Towards the Improvisation of Space

Abstract

Careful observation of contemporary urban agglomerations challenges planning and design disciplines to reconsider their inherited conceptions of the urban as a fixed, teleological, and universally generalisable form. Thereby, contingency, emerging as a constitutive resource of the city, provokes a rethinking of the epistemology of the urban. While the conceptual framing shifts from reading the city as object towards interpreting the city as process, emphasis is laid not only on an analysis of built structures, but also of urban practice. Against this background, this essay proposes a different reading of urban practice itself, drawing attention away from any substantialisation of action and to the constitutive effects of action. On the basis of this reading, one can claim that the condition for planning and architecture has changed. Their role is not to offer resolution and inherently new tabula rasa designs, but instead to carefully examine urban praxis in contingent situations. In accordance with this observation, my argument is that urban practice can essentially be read as the technology of improvisation. In this context, the term improvisation technology indicates an attempt to move away from conventional courses of action and planning strategies and towards engaging “in urban situations.”