[chox] Konsens und Organisation

• From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
• Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 00:05:29 +0200

In einer Newsgroup kam grad eine interessante Stellungnahme ruber, wo es
um die Frage geht, inwieweit im Bereich der Stadtplanung partizipative
Planungsprozesse fur partizipative Lebensmodelle hilfreich oder gar
hinderlich sind. Zum verstandnis: Paolo Soleri ist der Planer der
Modellstadt Arcosanti (www.arcosanti.org).

"Cohousing" sind Wohnprojekte, die zwischen einigen wenigen bis maximal 70
Leute umfassen.

Ich finde die Formulierungen vor allem gegen Schlub sehr relevant fur
unsere OHA - Fragen.

Franz



On Oct 23, 2004, Jeff Budderer wrote:

While Soleri rails against sprawl and
over-consumption, this does not mean he embraces democratic principles.
He comes from a modern perspective and embraces many modern tendencies.
One of these is autocratic Architecture.

I don't agree with your assessment that Soleri embraces autocratic 
architecture.  In fact he seems to be one of the few architects around 
who design large scale projects that do not have international or 
modernist glass-tower characteristics.  He may be autocratic in the way 
he runs his business, but I have always seen his designs as extremely 
organic and humanistic. Are you confusing Soleri's management style 
with his designs?


A strong desire to incorporate human scale is also evident in Soleri's 
designs.  No city in its entirety is human in scale.  It is in the 
details, size and proportions of nearby elements that creates an human 
scale.  A Suburban neighborhood could be seen as entirely human in 
scale, but the extension of that into a city, immediately becomes 
vehicular in scale.  Even the great pedestrian cities of the world are 
only human in scale at the micro-environment level.


Urban systems and their respective scales are what makes cities 
function, unless of course, you can find a city where each individual 
is responsible for their own water, waste, food, energy, and other 
resources.  Urban cooperation entails a scale much larger than that of 
the individual.   This is also true of social and government systems.  
That is why cohousing as a model is limited in scale.  When nearly all 
decisions must be made by consensus of all inhabitants, the scale of a 
project is limited.  Cohousing and it's design process works well at 
the right scale, but imagine the time it would take a half million 
people to come to consensus regarding the thousands of decisions 
required for a city design.


This is why finite teams of designers, engineers, citizen 
representatives, and city planners are used for urban projects.  Even 
then, consensus can be difficult to reach, and the resulting product is 
often a watered down compromise.  Design by committee is what you tend 
to see all around you, here in the U.S.  Vanilla cream strip malls, and 
stucco-tacky subdivisions are the common denominator, the result of 
consensus.






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