MAIN FEATURE
Every design intervention must strive to do more good— both ethically, in terms of sustainability and sociability, as well as aesthetically, in terms of form.
With their strong appeal, these glossy temperate models have been exported out of the West and are replicated all over tropical Asia, with many developers and corporations trading context-sensitive designs for climatically inappropriate, hermetically sealed, energy-guzzling towers. The ubiquitous skyscraper has led to universal placelessness, where cities have no sense of cultural identity and context. The 20th
century mindset
once again limits architectural innovation. When it comes to tall building design, the focus has often been on the optimisation of the tower’s component parts, such as improved façade performance through technology and engineering, but little rethinking of the tower’s typology has been done in relation to form, climate, nature, programming and other inter-related systems of a city.
21ST
CENTURY SYSTEMS WORLDVIEW Practicing in high-density tropical Asia over the past 26 years, WOHA is acutely aware that the 20th
century traditional reductionist worldview is utterly inadequate to address the complexities of our globally interconnected and overpopulated 21st
to progress towards a sustainable future, a paradigm shift from analytical thinking to systems thinking is imperative.
As a concept, systems thinking is not new. It originated in the 1920s within several disciplines, notably biology and engineering. “Systems thinking is thinking in terms of connectedness, relationships, patterns and context. According to the systems view, the essential properties of an organism, or living system, are properties of the whole, which none of the parts have. They arise from the interactions and relationships between the parts… Accordingly, systems thinking does not concentrate on basic building blocks but rather on basic principles of organisation. Systems thinking is “contextual”, which is the opposite of analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole8
.”
Systems thinking is therefore a holistic way of seeing the world as a complex network that is integrated, dynamic and self-regulating, rather than a dissociated collection of parts. Having a systems worldview in urban planning and architecture is vital, as it helps us understand how the different parts of a city can influence one another. The more we understand systemic patterns, the better able we are to work with (rather than against) them to shape the quality of life.
FUTURARC 65 -century world. Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and
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