HONORABLE MENTION
HW210 – H URBS
Hybrid Human-Urban Readaptive BidirectionalLy-Relational System Eduardo Eduardo Gonzalez Corrales (ES), Daniel Del Rey Hernandez (ES), Rubén Miguel Águeda (ES), architects;
Sergio Del Castillo Tello (ES), Maria Hernández Enriquez (ES), graphic designers;
Contributors: Alfonso De Sala Ribé (ES), student in architecture, Emilio López Ruiz De Salazar (ES), architect, Eva Teresa Juarranz Serrano (ES), Angela Carmen Juarranz Serrano (ES), Laura Currals Perez (ES), Beatriz Azpilicueta Pérez (ES), students in architecture, Alicia Bautista Martin (ES), architect
Madrid
The project has been provoking an intense discussion about its readability, credibility and specific qualities. The representation of complexity is striking, but its actual complexity has still to be explored. Reminding of Buckminster Fuller’s „think global, act local“ the project integrates local and translocal scales in its development strategy ranging from manifesto-like urban visions to details on the intimate scale of the appartments’ rooms. A set of tools according to different parameters triggers a perpetual accumulation of things (infrastructure, buildings, program) which is in itself transforming due to feedback processes between existing and new elements. The design can be seen as the promotion of combinatory excellence, demonstrating powerfully how we could control an urban process on the site, integrating strongly socio-ecological issues. Yet, the parametric patterns lack a certain specificity which would have to go beyond a generic debate about complex urban design strategies. Unfortunately, a machine beyond subjective intervention seems to be put forward hiding the lack of real intention behind rather general tools. Having a closer look at these tools, they seem to be inadecuate: for example, they do not deal with the parameters of the in-between as a decisive realm of linking things. Also, a couple of strange elements (e.g. palm trees) add a considerable amount of incoherence and doubt about the project’s substance. This, again, leads to the primary question of complexity: is this a really complex project in the sense that it allows to manage a comprehensive brief in the most efficient way so that the balance between the best possible quality and the most economic efforts is optimized? It rather seems that the project adresses complexity through its very mode of representation, enjoying the illustration of complexity in itself. By doing so it misses to address complexity as an exciting and promising operation between different agencies. In the end, we can see a bold narration on complexity as a self fulfilling prophecy, preferring the mapping of generic tools to the creation of specific qualities.