6 The Urban Improvise

The contemporary city consists of numerous networks that overlay and intertwine in unpredictable and delightful ways. While cities have always provided such mixtures, today's technology takes our ability to experience it to another level. In addition to creating entirely new networks through apps and other media, technology enhances the existing social, economic and infrastructural fabrics of the city. Today, we are able to see the train schedule, weather and what other city dwellers (both known and strangers) are up to in real-time. To Kristian Kloeckl, associate professor of architecture and design at Northeastern University, these conditions define the hybrid city. As the city of today no longer functions as the cities of prior decades did, it follows that the design principles architects implemented then do not address our urban needs now. Aldo Rossi and Rem Koolhaas, two significant urban-minded architects of the past half-century, can teach us much, but they do not address how to deal with, for example, the scooters that litter city sidewalks around the globe. While Rossi focuses on the temporal culmination that identifies the city, Kloeckl turns to the city's minute-by-minute events. We already understand that the city has lived; Kloeckl implores us to see that it is still alive.

Kloeckl has spent years researching and developing a series of concepts that he outlines in his new book, The Urban Improvise: Improvisation-based Design for Hybrid Cities, published this year by Yale University Press. Kloeckl's work spans the globe both virtually and physically, always with a focus on their intersection in the city.¹ (Disclosure: I took two courses with Kristian during my undergraduate studies, in addition to working closely with him on various research and design endeavours outside the classroom. While none of these interactions were directly geared towards the production of this book, in hindsight, they all helped it come into being.) The book, with its loud cyan dust jacket and louder typesetting,^A argues that the nexus of the urban and the technological provides previously untapped design possibilities; however, Kloeckl does not arrive at this potential through some Silicon Valley, data-driven logic. Rather, Kloeckl rejects the notion of empirical data that provides singular, scripted solutions in favor of what he deems improvisational design. Over the course of eight chapters and three semesters worth of endnotes, Kloeckl creates a compelling context in which improvisation becomes the obvious solution before outlining exactly what it means to design with room for the urban improvise.

¹ For instance, at MIT's City Senseable Lab, Kloeckl led a team that synthesized citywide data in Singapore in order to improve its accessibility and, in turn, improve the city through the use of the data. More about Kloeckl's oeuvre can be found on his website.

^A

Kristian Kloeckl. The Urban Improvise: Improvisation-based Design for Hybrid Cities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.

After a cursory introduction, Kloeckl digs in through the deconstruction of the various words used to describe the contemporary city. He points out the shortcomings of terms like 'smart city' without dismissing them outright, and instead picks out the conceptual threads worth keeping. Over the course of numerous such dissections (including that of his own favored term, hybrid city), Kloeckl quietly collects the themes with which the rest of the book will be woven. At this point, the city becomes context, and the focus shifts to improvisation. Kloeckl uses the term improvisation to account for the unexpected that always occurs; try as they might, designers (especially those of urban entities) cannot account for everything users will do. Rather than stranglehold their work to irrelevance, designers should promote these improvisational acts by leaving their works open to the whims of the urban environment. In allowing city-dwellers to do more with such designs, the designer promotes evolution within the city, keeping it alive. The topic's relevance cannot be denied because, as Kloeckl puts it, "as long as there is improvisation, acts remain relevant. Improvisation is a mode of operation to remain relevant, to ensure that one's actions will be relevant."² Design no longer has to be relegated to static creations. It can improvise, adapt and grow. By the end of chapter four and the conclusion of the first half of the book, the reader has a full understanding of the ideas at play and all their interrelationships. The concepts remain in the abstract, so the second half turns towards their application.

² Kloeckl, The Urban Improvise, 98.

Kloeckl proposes a four part model through which one may design for improvisation. First, designers must leave the work open to outside initiative. The designer chooses the building blocks, but leaves them unassembled. This does not mean that architects do not physically build their structures, but rather that they do not over-design them. A space should never in any one moment be the full entity of itself; it must always remain a fragment of kaleidoscopic whole. Kloeckl studies the example of the parklet, a parking space rented for a use besides that of parking (e.g. for a pop-up shop or additional cafe seating), which demonstrates how a space can always be open to new, useful misinterpretations. Second, the designer must have a keen sense of timing. Instead of relying on the unforgiving clock, designs should enter the natural rhythm of the city as well as the user's personal experience of time. Awareness of these temporal lines and cycles allows designed works to act at opportune moments, maximizing their agency and effect. Third, the designer must become a choreographer, creating designs that not only adapt to their situations, but signal such adaptations to other actors. The goal here is not only for responsive design, but design that elicits responses. Finally, designers must embrace the unexpected as they cannot design for it. Kloeckl references Jacques Lacan's Other, Gilles Deleuze's idiot and William Cronon's wildness as three examples of rationalizing that which exists outside intentions.³ Kloeckl suggest redundancy as a mechanism to encompass the unplanned as redundant elements will inevitably find new, unique uses. Kloeckl's at length discussion of this four part model culminates with an analysis of existing projects through the lens provided by his model, and an example of its application to an as-of-yet unsolved urban issue. By the end of the book, the reader has synthesized the massive amount of research from the first half into a digestible, easy-to-implement design strategy.

³ Lacan's Other denotes that which is alien to oneself, something that one cannot relate to or see themselves in (as opposed to his lowercase other, which denotes the alien within oneself). Deleuze's idiot serves as the private citizen who functions against public expectations. Cronan's wildness juxtaposes the notion of wilderness: the latter is a Romantic construct of the sublime while the former is the deadly, uncontrollable force of nature.

Despite its frequent references, abstract concepts and design principles clearly pointed at architects and the like, Kloeckl facilitates the ideas he discusses, keeping the book accessible to anyone interested in the changing contemporary city. He balances heavier Deleuzian incursions with pages of teachings from his karate sensei. In fact, The Urban Improvise excels in the breadth of its references. Kloeckl constructs his argument with everything from ethnography to theatre to business.⁴ While design remains the focus, Kloeckl compiles ideas from everywhere with an understanding that circular discourse provides no new solutions. One must remain open and learn to incorporate the unexpected. As such, Kloeckl's writing becomes somewhat improvisational, or at least insofar as a book might try to be.⁵

⁴ Prominent examples of each appear frequently throughout the book in the work of Lucy Suchman, Mary Overlie's Viewpoints technique and the platform economy.

⁵ Though he builds his understanding of the networked city with it, Kloeckl departs from the rhizomatic model of Deleuze and Guattari quite literally by letting the reader know The Urban Improvise is best read in chapter order.