GENERIC CITY - suggestioni per un seminario...

Sim City - Generic City

Prosegue la gestazione della mia ricerca personale sul tema CITTA' nell'ambito del seminario di Dottorato del Prof. Saggio dal titolo La Rivoluzione Informatica in Architettura
Uno sguardo critico.

Questo brano è estratto dal testo di Rem Koolhaas Generic City. Come un piccolo frammento apparentemente slegato (almeno per ora) questa suggestione sarà una piccola tessera del mosaico che mano mano mi auguro di riuscire a ricomporre. Parlare di Città oggi non può prescindere dal parlare della città (con la "c" minuscola): finalmente e drammaticamente GENERICA.

The Generic City breaks with this destructive cycle of dependency: it is nothing but a reflection of present need and present ability. It is the city without history. It is big enough for everybody. It is easy. It does not need maintenance. If it gets too small it just expands. If it gets old it just self-destructs and renews. It is equally exciting — or unexciting — everywhere. It is "superficial" — like a Hollywood studio lot, it can produce a new identity every Monday morning.

The Generic City is what is left after large sections of urban life crossed over to cyberspace…The Generic City is fractal, an endless repetition of the same simple structural module: it is possible to reconstruct it from its smallest entity, a desktop computer, maybe even a diskette…

The Generic City is seriously multiracial, on average 8% black, 12% white, 27% Hispanic, 37% Chinese/Asian, 6% indeterminate, 10% other. Not only multiracial, also multicultural…

The great originality of the Generic City is simply to abandon what doesn't work — what has outlived its use — to break up the blacktop of idealism with the jackhammers of realism and to accept whatever grows in its place.

C.I.O.

Filippo