Eduardo Rico, "Relational Urbanism: Models, Cities and Systemic Utopias"

The lecture will describe the practices of Relational Urbanism, where concepts linked to the cybernetics and system theory form the basis of a renewed critical perspective framing associative and digital techniques, moving beyond the false promises of the parameter and the performative design. The turf which Relational Urbanism claims as its own is that of envisaging new regimes of urbanism which derive their raison d???etre from a spatial design rooted in the material and temporal specificities of the territory and where the metabolic nature of the environment is critically balanced with concepts of social and environmental justice, in short, a laboratory for a new critical territorialism.

Eduardo Rico studied civil engineering in Spain and graduated from the AA's Landscape Urbanism program. He is currently a AA Landscape Urbanism Studio Master and has acted as consultant and performed research in the fields of infrastructure and landscape in Spain and the UK. Currently he is involved in the development of infrastructural strategies for large-scale urban projects within the Arup engineering team as well as being part of the collective GroundLab.

3/23/11