Cybernetic City

Columbia GSAPP 
Critic: Jimenez Lai
Fall 2018


This project attempts to design a city within a tower. The “Supermanhattan Studio” proposed a future where Central Park is extruded 12km into the stratosphere. The Cybernetic City is located within, and is proposed as an urban imaginary. Sitting well above the zone of livable atmosphere, this city is one in which the built environment promotes the consumption and dissemination of media.

“Miles above what stood as Central Park, a city was constructed. Nobody knows when it was constructed, the data was lost in the last Great Server crash. This city was seen as perfect- as the world around began to collapse into chaos of climate disaster, political upheaval, social unrest - the city remained contained, untouched through its isolation, cordoned off by a giant screen. The Screen came to represent more than the images its pixels projected; it was control, a universal order through illegible algorithms, security through optimization, equality through anonymous collectivity. Within the Screen, no mediating political or economic institutions were necessary, technology allowed for total community, all of its inhabitants all were rulers of the domain.

Architecturally, the city was a constant project as the optimization of its urban algorithms became more and more refined over generations. Life inside the Screen was one of constant media, and the built environment was constructed to proliferate and ingrain a sense of interconnection. The only moral imperative in the city was to produce and to consume media, for this allowed the algorithms to become more perfected, more granular in their understanding of needs and desires. The inhabitants believed that in their lifetimes this “Utopia Algorithm” would reach its final phase, and although the vast majority of media regarding the city was kept within its screens, word had spread to the rest of the world. It has caused a massive migration to the city, a physical and digital convergence of people wanting to be integrated into this society.