TITLE:

OVERPOPULATION AND INTEGRAL HABITAT - REPLICANT INFRASTRUCTURAL ARCHITECTURE IN THE THIRD AND FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION.

Autor: Mg.Arch. Leandro Tomás Costa

THE SHORTAGE.

The development of modern architecture has historically been linked to successive industrial revolutions. Now we are on the threshold of the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution, and architecture, as a disciplinary corpus, is required by solicitations and purposes imposed from the actors of power; solicitations and goals that need to be thought out urgently, as their senses, opportunities and risks.

The American economist and sociologist Jeremy Rifkin and the German economist Klaus Schwab are the theorists of the new industrial revolution. Rifkin proposes the third, while Schwab surmises the fourth. Both agree in seeing in the Technique a force capable of profound social transformations. Rifkin clearly defines what an industrial revolution is, in technical terms. Says Rifkin:

"... from my research I have deduced that the great economic revolutions of history happen where new communication technologies converge with new energy systems."[1]

From this convergence it is possible to base the genesis of true architectural inventions, as nodes --housing, industrial, transport, etc.-, linked by the flowering of terrestrial, aerial, material and informational communication routes.

History also warns of a conditioning relationship between the Industrial Revolution and the densification of the metropolis, not only with humans, but with technical objects, as the French philosopher Gilbert Simondon[2] called them, for whom both humans and technical entities evolved together from the Paleolithic to the present. It also tells us about the growth of the world's human population, based on better living conditions thanks to the technique, technique that Heidegger, perhaps its most relevant philosopher, called Modern[3], a technique whose essence is, precisely, to disguise the energies present in nature -including human-, that is, dispose them for industry and the world economy.

For the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, who continues critically Heidegger's thought, the Modern Technique is also an ideology of non-reproductive production, ie the consumption of non-renewable materials and the progressive transformation of renewables, in non-renewable. This ideology, according to Sloterdijk, moves, in this era of globalization, individual information and consumption, to the ways of living, of the metropolitan populations, as instructions for social behavior, without socialization, affecting both communities on the outside of the consumer society and its spatialities, as those who believe in that society and spaces. 

Slotedijk conceives a theory that he calls anthropotechnical[4], like that ancestral and complex policy, of the generation of human-technical islands for the biological and cultural incubation of humans, by humans, in integral habitats. Those anthropotechnical habitats require today, more than yesterday, of complex technical entities, abundant quantity of raw materials and energy, that is why when Sloterdijk defines our historical moment as the threshold of the Post-fossil era, that is to say of the scarcity of oil as a material foundation of the consumer society, it demands an urgent technological development, for new instances of abundance, that guarantee the survival of the human population on the planet. 

ABUNDANCE.

The theory of the Third Industrial Revolution is a proposal for a world in crisis due to the shortage of oil and socio-environmental disasters, which should be rescued by cybernetic technologies managed in a network, technologies for the production of renewable energies and manufacturing digitized of goods, in a distributed and collaborative way.

Rifkin requests an Architecture, as nodes of a global infrastructure, where each building behaves as a support of technologies for the production of renewable energy. This would make cities, potentially self-sufficient entities, from the energy point of view, which would significantly improve the levels of the so-called ecological footprint.

For his part, Klaus Schwab[5] argues that we are at the beginning of a Fourth Industrial Revolution qualitatively different from the Third Industrial Revolution (he takes care to name Rifkin), although related. From what we have studied about this theory, we interpret and propose that this difference would lie in the development of Artificial Intelligence, as a factor and actor, that exponentially accelerates technical developments, making industrial production more efficient, economic and complex.

For Schwab, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is characterized by continuous disruptions due to the interaction of the physical, digital and biological worlds, through the generation of information. These technological developments become radical metamorphoses of the world that make uncertain the conditioning factors of the architectural project, for which Schwab requests an Architecture of high density and concentration, which makes room for this uncertainty, through configurations of the areas that allow it to change, in time.

THE RISK.

Both Rifkin and Schwab agree on a forecast, according to which an increase in global overpopulation is likely, as an effect of the economic expansion of the new industrial revolution.

For Rifkin, abundance in the Third Industrial Revolution requires resources of all kinds. Some, like solar energy, are relatively easy to obtain renewable resources, others, such as food, water, and living space, cease to be so before the phenomenon of overpopulation.

For his part, Klaus Schwab, believes that the overpopulation will also be linked to the problem of the growing aging of the world population, that is, of the extended longevity due to biotechnological developments.

In 1968, the American biologist and demographer Paul Ehrlich, developed a theory and a formula (I = PAT) to measure the link between Superpopulation, Technology, and the Impact on the Environment, in his book "The Population Bomb"[6], whose thesis holds that the overpopulation is the origin of the great planetary ecological problem, solvable only by means of a worldwide birth control, idea still valid in the circles of world power, which equals, we hold, unjustly, responsibilities between the rich and poor peoples of the world.

The equation, I (Impact) = P (Population) x A (Affluence) x T (Technology) demonstrates, according to Ehrlich, that population and birth control is the key to the problem of overpopulation, therefore, even if they improve circumstantially the coefficients of affluence and Technology, with an exponentially growing World Population, the impact on the planetary environment and its soil, would follow the same trajectory.

Common sense tells us that, the higher the density, the more overpopulation, however, Ehrlich, clearly differentiates both concepts. Overpopulation would be the relationship between the number of people living in an area, with the load capacity of that area, that is, the disposition of an environment and its associated domains, to admit the activities of the human group that inhabits it. A city like New York, with high average density and great consumption of all kinds of materials and energies, may not have overpopulation, although it undoubtedly enhances the effect of overpopulation in many regions of the world, beyond national borders.

Ehrlich represents cities as inefficient and unhealthy terminals for energy consumption and raw materials, but what would happen if we could densify cities and resignify them as integral self-sufficient habitats, that is, capable of producing and recycling their own energies and materials? How should the qualities of the architectural housing infrastructure, which both Rifkin and Schwab, and Peter Sloterdijk request, so that said integral habitat be distributed equitably and with social justice among the populations? How could the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution, as a new mode of production, contribute to the development of a new architecture and a new architecture policy in the sense of the previous questions?

LIMITS.

From the study of the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution theories, arises, as significant information, the problem of overpopulation, therefore we summarize what follows: The limit and risk of the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution, as a new period of economic and population growth, is the overpopulation and its potential ecological and social collateral effects, given the context of a globalized consumer society that tends to the concentration of wealth and the exclusion of the population masses that are outside of that society.

Therefore, we propose the following statement of research and project: The limit to overpopulation, over-exploitation of land and socio-spatial exclusion, as effects of the development of the Third and Fourth Industrial Revolution, is the densified and resignified city , as a self-sufficient Integral Habitat, by means of an infrastructural housing architecture, product also of the advances of said new industrial revolution, that allows to replicate the potentialities of the soil and the culture, through the distribution, with social justice, of the habitat, the energies and the matter. 

Bibliography:

-         Ehrlich, P. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Buccaneer Books.

-         Heidegger, M. (1977). The question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

-         Rifkin, J. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

-         Schwab, K. (2017). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Crown Businees.

-         Simondon, G. (2017). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Minnesota: Univocal Publishing.

-         Sloterdijk, P. (2013). You must change your life. On Anthropotechnics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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[1] Rifkin, J. (2011). The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World. New York: St. Martin's Griffin.

[2]  Simondon, G. (2017). On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects. Minnesota: Univocal Publishing.

[3]  Heidegger, M. (1977). The question Concerning Technology, and Other Essays. New York: Harper Torchbooks.

[4] Sloterdijk, P. (2013). You must change your life. On Anthropotechnics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

[5] Schwab, K. (2017). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Crown Businees.

[6] Ehrlich, P. (1968). The Population Bomb. New York: Buccaneer Books.