the present so that the future is better” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017j, 2:21:20). The past is different because it consists of memory and history: “Memory attaches itself to sites, whereas history attaches itself to events” (Nora, 1989, p.22). Peterson’s tools and options act as a window to the future through a story or mapping process. The past attaches itself to the future. Past and future meaning, it is proposed, is bridged through this transformation of attachment, and infers the conceptual connection between visual meaning and sustainability (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Meaning of Past and Future in visual sustainability The past and future conspire to produce visual sustainability. History and memory provide past meaning; sustainable meaning is a function of the future.
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The whole In architectural terms, it is rare at the level of the scale of a building or urban space, that the ‘whole’ provides the meaning. Beinart explains Heidegger’s view, “the notion that somehow the world is best conceived as a complete picture” compared to Sitte’s view of urbanism as “a set of truncated visions, or visual experiences of the world” (Beinart, 2013d, 00:46:40). For Alexander “wholeness is not merely a gestalt of the thing, but the system of larger and smaller centres in their connections and overlaps” (2002, p.90). This can be considered in conjunction with the analysis offered by Peterson that there is too much information in the world for humans to handle (2017k, 1:10:00). Views that are framed have a better chance of not overwhelming an observer with too much information. The observer can remain engaged. The sensation of being overwhelmed in an urban environment can lead to a shutdown of biological circuits or of articulate communication. You freeze and time stands still. (2017a). Otto Wagner argued “that the music is not, nor is the world of urban experience, to be conditioned by limited structures, but by continuity” (Beinart, 2013d, 00:47:15). Continuity is a quality that speaks to the concept of visual sustainability. It infers how an object may reveal itself over time. A layering of meaning. The parts In contrast to the concept of the ‘whole’, it makes sense in the context of managing information, that parts of a building provide greater opportunities for meaning. Elements such as use of material, structural articulation. Salingaros provides the example of the 12th-14th Century Cosmati floor fractal patterns which provide essential meaning and scaling coherence in a building (2014, 23:30). The parts that
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look like the whole, giving the whole a level of compounded meaning (Eglash, 1999). The often-unrealised truth about fractals lies in scale: human scale. Images generated may look fractal but be completely out of scale, a fact that creators of pre-Twentieth Century large-scale buildings have understood intuitively. Because for visual meaning fractals must work to a human scale. Salingaros also makes the strange assertion (2014) that detail at higher levels of a building serve no purpose. This study disagrees. People still perceive the fractal relationships regardless of where they occur. How do we know? Try removing the human-scaled fractal ornament and details from lofty volumes of a cathedral or exterior upper walls and roof features. Grady refers to a world where: “Our daily lives are full of images. Consciousness is a sensually active process that is negotiated in thickets of sound, touch, smell, taste and sight … daily life involves the spontaneous and deliberate construction of images to communicate information and manage social relations” (Grady, 1996, p.17). People have an innate attraction to objects that say what they mean, for objects or expressions around us that we may describe for their honesty (Gast and Kahn, 1999, p.10). The proliferation of imagery around us is inevitably more meaningless as “the increasing opacity of postmodern technology obscures the core operation of the artefact [sic] in favour [sic] of a constructed and frequently unrelated surface appearance” (Moore, 1997, p.29). The authors Who really are the authors? The designers? their employers? The ‘shareholders’ of our built environment? Gatekeepers that control the creative processes? Moore (1997) and Cuthbert (2017) refer to variations of political, business and social agreements as the real drivers of the production and maintenance of our artefacts.
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Lynch referring to the role which architects always assume, once asked of Beinart (in conversation) what gave architects the right to invent form on their own without consultation (Beinart, 2013c, from 00:14:30). This remains a valid question when one considers the current level of criticism levelled against the functional and aesthetic value of our built environment (Griffiths, 2018; Brussat, 2018m, 2018c, 2018b, 2018a, 2018g, 2018i, 2018k, 2018e, 2018m, 2018n, 2018j, 2018c, 2018b). Even Twitter reveals a strong level of awareness in social media (Gnon, 2017a, 2017b) of what urbanity should look like. But as Moore points out there is more than meets the eye. The artefact, according to the social sciences, is first captured by social, business, and political agreements. The architect has always been a puppet of more powerful forces (Moore, 1997). The solution to our dissatisfaction evades us even though we all seem to understand the problem of an “aesthetics of uncertainty” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a). In our globalised world consultation has shifted further away from the individual. People feel less in control of their own urban environment. The devastating mistake many modern architects seem to make is to try and 'create' or manufacture meaning out of nothing, divorced from the context of consciousness (Griffiths, 2018). Fake meaning. Modernism was predicated on the idea that ‘Less is More’(Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig – A Dictionary of Modern Architecture, 2015), yet produced contrived objects and meanings “making things as if they look as if they were made by a machine” [sic] (Beinart, 2013d, 00:30:30). Sullivan who coined the term ‘Form follows Function’ “loved ornament” (Brussat, 2018l; Rustication – A Dictionary of Modern Architecture, 2015; Steel – A Dictionary of Modern Architecture, 2015). Is it that in modern society that has been stripped of meaning, we see this phenomenon where artists and architects are burdened to create existence or identity from empty
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ideologies (What Hollywood Can Teach Architects About Design, 2018; Opinion, 2018a; Opinion, 2018b; Opinion, 2018b; Architectural meanings are nothing but fictions, 2018)? Meaning is the continuation of a story that comes from our unconscious, from our subjective memory of history (Nora, 1989, p.9). But it is not fake history. These are not themes, copies, instancing of this morning’s thoughts from mainstream media, or from the latest scientific journal. Nora refers to “the quest for memory [as] the search for one’s history” (1989, p.13).
Rational, Scientific Sustainability Our modern concept of sustainability seems to be split by two different realities that lack any meaningful sense of mutual purpose. There is what one could loosely term late C20th ‘mainstream sustainability’ which relates to our natural environment, the adverse legacy of industrialisation, out of control development, and the unfolding angst of climate change (Kidd, 1992; Du Pisani, 2006). Orbiting around this is a small architectural ‘clique’ with perhaps some planners in the mix (hard to tell). This body of knowledge focuses on issues affecting morphological and visually related phenomenon of cities through a range of normative and pseudo-scientific research methods. At the architectural base resides the theory of Lynch (2005), whose thought process follows a trajectory along perception and cognition of city form and image. Science as an ally “This notion that science could be an ally is very deeply rooted in the idea of the scientific study of space” (Beinart, 2013d, 00:18:00) and has been promoted by many architectural theorists since the Modern Movement, as well as mainstream media (Architecture in Africa as Science First and Art Second |, 2018). It’s not evident in
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most buildings though beyond the science of mechanical and electrical installations. Orfield responds to an interview question as to why architecture is so reluctant to embrace research and science with: “It’s foreign to them. They’re also afraid that if they brought research into the “design” process, they would get marginalized. Architects have never found it necessary to learn to design buildings inspired or informed by science, because they believe that their intuitive process works well. And they have no useful way to compare this to the more scientific research-based design method, as they have no experience with it” (Pedersen, 2017). “Architects are encumbered, unlike Freud, by not being able to simultaneously produce an experience, as presumably you can with the human brain” (Beinart, 2013e, 1:43:00). Today science is moving closer to practically gifting the creative profession the ability to simultaneously produce experiences in the act of creating. For researchers and many commercial developers, opportunities for competitive advantage are rarely passed by. Marketing sustainability includes solar power, water savings, energy savings, and new building technologies (UCISocialEcology, 2017). Strategies are developed around descriptors such as smart; LEED; green (is it really this easy?: (GreenItest from DD on Vimeo, n.d.); innovation; collaboration; targets (Sustainability, 2018); zero waste; community; well-being; health (Harvard Researchers Detail the 9 Factors That Make a Healthy Building, 2018; Commercial Real Estate Needs Sustainability Performance Reporting, 2018), and performance (Full steam ahead to a Smart and Sustainable City, 2018). But much of this information gets lost on the public. This highlights one of the fundamental weaknesses in science: that “there are an infinity number of facts and most of them are irrelevant” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:42:20). A plane is “no more than a
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million parts flying in close formation, not a single one of which was capable of flying by itself” (Understanding the Soul Of A City, 2018). Aerial imagery such as GIS is advancing rapidly, claiming to “let you study the characteristics of places and the relationships between them (The Power of Where, 2018). For science to have meaning facts have to be relevant or there is no clear sense of purpose (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:42:28). This is true also of architecture: if the science must be relevant, then so too does the theory. The wilful blindness of design theory “Theory is something we have to invent when we’ve forgotten how to do automatically what the theory describes” (Brussat, 2018f, citing Steven Semes, Notre Dame’s architecture school). A side-by-side comparison of four contemporary quantitative theories from the built environment, illustrates how complex design theory has become (Table 1, p.50). This is because design is deeply rooted in unconscious thought. “For centuries humankind lived in culture-forming civilisations, in other words, settlements had a natural order determined by a universally-shared sensibility, thanks to which every illiterate mediaeval blacksmith, when asked to forge a bracket, infallibly forged a Gothic bracket, without needing a teacher of Gothic or a Gothic designer” (Havel, 2010). If theory is wilfully blind, it has the perfect excuse: a perfect storm of modernism and globalisation which has blown since the 1920’s. Efficiency is key; Profit is king, and anything slightly inefficient is value engineered out of existence. The architectural world is largely ineffective as it remains heavily invested in normative theory (Çalışkan, 2017) and intuition. Left by other professions to fend for itself. Specialities like town planning and traffic planning reached a higher level of influence over the built environment. It was only a matter of time before project
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management followed suit. Before long architects were complicit in the language of large plot sizes, setbacks, FAR restrictions, parking requirements, road requirements, etc. Cuthbert rationalises city transformation along economic principles of land supply and capital flow (2017). A system of actors transacting for goods or services (Understanding the Soul Of A City, 2018). Properties merged as wealth spread. Developers grew in size and capacity, able to finance ever larger developments. The entire system looped incredulously back on to the individual. Shareholders feeding of the agglomerated wealth of decisions made out of context. Architects have become onlookers. Today the annexation of our public realm, the spaces bounded by corporate wealth, is virtually complete. The fractals became bigger, while architects and artists became smaller. Criticism of Modernism has spiked over the last few years as frustration mounts at the lack of direction in modern architecture (Corbu’s rant at Neimeyer | Architecture Here and There, 2018; Even Soviets hated mods! | Architecture Here and There, 2018; Modern architecture is crazy | Architecture Here and There, 2018; Modernist architecture only worked for the wealthy | The Spectator, 2018). Beinart attributes this to a lack of formal theory of the built environment (Beinart, 2013a). But it’s never been far from the surface. A banner that reads ‘Less Monotony Please’, a screen clip from 1946 ‘urban ‘propaganda typifies the nature of the long struggle against Modernism (Plymouth after World War II | Architecture Here and There, 2018). “None of the social science theories … has any connection to valuing the built environment as something in itself [sic]. Kevin Lynch is the first of the protagonists of the theory which deals with the quality of the built environment” (Beinart, 2013c,
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00:06:40). Scientists and theorists like West (2011), Alexander (2004), Salingaros (2015) et. al, have pushed for a more convincing, unambiguous approach using mathematical techniques based on biological adaptability, fractal generation, and algorithmic design (Brussat, 2018h). Beinart is critical of this approach, rationalising that, for example, Space Syntax (UrbanNous, 2018; There’s a Science to Foot Traffic, and It Can Help Us Design Better Cities | WIRED, 2014) theory is all just a matter of common sense (Beinart, 2013c). He has a point. Fractal design too itself is not new, having been practised for centuries (Eglash, 1999; What Scaling and Fractals Are, and How Designers Can Use Them, 2012; Fractal parametric models of urban spaces, 2015). “While fractal geometry can allow one to get into the far reaches of high-tech science, its patterns are surprisingly common in traditional African designs” (Bangura, 2000). Despite these ancient wisdoms, modern architecture has persisted in its strategy to look like a machine, beguiled by perceived time and cost efficiencies. Research has uncovered various anomalies stemming from how we design our built environment. Effects such as regularity of pattern (Conversation, 2018) form part of a long list of scientific-led assertions of a correlation existing between architecture and physical and mental health problems. (Human brain hard-wired for rural tranquillity, 2013; Jaffe, 2012; Berman et al., 2012; Ulrich, 1979; Citizen science research investigates neighborhoods’ effects on well-being - Scope, 2018). Efforts to restore the effect of ‘sick buildings’ do make a difference as “building design transitions from an object-driven to an experience-oriented model, [unlocking] the restorative powers of perceived open space to reverse the rise of compressed urban footprints” (Mind over Matter, 2017). Many theorists and practitioners also argue for biophilic design (EcoKnights, 2012; François, 2017), or a vernacular approach to architecture (edX, 2016). The
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adoption of a bottom-up approach, away from big ideas to small ideas and interventions, to generate good urban form through individual effort (Massive Small Collective, 2018; Batty, 2012; Caperna et al., 2011). These measures also benefit the concept of adaptability. Adaptable morphology is one of the main reasons for the popularity today of some of the densest Nineteenth Century built environments in Europe (A 19th Century Proletarian Citadel in Paris (Part 1), 2012). These “hives of vibrant activity” possess “undeniable charm” (O’Sullivan, 2018). Many African cities too possess this sense of vibrant activity (Osman, 2018). Attempts are often made at restoring urban fabric (Scally, 2108) while on the educational front, at refreshing architectural education system. Visual sustainability can be seen in the move away from ascribing value to “aesthetic ideas and presentation techniques” and more aimed at meaning (Dickinson, 2017; National Civic Art Society, 2018; Salingaros, 2017). New Urbanism (Hardy, 2018) and the New Urbanist theory of the ‘transect’ is an example that has gained a level of popularity for its attempt to help counter the problem of “specialities … that don’t talk to each other” (Steuteville, 2017) or breakdown in building diversity in scale and typology (Dan Parolek, 2018). The wilful blindness in political structures in a process induces a costly silo effect (Farr, 2009, 00:07:50), exemplified in an example “where there were three ministries with three projects in the exact same place, not knowing of the existence of the other projects” with a combined value of 52 million dollars” (Aravena, 2014, 12:24). Farr illuminates some interesting examples of both shortcomings and successes in the practice of building sustainability and sustainable urbanism (Farr, 2009, 00:12:00; 00:14:50; 00:28:45). Salingaros calls for greater dependency on a system of coding the built environment beyond the “static” New Urbanists techniques
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advocating self-generating dynamic coding (UTSA - The University of Texas at San Antonio and Salingaros, 2015). One suspects however that modernism is far too well suited to capitalism for there to be much meaningful change soon. Reconciling the differences The ‘thing’ about science is: “Even a scientist is a human being. So, it is natural for him, like others, to hate the things he cannot explain. It is a common illusion to believe that what we know today is all we ever can know. Nothing is more vulnerable than scientific theory, which is an ephemeral attempt to explain facts and not an everlasting truth in itself” (Jung et al., 1964, p.92). We live in an age says Koh “where science becomes art and art becomes science” (2013, p.35) in a process where we are required to “adapt and co-evolve” (2013, p.36) Koh highlights the weaknesses in how science is harnessed in our built environment: “It is not that we should avoid being scientific, it is just that we should avoid old-scientific: reductionist, deterministic, instrumental and arrogant. There can be a science of design but there cannot be a scientific approach to design. That simply does not work. We should not confuse science with scientific method and remember that the aesthetic approach is also a legitimate approach to truth. That is the wisdom of Classical China and Lao Tzu." (2013, p.35). Peterson follows the same thought process, arguing that the facts don’t tell us what to do with the facts (2017g, 00:09:12). “The scientific process seems to strip the subjective from the phenomena … so what you feel about the chair is not relevant to the objective existence of the chair” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017g, 00:05:54). Over fifty years ago Jung had warned of “the deficiencies in our understanding of emotionally charged pictorial language. For in our daily experience we need to state things as accurately as possible, and we have learned to discard the trimmings of fantasy both
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in our language and in our thoughts thus losing a quality that is still characteristic of the primitive mind” (Jung et al., 1964, p.43). Alphabet’s “Sidewalk Labs' plans to build a high-tech urban district in Toronto spells a breakthrough in the idea of a "sensing city “experiment” (MIT predicts 10 breakthrough technologies of 2018, 2018), and Amazon’s new headquarters (Cohn, 2018) are examples of top-down deterministic interventions in cities (Badger, 2018; Harrison, 2018; Hopkins, 2018). Social Cognitive Theory (Bandura, 2001) highlights Alphabet as a method of analysing how buildings affect interaction and behaviour change. “From a moral perspective, though, built environments as behaviour change instruments raise issues” (Buday, 2017b, emphasis added). Other professional bodies too play a role in linking theory with practice (Surveyors, 2018). Image according to Lynch is comprised of Identity, Structure, and Meaning (Beinart, 2013b). Meaning is the most difficult of the three concepts to understand (2013c, 00:11:00). This makes sense in terms of meaning that cannot be manufactured or created. It already exists and is found, if we know where to look, in a world of abstraction and meaning: the world of visual sustainability.
Visual Sustainability “Wonder and an awareness that things are not self-evident are, I believe, the only way out of the dangerous world of a civilisation of pride” (Havel, 2010). All over the world the spaces between buildings are being filled with “blobs” of pride: “When I see this thing, I think the city has created a monster,” says street vendor Woojong Suk (The ‘spaces between buildings’ – Seoul’s first architecture biennale | Art and design | The Guardian, 2017).
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The richness of our visual world has been associated with, and rests at the centre of, our very ‘being’ (Bower, 2018)— spanning cultures, time, and space. “The world of visual experience is often characterized as being immensely “rich” that if properly measured “will open our eyes to the true richness of experience and to its neuronal substrates” (Haun et al., 2017), referring to research into “the neural correlates of consciousness” (Koch et al., 2016) and “the neural basis of phenomenal experience” (Tsuchiya et al., 2015). Huan suggests, in contrast to Peterson’s views, that the idea that “the amount of visual information observers can perceive and remember is extremely limited” (Haun et al., 2017). He however supports the idea that “visual phenomenology is immensely rich” urging that “we should not treat phenomenology as a doubtful hypothesis, but as a thing to be “explained” (Haun et al., 2017). Visual information is a strange phenomenon. Sometimes the most well intentioned interventions in cities are visually less stimulating (Highways are closing and turning into boulevards and parks - Business Insider, 2018). Visual coherence is more important in some ways than the function of the space, because the function of the space will always contribute to visual coherence, and not the other way around. Even if highways are torn down, it still remains lost space (Trancik, 1986) if visual coherence is lost. Shannon Mattern (Ether and Ore: An Archaeology of Urban Intelligences) reflects on visual communication in clay and stone, seamlessly integrating storytelling into buildings: stories that are “Old and Analog” still active in the past; while today the floodgates of “New and digital” media are fully open. Archaeology is a recording and archive of meaning, of past and future, sensory history, and materiality of space
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(Columbia GSAPP, 2018a). This ties in perfectly with the meaning of urban visual sustainability as coherent integration of meaning. More than a building Our attention is drawn by Peterson to multi-levels of meaning revealed through the process of tools and options. Citing Piaget’s work, Peterson refers to the concept of what remains constant across transformation (2017k, 00:48:00). His concept of transformation is an interesting concept in the built environment. Is a concrete building the same as a glass building? Yes, because the transformation is still a building. In a new age of artificial intelligence, at what stage will the duplicity of transformation change the meaning? Is the building still a building or has it become host to other equally competitive functions? An interesting angle of enquiry is in “making software the focus of critical attention rather than the technologies it enables” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.3). One can visualise a building as a giant robot, interacting with other robots around it. Stripped of physical attributes you have sets of instructions beaming out like a lighthouse: navigating civilisation through complex behavioural patterns. How is this relevant to visual sustainability? Its relevance lies in the fact that the external appearance of our objects are sets of instructions in themselves, both physically and through their abstraction. As Jung points out: “We are born into a pattern. We are a pattern … our biological function follows a pattern” (Psychology Library, 2017, 00:3:05). Our cities are patterns (of behaviour) (Understanding the Soul Of A City, 2018). “The patterns we observe around us affect our internal functioning as human beings” (Fractal parametric models of urban spaces, 2015). Batty’s city “turning into a constellation of computers” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.12 citing Batty, 1997, p. 155) represents a real machine for living in. Software “can
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exhibit some of the characteristics of being alive” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.5) in a “a new age—Greenfield (2006) refers to this as everyware—in which computing becomes pervasive and ubiquitous. In this new era, software mediates almost every aspect of everyday life”(Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.9). An everywhere that is nowhere, in a visual world generated by software. Updating meaning For visual sustainability humans need to ensure that their association with meaning updates as society changes. This occurs the processes of the unconscious state of being, dreams and storytelling. Why? To avoid tearing apart meaning. To avoid urban schizophrenia. To avoid nihilistic expression or existence (Brussat, 2018d; François, 2017). Humans are experts in mass imitation (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:50:10). The artefacts we create, these “coded objects” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.9) unless imbued with some deeper collective meaning are easily transformed into meaningless imitation, evidenced in modernist architecture and urban space. The world as a machine to live in represents perhaps an even greater existential threat: a world of artificial intelligence. Darwinian principles represent a more sustainable model: “You can’t predict which way the environment is going to go, and so what you do is you take your structures and vary it, and you throw those out into the world … and so when you think about the future, what you’re doing is generating a multiplicity of potential environments and then you’re generating a sequence of avatars of yourself to live in those fictional futures” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 1:01:50, emphasis added). Colloquially known as ‘Look before you leap’. Our symbols and artefacts, like buildings, may be thought of as representations of ourselves or more importantly, expressions of the entities they
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represent. During the process of designing a building the designer inhabits variations of the future until the design is finalised. While buildings have a finite life, our inability to stop reimagining the building means that the simulation seems to keep running even after being built. Referencing sustainable architecture Guy and Farmer point to the fact that “… there is “interpretative flexibility” attached to any artifact [sic]: It might be designed in another way” (2001, p.146, citing; Moore, 1997, p.25). Future proves past “These subliminal aspects of everything that happens to us may seem to play very little part in our daily lives. But in dream analysis, where the psychologist is dealing with expressions of the unconscious, they are very relevant, for they are the almost invisible roots of our conscious thoughts. That is why commonplace objects or ideas can assume such powerful psychic significance” (Jung et al., 1964, p.43). If what Jung quoting Franz Marc once said is true today as it was over fifty years ago, that “the art that is coming will give formal expression to our scientific conviction” (Jung et al., 1964, p.261), then Jung’s declaration that “this was a truly prophetic saying” (1964, p.261) is all the more meaningful over fifty years later. This aligns with Walker’s sense of meaninglessness or ‘unsustainability’ that he describes as having grown from the 1500’s into modernity (TEDx Talks and Walker, 2013, 00:02:30). The problem of meaning in our visual world is becoming confused with behaviour where: “Instead of people in control of creativity assisted by computers, parametricism gives computers the central role, with architects playing secondary characters” (Buday, 2017a). Buday’s entertaining storytelling leads from traditional hand sketching to computer-aided design to human-aided design to behaviour-aided design: “Our hero sits at a desk mousing through CAD and HAD. Satisfied, Dave clicks EXPORT TO BAD. Up comes his design in a video game” (2017a).
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We used to build intuitively by watching our neighbour. Instead we have Virtual Reality (TEDx Talks and Ellard, 2011; 5 Architecture Offices Using VR to Present Their Designs | ArchDaily, 2018); BIM (Dickinson, 2016); and CIM: “like SIMCity, but for Real Cities … a fully integrated, semantically enabled “super-BIM” 3D city model that hyper-connects users to any contextual project data source or analysis tool—static or dynamic, spatial on nonspatial—from buildings, to roads and public spaces (open data), to streetlights (sensors/IoT), to people on the street (social media)” (Cityzenith, 2017). Today software has “enabled new forms of creativity, knowledge production, and artistic practice; opened up original ludic possibilities and ways of recording personal experiences and memories” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.11; Gatys et al., 2015; Perceptual Losses for Real-Time Style Transfer and Super-Resolution, n.d.). “Artists essentially use an artificial intelligence technique, evolutionary algorithms, to create artwork digitally” (Artificial Intelligence, 2018). Whether replacing human traits with computer simulation is possible remains to be seen: “You cannot simulate what you don’t know” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:30:40).
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Figure 8. Ontological elements of visual sustainability Visual richness, visual aesthetics, and visual meaning. Visual meaning produces visual sustainability.
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Rapid urbanisation or: Squashing people into cities The importance of visual sustainability should be seen in the context of the phenomenal growth of our cities: “Every week from now until 2050 over one million people are being added to our cities”, and by 2050 over 75% of the world’s population will be urbanised (TED and West, 2011, 00:01:30). A city is the realisation of the physical manifestation of our activity or interactions. Geoffrey West refers to the need for “a scientific theory of cities” (TED and West, 2011, 00:02:04). For West, life consists of networks, and cities are simply physical manifestation of people: “We are the city” (TED and West, 2011, 00:13:20). If this is true, then cities are a compression of consciousness. Compressed life. Sustainability measures are focused on developmental and environmental issues that exclude the visual effects our built environment will have on our future physical and unconscious well-being. If we are the city, then visual meaning must play a central role in its creation. In ‘Ways of Knowing Cities Networks’ (Columbia GSAPP, 2018b) Wendy Chun discusses cities as networks, not only of people but in terms of how “cities can be analysed through the networks” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018b). Networks are important to understand urban space: “Networks map and abstract movement, they map and abstract space” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018b). West’s approach in quantifying urban studies as a super-linear phenomenon is criticised by Chun for being abstractions of real world problems (Columbia GSAPP, 2018b). Science does not understand people and their problems. It’s not clear what we expect when we squash people into cities, then strip their surroundings of meaning. While meaning is like the luggage we pack for a long journey, sustainability is like leaving. We all must leave sometime. Fortunately, we do
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get to choose what to pack. In today’s cities though we face the consequences of not having been allowed to pack our own luggage. The power of meaning Public perception of objects that clearly try to express meaning provides valuable information about visual sustainability. One example of how people question contemporary meaning is captured in a video blog about a “Massive New Death Symbol In London” (swilliamism, 2018; ‘We face identical problems to people building a skyscraper,’ says Christo, 2018). How is visual sustainability related to other forms of activity? For example, what can be understood from Bermondsey being named London’s best place to live (Frost, 2018)? Then there are examples of buildings with what one may consider having little by way of visual richness. One such is a complex associated with Jane Jacobs, the Greenwich Village complex (Gratz, 2017; Vitullo-Martin, 2007). Blank walls facing the street, featureless windows, little connection with the public pavement. Clearly then, meaning can overrule any deficiency in visual richness. A study of happiness in urban spaces carried out in Brisbane, Australia reveals urban form in conjunction with open space, historic architecture, and buildings with character, are the strongest indicators of urban happiness (Pringle and Guaralda, 2018). Peterson objects to the term happiness as having any meaning, preferring to associate meaning with suffering and a deep sense of moral value and responsibility (2017h). Evidence of the deep concern for the visual health of our urban surroundings is not limited to ideology, countries, cultures, discipline, or scale. The problem of restoring city attractiveness due to urban blight lies in the contradiction of what
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caused urban blight in the first place. The attractiveness of the city (Mzamo, 2018). These contradictions become more apparent despite different sets of criteria being analysed. For example, another urban study which is free of urban blight but “devoid of any setting for meaningful human activities” (Zafarullah b Mohamad Rozaly et al., 2018). Meaning cannot be compartmentalised. Deficiencies in visual richness exists in both environments. This suggests that the cause of the problem lies in visual meaning and not in aesthetics. Building blocks Building blocks have no meaning, it’s what you do with them that counts. In practice one would expect Lynch’s five spatial concepts (2005), and Alexander’s fifteen principles (Unified Architectural Theory, 2015), to provide an excellent foundation for the building blocks of visual sustainability. But no-one seems to use them. Perhaps all they are proxies. Each of their individual elements represents a concentration of activity that is necessary to support visual richness of life, a proxy of sorts to then bridge ‘the divide’ between past and future (Figure 7). Meaning is still needed to bring life to these physical constructs. What then brings meaning? The instinctive answer is that only people can bring meaning. We need to study people to understanding sustainable meaning; we don’t need to study artificial intelligence to understand people. Urban anthropology “is seeing a resurgence” (Consider Anthropology in Your Next Urban Design Project, 2018) of human value over technical capability (Caprotti, 2018). Let us consider some additional building blocks: •
The past (history or memory)
•
The future (tools and options; stories and mapping)
•
Understanding negative design, complicit in stripping away meaning
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•
The presumption by designers that think they can design an entire city. Havel reflects on how architects “started planning various happy cities with separate zones for housing, sport, entertainment, commerce or hospitality, all linked by a logical infrastructure. Those architects had succumbed to the aberrant notion that an enlightened brain is capable of devising the ideal city. Nothing of the sort was created, however. Bold urbanist projects proved to be one thing, while life turned out to be something else” (Havel, 2010).
•
Reconciling Past (‘memory-meaning’) and the Future (‘mapping-meaning’) (Figure 7) as sustainable devices. In the same way that morphology (reflective process) and urban design (active, future-oriented process) are reconciled as design devices (Marshall and Çalişkan, 2011, p.416).
•
Continuing the analogy provided by Marshall and Çalişkan (2011, p.417), the outputs of history and memory acts as inputs of visual sustainability. Normative theory and human commentary throughout the ages suggest this to be true: we need a Past to live into the Future. Technology on its own will not bring success. In visual sustainability do the spatial elements drive the activity and meaning,
or does the activity activate these spatial elements and therefore activate the meaning? Both conditions are probably likely to be true. One can imagine that a single business, or a mix of uses, can cause walkways, lanes, and roads to converge over time. The opposite is equally true: that a unique street network may attract business to locate along it. The businesses attract the network; and the network attracts the businesses. This link between form and function is the basis of Space Syntax theory: “that, other things being equal, the key determinant of movement in the lines that make up the city is the spatial configuration itself. How each line relates to others. We call this
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phenomenon, of the degree to which movement is shaped by the urban grid, the law of natural movement” (UrbanNous, 2018, 00:08:00). Space Syntax describes itself as being “science-based; human-focused” (2018, 00:56:00). They best represent scientific progress in architectural theory and human spatial dynamics. Christchurch provides an excellent case study of the relevancy of space syntax theory in explaining how historic layouts aid in self-healing a network of human life (2018, 00:47:00). The term ‘sticky’ streets refer to how through traffic is slowed down in a way that encourages a process of ‘pausing, stopping, and shopping’ in High Streets. How does meaning become sufficiently ‘sticky’ to manifest in of any of the elements identified by Lynch, Alexander, or Space Syntax theory? Other interesting influences on visual sustainability include: o Salingaros explores practical implementation of the mathematical approach in a 10-part case campus design series (Salingaros, 2018). o The SCALES core principles: Design for Sustainability (DfS) c.1990’s (Spangenberg, 2013; DEEDS-24-core-principles.pdf, n.d.). DEEDS: “DEsign EDucation and Sustainability. o Negative or ‘lost’ space surveys and methods of transforming these into positive, liveable space (Callister et al., 2018; Urban R+D, 2017). o Support from governments and businesses for United Nations SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals) (UBS, 2018; SDGs .:. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, n.d.; Bebbington and Unerman, 2018).
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Table 1. Complexity of architectural theory
Landmark
Levels of scale Strong centres Thick boundaries Alternating repetition Positive space Good shape Local symmetries Deep interlock and ambiguity Contrast Gradients The description of Roughness space The theory of Echoes natural movement Cities as The void movement economies The Simplicity and simultaneously inner calm multi-scale city The dual grid Not-separateness
1960 Lynch
1983 Space Syntax
Path Edge District
Node
2001 Alexander
Alexander’s ‘Fifteen Fundamental Properties’ Biophilia Complexity Convex space Design patterns Fractals
Scaling coherence
Symmetries 2010 Salingaros
Proxies of meaning: 4 quantitative urban design theories side-by-side. Building blocks have no meaning, it’s what you do with them that counts.
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Ⅱ Why we see
While “half of the sensory information going to the brain is visual” (Kandel 2012, p.238, cited in Hollander and Foster, 2016), “we don’t see with the eye, we see with the brain” (Allen Institute and Koch, 2013, 00:54:25). “42% of the brain is occupied with perceptual vision, we see billions of pixels - not pictures - coded into … the brain” (Beinart, 2013f). “Object recognition is no trivial task. A visual image doesn’t enter our brains as a visual photograph, rather it is like a grid of pixels on a digital camera, an array of millions of numbers indicating light and colour on our eye’s ten million or so photo receptors. As you walk down the street billions of bits of information strike your field of view. That view refreshes itself continuously as objects move, lighting changes, or you shift your eyes or body. Still the briefest glance is often enough to recognise even the never before seen objects. In a fraction of a second its visual input runs from the retina through the increasingly higher levels of the visual stream until it reaches the cognitive regions of the brain” (Beinart, 2013e). The relationship between these pixels, existing as a form of raw data and our sense is less well understood. Given that neuroscience itself cannot adequately explain what exactly goes on in the brain (Koch et al., 2016) this section expands on Peterson’s observations of perception from section 1: focusing more on meaning. Structural and visual dualities The duality of sight through left and right hemispheres of our brain imitates the structural duality of our bodies. It is generally accepted that our visual world requires the interaction between the left hemisphere (representing unconscious or dream recognition) and the right hemisphere (the rational or logical) of our brain. We all
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need this function for survival (Koch et al., 2016). For Jung, the duality of observing the world was between the tangible objects and a world of images. The image world he referred to as fantasies, which he called facts. The experience is a fact and the objects we see around us all started off as fantasies (Psychology Library, 2017, 00:10:00). This makes sense. Science has yet to prove those thoughts that plotted how to bring meaning to those thoughts. In ‘Getting Lost’, Ellard refers to his experience of the mental connection between the duality of place and space where mind is divorced from reality: “my mind was leaping effortlessly from place to place and from time to time, as my feet were making this path along the beach … combining what we see with what we think about, what we see with those mental leaps through space” (TEDx Talks and Ellard, 2011, 00:01:40; 00:05:00). Peterson supports the common held belief of the duality of the brain. That the right hemisphere concentrates on subjectivity, processing our unconscious dreams while the left reconciles objective, rational thought - our waking hours. He asserts that both borrow heavily from each other and borrow interpretation and meaning biologically through our nervous system, to the extent that our brain is not in fact confined to our head, as we tend to perceive it to be. Our brain functions throughout our body. Our brain we think is situated towards the back of our head, yet often there is a sensation that it could be towards the front, near the eyes, or down towards our shoulders (2017m). We accept the duality in our perception between physical matter and unconscious matter. There are two systems of perception, the conscious and the unconscious. Visual sustainability relies on meaning. Meaning is as much part of unconscious perception which relies on our seven senses.
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Our seven senses “Traditionally, we talk about having five basic senses: smell, hearing, touch, taste, and vision. Scientists today actually recognize more, including ones of gravity (McCredie 2009) and texture (Gallace and Spence 2014) (Hollander and Foster, 2016). The meaning of meaning in visual sustainability must be closely connected with research into “the five sensory systems introduced by Gibson (1966): the visual system, the auditory system, the taste–smell system, the basic-orienting system, and the haptic system” (Measuring human experiences of public spaces: A methodology in the making | Conscious Cities, 2016; Gibson, 1983). Through our seven sense we are able to understand what value means. Value first The thought of people as magnets moving around through our urban environment, able to attract data that has value or specific contextual properties, comes to mind with Gibson’s characterisation of “perception as an act of picking up information” (Ben-Zeev, 1981, p.119, citing Gibson). This acting on information links up with Peterson’s behavioural analysis, predicated on acting out sets of instructions: “When people looked at the world, they saw value first, inferred, object second. So, for example for Gibson, if you’re standing by a cliff, you don’t see a cliff and think about the fact that you may fall, then feel frightened. You see a falling off place and part of the seeing of that, part of the act of seeing is being afraid of that. Because your eyes are connected right to your emotional system and part of what your eyes do is tell you what the object is. But your eyes do all sorts of other things like they prepare you for action, they prepare you for gripping, they prepare you for emotion, and none of that action requires the existence, necessarily, the existence of your perception of the object” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017i, 1:11:45).
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The logic follows that, for example when we are tired and hungry, what we see in a restaurant is its utility as a place to rest and eat. Designers of buildings are best placed to focus on the value of the function of the space above all else. The concept advocated by Salingaros et. al of an adaptable architecture of space is a sustainable idea. Any space should be able to reflect its function. Where building use or occupancy changes the function changes. The value associated with our observation also changes. Architecture does not influence the value of the building or its change of use to us. If we think about what actually occurs architecture exists as a secondary element or sub-system conditioning our behaviour. The question of whether architecture ever acts as a primary motivator in how we see and behave in the built environment is worth considering. The building blocks implicit in value or hierarchy of values, one would think can be based on sustainable design principles similar for example, to Alexanders ‘Fifteen Fundamental Properties’. A set of principles with universal applications that can be used across cultures (2002, 5; Salingaros, 2012, 00:02:42; Bı̇ Çer, 2008). These principles invoke interdependency through nested or sub-systems, which in turn support the concept of value. “Your value system determines the direction of your perception … you live in a framework of perception determined by your values” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017i, 1:07:30). What you value determines what you look at, which buildings, what kind of architecture. “We never think of the world as something that reveals itself through our values, but of course it does, because you look at what you want. You aim at what you want” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017i, 1:08:15, emphasis added). ‘What you want’ the implies consumption of a good or service, but it would be naive to limit this concept. What you want, what you aim for, is as much an unconscious act. We want visual
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meaning. Visual meaning can nest as a sub-system to a higher meaning of value. Peterson describes how these value systems can change instantly as competing interests or environmental conditions demand our attention (2017m). In Peterson’s analysis we want to orient ourselves properly every day, around our values. We want objects around us that reassure us. In the broadest definition of competing or conflicting information, most of us simply aim for a positive future, full of meaning for ourselves as well as for our children (2017a). Constructivist building blocks Dzebic refers to a gradation in perception from a low level of edges and depth; intermediate level of relationships; and high level, when vision becomes meaning (Salk Institute, 2012, 00:02:00, citing Henderson and Hollingworth, 1999). This echoes Piaget’s constructivist theory of how we layer information. The value of ‘abstraction of value’ is difficult to fully articulate, which is why architecture and music are impossible to describe scientifically. “Environments which possess “mystery” are preferred” and this is strongly related to “the concept of knowledge acquisition or information acquisition” (Salk Institute, 2012, 00:02:40, citing Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Biederman & Vessel, 2006), a concept discussed at length by Peterson in his lecture series. It appears that we only acquire enough knowledge or information to the point where we exist comfortably in the mystery: “And that’s a notion of the incomplete ability of the representation system to represent the concept of implicit perception, or the procedural system. You can know that you know something but that doesn’t mean you can describe why. It doesn’t mean you can describe how you know it. And you don’t. How do you focus your eyes? You don’t know how you focus your eyes, you just focus them” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:29:00). And so it is that we know
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when we see the value in a building or listen to a piece of music. Future research must keep unpacking this concept of value and its importance to visual sustainability. Relevancy Peterson refers to a landscape of relevancy that frames our world view. We see only what we can process, predominantly at a low resolution. We ignore the rest. For the time being at least these are ‘known-unknowns’. It’s the interpretation of the pixels, that provides the meaning. Beyond what we see and perceive lies Chaos, the ‘unknown-unknowns’. Chaos is the world we inhabit when our senses have completely shut down. We are incapacitated, frozen through fear, anxiety, or neurosis - failing to comprehend unfolding events that have triggered this ‘zeroing’ in of all previously held value systems and beliefs (Jordan B Peterson, 2017a). The possibility exists that our modern built environment has induced a slow paralysis effect on people. Do we question less of our built environment, incapacitated by having insignificant influence or power? The question makes for an interesting hypothesis. Peterson’s analysis of perception concludes that what we see that is meaningful is narrowly focused and translated into a high-resolution image. Even this high-resolution image remains subjected to both right and left hemispheres of our brain. The phenomenon of sight is perplexing. We hold true every scientific explanation that emerges about vision, yet our experience (we can all speak from experience) and our interpretation of the same events or factual information in front of us, varies in ways that cannot be explained. Peterson in his analysis of psychoanalytical behaviour discusses perception and vision throughout his series of lectures (2017a, 2017h). Understanding the complexity of how we see things is fundamental to understanding how and why it is we create and observe our artefacts.
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Why we arrange them in certain ways. Why we look to validate our existence through these creations. The importance we attach to these objects is almost as important as the need for food or shelter. When we seek positive information from our built environment, we use the same dopamine circuit (2017j, 2:08:50) to get from point A to point B. The tools are the buildings, the options manifest as navigation, in comfort or under levels of anxiety. Do we exist in our cities through what Peterson refers to as a bootstrapping process, absorbing information incrementally until “all of a sudden your computer [the city] is there”? (2017k, 00:55:08). An experience or interaction that repeats itself infinitely, acting “in the world and as you act you generate information; and out of that information you make the structures inside of you, and you make the world” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:56:28). And your world is different to everyone else’s world, held together only by Peterson’s concept of value. One could conclude that not being able to absorb large amounts of highresolution information, if true, does not negate the relevancy of visual richness. Nor of visual meaning. In the same way a computer boots up, the interaction is irrelevant until relevant: until we need to use or access the visual world around us for our own sanity, to maintain positivity and balance, or to record to memory for long-term sustainability. The analogy rings true for our perception of a building or an urban space that we inhabit. We play a mapping game utilising tools and options. When we run into an obstacle and the game we are in is in error, that new or more real meanings of objects manifest themselves to us. We may then, depending on the obstacle, look for, say, visual richness in the form of higher resolution patterns or proportioning systems like Salingaros’s universal scaling (UTSA - The University of Texas at San Antonio and
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Salingaros, 2014). This will help re-orient us in the manner defined by Peterson and cited in this study in Chapter 1 the sense of meaning is an orienting reflex. Our response is to seek balance and calm as we try to pull back from the level of complexity or chaos, from being overwhelmed by previously unseen layers of information and meanings, both real and imagined. We take our building environment for granted as long as it works for us in sustaining us. Peterson provides an interesting analogy: “why bother paying attention to something that works?” (2017k, 00:31:40). “This object with objective qualities you would call a car [building] but that isn’t actually how you perceive or act towards it. What happens is that, as long as it’s doing what it’s supposed to do [mirror your existence?], which means that its function is intact, not what it is, but its function, then you can use a really low-resolution representation of the thing. A car is just what gets you from point A to point B [a building is just what shelters you from the sun on a hot day]” (2017k, 00:32:20). As soon the building fails to sustain us (the air conditioning breaks down) then it changes from a cooling device back into a building. “Well, what do you know about your car [the building]? Nothing, nothing at all” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:33:00). It is at this point then that one could say a building starts looking back at us.
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Ⅲ Buildings that look back at us
“I want to be a machine” Andy Warhol (Consciousness, Free Will, and Art – Art & criticism by eric wayne, 2014). There is something to be said for “the usefulness of the approach for making the familiar strange” (Mannay, 2010, p.1). A common held belief that when our surroundings become familiar, we stop seeing and take objects for granted. “The concept of defamiliarization was introduced by the Russian formalist Shklovsky who believed that over time our perceptions of familiar, everyday situations become stale but that art can address this automisation by forcing us to slow down our perception, to linger and to notice (Gurevitch, 1998)” (Mannay, 2010, p.9). Art or architecture to help us slow down. This aligns with Peterson’s theory of re-orienting. The restorative value of looking at something as if you have seen it for the first time. Faces A face is something that can always be looked at for the first time. Not a single face is the same. Faces automatically attract our attention independently of task and ahead of any other feature (Allen Institute and Koch, 2013, 00:13:00). The face tells us what someone else is up to (Jordan B Peterson, 2017i, 00:12:45, 2017k, 00:50:45). “We continually hunt for faces or face-like objects and visually and psychologically attach to them without effort” (Sussman and Hollander, 2018). Do we look at the ‘faces’ of buildings, so that we can determine what’s looking back? Cooperation or threat; hero or villain? These concepts are implied in a two-way ‘conversation’ described by Peterson (2017k, 00:51:55). The visual saliency (Allen Institute and Koch, 2013, 00:14:00) of faces. Software has even been
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developed to “perform facial recognition on buildings … architectural biometrics” (I Run ‘Facial Recognition’ On Buildings To Unlock Architectural Secret, 2018). An interesting observation is made that affects how older buildings were constructed: “This evidence called into question previous assumptions that buildings, like a sculpture or a painting, are primarily influenced by just one person” ” (I Run ‘Facial Recognition’ On Buildings To Unlock Architectural Secret, 2018). The fact that buildings are the product of many people, each contributing in unique ways may influence the concept of visual sustainability. Do we for example see idiosyncrasies in older buildings precisely because we recognise the interventions of individuals? A process of adding meaning during the life of its construction, and afterwards. Facing interactions “Knowledge does not begin in the I, and it does not begin in the object; it begins in the interactions… There is a reciprocal and simultaneous construction of the subject on the one hand, and the object on the other” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017k, 00:53:40, citing Piaget, emphasis added). The interactions during construction. The interactions after the builders have left site. These interactions produce visual meaning. Visual meaning is based on interaction, not on the subject or the object in isolation of its surroundings. In the traditional sense of building things, it’s in the interaction that the stories are told. In cities, buildings must fulfil their role for interaction to take place. “Biometrics tell us that people like to look at other people most, which certainly qualifies as what we already know intuitively. We look at people because people’s faces are the kind of detail that is most interesting to the brain. So, our experience of places and individual buildings are more pleasing when the places have more people in them and when the buildings have details that suggest
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the human face or simply more detail rather than less detail” (Brussat, 2017). Perhaps this also makes sense in terms of duality of meaning. According to Peterson observing people’s faces provides clues about people’s intentions. Our surroundings today represent “the same circuits that were used when we were out in the forest, or even in the trees, the same circuits we used to parse up the world then, into safe territories. And the place where predators loom, is the way we parse up the world now … it’s become abstracted … but it’s still the same circuit” (Jordan B Peterson, 2017j, 2:08:05). The abstraction of what threatens us is in a way our greatest threat yet. How do we properly identify these threats? Do they manifest in the way buildings appear to be aloof, non-communicative? Or is it more to do with influences driven by big data, algorithms, software, and hardware (Twenty Years Later, Everything Is The Truman Show | Vanity Fair, 2018). Are we under the illusion that big data somehow puts the individual in control? (Movers and shakers: New digital executive roles for Cameron Brill and Richard Kay - CIO New Zealand, 2018). In terms more specific to buildings, current research into biometric analysis of urban form is at the forefront of understanding what it is that looks back at us (Sussman and Ward, 2016, 2017; The Neuroscience of Architecture: The Good, the Bad—and the Beautiful - Historic Properties and Traditional Architecture | Traditional Building, 2018): “People don’t tend to look at big blank things, or featureless facades, or architecture with four-sides of repetitive glass. Our brains, the work of 3.6 billion years of evolution, aren’t set up for that. This is likely because big, blank, featureless things rarely killed us. Or, put another way, our current modern architecture simply hasn’t been around long enough to impact behaviors [sic] and a central nervous system that’s developed over millennia to ensure the species’ survival
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in the wild. From the brain’s visual perspective, blank elevations might as well not be there” (Sussman and Ward, 2017). Sometimes sameness is found simply in the sameness of typology, especially true for iconic high-rise buildings. The architectural gymnastics become utterly predictable and boring (Not over till fat lady sings | Architecture Here and There, 2018). Often news media reporting exaggerate or confuse visual significance (Owen Hatherley: ‘What is happening at Sewoon Sangga is extraordinary’, 2018). And often the story becomes the novelty (Paris’ Utopian Village Of Concrete Cabbage, n.d.). Faces are unique, and this uniqueness is one of the most powerful and enduring influences on our visual perception. It’s no wonder therefore that we search for faces in our surrounding built environment, even if subconsciously. Facing our shadow The blankness referred to by Sussman et. al contributes to the creeping phenomenon of ‘sameness’ (Chakrabarti, 2018; Eck, 2018) and needs to be tempered by building sustainable places for people (Sussman and Hollander, 2018; Hollander et al., 2018; Hollander and Foster, 2016). We see how buildings start to look back at us (Neglected Utopia, 2016) in all manner of ways: “What Makes Paris Look like Paris?” (Doersch et al., 2014) reveals the ultimate irony of technological progress. The cause of this phenomenon of ‘sameness’ evidently now offers itself up as the solution. The contradiction of algorithms run through Google Street View to try and identify unique features that we are simultaneously trying to destroy; or that we have forgotten. The opposite may also be true: when complication is just as bad for us as blankness. Spline modellers and big data computation produce disturbingly complicated objects, exemplified by “Michael Hansmeyer and Benjamin Dillenburger, Digital Grotesque Grotto” (BREAKING THE CURVE, 2014). While
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Sussmen et. al argue that: “Unconscious brain activity directs our conscious behaviour” (Sussman and Chen, 2017), we see another contradiction as science is being overturned by science. We seem to have gone full circle, as conscious behaviour aided by technology instead attempts to direct unconscious behaviour. Peterson likens the fact that as social constructs we interact in an environment of other people who want something from us while we want something from them. The Piagetian games we play may be true also for the games we play with our built environment. We give form to architecture, music, art, or artefact. These objects (through their function) desire interaction from us. What do we want from them? We want value. We want these objects to enrich our lives through meaning. If these objects are dishonest, then we leave (the game) or we confront the dishonesty (2017i, 00:18:00; 00:23:00). Unless of course our role is to serve our objects. Perhaps then this is the primary sustainable meaning of the objects that we surround ourselves with: to look back at us when we most need them to.
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Ⅳ When a City starts looking back
Figure 9. Looking back The custom-made panoramic camera that has made Google’s Street View possible. Credit Dan Winters for The New York Times (Google’s Road Map to Global Domination - The New York Times, 2013).
“And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee” (Beyond Good and Evil, by Friedrich Nietzsche, 2009). Our cities simply put, are physical manifestations of people: “We are the city” (TED and West, 2011). The connection between these two statements can be found in Jung’s shadow (Jayson, 2015, 00:46:50). If people succumb to their shadow, then we should expect the unexpected. A city that looks back implies a futuristic angst projected back on to the living. Design as a tool is heavily criticised in certain circles (Design Won’t Save the World – Member Feature Stories – Medium, 2018). Described as “the most influential designer of the last century”, the disillusionment of Dieter Rams in the article: ‘If I
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Could Do It Again, “I Would Not Want To Be A Designer”’ resonates in support of sustainable meaning, of visual sustainability: “I always strove for things to be sustainable … I’m bothered by the arbitrariness and the thoughtlessness with which many things are produced and brought to the market …Unnecessary, false, dishonest products” (A Mesmerizing First Look At The Dieter Rams Documentary, 2018; Hustwit and Hustwit, 2015). Smarten up! Smart cities remain an enigma. A system of perfection, conditioning us to behave perfectly. Heavily criticised. There have been attempts to temper their visual appearance (Forget ’smart’—we need ‘context cities’ | CNU, 2018). For Orit Halpern talking about ‘Resilient Hope: Infrastructure, Responsive Environments, and “Smartness”’ (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a), the reward is more about not knowing, being “really interested in uncertainty and epistemologies of speculation that are currently transforming our environments”. She references Songdo, and the contradiction of smart cities. How “the end of the world has never looked better or more profitable [and] … the way that the end never seems to arrive” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a). An “aesthetics of uncertainty” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a, 1:26:42) prevails: sustainability is framed against “the preservation of processes, not lives … In the development of smart cities, every present state is understood as a demo or a prototype of a future smart city … as a consequence there’s never a finished product … Instead infinitely replicateable yet always preliminary versions of these cities exist around the globe … They can never fail because they’re never fully realised … Betting two futures against each other” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a). One might be tempted to say sustainable cities are going through a Darwinian process, throwing up avatars, described by Peterson.
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Trevor Paglen in ‘Monsters in the Smart City’ (Columbia GSAPP, 2018d) discusses concepts such as “invisible images … explosion of visuality”, that surpasses the Twentieth Century rise of mass media and is “characterised by computer vision and ubiquitous sensing, by artificial intelligence, and by infrastructures that are increasingly behaving in seemingly autonomous ways” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018d). This phenomenon is “very different from the visuality of the past, first and foremost because it is largely invisible” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018d). Images that contribute to an unsustainable culture represents yet another contradiction. Images condition behaviour in ever-increasing ways (Art installation promotes mental and emotional wellbeing | Springwise, 2018; Are visitors to malls and Dubai buildings controlled by algorithms?, 2018). “Now the images look at the humans, and more often than not the image itself is actually invisible to human eyes” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018d). But are these images just a form of eye and mind candy? Artificial intelligence, through neural networks, can train neurons to see objects like apples. “People [however] never see in isolation from the social, political and cultural conditions” (Columbia GSAPP, 2018d), something a computer cannot do. Friend or foe Cities should be a visual fantasy of creativity. The unconscious manifestations of our interactions or games. The threat of cities achieving a state of consciousness through big data and software (The Cognitive City, 2018) has always been in our minds, most prolifically examined in science fiction movies and comics. Until now however cities only serve as a mirror. Is this all changing? Anita Say Chan (Urban Filter: Connectivity Declarations and Decentering [sic] Data Futures from Latin American Startup [sic] Ecologies) asks the question: “How did the internet come to know you”? (Columbia GSAPP, 2018a). The internet sees us. It has eyes that follow us (Your city
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is watching you, 2018). We have a map of the world adapted especially for each of us as we move from point A to point B in time and space. We exist in filter bubbles. The question must be asked eventually: will all we see in the future be avatars of ourselves? Technologies that draw or bring places together like phone systems and the internet (Diemer et al., 2018) fill the space between places. This compression of space has become even more significant with instant communication and smart city technology (Dixon and Farrelly, 2015). “What Jürgen Habermas so famously defined as the “public sphere” has become as important as the buildings themselves, not just visually but in terms of visual perception: reflecting a liberty of conscience advocated by Milton (Foer, 2018). These technologies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon appear to have the upper hand: “It took centuries for the public sphere to develop—and the technology companies have eviscerated it in a flash … [as] they weaponize us against ourselves” (Foer, 2018). Today’s personal space is not limited by physical location (Carta, 2018; Your personal space is no longer physical – it’s a global network of data, 2018); but data driven for “the guy who has the most data, wins” (Google’s Road Map to Global Domination - The New York Times, 2013). Even through image sharing we have begun to project experiences on to others: “ … hospitality clients were increasingly demanding designs that encourage sharing on Instagram” (Instagram design guide shows architects how to create ‘a visual sense of amazement’, 2018). The ability to project intent (a superficial level of meaning) on to others and into private personal space will have unforeseen consequences. Carta’s analysis (2018) of information flow extends the discussion about the future iterations and capabilities of Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The challenges facing visual sustainability have therefore moved beyond the traditional
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concept of image and of physical space between buildings. It now occupies an omnipresent ever-changing forum, of urban squares in the cloud. Images are not confined to the projection of personal space. In ‘Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics’ (Columbia GSAPP, 2013) Laura Kurgen and Trevor Pagler discuss the meaning to be found in the explosion of image production and the aesthetics of images, particularly related to satellite imagery. An aesthetics of objectivity becomes a subject up for debate as images become appropriated for different uses (Columbia GSAPP, 2013). This is similar to how Deep Learning is used to automatically rank millions of hotel images (Lennan, 2018). There is the notion that we must understand the patterns that come out of data and need to be more careful in interpreting meaning when image analysis is constructed by algorithms. Algorithms are written by humans which can introduce levels of bias and possibly political manipulation (Columbia GSAPP, 2013). The idea that image and data are interchangeable is very relevant to visual sustainability. Image becomes the data; data becomes the image (Columbia GSAPP, 2013, 1:17:00). How do we visualize something that’s not visual? We know that data can be hidden in aesthetics. Can visual aesthetics be hidden in data? Space is being reimagined in physical environments too: “Code/space occurs when software and the spatiality of everyday life become mutually constituted, that is, produced through one another … If the software crashes, the area reverts from a space in which to check in to a fairly chaotic waiting room” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.16-17). How does meaning remain intact if space is switched out in real-time? A “laptop computer accessing a wireless network transduces the café, the train station, the park bench, and so on into a work space for that person” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.17). “The check-in area at the airport does not facilitate travel; the store does
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not operate as a store. Here, “software quite literally conditions . . . existence” (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011, p.18, citing Thrift and French 2002, p.312). Does science prove the existence of all these abstractions? It is worth considering that as we move into a metaphysical realm, science is confirmed by the existence of our behaviour. We no longer need science to validate the truth about something. The truth is in our action. Our behaviour. Abstraction has become an object in our mind. One which must surely, for the sake of what we hold dear, adopt all the characteristics of visual sustainability. The “Preservation of democracy requires preserving this ecosystem of ideas that has miraculously persisted with us since the 17th century” (Foer, 2018). The concept of boundaries is changing (Zhang and Jacob, 2013; Sayed, 2017): “Modern philosophers, from the late 20th century onward, have continually challenged Cartesian views of one’s skin being the boundary between their essential being and the world. Instead, they propose a concept of embodiment; which considers the human mind and body as one and the body and the world continuously interacting (Dakers, 2016). Technology can take us a step further by bridging the gap between our mind and body (self) and the world” (Sayed, 2017). “The internet of things has blurred the boundary between human, technology and environment; all three have become parts of a larger interconnected system” (Sayed, 2017, citing Greengard, 2015). The object is dead, long live the object. The object is dead, long live the object. How we see things is changing the world. Historically we mapped out our hidden world over telephone party lines. A shared network of eavesdropping and gossip, itself a form of visual sustainability. Perception was meaning. Visual perception was implicit in the communication. Visualising images as we acted out the process of
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connecting across telephone cables spanning hardwood poles crisscrossing an entire country. In Wichita Lineman (Savage, 2017) storytelling and music convey a powerful simple message: giving visual expression to what people couldn't see. They saw with their ears. While telephone or telegraph poles were yesterday’s connectors, today connectivity is instant. Is what we couldn't see more meaningful than being able to access almost anything anytime, anywhere? The protection offered by Sitte’s framed views or Jung's dream states is rapidly being dismantled by technology. It may be costly because seeing everything may mean seeing nothing. Ellard refers to the instantaneous crossing of vast stretches of space through technology, so that “we can not only think about what’s happening somewhere else but we can actually see, we can sense it more or less directly … and the fear is that if you’re everywhere, you’re actually nowhere” (TEDx Talks and Ellard, 2011, 00:09:00). Think about how drones affect our visual world. Our minds can fly with the camera through a world full of objectivity, experiencing a world of subjectivity. Patterns and fractals. Interpretation and dreams. The drone takes us everywhere and we feel connected to it. But where is this leading us? Our images are being torn from our bodies. We still have stories, but we no longer share them. The digital city is already a reality and every city has some form of digital skin growing that highlights the differences between the real city and virtual city (2015). We see how “… new technologies provide inputs from embedded sensors, mobile devices, and databases to enable mapping and locating. Taken together, they allow a digital representation of the city; visually in the form of maps and images; and informationally in the form of lists, recommendations, tags, and categories of what exists in the urban environment” (Rabari and Storper, 2015, p.8). This technique is evident in research using Google Street View “which might be called computational
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geo-cultural modelling” which looks at “which visual elements are fundamental to our perception of a complex visual concept, such as a place” ultimately aimed at “to provide a stylistic narrative for a visual experience of a place” (Doersch et al., 2014). Visual imagery is processed through algorithms that “find visual elements, e.g. windows, balconies, and street signs, that are most distinctive for a certain geo-spatial area, for example the city of Paris”. We are facing a transformation of visual meaning in our lives. “A building is like a computer game. You never know what’s on the next level” … “In the hands of an architect, a video game engine could be a laboratory for emulating and testing design ideas on actual, not generic, users. Put a client inside a VR building inside a game and see what they do, where they go, how they get there. Track their eyes and take notes. Use the game engine’s artificial intelligent functions to simulate building life. Populate spaces with NPCs and turn them loose. Vary conditions by time of day and season, change the weather, play with the thermostat, increase and decrease the number of elevators and stairs, throw in a fire alarm, and rerun the scenario. Then mix things up and do it again” (Buday, 2017a). We must try and keep up by updating meaning with these transformations. To be successful we must do so from within the profession of sustainability: by incorporating the concept of visual sustainability.
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Ⅵ Discussion
Methodological considerations The hypothesis of this study is that a correlation exists between sustainability and visual meaning in the built environment. This correlation points us in the direction of a concept called visual sustainability. Analysis leading up to this chapter is a descriptive study “identifying a problem for further more sophisticated research” (The Doctoral Journey, 2013). Copious amounts of data are available on sustainability. Most of it is irrelevant for the purposes of this study because the emphasis is on environmental and developmental sustainability. Very little is concerned with the visual world that sustains us. The opposite, however is true for visual sustainability. Practically no information exists about the term and no research has been done on visual sustainability. However, there is a rich vein of information on the variables that may support the concept of visual sustainability in the built environment. These include architectural theory, biometrics, and psychometrics. Other variables may include image, emotion, aesthetics, meaning, visual richness, and visual meaning. In this study the influence of all the variables are too complicated and too subjective to pursue cause and effect methods with any certainty (The Doctoral Journey, 2013). Cross-sectional survey designs (The Doctoral Journey, 2013) should be useful initially to add definition to the current problem of: why the concept of visual sustainability is not valued in the field of modern-day sustainability. This survey method should help frame the best strategy for implementing future research methods.
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When looking at 1. sustainability and 2. visual meaning, the key seems to lie in the relationship between the variables, not their differences. Therefore, a quantitative correlational design will establish whether a relationship exists between variables. This will require that a theoretical framework (or theory) be established for each variable first. Because there are multiple variables especially in item 2. visual meaning, this study will follow a methodology for predictive research design (The Doctoral Journey, 2013). The building blocks of visual sustainability will be to discover the following relationships: •
V1 = The existence of an image with a corresponding emotion, and the presence of transcendence (meaning).
•
V2 = The existence of aesthetics with associated visual richness, and the presence of meaning.
•
V3 = The existence of visual meaning and the presence of sustainability.
•
V4 = The existence of visual sustainability and the presence of modern-day sustainability
These variables V1 to V4 will be included in an initial survey of a selected area. A factor analysis FA-1 of the results of the survey will be used to reach a working definition of visual sustainability (V~S). Fractals at a human scale One possible outcome of this study may be to propose a simple device that can be used by planners, politicians, and other gatekeepers, to measure what may be termed the Fractal Index of Scale (FIoS) of any urban area. The proposed device will essentially act as an overlay to inspect fractal-scale relationships in the built
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environment. This proposal is not intended to advance any urban theories associated with fractals. It is simply a form of communication. Fractals offer the opportunity to measure urbanity based on coherence (2D analysis) and scale (3D analysis). Further specialised research may also investigate whether a device like this would work in a three-dimensional environment through an algorithm. This hypothesis asserts that the proposed ‘fractal scale’ can use images of urban density to provide mathematical calculations of proximity to infer levels of visual sustainability. A factor analysis FA-2 will be carried out using these urban images. The results will be analysed in conjunction with FA-1 to establish whether an equation can be used to reconcile V~S with FIoS. For FA-2 the following data was used: •
Urban density values of well-known cities (Figure 14). People per 100HA. (The Most Densely Populated Square Kilometre in 39 European Countries, 2018; Urbanist Lessons From the Densest Neighborhoods Across Europe CityLab, 2018; Rae, 2018).
•
V1 = coherence
•
V2 = scale Suggested terminology:
•
V~S = FA-1 | FA-2
•
hS = human scale
•
fS = fractal scale = population count
•
FIoS = hS/fS
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Table 2.
Lived densities for European countries.
Maximum One-square Country City kilometer population 1 Spain Barcelona 53,119 2 France Paris 52,218 3 Poland Sczczecin 32,752 4 Belgium Brussels 29,100 5 Greece Athens 28,880 6 Sweden Stockholm 26,120 7 Bulgaria Sofia 23,934 8 The Netherlands Amsterdam 23,485 9 Germany Berlin 23,379 10 Czech Republic Prague 23,249 11 Denmark Copenhagen 22,381 12 Italy Naples 22,113 13 Portugal Lisbon 21,823 14 Switzerland Geneva 21,456 15 England London 20,477 16 Romania Galați 19,179 17 Estonia Tallinn 17,375 18 Austria Vienna 16,984 19 Lithuania Vilnius 16,166 20 Norway Oslo 15,673 21 Slovakia Košice 15,379 22 Finland Helsinki 14,933 23 Monaco Monaco 12,564 24 Ireland Dublin 12,176 25 Malta Fgura 11,421 26 Wales Cardiff 11,291 27 Scotland Glasgow 11,069 28 Slovenia Ljubljana 10,504 29 Hungary Budapest 10,451 30 Croatia Split 10,202 31 Latvia Riga 10,123 32 Andorra Andorra 9,300 33 N. Ireland Belfast 8,555 34 Luxembourg Luxembourg 7,213
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(NEW) (NEW) (NEW) population dwellings City Life /HA /HA Rankings 531 522 328 291 289 261 239 235 234 232 224 221 218 215 205 192 174 170 162 157 154 149 126 122 114 113 111 105 105 102 101 93 86 72
231 227 142 127 126 114 104 102 102 101 97 96 95 93 89 83 76 74 70 68 67 65 55 53 50 49 48 46 45 44 44 40 37 31
1
1 1
1
1
1
1
35 Iceland 36 Cyprus 37 Isle of Man 38 San Marino 39 Liechtenstein
Reykjavik Limassol Douglas San Marino Vaduz
5,738 5,439 4,654 2,034 1,947
57 54 47 20 19
25 24 20 9 8
Population per 100 hectares using Eurostat’s population density grid data for 2011. These figures are a measure of density only for the areas in a country that are occupied or lived in. The densest one-square kilometre of these “lived areas”, for each country, are represented in this table.(Rae, 2018; O’Sullivan, 2018b; Rae, 2018). City Life Rankings column: Level 1: “There is a cluster of cities, whose residents are both satisfied to live there and whose livability [sic] based on Mercer index are high” (Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2013). Dwellings per hectare calculated on EU standards (Household composition statistics - Statistics Explained, 2018).
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Table 2 shows existing data with three new columns added that scale the data down to an urban metric of hectares. An analysis of the combined data reveals the following: •
For the densest one-square kilometre “lived areas”, the mean/average for the 39 countries (cities or built-up areas) is 176 people per hectare. This equates to 76 dwelling units/ hectare (dph).
•
England’s most dense one-square kilometre area equates to 205 persons per hectare (89 dph) which is above the densities for most of Europe. This is well above the average of 103 (44dph) for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
•
The standard deviation for the information collected for all the countries is 112 (or 48 dph). It is important to remember that these figures are only for the densest square kilometre of built-up or “liveable” area in each country.
•
In terms of meaning in visual sustainability: “There is a cluster of cities, whose residents are both satisfied to live there and whose livability [sic] based on Mercer index are high” (Okulicz-Kozaryn, 2013). Further research will help discover the correlation between visual sustainability, perception (satisfaction), and liveability rankings.
•
Meaning in visual sustainability can be argued to be predicated on the visual coherence of cities and the amount of fractal scale at a human level. It would appear to be true from the table, that density in terms of population or dwellings per hectare bears no correlation with ranking or more importantly with inhabitant’s perception. There are other reasons for the wide spread of high-ranking cities in Table 2.
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•
The implication for this study, is that for “satisfied residents” (OkuliczKozaryn, 2013) a stronger correlation may exist between visual sustainability factors, such as visual coherence and city liveability.
•
Further research will establish the relevancy of visual sustainability to the overall modern-day concept of sustainability. Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 12, and Figure 13 show the type of fractal
associated with population per hectare: as an image, not as data. If, as it appears, these fractal images do not highlight how population densities may influence the level of resident satisfaction, then what else may these images be able to tell us? They may be useful in deriving new understandings of factors related to visual sustainability. Liechtenstein is least dense and arguably less coherent. Its fractals are in a state of ‘spatial suspension’. Spain (Barcelona) on the other hand is most dense and arguably more coherent: solid blocks of 'fractals within fractals.’ These images then perhaps infer how the visual sustainability of well defined, meaningful space increases resident satisfaction. This idea is supported by many of the key post-war architectural theorists (Cullen, 1995; Bentley, 1985; Lynch, 2005; Trancik, 1986; Krier, 1991). Some of the main advantages of fractal measurements may be summarised as follows: •
Simple, easy to use
•
Highlights accessibility
•
Identifies fractal silos
•
Movement study based on fractal size
•
A scale of diversity or intensity
•
Retrospective application of existing
•
Possible synergies with space syntax theory.
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The following urban density generated fractal images (Figure 10, Figure 11, Figure 12, and Figure 13) represent the highest and lowest population density examples from Table 2.
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Figure 10.
Image as a fractal measure of coherence
Liechtenstein: least dense, less coherent? Fractals in ‘spatial suspension’. Fractal image using the variable of open space to determine coherence as a factor in visual sustainability. Fractal image generated from LI, 1,947 people/ hectare.
Figure 11.
Density LI, 1,947 people per 100 HA: Figure-ground
Fractal image studying coherence as a variable of visual sustainability. Proximity study; ignores height density. 80
Figure 12.
Image as a fractal measure of coherence
Spain, Barcelona: Most dense, most coherent? Solid blocks of 'fractals within fractals’. Fractal image using the variable of open space to determine coherence as a factor in visual sustainability. Fractal image generated from ES, 53,119 people/ha.
Figure 13.
Density ES, 53,119 people per 100 HA: Figure-ground
Fractal image studying coherence as a variable of visual sustainability. Proximity study; ignores height density. 81
Figure 14.
Lived densities for European countries
Density as fractal measurement. The fractals became bigger, while architects and artists became smaller. Levels of fractality extracted from images of urban density.
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Conclusion This study acts as a precursor to a more competent search for knowledge about visual sustainability in our built environment. Visual sustainability must be recognised for its ontological relevance. Visual sustainability is about reality. It is the source of the river of sustainability, not a tributary. Some of the key ideas to have emerged inviting further research include: •
As fractals become bigger, we become smaller
•
Sustainability is simply the human body
•
Orienting, mapping, and transformation processes
•
Everything matters
•
The value of value
•
The meaning of past and future in sustainability
•
Doing away with gatekeepers: authoring parts of the whole
•
Science and art: allies of sustainability
•
Colour-by-numbers sustainability: time to move on
•
Making sense of sustainability: keep updating the meaning
•
Meaning is the luggage, sustainability is the leaving
•
In sustainability “all things and events are essentially incomplete” (Koh).
•
Buildings are sets of instructions; cities are the sum of our interactions
•
Building blocks have no meaning; its what you do with them that counts.
•
The object is dead, long live the object.
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