Uploaded on 2014-11-03 by virnak

[1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14150379381137617.jpg This photo depicts 3 of the most important factors that form today’s urban life: **People**, **Buildings** and **Transportation**. We can ¬translate this photo clearly as a snapshot of our everyday life in the city, where we can identify these factors interact or even contradict each other. What we can’t see, and it’s the most interesting thing about these factors, is that each one of them has an additional reasoning about their existence at this very single point. To be more specific: 1) We can see here two groups of **people** standing, waiting the sign to walk. They’ re standing opposite to each other and that means they’re heading to different destinations. What is not shown, though, is the **reason why** they are both here at the first place, what is the cause responsible for bringing them together this Sunday afternoon to this specific area of the city. This means that by looking at the picture we’ re, in fact, looking for the information that will help us understand the **dynamics** of the city, viz the reasoning behind these people’s existence here. This reasoning is the “invisible information” we should try to extract so as to provide ourselves with knowledge about the city and its components. 2) We can see here a sequence of **buildings** forming the urban environment in the background of the picture. As architects we are used to photograph buildings in a row usually without knowing what these buildings truly depict for their environment. This picture could stand as an exact example of such an overlooking. And that is because one of the buildings shown here has a special **identity** as a symbol not only for the history of this city but also for the history of the whole country. I’ m referring to the last building at the right, known as “Tower of Athens”, which happens to be also the tallest building in Greece. Such structures were designed and constructed only during the dictatorship imposed in the years 1967-1974. But the **historical essence** of this particular building is not the only invisible information here. What is also important for us to understand is the **reason why** the dictatorship regime had chosen this specific place to erect the structure. This means that we’ re looking for the importance of this place or elsewise the **dynamics** of this place. A quick overview of the photo doesn’t provide us with the capability of understanding these “invisible information”. But it is crucial for the designing of the cities to lean on them. 3) In the upper part of the picture we can see entangled **transportation** wires. ”Entangled“ is probably the key word here. It give us the possibility of making an easy guess and refer to this specific point where the picture is taken as “**junction**”. That would be correct but, though, not enough. If we look closer to the picture we can recognize a sign with the word “ΑΡΓΑ” (which means “SLOWLY”) on it. By making this kind of a remark we can identify an “invisible information” about the nature and the age of the transportation system. We now know that these wires refer to an old transportation system on the ground level of a junction. What we still don’t know is whether this junction is provided with other transportation systems or not. This means that we’ re looking for the importance of this junction which can be translated again as the **dynamics** of the city, in the sense that importance is measured in a qualitive and not in a quantitive way. The knowledge of the material and the immaterial grid of connections between the components of the city is at stake when we’re called to design our cities or future cities. DYNAMICS of the city By analyzing before both the visible and the invisible information the picture gave us, we identified that a crucial parameter for the planning of a city would be the understanding of its dynamics. Creating knowledge about the dynamics of a city is not a static procedure. Components of the city may be static but people’s reaction to them is rather a fluid fact. This means that no design can solve ultimately the request for a liveable urban space, but using these “invisible information” can be of a great help towards that direction. For example, knowing whether the junction of the picture is an important one (according to the conditions we set before about what importance means) for the city could help us design a net of connections useful to those who need to be at that particular point from various other points. Knowing also the reason why these people need to be there could help us plan the space considering their needs and their activities there.