The Logistical City Workshop

We live in an era where logistical systems have become central to how we work and live. We now think nothing of dropping a priority package in a drop box in Chicago at 9:30pm knowing it will arrive in L.A. by 7:30am the next morning. Talking in real time with a friend in a remote location via video-telephony is taken for granted, using nanosecond transmission signals is fundamental in the financial industry, while ordering groceries with an app and having them delivered later the same day is the norm rather than the exception. Given there is so much material and information flow in and around the spaces we inhabit, one could argue that infrastructural systems and their associated procedures are now the primary shapers of the urban environment. Yet, there are few, if any, intellectual models in place for architecture to contemplate the city from this perspective.

The one-day workshop, featuring national and local scholars as well as faculty from the UIC School of Architecture will review the social, political, material and cultural implications of logistical procedures for architecture and urbanism and debate ways in which logistical intelligence could be deployed, or re-routed toward the future design of the city. Speakers will be asked to present a definition of the Logistical City through the lens of their own unique research.