"MVRDV/DSD in collaboration with the Berlage Institute, MIT and cThrough."

Cover title.

Includes bibliographical references.

Frontflap holds the fold-out Bibliography --
2 Contributors --
3 Students of the Berlage institute --
18 0.0:
20 Foreword and acknowledgements Winy Mass --
22 Space fighter: the evolutionary city game Winy Mass --
32 Entropia: energy and regional survival Arthur van Bilsen, Brent Batstra, Camilo Pinilla --
48 Evolutionary urbanism Brent Batstra --
72 Evolutionary games and arquitecture Arthur van Bilse --
80 Emergent urbanism Camilo Pinilla --
94 Urban mapping: tactical games or critical theories text: Arie Graafland Photos: Roemer van Toorn --
128 0.1 Warm up games:
130 Developer Suchada Kasemsap, Zhenfei Wang, Sheng Ming Wu, Zhonping Wu --
134 Hub maker Adolfo Despradel, Miha Pesec, Lama Sfeir--
138 Id seeker Yvette Vasourkova --
142 Market Satisfier Elena Gissi, Jiri Pavlicek, Shiyun Qian --
146 Opportunity seeker Sahil Abdul Latheef, Melisa Varga --
150 Synergiser Vid Mozina --
154 1.0:
156 While building spacefighter Berlange studio participants with Winy Mass, Brent Batstra, Arjen van Susteren and Arthur van Bilsen --
162 Space fighter platform Berlage institute --
168 Why pixel? The representational dilemma Berlage institute --
172 1.1 Introduction:
174 1. A senior player enters spacefighter Berlage institute --
184 2. A visitor enter spacefighter Berlage institute --
Applications:
194 Detroit Berlage institute --
213 Hub maker: Film fragment Berlage institute --
220 Rome Berlage institute --
252 Dubai Berlage institute --
269 Turning world: film fragment Berlage institute --
304 PS: spacefighter 2.0 mit / Winy Maas --
24 The Evolutionary City: The Predecessor Urban Change --
25 The Global Urban Network Competition Gladiators Lite Urbanism Beyond Mapping --
26 Projective Urbanism SpaceFighter KM4 Perpetuum Mobile --
27 Evolutionary Urbanistic Developments Vocabulary Games Game Theory --
28 Players Intuition Trial and Error Based Interaction Emergence Visualization --
29 Units Pixels 3-D Skin Mechanisms Time Patterns --
30 Score Datamachines Datascaping 2.0 Beauty Input output --
31 Gaps Technological gaps The SpaceFighter Platform --
34 1. Introduction:
Looking at urban regions from an evolutionary standpoint and studying regional survival as a problem of energy management --
35 2. Evolution theory, survival and energy By looking at regions as surviving systems, energy losses, accumulations and uses are observable --
3. Energy, entropy and negentropy in thermodynamics Following the Second Law of Thermodynamics, Entropy implies the spreading of energy and negentropy its reversal --
37 4. Illustration of the energy/entropy principle According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, in order to maintain a functional artifact, energy needs to be invested --
40 5. Systems and regions Regions, as open systems, are always confronted with energy degeneration, thus energy input strategies are needed for their survival --
6. Inputs and outputs between systems The rise of the global as a complex higher level of organization is the contemporary characteristic of surviving regions --
41 7. Regional survival By understanding regions as open systems, it is implied that in order to survive, regions must (a) Import energy (from the environment or other regions) or (b) Preserve energy efficiently --
42 8. Visualising energy In order to visualise energy types and action spaces are proposed. The former are categories to distinguish between different kinds of energy, the latter refers to the spatial deployment of energy --
46 9. Regional intervention Urban intervention is the energy impulse attempting to bring an urban region into a more desirable state --
47 10. Conclusion: From Entropia to the Spacefighter uses Entropia's perspective of dealing with energy management as way of urban intervention and develops a computer game application to simulate regional survival --
50 Introduction:
1. Life as a struggle for energy against heat death Living beings and artifacts have as common denominator an energy cost benefit balance --
53 2. Ratio based calculations in nature Human rationality appears to have underlying numerical energy ratios on the basis of which decisions are made --
55 3. The instrumental vision in urbanism Can goal orientated rationality, instrumental vision and symbolic interaction be synthesized? --
58 4. Working with data and statistics regarding our contemporary dispersed situation? --
The SpaceFighter engages our contemporary situation, by structuring interactions between different levels of scale, as well as qualitative differences --
60 5. Three options for computer usage in contemporary urbanism SpaceFighter combines three computer applications; the computer as 1) generator of plausible scenarios, 2) heuristic device, 3) learning device --
62 6. Emergence as Darwin's dangerous idea Emergence can be the result of small dumb mechanical steps --
63 7. Evolution means feedback loops Architecture and urbanism as information systems are characterised by feedback loops --
65 8. Feedback loops have always to do with selection criteria Natural and sexual selection determine the feedback loop --
67 9. Introduction to the possible theoretical implications and applications of 'evolutionary rules' on city-planning, regional thinking, urbanism and architecture Checking architectural or urban proposals with the three selection criteria is the main implication --
69 10. A misapprehension concerning the relation between aesthetics and non-aesthetic practices How aesthetics and economics merge into one --
74 1. Why Evolutionary Games? Evolutionary games, incorporating the analysis of human interaction and representing a unifying framework for the social sciences, are relevant to architecture and planning --
75 2. Games Games can be used to gain insight in complex systems. Since architects and planners intervene in such systems, the insights can be used to improve interventions --
76 3. Classification of Complex Systems The complexity classification of systems is grounded in the number of elements, the degree of dependency amoung these elements and the predictability of the system in time --
77 4. Evolutionary Spatial Game Theory How space entered Evolutionary Game Theory. From strategic agents, cellular automata, Universal Turing machines and physical reality, a new perspective arises --
79 5. Concluding remarks The perspective is a useful lens for architects and urban planners, who have to intervene in a world, that no one oversees completely --
82 1. Systems Theory and organization in order to define a context of operation for complexity and emergence, this section uses the notion of systems, environments and their relationships --
84 2. Change The system environment relationship explains change and transformation through concepts of adaptation and survival strategies --
85 3. Complexity Complex systems are introduced as those including large amounts or composing elements and many relations amoung them --
4. Emergence Emergence is presented as a characteristic of complex systems where local adaptation generates global/macro-behaviour Decentralisation, non-linearities and prediction difficulty are its most relevant consequences --
87 5. Emergence of global patterns Increase in global interaction with networking and internationalisation is presented as the cause for the emergence of global urban patterns --
Large scale international urban projects are given as examples --
88 6. Scale Scale is introduced as a way to understand the emergence of global patterns --
Particularly, progress in communication technology facilitates connections between varied scales and entwines local and global levels. The Zuid As Urban Development in Amsterdam is given as example --
91 7. Emergent urbanism "Emergent urbanism' is presented as an ongoing assemblage flourishing from the dynamic interactions of parts and participants in the urbanisation field --
Examples of local and global homogenisation and differentiation are presented as emergent urbanism s consequences --
92 8. Computational approaches To conclude with an alternative option to tackle emergent urbanism s consequences, the computational approach is presented as tool for progressive scenario making and alternative learning processes --
97 New Office Practices and the Problem of Critical Theory Network practices in the 1990s are becoming more powerful; the combination of design intelligence with computer technology is on its way --
103 Aesthetic Reflexivity Cultural capital creation and aesthetically cast expert systems like Space Fighter are intrinsic to part of the current architectural profession --
106 After Theory Critical theories of the 1960s and 1970s in architecture have found no successor, postmodernism, deconstructivism and critical regionalism of the late 1980s posed as false pretenders to Modernism --
109 Switzerland: An Urban Portrait Networks in Switzerland are not distributed homogeneously in space; they are full of holes and gaps, knots and nodes --
113 The High Lands and the Low Lands in Urban Planning Switzerland and the Netherlands --
Spatial developments both in Switzerland and the Netherlands only vaguely correspond to political divisions --
121 MVRDV and Abstract Image Production The geometry in MVRD's analysis of Switzerland is only there to designate the ground; the drawings are an illustration of a possible future image, realisation is not implied. They begin to question the authority of vested political interests in the planning bureaucracy --
123 SpaceFighter I consider the books on Switzerland to be analytical; they analyse the processes of urbanisation resulting in a new cartography. SpaceFighter is a projective endeavour projecting political problems and possible solutions into a near and sometimes distant future --

Cities and landscapes change, continuously. In size and character. They appear and disappear; they become importantand less important. They florish, they become ruins. No, nothing fixed , even if we try so hard sometimes. Even with lots of Monuments Acts. Maybe it is not permanence that is monumental but change itself. Change seems one of the very few constants. But how do concentrations and settlements 'move'? How do they mutate and or adapt to his continuous change'? What is the struggle, the driving force, behind this? Maybe a process oriented, 'Darwinist'or evolutionary attitude can be followed towards change and creation, one that models these 'battles', these acts of ascending survival mechanisms. SpaceFighter wants to model these interactive urban developments. It wants to reflect and compare (in one second or one minute) imaginable interactive urban processes. SpaceFighter has been constructed by Winy Maas in collaboration with the Delft School of Design (DSD), the Berlage Institute in Rotterdam, cThrough in Eidhoven and MIT, Department of Architecture in Cambridge (Mass.) in the years 2005-2006 --