Masterplanning the Adaptive City

opportunity, in a series of adaptations that themselves become interestingly
coherent and purposeful. 
Lewis Mumford, 1961
30
Goethe’s definition of morphology distinguishes between form and formation, or 
in German bildung:“to designate what has been brought forth and what is in the
process of being brought forth.”
31
This distinction “marks a turning away from the
simple structure of end-products and toward the active, ever-changing processes
that bring them into being.”
32
Urbanism and architecture are more than services to investors; they are at
their best cultural practices. However, “periods of cumulative avant-garde work”
are hard to sustain and fall victim to obsolescence as changes in society “ensure
that premises, procedures and model solutions become maladapted and thus
dysfunctional,”
33
recalling Thomas Khun’s distinction between eras of “normal
science” and “revolutionary science.” 
The technology of the natural world is already all around us and within us—
and it is vastly superior to our technology.
Peter J. Bentley and David W. Corne, 2002
34
Given the precariousness of ecological conditions and the global economic system
how can urban earth sustain itself? Asking new questions brings new answers to
challenging problems. To confront the challenges of extreme urbanization facing
us in this century, it is necessary to relearn, even unlearn, our biases. What, then,
are our options? Do we build for the short term and maximize recycling? Should
we shift to high-endurance, resilient architecture and infrastructure? The
paradoxes of endurance and decay, permanence and ephemerality, fixity and
adaptability have been persistent themes throughout this book, and while no
direct solution has here been sought to the problem of change in what we still call
the city, there seems to be little material justification for giving up on endurance 
as a model of sustainability—as vague as that term “sustainability” is—given
environmental performance, material resilience, energy consumption, cultural
heritage, and other vital parameters. 
Architecture is a material practice, and the city has become increasingly
mineralized over the course of its history, from its origins as temporary dwellings
to now, when more than half the world’s population is living in cities. As a material
paradigm, matter has a capacity to change over time, and the opportunity
presented by the mutability of materials “was something to be avoided in much
twentieth-century architecture, and was rarely embraced as a design opportunity.
Decay is seen as the enemy in buildings, and a great deal of technical effort is
aimed at combating and arresting it.”
35
Henri Bergson, however, described matter
as comprised of “modifications, perturbations, changes of tension or energy and
nothing else,”
36
reflecting an understanding of matter as alive and in transition,
rather than dead and inert. An argument for urban endurance must not be
confused with nostalgia for architectural “weathering,” understood as the
valorization of the “patina” of desired, even designed deterioration, highlighting
light and coloration effects on the surface of so-called natural materials.
37
But
what, if any, are the urban alternatives to whitewashing all surfaces, in the manner
233
ENDURANCE, OBSOLESCENCE, AND THE ADAPTIVE CITY

---

234
TOM VEREBES
Proposed differentiated
massing systems for Dan
Zi Shi, Chongqing,
China. (Studio Tutor:
Tom Verebes; Students:
Lai Sheng Ching, Cheng
Chun; MArch I Studio,
Ground Control, The
University of Hong
Kong, 2012)
Diagrams of urban massing, infrastructural, landscape, hydrological, and topographical systems.
(Studio Tutor: Tom Verebes; Students: Lai Sheng Ching, Cheng Chun; MArch I Studio, 
Ground
Control, The University of Hong Kong, 2012)

---

of Le Corbusier’s Law of Ripolin, which was aimed at dematerializing surfaces?
What alternatives might be found to the design of short-term, disposable or
recyclable cities? Old cannot simply be equated to good, and new to bad. As
highlighted, the ecological footprint of short-term design implies that longer
design life can be equated with a “sustainable” approach to design. Cities should
not be pickled and preserved, however. 
Cities grow, are transformed, fall into decline, and sometimes they are
abandoned and disappear. Despite these risks, there is now nowhere to go but
cities. In the context of a global culture of short termism, the future lies between
planning and emergence, top-down control and self-organization.
38
A sea change
in urbanism based on implementation of the concepts and methodologies here
proposed may give rise to new approaches to city design, “the aim of which is not
to control, but to participate.”
39
Since change is the only constant in urbanity,
change should occur through adaptation rather than by erasure. Permanence
resists change, hence the paradoxical interaction between a wished-for
permanence and the inescapable temporality of urbanism. Letting go does not
entail giving up all control.
NOTES
1
> M. Mostafavi and D. Leatherbarrow (1993) On Weathering: The Life of Buildings in Time
(Cambridge: MIT), 17.
2
> M. Tafuri (1976) Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development (Cambridge:
MIT), 176.
3
> L. Iwamoto (2009) Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (New York:
Princeton), 4.
4
> Reprinted in L. Mumford (1986) The Lewis Mumford Reader, ed. D.L. Miller (Athens,
Georgia: University of Georgia Press), 304.
5
> R. Banham (1960) Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (Oxford: Butterworth-
Heinemann), 10.
6
> G. Deleuze (2003) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation (London: Continuum), 140.
7
> L. Spuybroek (2011) The Sympathy of Things: Ruskin and the Ecology of Design
(Rotterdam: V2 Publishing), 56.
8
> M. Speaks (2007) “Intelligence after Theory,” in Network Practices: New Strategies in
Architecture and Design, eds. A. Burke and T. Tierney (New York: Princeton), 214.
9
> F. Otto (2009) Occupying and Connecting: Thoughts on Territories and Spheres of Influence
with Particular Reference to Human Settlement (Stuttgart: Edition Axel Menges), 111.
10
> J.H. Frazer (2006) “Exploring the Analogy that Parametric Design is a Game,” in Game Set
Match: On Computer Games, Advanced Geometries and Digital Technologies, eds. K. Oosterhuis
and L. Feireiss (Rotterdam: Episode), 211.
11
> Quatremère de Quincy (2000, first published 1825) “Type,” in The Historic Dictionary of
Architecture of Quatremère de Quincy.
12
> S. Jacoby (2008) “What’s Your Type?” in Typological Formations: Renewable Building
Types and the City (London: AA Publications), 149–150.
13
> R. Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, 21–22.
14
> C.M. Lee (2008) “Projective Series,” in Typological Formations: Renewable Building Types
and the City (London: AA Publications), 137.
15
> J.W. von Goethe (1806) “Form and Transformation,” in Goethe’s Botanical Writings
(Woodbridge, CT:OX Bow), 24.
16
> Otto, Occupying and Connecting, 7.
17
> J. Burry and M. Burry (2010) The New Mathematics of Architecture (New York: Thames &
Hudson), 157.
18
> P. Schumacher (2012) The Autopoesis of Architecture: A New Framework for Architecture,
Vol. 2 (London: Wiley), 28–30.
19
> P. Trummer (2011) “Associative Design,” in Computational Design Thinking, eds. A.
Menges and S. Alquist (London: Wiley), 180.
235
ENDURANCE, OBSOLESCENCE, AND THE ADAPTIVE CITY

---