PurposeThis paper highlights the importance of transdisciplinary studies in times of crisis. In the first part, the study shows the benefits of the introduction of literature on biology to better understand the evolutionary dynamics of architecture.Design/methodology/approachThe focus of the research concerns architectural exaptation. In biology, exaptation is a functional shift of a structure that already had a prior but different function. We will also learn that, in biology, all creative systems are redundant and involve variability and diversity.FindingsAs a conclusion, through the comparison between biology and architecture, we will, therefore, try to build an architectural taxonomy that demonstrates how indeterminism is not a subcategory of design. Instead, design paradigms in which redundancy and variable diversity of structures reflect functionalism constitute an equivalent and essential complement with respect to design determinism.Originality/valueIt demonstrates how architectural exaptation, intended as an indeterministic and radical mode of design, can contribute to overcoming the current global crisis because structural redundancy is frequently functional, mostly in ever-changing and unstable environments. For instance, the failure of a planned function of a city can be an opportunity to re-use a structure designed for an obsolete function to respond to unexpected constraints.
The cities planned to date are the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, it is now necessary to study an alternative way of designing resilient cities. Starting from this consideration, this text is an exploration of the possibilities of using nondeterministic tools, therefore not suitable for designating a use (function) from the planning stage, as a way to respond to the uncertainties of the future. To do this, we hypothesised a methodology that compares biology with architecture and, in particular, natural selection with design. The components of the natural selection’s aptation are, in fact, both deterministic (adaptation) and non-deterministic (exaptation).While adaptation is a concept widely studied in architecture, there is no literature regarding the study of the mechanisms of exaptation, as deffened by Stephen Jay Gould, despite the obvious practical applications of this principle in city planning. From the studies carried out, the difficulty of overcoming an exclusively deterministic planning emerges, above all, because of some prejudices in the form of reifcation, including the ‘recapitulative’ reading of the city. In conclusion, the diversity of subjects who can contribute to city planning is essential to increase their resilience in view of future unexpected effects of the global crises.
Through its worldwide impact, the on-going Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally affected the way people live and experience the built environment in every country. Starting to spread in late January 2020 in Europe and in the Mediterranean Region, the threat of viral infection with the Coronavirus led to several phases of lockdowns from mid-March on until now. The limited accessibility and the safety measures during this last year have challenged dramatically the perception and the use of public space thresholds between private, semi-private and public conditions, creating new forms of temporary appropriation. The consequential paradigms of household isolation and social distancing have also contributed to the augmentation of the public space, now swinging between digital and analogue possibilities. In opposition to the former wide range of possibilities of space uses in everyday life, being subject to restricted spatial conditions under the current situation leads to new challenges on a cognitive level: the resulting change in the perception of proximity and distance, indoor and outdoor, private and public, implies an expanded use of both spaces introducing many opportunities of colonisation of private, public and semi-public appropriation creating new forms (and sometimes also old ones) of resilience. Algiers, Portsmouth and San Francisco de Campeche have been selected as case studies to observe how the lockdown was organised from the same time on in different places with distinct political approaches and public control measures, and the impact this had on the community and the use of public space in the three cities.
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