Urban hybrids and the fluid importance of locality
Dimitris Papalexopoulos
Architect, Ass. Prof. Faculty
of Architecture, NTUA
Between the historical
centre, blocked by the continuous reference to the past and the periphery of
the city, exploded through its generic and open character, the rest of the city
assumes the role of a laboratory of the continuously changing cityscape. The propositions
sketching and treating of this city in-between are always defined by the, in
situ, coexistence of contradictions and dichotomies. Past and future,
physical and digital, virtual and actual, renovation and totally new, local and
global. morphing rather than collage (or the
reference to a Form) describe this territory of
continuously transformed and instable
identities.
A changing and
transforming digital reality operates in this contradictory urban tissue, by a
ceaseless virtualization of the existing, by the continuous formation of urban
hybrids.
Through them, locality is redefined, or calls for a critical
redefinition, assumes a new role, does not dissolve herself in global
operational networks.
Locality is density, interface and event, between the building and the
city.
Locality could be related to “mondialisation” as opposed to
globalization and acquire a new critical meaning and function.
The fact is, that
the digital is real and localized. It could be fluid, non linear, non
hierarchical, not attached to a place, with no stable identity, but not without
identity and certainly not out of place.
Urban hybrids, promote the coexistence of the physical and the digital
and with the same movement, the coexistence of the local and the global. Urban
hybrids are public in a local and global sense.
A reference to Derick de Kerckhove with “trans-localism”, bur also to
Hans Vogelaar and Elizabeth Sikiaridi with “idensity”, supports the idea of the
necessity to work towards the establishment of “connected localisms”. Locality
could be defined as a tension between the necessity of an open city and the
search for an (instable) urban identity.
Connected localism works with and
within the existing urban fabric. Hybrid urban public and private spaces could
escape from the logic of global operational strategies and promote tactical,
ephemeral links for creation-oriented events.
As if we could clearly put down the characteristics of these new
connected local spaces, that deny traditionalism, we could note that:
o
They are always interface and through that they dissolve in the
global
o
They support a multiplicity of functions, permitting the global
to be locally present.
o
They are in a continuously evolving
condition related to the changes of activities that take place.
o
They are always in tension because they provoque a continuous
circle of deritorialization and reteritorialization of events.