DocTalks is a series dedicated to ongoing investigations by doctoral, postdoctoral, or early-career researchers into the expansive entanglement of architecture and the natural environment. These sessions are meant to create an intercollegiate cohort of scholars who workshop writing, share research findings, and experiment with methodological tools while engaging with the vision and investigations of the Ambasz Institute.
These Doc Talk sessions are intended for scholars or architecture history and theory, but scholars in related fields and the general public are welcome to attend.
Dynamic Environments: Contemplating Interpretations of Systems Dynamics, from the US to Japan and Beyond
Speaker
Anna Ulak, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design
As the concern for the degradation of the natural environment began to intensify during the late 1960s and early ’70s, a method to study its deterioration was visualized via the World Dynamics model. Developed in 1971 by Professor Jay Wright Forrester (1918–2016) and his team at MIT, the World Dynamics model was used to study the correlations between population, capital investment in agriculture, the economy, pollution, and the natural resources of the world. The model was based on systems dynamics, which Forrester founded in 1956. Systems dynamics was a relatively new method in which systems theory was applied to a variety of problems via an extensive use of diagrams and computation.
Presented at the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, World Dynamics was later challenged at the 1973 Report from Tokyo conference for maintaining the pattern and substance of existing power of the developed, resource-rich nation states. Following the 1973 conference, systems dynamics was later adapted by architect Kisho Kurokawa’s demographic studies of Japan and some of his urban/architectural work internationally, in particular his study of San Salvo and Vasto within the province of Chieti, Italy.
A combination of literary and visual analysis will be employed to explore how the use of systems dynamics migrated from a Westernized global stage, into the Japanese perspective at the 1973 Report from Tokyo, to the eventual application by Kurokawa in Japan and Europe. Thus revealing systems dynamics ideological nuances and striking similarities when analyzing its use in different contexts.
The focus on the application of systems dynamics in various cultural contexts explores how it was used as an object of authority where its multiple adaptations were projecting similar desires to preserve stable forms of power, while simultaneously disrupting steady representations of natural environment, urbanism, and architecture. As such, new ways to gain influence to make such disruptions will be contemplated.
Anna Ulak has, since 2017, been a PhD research fellow at the Oslo School of Architecture, Department of Architecture, and an architect registered with the Architektenkammer in Berlin. She holds an MArch from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design. She has exhibited in Weimar, Toronto, Warsaw, and Berlin, at the National Museum of Architecture Oslo, and in Aarhus, Denmark. Her work has been published on archdaily, archinect, DOMUS, and Media + Architecture Institute Vienna, and she has contributed to UrbanNext, Conditions magazine, and DOMUS. Professionally, Ulak worked at several internationally recognized firms, such as Michael Maltzan Architects and GMP Architekten, on various large-scale public projects in Europe, the Middle East, and the US.
Respondent
Chelsea Spencer, Rice University
The Emergence of Photogrammetry in Monument Documentation and Land Surveying, 1850s–1920s
Speaker
Shuyi Yin, Columbia University
This paper, the first chapter of my dissertation, explores the emergence of plane table photogrammetry in the 1850s–1890s, a foundational development leading to 20th-century stereophotogrammetry and the contemporary ubiquitous use of digital photogrammetric methods in the monument documentation. It focuses on Albrecht Meydenbauer (1834–1921), the pioneer in the field who coined the term “photogrammetrie” in 1867. Meydenbauer’s revolutionary use of plane table photogrammetry and his development of related apparatuses significantly departed from traditional monument documentation methods, laying the groundwork for this technology’s evolution and use in monument documentation.
Meydenbauer’s leadership at the Royal Prussian Photogrammetry Institute (Königlich Preußische Meßbildanstalt) was instrumental in advancing photogrammetry in monument documentation, overseeing the survey of over 1,200 monuments across Germany and Europe and creating an archive of 20,000 photo plates. The paper examines Meydenbauer’s contribution within the broader context of 19th-century nation-building, monument politics, and land surveying. It also discusses other figures such as Aimé Laussedat (1819–1907), focusing on their techniques, particularly those applied in land natural environment surveying. The research not only delves into the socio-technical evolution of photogrammetric machinery and techniques, but emphasizes its impact on and reciprocation with monument documentation and land surveying. It reveals the interdependent and reciprocal relationships among these disciplines, demonstrating how development in one area propelled technological innovations in the others, all within a broader historical context. Central to this analysis is a recognition of the interconnected processes of key individuals, institutions, and other agents of change. The paper highlights the co-evolution of photogrammetric technologies, monument documentation, and land surveying and how these developments collectively formed a symbiotic network that reshaped each field.
Shuyi Yin is a doctoral candidate in historic preservation at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). She is affiliated with the Columbia Center for Archaeology and Center for Comparative Media. Shuyi holds a bachelor of architecture (BArch) degree from Zhejiang University, a master of science in historic preservation (conservation science) from the University of Pennsylvania, and a master of environmental science (architectural and historic preservation history, advised by professor Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen) from Yale University.
Respondent
An Tairan, Princeton University
This event was made possible through a generous gift from Emilio Ambasz. The Emilio Ambasz Institute for the Joint Study of the Built and the Natural Environment is a platform for fostering dialogue, promoting conversation, and facilitating research about the relationship between the built and natural environment, with the aim of making the interaction between architecture and ecology visible and accessible to the wider public while highlighting the urgent need for an ecological recalibration.