Chapter 01_Equivocal Emergent

In light of the Marxist idyll where the environment has the ability to change as a characteristic of our time, I came across a couple of naturally occurring phenomenon's where the emergent situation has evolved in a dynamic but apparently obvious way. 

"Each system would have to evolve to manage 'emergent situations,' not 'established' ones." (p117)

Kowloon - The Walled City is an emergent organism.  Hong Kong: At Kowloon's peak when the density reached 1.9milliom/km² (the record for most densely population human habitation in the history of the world) it was possible to walk from one side of the city to the other without ever going to the ground level.  A sanctuary for murderers, drug dealers, prostitutes, money launderers and other deigned fugitives from Hong Kong proper.

Darkness oppressing the bygone Kowloon Walled City underbelly 

Source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9tw0Yrmxjq0tez28LfBfygtgk5KyiBIzB3UKO5RtDraEZ-if07Z5zqcd1kaaF4VNfliJAkMHALsQxPihwefMSVcC6T8l6YlLUQO1aWkhgY08zxtb15MxdCUy-A_crhVqmwU1oySBBTvQ/s400/kowloon_tin_hau.jpg

Kowloon Walled City  

Source: http://www.visualnews.com/2011/01/05/kowloon-walled-city-pictures-and-cross-section/

Cross Sections show how the occupants adapt to the constraints of the walled city, and how the walled city adapts to the occupants. It is a socially (and aesthetically) poignant symbiosis between the two elements of the landscape who must harmoniously co-exist to survive the exile of the city proper.  Interestingly, the area had a below average crime-rate, despite many of the city's hardened criminals living within Kowloon.

Kowloon Walled City  

Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Kowloon_Walled_City.jpg/350px-Kowloon_Walled_City.jpg

The city was torn down by the British and Hong Kong Governments after a decision made in 1987 amid concerns for human sanitation and quality of life.  Today the area is a park, however, relics of the city remain.


The Kowloon Walled City, although perhaps an extreme example of urban negligence, is in fact its own antithesis.  Here, the people of the city were in complete control of the built environment.  Here, confined to 6.5 acres, the people were living in a structured organism by their own program and the environment was shaped by their own choices. Here, The city was capable of a level of self-sufficiency greater than many Western cities spruik today.   
Such accidental "un-designed" architecture shows that it is important for arrangement to be informed by the needs of society.  Fulfilment of these needs will come by no accident: "People do like choice" (Cook, 1970) 
We us architects must recognise this, and endeavour to provide the tools to a successful society, in the words of Alan Stanton (Archigram no. 8) on self-structuring systems: "Designers must look to technology as a basis for determinism.  For long enough the consumer has been demanding choice in everything he buys."  A system is required for its success even if it that system has the users “blithely unaware that they are being provided with the most radical architectural visualisation since Ed Lissitzky…” (Sadler, 112)
Sadler, S., 2005. Beyond Architecture. In. Archigram: Architecture Without Architecture, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. pp90-138. 

PAKISTAN ARACHNICITY

In Pakistan because of flood spiders take haven in trees. The spider-webbed trees inadvertently save thousands of lives, capturing mosquitos carrying malaria which takes a death toll greater than the actual flood.

Source: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/03/pictures/110331-pakistan-flood-spider-trees-webs/

This phenomenon shows us the triumph of a parts-to-a-whole, amalgamated organic system where the outcome indadvertedly fills a gap of a sect in society. 
A desirable outcome of Architecture should be a dynamic one where the purpose and the meaning is constructively ambiguous.