The Algorithm that Ate the Street: The Storyboards

Abstract

These eight storyboards were exhibited at the 16th Annual International Conference of the Architectural Humanities Research Association at the University of Dundee, UK. They were designed by Paul Guzzardo and Gustavo Cardon. The tableaus are set in barrios in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were developed for two Buenos Aires architectural graduate workshops and UNESCO presentations in France, Lithuania and Sweden. 1 The storyboards were proposed as an alternative to the desiccated storylines that gag most urban design briefs. They offer a new mythic stew, as “triage way stations” to map a way out of the digital mesh-up we are slapped hard against and as mythic blueprints for a line of firewalls against weaponized data. Despite the fact that digital buckshot is coming at hyper-speed, a conversation about myth and the practice of architecture has been ignored. Myths contain seeds of new stories, stories that incrementally increase intelligence. 2