....A Quantum City: Mastering the Generic (Applied Virtuality Book Series, Band 10)..A QUANTUM CITY: MASTERING THE GENERIC (APPLIED VIRTUALITY BOOK SERIES, BAND 10)....

....ludger hovestadt,
vera bühlmanN,
Diana Alvarez-marin,
miro Roman,
sebastian michael

Birkhäuser, 2015

..LUDGER HOVESTADT,
VERA BÜHLMANN,
DIANA ALVAREZ-MARIN,
MIRO ROMAN,
SEBASTIAN MICHAEL

Birkhäuser, 2015....

....Introduction to the book

Orlando in the Cities
–Who is Orlando?

Excerpt from Chapter 1: Welcome to the City

Excerpt from Chapter 2: We Are the World
..

Introduction to the book

Orlando in the Cities
–Who is Orlando?

Excerpt from Chapter 1: Welcome to the City

Excerpt from Chapter 2: We Are the World

....

....Mastering the Generic

We are all migrants
native to the universe.

This is a stage play, a narrative
about us on the planet.
About how we relate to each other
and to the Great Masters among us.
Welcome to The City.

Your views are wide open and bright.
Cities are powerful and challenging.
The heights are lofty
the abysses are deep.

Take a seat!

Here’s the setting:
A planet.
The generic city.
And 100% urbanism.
Raise the curtain!

Everything is connected.
Everything imparts everything.
The self and the other.
Good and evil.
Adland perfection to bad news provocation.
The burning pain of aching souls versus the purity of nature.
Catastrophe and salvation circling each other forever in their merry-go-round.
A Venetian Carnival:
Masks, murder, love, perfidy and beauty.

What should I do,
if I am capable of anything
but have no idea what to do?

A Quantum City invites you to tap into the wealth of indexes belonging to our world. You get introduced to Orlando, a person with no noteworthy qualities, nor any particular properties: an unwritten book. And it’s because of this that Orlando is singled out by the gods. He sets sail from Crete towards Athens in 320 BCE, hoping to find evidence of perfection. Throughout the book you follow him on his Odyssey through Western civilisation; though Orlando never quite ends up where she intended to go. And yet, by the time she arrives in the New York of the 1960s, all the decisions that have been made must be called hers. Orlando’s adventure is to challenge the collective origin of intellectual nature. In doing so, Orlando becomes neither an authoritarian functionary, nor a restless activist, nor a comfortable member of a bourgeoisie, but a citizen of the digital age, a Quantum Citizen.

This is not a book as you might expect. It doesn’t offer a theory about cities; rather it speaks of any theory. It is not engaged in solving problems, but it is outraged at stupidity, at the oppressive and anonymous demand that any solid formulation of a problem should be simple. Our planet may be limited by resources, but it is overwhelmingly rich in intellect. We have abundance, if only we dare trust ourselves...

introduction to the book

The masterwork [chef d’oeuvre] is unknown, only the work [oeuvre] is known and knowable. The master [chef] is the head, the capital, the reserves, the stock, the source, the beginning, the abundance and is in the intermediate interstices among the manifestations of the work. No one produces a work if he doesn’t work in this continuous flow whence sometimes comes a form. One must swim in language, dive in as if lost, for a weighty poem or argument to arise. The work is made of forms, the masterpiece is the unformed fount of forms; the work is made of time, the masterpiece is the source of time; the work is in tune, the masterwork shakes with noises.
(Michel Serres)

We know of so many books about the city, in so many veins: engaged, theoretical, demonic, utopian, fictitious, idealistic, dystopian, green, self-reverential, misanthropic…

Our book is none of these. The only thing our book has in common with all of them is a fascination with The City itself. But we are convinced that each era—including our own—has to reinvent its City. Our relation to The City is never immediate, it depends upon the indefinite article ‘a’ and a characterization of this indefiniteness. The essence of The City does not resolve itself in urbanism. Cities embody political and economic values and thus—albeit never immediately or directly—also the spiritual values of our cultural identities. Urbanism, by contrast, turns into something akin to
a landscap—an increasingly global landscape which doesn’t settle around different ecological compartments where correspondingly it articulates itself according to relevant climates, but arranges itself in such a way that everything circulates within it, creating a dislocated, over-powerful, faceless centre: what some people have called a lone singularity. Urbanism proclaims itself in terms such as ‘green city’ and ‘urban farming’, promising a satiate land of plenty in return for geo-engineering. Sustainability is to become the uniform characteristic of everything urban. A paradise. Globally adjustable, tuned to the given parameters, free of any particular quality, uneventful and lasting.

This book seeks to invert the perspective and to learn to see, instead of an empty centre, a centred void. Because what are these cities? Once we spend some time reading and travelling, we are surprised to realise: cities are—and have always been—places where the gods reside. Where the infinite manifests itself, where the immeasurable finds hospitality. Where there is opportunity and the spirit for comedy and tragedy. Today we don’t want to hear this any more. It’s uncomfortable. It challenges us. Because: cities welcome you—as long as you follow their rules. The City does not express itself by mimicking the continuous cycles of nature. It pronounces its own laws mediately, in articles and paragraphs. Discretion is its principle—if only to preserve a kind of natural continuity that can always make room for the immense. It is not necessarily benign. Cities transcend the familiar rhythms of the countryside.
They are neither conservative nor modern—rather: they are both. They are reasonable and unreasonable, they squander that of which they wish to have plenty. It is a generosity of this daring and speculative kind that they preserve for their own sufficiency. The reality of The City is never just factual. Nor is it ever just fictitious. In a city, nobody can know what the next steps are in relation to what is happening. Instead, these steps have to be learnt and fought four: gained. Each time. Only thus can cities and therefore also the country be cultivated. Cities are the embodiment of our cultures.

And so we look around and we are outraged: about the cultural angst, about the theoretical foreshortenings and the economic needs that are being talked up in despotic tones. About the anonymous demand that ignorance be credited with innocence and expertise be liberated from responsibility. About the contempt for intellect and the absence of any celebration and appreciation of intellect, by and large, in our settings of urban convenience. About the power we give to machines and about simplistically assembled statistics; about the factual, the suggestive, the persuasive. About the lack of research, in favour of development.

At the same time though this book is fascinated by a new world that opens up to us through our technologies, and therefore our skill and, in tandem with these, through globalisation. It is fascinated by the breathtaking speed with which our planet is being urbanised; by the possibilities and freedoms that now, as a result, become available to so many more people than ever before: being healthy, growing old, not having to work too hard, being allowed to learn, to travel, having a say…

We do not believe that Cityness—and with it an indeterminate political, economic and spiritual life—is constituted in the flagging up of injustices, in identifying problems, proposing solutions and implementing optimisations. All these are part of an urbanisation that hopefully makes good and rapid progress. Cityness factors in a development which Rem Koolhaas—with sarcasm or humour?—characterises as the interplay of a generic city and a junk space. In doing so he formulates in an overdrawn figure: one can’t develop a city by improving it. To us, this sounds just like quantum physics: neither particle nor wave, or rather both and. It, more than anything, demonstrates
that measurableness, and everything we associate with it, has to be considered
an intellectual achievement. Quantum physics shows us that we create our
reality in the way we see and measure it. The urban is systematic and balanced, however complexly it might be engineered. But our cities are architectonic. They do not take measures for granted, they challenge them by re-articulating their units, and the magnitudes those units support.

Thus we have put together our anthology, for which we have jauntily and perhaps also somewhat unashamedly picked from the richnesses of our world. We avoid cliches or drastic imagery, we bypass the new or unfamiliar. The book has no concern with completion. It postulates no theory and it proclaims no truth. It is not instrument to everybody’s fear. It does not aim to convince, to teach or to persuade. It seeks no following. It’s not economical.

This anthology is a declaration of love to thought and the dignity of thinking. It honours the fount, the well of thought that is universal in nature, free of ownership and privileges, thought that belongs to the Earth. It hails both practical and theoretical mastery. It responds to how their challenges do not cease to address us. It maintains that we can learn to understand the forms their values take—by measuring up to them. This book is open, curious, disturbed, outraged, fascinated. It knows a lot, experiences a lot. It is like a citizen of our digital world—a sheaf of intelligible probability
and delicate sensitivity, a quantum of City.

The book came about in 2013–2014 during our research residence at the Future Cities Laboratory of the National University of Singapore and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule, ETH) Zürich. Architects and PhD students Diana Alvarez- Marin and Miro Roman collated the majority of the book’s contents. The character and narrative of Orlando was developed and set down by writer and filmmaker Sebastian Michael. Our most heartfelt thanks for their fruitful labours towards the realisation of this book.

Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann Zürich, February 2015

table of contents

Introduction
Editorial Note on Text

ORLANDO IN THE CITIES

PROLOGUE

Preamble
Orlando in Alexandria

I. WELCOME TO A CITY

Orlando in Florence
Famous Travellers
Why Am I Entering a City 000 Walking Around
Meeting Friends
Making some money
What to eat?
Hanging around
Getting angry?

II. WE ARE THE WORLD

Orlando in London
Know Everything
Being Empathic
Being Engaged
Being in Danger
Being Safe
It’s My Good Right

III. PARADE OF MASTERPIECES
Orlando in Paris

IV. GENRES
Orlando in Vienna
Dionysus
Hermes
Hera
Chiron
Athena

EPILOGUE
Orlando in New York
Coda

..

MASTERING THE GENERIC

We are all migrants
native to the universe.

This is a stage play, a narrative
about us on the planet.
About how we relate to each other
and to the Great Masters among us.
Welcome to The City.

Your views are wide open and bright.
Cities are powerful and challenging.
The heights are lofty
the abysses are deep.

Take a seat!

Here’s the setting:
A planet.
The generic city.
And 100% urbanism.
Raise the curtain!

Everything is connected.
Everything imparts everything.
The self and the other.
Good and evil.
Adland perfection to bad news provocation.
The burning pain of aching souls versus the purity of nature.
Catastrophe and salvation circling each other forever in their merry-go-round.
A Venetian Carnival:
Masks, murder, love, perfidy and beauty.

What should I do,
if I am capable of anything
but have no idea what to do?

A Quantum City invites you to tap into the wealth of indexes belonging to our world. You get introduced to Orlando, a person with no noteworthy qualities, nor any particular properties: an unwritten book. And it’s because of this that Orlando is singled out by the gods. He sets sail from Crete towards Athens in 320 BCE, hoping to find evidence of perfection. Throughout the book you follow him on his Odyssey through Western civilisation; though Orlando never quite ends up where she intended to go. And yet, by the time she arrives in the New York of the 1960s, all the decisions that have been made must be called hers. Orlando’s adventure is to challenge the collective origin of intellectual nature. In doing so, Orlando becomes neither an authoritarian functionary, nor a restless activist, nor a comfortable member of a bourgeoisie, but a citizen of the digital age, a Quantum Citizen.

This is not a book as you might expect. It doesn’t offer a theory about cities; rather it speaks of any theory. It is not engaged in solving problems, but it is outraged at stupidity, at the oppressive and anonymous demand that any solid formulation of a problem should be simple. Our planet may be limited by resources, but it is overwhelmingly rich in intellect. We have abundance, if only we dare trust ourselves...

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK

The masterwork [chef d’oeuvre] is unknown, only the work [oeuvre] is known and knowable. The master [chef] is the head, the capital, the reserves, the stock, the source, the beginning, the abundance and is in the intermediate interstices among the manifestations of the work. No one produces a work if he doesn’t work in this continuous flow whence sometimes comes a form. One must swim in language, dive in as if lost, for a weighty poem or argument to arise. The work is made of forms, the masterpiece is the unformed fount of forms; the work is made of time, the masterpiece is the source of time; the work is in tune, the masterwork shakes with noises.
(Michel Serres)

We know of so many books about the city, in so many veins: engaged, theoretical, demonic, utopian, fictitious, idealistic, dystopian, green, self-reverential, misanthropic…

Our book is none of these. The only thing our book has in common with all of them is a fascination with The City itself. But we are convinced that each era—including our own—has to reinvent its City. Our relation to The City is never immediate, it depends upon the indefinite article ‘a’ and a characterization of this indefiniteness. The essence of The City does not resolve itself in urbanism. Cities embody political and economic values and thus—albeit never immediately or directly—also the spiritual values of our cultural identities. Urbanism, by contrast, turns into something akin to
a landscap—an increasingly global landscape which doesn’t settle around different ecological compartments where correspondingly it articulates itself according to relevant climates, but arranges itself in such a way that everything circulates within it, creating a dislocated, over-powerful, faceless centre: what some people have called a lone singularity. Urbanism proclaims itself in terms such as ‘green city’ and ‘urban farming’, promising a satiate land of plenty in return for geo-engineering. Sustainability is to become the uniform characteristic of everything urban. A paradise. Globally adjustable, tuned to the given parameters, free of any particular quality, uneventful and lasting.

This book seeks to invert the perspective and to learn to see, instead of an empty centre, a centred void. Because what are these cities? Once we spend some time reading and travelling, we are surprised to realise: cities are—and have always been—places where the gods reside. Where the infinite manifests itself, where the immeasurable finds hospitality. Where there is opportunity and the spirit for comedy and tragedy. Today we don’t want to hear this any more. It’s uncomfortable. It challenges us. Because: cities welcome you—as long as you follow their rules. The City does not express itself by mimicking the continuous cycles of nature. It pronounces its own laws mediately, in articles and paragraphs. Discretion is its principle—if only to preserve a kind of natural continuity that can always make room for the immense. It is not necessarily benign. Cities transcend the familiar rhythms of the countryside.
They are neither conservative nor modern—rather: they are both. They are reasonable and unreasonable, they squander that of which they wish to have plenty. It is a generosity of this daring and speculative kind that they preserve for their own sufficiency. The reality of The City is never just factual. Nor is it ever just fictitious. In a city, nobody can know what the next steps are in relation to what is happening. Instead, these steps have to be learnt and fought four: gained. Each time. Only thus can cities and therefore also the country be cultivated. Cities are the embodiment of our cultures.

And so we look around and we are outraged: about the cultural angst, about the theoretical foreshortenings and the economic needs that are being talked up in despotic tones. About the anonymous demand that ignorance be credited with innocence and expertise be liberated from responsibility. About the contempt for intellect and the absence of any celebration and appreciation of intellect, by and large, in our settings of urban convenience. About the power we give to machines and about simplistically assembled statistics; about the factual, the suggestive, the persuasive. About the lack of research, in favour of development.

At the same time though this book is fascinated by a new world that opens up to us through our technologies, and therefore our skill and, in tandem with these, through globalisation. It is fascinated by the breathtaking speed with which our planet is being urbanised; by the possibilities and freedoms that now, as a result, become available to so many more people than ever before: being healthy, growing old, not having to work too hard, being allowed to learn, to travel, having a say…

We do not believe that Cityness—and with it an indeterminate political, economic and spiritual life—is constituted in the flagging up of injustices, in identifying problems, proposing solutions and implementing optimisations. All these are part of an urbanisation that hopefully makes good and rapid progress. Cityness factors in a development which Rem Koolhaas—with sarcasm or humour?—characterises as the interplay of a generic city and a junk space. In doing so he formulates in an overdrawn figure: one can’t develop a city by improving it. To us, this sounds just like quantum physics: neither particle nor wave, or rather both and. It, more than anything, demonstrates
that measurableness, and everything we associate with it, has to be considered
an intellectual achievement. Quantum physics shows us that we create our
reality in the way we see and measure it. The urban is systematic and balanced, however complexly it might be engineered. But our cities are architectonic. They do not take measures for granted, they challenge them by re-articulating their units, and the magnitudes those units support.

Thus we have put together our anthology, for which we have jauntily and perhaps also somewhat unashamedly picked from the richnesses of our world. We avoid cliches or drastic imagery, we bypass the new or unfamiliar. The book has no concern with completion. It postulates no theory and it proclaims no truth. It is not instrument to everybody’s fear. It does not aim to convince, to teach or to persuade. It seeks no following. It’s not economical.

This anthology is a declaration of love to thought and the dignity of thinking. It honours the fount, the well of thought that is universal in nature, free of ownership and privileges, thought that belongs to the Earth. It hails both practical and theoretical mastery. It responds to how their challenges do not cease to address us. It maintains that we can learn to understand the forms their values take—by measuring up to them. This book is open, curious, disturbed, outraged, fascinated. It knows a lot, experiences a lot. It is like a citizen of our digital world—a sheaf of intelligible probability
and delicate sensitivity, a quantum of City.

The book came about in 2013–2014 during our research residence at the Future Cities Laboratory of the National University of Singapore and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenössiche Technische Hochschule, ETH) Zürich. Architects and PhD students Diana Alvarez- Marin and Miro Roman collated the majority of the book’s contents. The character and narrative of Orlando was developed and set down by writer and filmmaker Sebastian Michael. Our most heartfelt thanks for their fruitful labours towards the realisation of this book.

Ludger Hovestadt, Vera Bühlmann Zürich, February 2015

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
Editorial Note on Text

ORLANDO IN THE CITIES

PROLOGUE

Preamble
Orlando in Alexandria

I. WELCOME TO A CITY

Orlando in Florence
Famous Travellers
Why Am I Entering a City 000 Walking Around
Meeting Friends
Making some money
What to eat?
Hanging around
Getting angry?

II. WE ARE THE WORLD

Orlando in London
Know Everything
Being Empathic
Being Engaged
Being in Danger
Being Safe
It’s My Good Right

III. PARADE OF MASTERPIECES
Orlando in Paris

IV. GENRES
Orlando in Vienna
Dionysus
Hermes
Hera
Chiron
Athena

EPILOGUE
Orlando in New York
Coda

....