Officially, there are eight guilds within the Urban Codemakers group. There are rumours of a ninth. Of the eight official guilds, three have emerged as the most active over the past month, namely the Master Codemaker, Locative Urbanist and Crossmedia Ecologist. Their musings on our blog reveal distinctly different views on the nature of urban codemaking from each of these three guild masters.
The Crossmedia Ecologist takes an ecological view on urban codemaking. Seeing urban spaces as networks of forces, some social, some economic, others material or information based in their nature. It is somewhat between a traditional ‘village’ based view – letting spaces grow of their own accord – and seeing urban designers as being responsible for nurturing, rather than controlling, spaces. Making them liveable and functional.
The Master Codemaker takes a spatial approach to urban codemaking. Seeing the role of the urban designer to put in place codes that inform people without words: nonverbal and visual signs that control and regulate the use of space. He creates both visual codes, spatial codes and behavioural codes that are designed to work together to form a new language – this may be the ‘Third Language’ evolving from evolution’s third replicator: genes, memes, and …
The Locative Urbanist takes a technology driven view on urban codemaking. His approach is driven by a push to remap the city via computer simulation, form-based codes and augmented reality. While this may sound cold and calculated it is motivated by a philosophy that sees urban space as having a greater flexibility when its various flows are monitored and made tangible via technology – a ‘bottom-up’ approach to codemaking in which the codes are generated via interaction between people, space, buildings and technology.
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