While modeling is a part of analytic, creative and projective processes used by designers, scientists and policy makers, the definition of model differs widely from discipline to discipline. Kevin Lynch begins his chapter on City Models and City Design (1984, p 277) from the book Good City Form, with three definitions of model:

1) A 3-d miniature, this years new car, a person who exhibits new clothes
2) A theory of how something functions: quantitative, metaphorical, qualitative
3) A picture of how the environment ought to be made, a description of a form or a process which is a prototype to follow.

For Lynch, theory is a succinct explanation of the inner workings of a formerly confusing phenomenon. An integrated city theory can produce urban models, whose visualization creates a mental structure, a collective philosophical and psychological construction shared by city inhabitants. Lynch's primary concern is with urban form and his third definition has been of primary importance traditionally for urban design, where decisions are largely based on models in the head of the designer. This course is an introduction to various computer applications – 3-d modeling, graphic representation, multi-media and internet - adjusted to the discipline of Urban Design in order to construct models in Lynch's cognitive sense. The "adjustments" follow pedagogical propositions, tested through in-class experiments, theorizing the dialectical relationship between urban representations and bodily experiences within the city itself.

The following issues related to urban form and processes will be explored:

A. Embeddedness: Historical, ecological and social patterns of an urban site can be examined as processes at various scales within an urban fabric. Embeddedness can be modeled digitally in three ways:

1) Framing: A frame establishes a closed set of relations within the frame and an "out-of-field" outside the frame. All sites are framed by physical enclosures, legal restrictions, political boundaries and property relations. We directly experience the world in small fragments and assume the accuracy of the representations of that which lies outside our field of action. Framing, therefore is a critical act by the designer in establishing new sets of relationships beyond normative conceptions of site boundaries.

2) Layering: Urban complexity is unpacked through a process of modeling various attributes and elements of the city as separate layers of information. This process enables one to isolate and investigate the relationships between urban elements and perceptions, as well as data from various disciplines - environmental, social, economic, etc.

3) Scaling: Techniques are introduced in moving between various scales and levels of organization in the design process. Digital modeling programs allow the designer to zoom in and out in order to engage work at several scales simultaneously: global economic and migration patterns, regional landscapes and infrastructures, district enclaves of blocks and streets, local pockets of lived spaces, and the scale-less-ness of mental images of the city.

B. Truth in Crisis: Movement and Time Images: The representational "reality" or "truth" of urban sites and programs are viewed as constructed by varied authors. Singular constructions can be questioned through interactivity inherent in multi-media work. What can be shown in a site versus what can be said about it? How can invisible information be presented to the senses? How can experience, perception, concept, and thought be expressed in a design process?

1) Visibility and "sayability": Some urban sites and many urban relationships are imperceptible to the eye. The full urban experience is indescribable in representations. Like the camera's expansion of the optical capacity of the human eye, the ability to render in wire-frames, transparencies and translucencies enables the designer to adjust according new optical information: physical relationships between inside and outside, under and over, but also the spatial analysis of demographic, economic or environmental information expand our notion of the "form" of the city. Cinema language, as described by Delueze, can create "thought images" through the interrelationship between movement, affect, sound, image and time.

2) Movement and Time: Computer multi-media and modeling programs will be utilized in order to map New York City in time, both historically (the past), experientially (the present), and possibly (the future). Animations will be created to examine historical development, documenting and simulating street level urban experience, and creating time-based scenarios for imagining the future of the city. New relationships will be discovered through reversals, speeding up and slowing down. Aberrant movements and non-linear time images are preferred methods rather than simulating "natural" perception through hyper-real simulations and walk-throughs.

C. Subjectivity and Authorship: We will work to undermine the authority of the single point of view by shifting vantage points and collaborating. The work is in support of a critique of the "master" plan but also reflects an ideological position which does not prescribe to either the classical view of a human-imagined world order, nor the belief in a cubist or deconstructed model of chaos and fragments. Rather, it imagines life as creative evolution where momentary constellations of fragments join to create space, event and shifting life worlds.

1) Repositioning points of view: The standard fly-through view of the city from above will be replaced by the deployment of cognitive mapping of perceptual experience. The integration of diaries, photographic recordings capturing aberrant and multiple walk-through animations during the design process repositions the designer within the designed site from various points of view. The process also considers presentations to various audiences representing different constituencies outside of academia. An effort is made to find modes of representation which can accommodate and engage various positions and interpretations.

2) Collaboration: A computer network eases the integration of individual and collaborative work. Students work individually on local probes of larger scale urban assemblages, which are derived through group affinities, rather than the master plan or a single vision. The cut and paste abilities of computer software allows for individual projects to be layered and juxtaposed, easing the collaborative process. Group identity is also questioned since affinities are partial and limited. Also interdisciplinary collaborations can be created by importing spatialized data from planning, preservation, real estate and the social sciences.

Examples in art, cinema theory and urban design practice will expand the sources of inspiration through mixing vantage of points, movement and Montage. Ruptures and lack of linear continuity of thought can explore certain cognitive effects and where the "reality" of a site or program can be questioned by movement of subject position and non-linear temporal structures. According to philosopher Gilles Deleuze, cinema creates an awareness of ourselves as centers of indeterminacy in an a-centered world. You are not asked to produce "movies" but architectural drawings and diagrams that move. A deliberate and slow animation style is strongly suggested. The reading assignments are drawn from Gilles Deleuze's Cinema books and Robin Evans' The Projective Cast, (see Class Schedule) We would recommend you buy these books. While ambiguity and irony are encouraged, you are asked to employ the technology to clarify your observations, not to proliferate further images within the preconceived spectacle of consumption of clichés.

Modeling is a process used in science as well as in architecture. We are interested here in the course as an experimental laboratory and the success of a scientific model lies within rigorously defined parameters and limits and by the questions posed by the model. Models are projective not descriptive. Two representational axes will be employed in constructing digital models. One axis will explore the relation between two and three dimensions and another, the pole between abstraction and simulation. We are not interested in any of the extreme points of the axes, where much digital representation lies, but in the creation of a hybrid language between 2D and 3D; between the flatness of abstraction and rendered simulation.

The course work will consist of weekly in-class assignments, independent field trips, and the construction of an urban model and animations. Attendance is mandatory, and grading will reflect the quality of work done in class as well as performance at reviews. The course is primarily concerned with digital urban modeling and you will be evaluated based on the accuracy and completeness of your urban models as well as the clarity of your concepts as expressed in your presentations.