Description
The city is a factory that produces more city. The heterogeneous actors that make up the assemblage of the city, humans and non-humans, create the conditions for the city to reproduce itself – being the site and result of its reproduction.This paper argues, that by seeing the city as an assemblage, we can identify the key actors and power-balances in the way(s) in which the city becomes and transforms itself through iterations. With this theoretical framework a holistic analysis of the dynamics of urban development can be made, and possibilities towards shifts from a mere reproductive status-quo towards regenerative models open up.
This premise is here tested with an actor-network theory based reading of the assemblage(s) at work in the case of the ”Signe” building project in Helsinki, Finland. The project is a prime example of a constellation of things from regulatory statements and rent prognostications, to real-estate managers, architects and the reinforced concrete of the building frames themeselves, that together make up the city-factory. By tracing the networks of actors that have enabled the cyclical narrative of demolition and rebuilding on this central site in the heart of the city, we can see the material and immaterial, social and natural, human and non-human actors at work. The tracing is done in phases, first, through a review of the planning and building documents and all related material, like contracts and published discourse; second, this tracing is then questioned and tested through insights gained from expert interviews.
This tracing allows us to conclude what the decisive actors and their configurations were in this process of tranformation and it allows us to speculate what changes can be proposed for the crafting of new processes of urban change, that instead of the reproduction of extant values, make a regenerative city-assemblage possible.
| Aikajakso | 8 marrask. 2024 |
|---|---|
| Tapahtuman otsikko | Annual Symposium of Architectural Research in Finland: Regenerative Futures: Architecture at the Crossroads of Transformations |
| Tapahtuman tyyppi | Conference |
| Konferenssinumero | 16 |
| Sijainti | Espoo, SuomiNäytä kartalla |
| Tunnustuksen arvo | International |