Intangible Technologies and Optimization of Energy Flows

The concept of the city as a ‘single element has been replaced by the concept of a “city system”, overcoming the Aristotelian model (form/substance) and the Cartesian paradigm of a simplifiable and decomposable city, to attain the concept of a system understood as a “complex unit”. By definition, a system is made up of elements and relationships, interactions, and interrelations between them. It follows that its rules of composition cannot be guided by simple additive properties (as in the simple case of a set) but, to respect the connections between the multiple elements, those rules must be relational to also consider the constraints and conditions of the environment the system is a part of. The architect must have a systemic approach capable of expressing unit and multiplicity, diversity, wholeness, organization, and complexity at the same time, working with various types of knowledge at the same time, hybridizing the knowledge and circuiting the various disciplines involved in the process and enforcing respect for the complexity of the system.