TECH-SMART & SOCIO-SMART. PREMISE PENTRU O CRITICĂ A IDEOLOGIEI ORAȘELOR ȘI ARHITECTURII INTELIGENTE
TECH-SMART & SOCIO-SMART. PREREQUISITES FOR A CRITIQUE OF IDEOLOGY CONCERNING SMART CITIES AND ARCHITECTURE

Summary/Abstract: As the news in mass-media announced in early February2016 that Oradea will be the first smart city in ourcountry, a pressing need for inter- and trans-disciplinaryprofessional debates on a new type of modernizationbecomes stringent. I begin in this paper from five theoreticalobservations into the wider context of internationalexperiments on smart cities and architecture:1) Many debates in the last decades solely based on aestheticissues concerning architecture and urban design(traditionalism vs. futurism) are exhausted;2) The ethical issues concerning urban satisfaction,based on social observations on urban space appropriationand identification through technology, becomestruly relevant in our context;3) We notice the ideological difference between thepowerful models of smart cities, created ex nihilo (suchas Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, or the Center for Innovation,Testing and Evaluation in New Mexico, UnitedStates) and the alternative models of modernizationon a smaller scale, more realistic and sensitive to localconditions.4) A dictionary of urban trends such as “ParticipatoryCity: 100 Urban Trends - BMW Guggenheim Lab” has anessential role into the architectural education of the moment,yet not fully developed and interpreted at theoretical levels;5) Our focus of criticism on several recent projects of smart architecture and urbanism from Romania splitsinto two categories:a) Projects “top to bottom”, implemented by corporationsand / or governments: Vodafone Global Machineto-Machine (M2M), Siemens Smart City Sibiu and ClujTechnology Park Liberty project by Arhimar;b) Projects “bottom-up”, socially activated by small creativegroups: idz architecture, Modulab projects, themultidisciplinary intervention groups like Calup, Nodemakerspace and Make a Point, the educational project“De-a arhitectura / Playing with Architecture” and eventhe phenomenon of protests linked by Rosia Montanacase.

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