Quantum City

Lecture

Quantum Urbanism

Skype talk.

Competition and Provocation| beirut, Competition, event urbanism, martyrsfestival, memory, metaphor, postwar, and quantum urbanism

Sum over histories or the Garden of Forking Paths

The following project was part of a submitted proposal for an international urban design ideas competition for the development of Beirut’s Martyrs Square, launched in summer 2004 by Solidere, the real-estate company in charge of the reconstruction and development of the Beirut City Centre (BCD).

Lecture and Workshop

Quantum Design Workshop 2007

Talk

Urban Design and Quantum Technology

http://www.mest.bh/speakers.htm

Provocation

“Architecture in the New Paradigm”: a Response to Charles Jencks’ “The New Paradigm in Architecture”

The problem with Charles Jencks is that he is too old to recognize the new paradigm as anything more than a new opportunity to recount the buildings of his personal favourite architects. The paradigm shift he is looking for in the grammar of a handful of landmark buildings will forever elude him: the new paradigm [...]

Lecture and Media

Architecture and Sound, Cityness and Waves

Ayssar Arida discusses ideas explored in his book: Quantum City (MP3)

Paper

Quantum Environments: Urban Design in the Post-Cartesian Paradigm

Introduction An Antipodal Landscape, the Need for a Synthesis The Cartesian Paradigm A Post-Cartesian Paradigm: the Quantum World View A New Conceptual Language The Society-Space-Time Quantum Continuum and the Role of the User’s Mind Implications for Urban Form A Multi-level Framework Conclusion Introduction Incomparable scientific and technological development has transformed our culture and our lifestyles [...]

Paper

Sifting Through the Chaos / A (Brief) Manual for Navigating the Streets of Beirut

For many travellers visiting a new city, the first impression is everything… yet most interesting cities hide their true character behind a facade of images and sounds that overwhelm the visitor’s senses by their sheer newness. This generally makes for a very shallow form of tourism that, although often interesting enough by itself, gives a [...]

Paper

Memory Between Amnesia and Trauma (a Proposal for Sarajevo)

This project for the Marijin Dvor district of Sarajevo proposes both to retain the characteristics of a charged site and transform the significance of those characteristics – to walk a fine line between amnesia and trauma. It suggests a neutral recognition of certain artifacts, in particular the extraordinary figure of the Marshall Tito Barracks. It [...]

Lecture

The 70-Year Itch or the Dawn of the Quantum City

The Planned City? ISUF International Conference (refereed), Trani, Italy, 3-6 July 2003. “The 70-Year Itch or the Dawn of the Quantum City” Published in Proceedings of the International Conference, A. Petruccioli et al (ed.), Trani, 2003, vol.3, p.1006.  

Lecture and Workshop

Quantum Design Workshop 2008

Hyperbody / Non-Standard and Interactive Architecture (PDF) Hyperbody, as a cutting edge ICT driven research and design department, has over the years developed intricate academia and praxis based connections with some of the world’s leading professionals, institutes as well as industrial practices. Some of our prominent connections include Marcos Novak (University of California, Santa Barbara,USA), [...]

Paper| quantum

Therapeutic Urbanism?

“Hornstrumpet! We shall not have succeeded in demolishing everything unless we demolish the ruins as well. But the only way I can see of doing that is to use them to put up a lot of fine, well-designed buildings.” – Père Ubu (Alfred Jarry)

Competition, Paper, and Provocation

n-Dimensional Metaphor: the Grand Museum of Egypt

One of the most recurrent themes in the history of civilisations is the close link between their worldview – what they believe the world to be like- and their large scale architectural production. In particular, the Egyptians built gargantuan projects because they believed they were necessary to uphold and sustain their worldview. It was also their way of keeping eternal archives of their memory and knowledge, literally carved in stone, or through metaphoric and symbolic devices. Here are some of the parallels in attitude – updated for the 21st century – we have adopted for this project.