The Urban Revolution

It has been said many times, in keeping with Marx, that the essence of “man” cannot be found in the isolated individual but consists of a set of relationships or concrete social relationships. Generic Man(in general) is only an abstraction.

Henri Lefebvre

In analyzing the urban phenomenon is not difficult to imagine that the above dictum is useful as a evaluating system of social formations. Different city-scapes need to be opposed or combined with other equally opac and complicate urban systems so as to be defined. The hypothesis advocates that without this process the urban landscape doesn’t make sense, its unable to unveil the complexity and the importance. With the construction of the cube we claim that the opposition should be base not only on the level of grammatical or syntax elements but among already signifying units .

As in the Saussurian linguistics in the cube the complexity of its face makes possible an analysis that is based on differences within the object, which can intelligibly subdivide and reconstruct.

Towards a possible(?) opposition that will establish urban paradigms and syntagms.

As H.Lefebvre admits the urban phenomenon taken as a whole, cannot be grasped by any specialized science. Thus the cube doesn’t aim to demonstrate a final scientific result,nor can give complete and perfect methodology. The object is worthwhile only if we use it and using it consists in measuring the differences between models and between each model and reality. Besides no synthesis can be accomplished in advance.There is no original and final totality compared with wich any relative situation or act or rotation would be alienated-alienating .

The movements of the cube and the structure of the transformations of it try to underline the fact that urban can be grasped not as a prefabricated goal or a meaning of a single history or narrative.

On the other hand the narratives of the cube work in a way contrary with the spatial formations of the metropolis where the classification and the domination of needs have a contigent character and are paradoxically institutions. Institutions are created on top of such needs, controlling and classifying while constructing them. Conversely the cube explores the urban fabric as a formation of abstract human desires challenging(?) the established social and economic hierarchies arguing for a new humanism that is developed as a succession of images and fragments. Denying the totality of a finished object and balancing among the contemporary economic context (Richard Sennett New Capitalism),

a) superficial, short-term relations at work, superficial and disengaged relations in the city

b) The second expression of the new capitalism is the standardisation of the environment. A few years ago, on a tour of New York’s Chanin Building, an art-deco palace with elaborate offices and splendid public spaces, the head of a large, new-economy corporation remarked: "It would never suit us. People might become too attached to their offices. They might think they belong here."

c) adults withdraw from civic participation in the struggle to solidify and organise family life; the civic becomes yet another demand on time and energies in short supply at home.) and emerging previously mentioned institutionalisation of needs the project try to conceive the urban as a presence-absence. That the urban is a language(or better a metalanguage) and a sign system, a virtuality.