Workshop “Energies of Social Relations”Workshop “Energies of Social Relations”
Posted by: NY-Blogger_en on Sep 12, 2011
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As far as British author and keynote speaker at the Audi Urban Future Award Charles Leadbeater is concerned, Melbourne and Curitiba are particularly habitable cities. Why? Because these are cities with high empathy levels. In the workshop “Energies of Social Relations”, experts from diverse disciplines discussed social relations in a mobile and urban world of the future. The subject gave rise to not only visionary scenarios.
Where do we stand on the question of individual ownership, now that we already share so much with one another – in the world of social networks, for example? Which new participatory models emerge as a result? What does “neighborhood cooperation” mean and to what extent will people be willing to share their cars with someone else in the future? How do the future prospects of a city like Mumbai or Munich differ?
“The consumption of tomorrow must be collectively organized”, said the London-based architect Alison Brooks, who named her concept of mobility in the future “Co-Mobility”. Alongside urban planner and architect Jose Castillo from Mexico City, Bettina Bernhardt, head of Customer Relationship Management at AUDI AG and Christian Schüller, head of Brand Development and Corporate Identity at AUDI AG, Brooks presented her visions of the future in the year 2020 at the AUFS workshop “Energies of Social Relations”. The subsequent discussion was extended to other workshop participants, among them Mark Wigley, Dean of the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at Columbia University.
Alison Brooks
During the one and a half hours of the workshop, how technology can create new models of participation in this age of rapid data exchange and social networking was not merely the subject of presentations and discussion, but was rather experienced by the audience first-hand: Using iPhones, participants were given the opportunity to cast their vote live via TED televoting. One of the questions harvested an unambiguous result: Which feeling is most closely associate with a car? 80.6 percent voted for freedom, 8.3 percent for either love or hate and 2.8 percent associated a feeling of pride with an automobile. Equally interesting was the response to the question “What would you like to share?” Only 4.2 percent responded with the own home or own clothes; 24.2 percent responded with the car, 30 percent with tools and 37.5 percent with books.
Mark Wigley
Moderator Karen Wong, Assistant Director of the New Museum in New York, summed up the workshop as having provided “a wealth of aspects that we touched upon and which could be the basis for further discussions”.
Charles Leadbeater
