Columbia University A6010y Adv. Architecture Design Moscow Studio 600 Avery: M, W & F (2:00-6:00pm) Phu Hoang (ph@phuhoang.

com)

GSAPP AAD Spring 2012

Identity Crisis:
The City in the Box Institute

La Negra 1980 and 2010, Buenos Aires; Irina Werning

Identity is a subjective sense as well as an observable quality of personal sameness and continuity, paired with some belief in the sameness and continuity of some shared world image. - Erik Erikson, 1970

Objective: The studio will research cities and the constraints whether rules, regulations or conditions-that define or distort their identities. This research will focus on the adaptation and subsequent transformation of identities as they are conveyed from one global city to another. This re-appropriation of identities results in a global form of urban identity crisis. The studio will examine this global crisis of identity as the product of rapid globalization and the mass urbanization of societies. However, this form of identity crisis should not simply be viewed in the pejorative; instead the studio will harness it as a force capable of creating unexpected and transformative architectural strategies. The studio will ask the essential question: How can global urban identity crisis initiate new architectural strategies, techniques and organizations? Global identity crisis is integral to the character of the city in a box, or instant city. This new form of urban design irreverently mixes identities from cities around the world. Geographic, socio-cultural and climatic boundaries are erased in an effort to adapt existing identities for use in new cities. Though these cities are conceived and produced in current global capitals (New York City), they are often located in the rapidly changing and developing BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries. The studio will design a New York-based City in the Box Institute, where the traditional urban disciplines of architecture, planning and engineering will be combined with new urban trades such as information technology and financial industries. All of these disciplines would be housed under one roof, resulting in a new productive form of identity crisis.