I am reading the Harvard Design Magazine : Can designers help Non formal Settlements where they talk about the existence of squatters and slum developments as tight clusters or strong units which are hard to restructure or even relocate. They have a lifestyle of their own and the current approach being taken is to help organise that life in the existing state, improve basic facilities without restructuring.
Currently i am exploring everything possible that hints towards the idea of the box.
The box is a landscape (i keep repeating this :) It is a form that i associate to a developing way of life. Life according to and within the box. What is it like? Distopic, Utopic? What are the trends that are currently defining this form / landscape?
BOX = efficiency
So what are the characteristics of this new landscape? What are the various aspects that make up a lifestyle?
Family
Income
Housing
Status
Career
etc
Free Writing off the top of my head
Scenario 1
The Box
Clustering was the new way of doing things. Independence was another.
The more self sufficient you were, the more powerful you felt.
Personalised technologies, services.
Mobile applications, your personalised application to quit smoking..
Your personalised cab, it addresses you, knows you when you call it.
GSM services track you, interact with your movement constantly updating schemes and prices.
Advertising doesn't sermonise any longer. It isn't one way. It includes you. It speaks to you and your experience with your product.
Household applications respond to you, as though they lived in your house. Switches, faucets, lights, the toilet seat.
Housing has divided into formal and non formal.
The increase in population has led to a rise in urban spaces.
Existing metropolitans have become strongholds and the sister cities are the new suburbs. Townships. Satellite towns
The formal spaces comprise of business centres and luxury living. Residences are self provisionary with shopping arcades, plexes etc.
Nonformal living has become more organised. Micro organisms in themselves, they are autonomous, yet share basic common responsibility.
The slums were never demolished and the squatters never discouraged, only made more efficient. "Pirate urbanism", they don't confrom to zoning or service regulations and are
managed by populist governments. These hubs give rise to many non formal industries. Some pockets less developed than others.
Environments were flushed. People grew less consious of technologies that facilitated everyday living. technologies and interfaces had become intuitive reacting and changing
as per the users intuition.
Low cost housing, bloc apartments and communities had allowed for "limited living". The lack of space already put restrictions on child birth. 650 sq the average space the upper middle
class was allowed. These social brackets were more defined due to the lack of space. Space was rationed depending on income or else was considered illegal.
Gregory Stock: To upgrade is human
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