Acconci Studio (Vito Acconci, Dario Nunez, Ezio Blasetti, Nathan de Graaf)
NEW CITY, FLINTSHIRE, WALES 2007


Vector Fields. Make a point, make another point, make five points. One point affects the other, pulls the other, like a magnet: each point is stretched out into a line that’s stretched out into a surface as it’s pulled toward the closest point near it.

Introversion/Extroversion. When a surface turns in on itself, it joins itself to form a capsule (this capsule might be a building, a stadium, a plaza, a park). When a surface turns out from itself, spins out from itself, it bends and folds to form structure.

Self-Sustaining City. The surface wraps around itself, warps and pinches to make a funnel that pulls in air; as the surface turns in on itself, twists itself, the air reacts to itself, the capsule causes turbulence -- whereas a wind-turbine only processes wind, the capsules here produce wind.

Hairy City. The concave surfaces of the capsules are lined with cilia; these hairs, fluttering non-stop in the turbulence, harness the kinetic energy of the wind into electrical energy. The convex surfaces, in the meantime, double as reflectors, or as fields of fiber-optic lighting.

Diffusion-Limited Aggregation. The future city will spread like a crack, like cracks from a crack, like a network of cracks; the future city will spread like a lightning bolt.

Swarm-City. We won’t plan the future city; no one will, no one can, no one should – but we can diagram, now, the principles of emergence and generation. The future city will grow from itself, for itself. The future city will be like a flock of flying birds, where there’s no leader, where each bird adjusts to the movement of the bird next to it, where each bird knows what to do without being told – the new city will self-organize.