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Abstract
Takis Zenetos was enthusiastic about the idea of working from home, and believed that both architecture and urban planning should be reshaped in order to respond to this. He supported the design of special public spaces in residential units, aiming to accommodate the inhabitants during working hours. This article argues that Zenetos’s design for “Electronic Urbanism” was more prophetic, and more pragmatic, than his peers such as Archigram and Constant Nieuwenhuys. Despite the fact that they shared an optimism towards technological developments and megastructure, a main difference between Zenetos’s view and the perspectives of his peers is his rejection of a generalised enthusiasm concerning increasing mobility of people. In opposition with Archigram, Zenetos insisted in minimizing citizens’ mobility and supported the replacement of daily transport with the use advanced information technologies, using terms such as “tele-activity”. Zenetos was convinced that “Electronic Urbanism” would help citizens save the time that they normally used to commute to work, and would allow them to spend this time on more creative activities, at or near their homes. The main interest of “Electronic Urbanism” lies in the fact that it not only constitutes an artistic contribution to experimental architecture, but is also characterized by a new social vision, promising to resynchronize practices of daily life. An aspect that is also examined is the relationship of Zenetos’s ideas and those of the so-called Metabolists in the 1960s in Japan, including Kenzo Tange’s conception of megastructures. Zenetos’s thought is very topical considering the ongoing debates about the advanced information society, especially regarding the social concerns of surveillance, governance, and sovereignty within the context of Big Data. His conception of “tele-activities” provides a fertile terrain for reflecting on potential implications and insights concerning home-office conditions not only within the context of the current pandemic situation but beyond it as well.
Highlights
Takis Zenetos’s “Electronic Urbanism” was based on systematic speculation concerning the development of electronic applications in the realms of “tele-management,”
Zenetos’s reorientation of city design and living units means that working from home results in the restructuring of society. He conceived “Electronic Urbanism” in conjunction with a shift in social structure, that is to say in conjunction with “an unprecedented mobility in its structure and in the independence of its members” [26] (p. 11), to borrow his own words
Zenetos’s “Electronic Urbanism”, which consisted of a network of individual living units spread over a vast infrastructural domain, presents many affinities with various projects of suspended megastructures, such as the utopian urban network over Paris designed by Yona Friedman, the Plug-in City by the British group, Archigram, and the New Babylon by Constant Nieuwenhuys
Summary
Takis Zenetos’s “Electronic Urbanism” was based on systematic speculation concerning the development of electronic applications in the realms of “tele-management,”. Published in the seventh issue of Architecture in Greece devoted to the themes “Leisure time, recreation, tourism” [2], are Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics, or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine [10], Athelstan Spilhaus’s “Ecolibrium,” published in Science [11] Nicholas Negroponte’s Architecture Machine: Toward a More Human Environment [12], and “Mobile Home Report,” published in Architectural Design in 1972 [13] In his writings, Zenetos refers to Peter Cook’s Experimental Architecture [14], Robin Middleton’s “Disintegration” [15], as well as to the work of Richard Saul Wurman [16]. Zenetos’s position on this is of great significance, because it shows that he was opposed to the fetishization of speed, which was still dominant during the early seventies His critique of the reliance of cities on transport was very apparent in the following 1973 articles: “Myths of Low-Density Living,” published in Architectural Design [19], and “The. Metro Does Not Solve Any Problem”, published in Economy Postman [20].
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