Spaces in motion: Hybrid collectivities for a nomadic practice

Abstract

While new forms of mobility and unprecedented infrastructural developments allow us to physically go from one place to another faster than before, digitalization bounds our activities in a virtual space of networks, making “online movement” easier than ever. This article argues that this flexibility of movement gives us the opportunity to reconsider the way we have inhabited till now and shift towards a less static living pattern. Within this context, the role of urbanists, architects and designers is being challenged to consider design approaches based on the contemporary notion of movement. If we consider that paradigm shift is happening towards a more nomadic pattern, still the way we have been designing contemporary urban spaces to date fails to weave on one hand, our de-spatialized digital existence with our physical one and on the other, the emerging mobility infrastructure with our need for social spaces.  To stress the effects of a shift in the design discipline, we use photogrammetry as a technique that contains motion within its own performance. Driven by forensic approaches, we break down static milieus into particles. Through both the represented result and the technique itself, we incorporate the nature of space in movement and picture speculative scenarios of nomadic narratives. What if national boundaries become movement pathways, subways are transformed into event halls and housing units become apparatuses of movement tracking?