Designing disorder. Experiments and disruptions in the city

摘要

Designing Disorder is a timely revisit to Richard Sennett's first book, The Uses of Disorder. Personal Identity and City Life (1970), 50 years after its publication. Its authors, Pablo Sendra and Richard Sennett, establish a dialogue between theories of urban sociology and design practice, through the consecutive writing of the book. The first part, entitled 'Civil society', is written by Sennett to recapitulate over the message delivered by The Uses of Disorder. Sendra writes the second part, entitled 'Infrastructures for disorder', to set the theoretical motivations and design features to materialize Sennett's thoughts. The third part, entitled 'Unmaking and Making', is a conversation between Sennett, Sendra and Leo Hollis, with a direct recount of the two authors' professional and life experiences in relationship with the book. The book is a bold invitation to take sides, right from scratch in the introduction: a city of power (Hudson Yards) versus a city of the people (the Garment District in New York City), before formulating the no less audacious goal of the book: to enable urban spontaneity by means of design. Richard Sennett's return to The Uses of Disorder in the first part of the book takes the shape of a short essay. In fact, Sennett's text acts as a prologue to Sendra's contribution, which constitutes almost two-thirds of the book. Building upon the sharpness of the introduction, Sennett offers a dismal definition of the contemporary city on the one hand: 'an iron cage - one that imprisons disoriented, labouring animals' (p. 20), and a bright vision of how cities should be 'clean and safe, possess efficient public services, be supported by a dynamic economy, provide cultural stimulation, and also do their best to heal society's divisions of race, class and ethnicity' (p. 23) in the other; urging the readers to sustain a critical stance.