Predicting the Evolutive City. The notion of Time in Diagrammatic Thinking

The exponential growth of built environment in the last half century presents traits typical of complex systems. At the edge of the planned city, in the so-called “transitional zones” frictions take place and trigger spontaneous self-organization processes. In order to capture those urban emergent behaviors, in the past 20 years, new design methods, based on the recognition of digital generative potentialities, have fine-tuned the development of diagrams, namely responsive systems of description and representation merging cognitive and creative steps. This approach is grounded on the observation that complex systems theory has not only changed our understanding of territorial dynamics (in both physical and non-physical senses) but has also provided operative mediums capable to fill the gap between strategic ideation and formal fabrication of ideas, therewith framing the design process in a new temporal adaptable contingency. Interestingly, such contingency respects the evolutionary becoming of urban matter, but does not constrain the architectural disciplines’ role to figure long term scenarios. In the delicate interplay of rules and randomness, diagrams are far more than technical devices and organizational optimizers. They are potential agents of radical anthropological changes.