Seminarweek FS 23: Taking Stock: On the Genealogies of Data-based Design

In the post-war period, the architect and urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis was engaged in the systematic collection and analysis of data on human settlements with a view to applying the knowledge gained to future urban growth. Reconstruction programmes and Cold War policies promoting global economic and technological progress supported Doxiadis’s efforts and encouraged early computational approaches to planning. We will explore the terms and categories of Doxiadis’s approach to analysing the past and present through data, and relate his methods to contemporary data-based practices in urban planning. A one-day workshop with the Technical University of Athens will be part of the excursion; re-enacting Doxiadis’s methods, we will map a series of squares along the current construction of a metro line connecting the university to the city. The aim is to create a time record of the current state and to document the resulting knowledge about the places that will be connected by the metro line, asking about their spatial protocols, and how technical infrastructures, the ecological and the social intertwine and inform urban space.

Cost Framework: C (CHF 501.- bis 750.-)