著：（美）查爾斯·瓦爾德海姆 譯：鄔峻 校：張博雅

當代，關(guān)于城市在設(shè)計文化中地位的討論趨向于朝著2個自指的、最終不可調(diào)和的邏輯循環(huán)發(fā)展。一方面，許多關(guān)于當代城市設(shè)計的討論淪為對政策、公眾參與及治理等社會政治議題的癡迷；另一方面，這些討論普遍局限于對城市歷史上單個地點、項目以及特例的描述。搖擺于這2個城市議程的范圍和規(guī)模之間，我們似乎失去了將城市設(shè)計描述為集體文化項目的潛力。這種籠統(tǒng)的聲明顯然過分簡化了情況，并冒著夸大其詞的真實風險。然而，在大多數(shù)情況下，一方面，當代城市相關(guān)的設(shè)計論述和實踐在規(guī)模、地點和主題上趨向于與政策相關(guān)；另一方面，與個體發(fā)展項目相關(guān)也是不爭的事實。

在因政治領(lǐng)導缺失、監(jiān)管機制不健全或無效公眾參與（可惜我們沒有合適的市長、開明的治理模式、稅收累進優(yōu)惠制度、受過良好教育的公眾等）而導致的廣義上的失敗中，對城市提案提出批評已變得司空見慣。對一塊土地、個人發(fā)展興趣或單一建筑師的身份等相關(guān)細節(jié)提出這種批評也已經(jīng)變得不足為奇（千載難逢的機會、解鎖單一的城市用地、奧林匹克運動會即將到來、世界上最著名的建筑師等）。雖然這2種批評視野都完全合理且必要，但當代城市設(shè)計討論中最缺乏的似乎是在集體項目規(guī)模上表達超越單一項目的利益或價值觀的能力，而非城市尺度本身。簡而言之，我們似乎已經(jīng)在場地和規(guī)模上都全面潰退，因為忽略了城市形態(tài)實際上是集體文化的表現(xiàn)。

在這城市命題萎縮的背后，還有許多充分的歷史原因。在這2種情況下，我們都見證了缺乏理性的政治解釋、缺乏政治經(jīng)濟大環(huán)境的解釋，或缺乏對那些直接和即刻投入實質(zhì)性項目的人的自身利益的解釋。當然，這很大程度上是由于自1968年以來的學院專業(yè)化以及城市規(guī)劃和建筑領(lǐng)域所享有的相對自治權(quán)。同樣，也源于我們關(guān)乎政治經(jīng)濟大環(huán)境和公民的討論。在這些討論中，集體考慮共同利益和成果互利似乎愈發(fā)難以實現(xiàn)。在規(guī)劃學圍繞社會議題激進化發(fā)展、建筑學圍繞學科自治激進化發(fā)展之后，誰將為城市文化展開訴求呢？誰有能力表達集體城市形態(tài)的潛力？在這種情況下，廣義的設(shè)計學科，尤其是城市藝術(shù)，具有通過發(fā)展話語形式和預判力來糾正這種歷史形態(tài)的潛力。

在關(guān)于城市作為設(shè)計主題和設(shè)計對象的論述中，可能會在日照朝向與城市化之間的關(guān)系里找到一個政體與項目和解的潛在性課題。自最早的城市建筑法規(guī)出臺以來，這一古老的議題就已經(jīng)出現(xiàn)。但對于設(shè)計學科而言，這又是一個很應景的問題。因為該話題有望增強當今社會對生態(tài)與城市主義之間關(guān)系的興趣。雖然生態(tài)都市主義的許多論述和實踐都集中在基于現(xiàn)代水文和生態(tài)條件的城市形態(tài)生成，但陽光都市主義（heliomorphism）的前景為生態(tài)功能與城市形態(tài)之間提供了一組新關(guān)系。這樣，該話題有望使人們對從景觀都市主義和生態(tài)都市主義到熱動力學和城市新陳代謝的一系列主題產(chǎn)生興趣。不同于與任一特定設(shè)計學科相關(guān)的技術(shù)問題，陽光都市主義建議將城市設(shè)計回歸為一種集體文化行為。為了避免在建筑文化自主權(quán)和城市形態(tài)生態(tài)參數(shù)的決策這二者之間做出錯誤選擇，陽光都市主義提供了第 3種選擇。就這一點而言，陽光都市主義的“轉(zhuǎn)向”與熱動力學這個主題有很多共同之處，兩者均是通過氣候、碳、能源和環(huán)境的外部驅(qū)動因素來動員建筑自主文化生產(chǎn)的議程。

景觀都市主義和生態(tài)都市主義這2個主題已經(jīng)引起了人們對與城市形態(tài)相關(guān)的水文網(wǎng)絡及其生態(tài)績效的關(guān)注。這些議題仍是許多人關(guān)注的焦點，與此同時，“陽光都市主義”給出了一條新的探究思路，通過這種思路也可以構(gòu)想出“生態(tài)都市主義”。

城市形態(tài)及其與日照朝向關(guān)系的話題一直存在。最早的建筑和城市規(guī)劃相關(guān)的文獻強調(diào)了城市的朝向、布局以及城市形狀與日照朝向相互對應關(guān)系的重要性。不論緯度如何，在世界各地的文化中都能找到將“日照權(quán)”作為基本社會建構(gòu)的古代法律。20世紀，該話題一直存在于“作為社會契約一部分的日照權(quán)”與“以城市化為途徑的、各種形式的資本積累”二者之間，成為兩者長期以來矛盾關(guān)系的一部分。

一些最早對建筑提出限制的英文法規(guī)是基于將日照可獲取性作為一項人權(quán)并探討其與城市高層建筑影響之間的張力而制定的。許多現(xiàn)代規(guī)劃領(lǐng)域的先驅(qū)提出過一些項目，通過限制建筑物的高度、退線和朝向，將全時段內(nèi)日照的最低公平獲取量納入現(xiàn)代城市形態(tài)的決定因素。20世紀城市化過程中一些最持久、最有力的城市形象來源于極端社會公平水平條件下的瘋狂垂直積累。英國的普通法“日照權(quán)”概念塑造了最早的盎格魯規(guī)劃形態(tài)（Anglo forms of planning）。在其他先例中，這些想法為美國最早的規(guī)劃法規(guī)的形成提供了信息?！都~約區(qū)劃法令》（New York’s zoning ordinance, 1916年）是其中一個例子，關(guān)于日照權(quán)的社會契約以城市形態(tài)的形式被編纂入法令中。這種集體社會契約的形式也以文化形態(tài)印刻在我們接觸到的城市意象中。休·費里斯（Hugh Ferris）的《明日的都市》（TheMetropolis of Tomorrow，1929年）將這座城市的文化雄心描繪為人們圍繞日照可達性的集體社會公平感。

針對陽光都市主義在當代的回歸，筆者建議重新閱讀20世紀的建筑和城市史。在20世紀下半葉，許多著名的建筑師和城市主義者探索了陽光都市主義項目的各個方面。包括對德國規(guī)劃師路德維?！は柌髂↙udwig Hilberseimer）的《新區(qū)域格局》（New Regional Pattern，1949年）[1]的重新審視。希爾伯西默的戰(zhàn)后計劃同樣受到了與分散式工業(yè)經(jīng)濟主導的空間定位有關(guān)的、深刻的社會陽光公平感的啟發(fā)。這些提示我們重新關(guān)注日照朝向的概念是如何影響英國建筑師簡·德魯（Jane Drew）和麥克斯韋·弗萊（Maxwell Fry）的工作。他們著有2本《熱帶建筑》（Tropical Architecture，1956年、1964年） 以 及《建 筑與環(huán)境》（Architecture and the Environment，1976年）[2-4]。美國建筑師拉爾夫·諾爾斯（Ralph Knowles）的設(shè)計作品以及他在《太陽節(jié)奏形式》（Sun Rhythm Form，1982年）一書中所述的“日照包絡體”的概念對于重讀陽光都市主義至關(guān)重要[5-6]。面對20世紀70年代的能源沖擊和經(jīng)濟轉(zhuǎn)型，諾爾斯提出了“日照包絡體”的概念。這一對“新”陽光都市主義的前身的重新解讀可通過重讀同時代其他理論著作而獲益，其中包括雷納·班納姆（Reyner Banham）的《溫和環(huán)境中的建筑》（Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment，1969年）[7]。通過解讀城市主義最新數(shù)字范式的承諾、與日照性能相關(guān)的城市形式的城市模型的潛力，這些歷史案例將被發(fā)揚光大。

加拿大都市主義者弗拉基米爾·馬特斯（Vladimir Matus）在1988年出版的《北方氣候設(shè)計》（Design for Northern Climates）一書中提到了“陽光都市主義的城市空間”的設(shè)計。馬特斯提出了具有生物學意義的城市項目的潛力：“幾十年來，對于各種人來說，最佳環(huán)境主要通過能源輸入來實現(xiàn)活動……（現(xiàn)在）建筑物可以轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)閷Νh(huán)境變化敏感的準生物系統(tǒng)，像花朵一樣開放，利用并吸收環(huán)境能量?！盵8]

這些例子，以及其他無數(shù)例子，預示著在城市形態(tài)控制過程中爭論焦點的形成，圍繞著獲得最低日照標準權(quán)利的抗爭，將資本積累與建筑形態(tài)的生長聚集對峙起來。豎直方向的生長聚集和水平方向的規(guī)范控制之間長期存在的矛盾與爭論，基本上定義了現(xiàn)代城市形態(tài)和日照朝向的議題。然而，最近建筑師和城市主義者指出了新型太陽能經(jīng)濟的潛力。其中許多項目建議通過擴大日照性能，建筑表現(xiàn)形式和城市形態(tài)來超越資本積累與公平獲取之間的長期矛盾關(guān)系?！靶隆标柟舛际兄髁x的前景暗示了兩組各自獨立且互相關(guān)聯(lián)的矛盾關(guān)系，二者均為城市設(shè)計所特有：1）城市作為社會公平的場所與城市作為資本積累的引擎之間的長期矛盾；2）生態(tài)過程中的太陽能獲取與可再生能源的太陽能獲取之間的矛盾關(guān)系?？偠灾@些術(shù)語提供了與社會、經(jīng)濟和生態(tài)參數(shù)相關(guān)的潛在城市形態(tài)與生命政治。陽光都市主義的議程產(chǎn)生了3種不同設(shè)計研究模式的交集，使得這種擴展的生命政治在城市領(lǐng)域成為可能：即服務于熱動力學的計算機幾何學和關(guān)系化城市建模；為建筑和城市形態(tài)服務的能源建模和改善性能措施；基于設(shè)計的生態(tài)學思想多元化和政治化。

最近的一些實踐案例可能有助于說明日照性能這一領(lǐng)域的擴展。為同上文提到的研究模式對應，并考慮到城市在該歷史議題中所起的作用與時間的非線性關(guān)系，這里選取了過去5年曼哈頓的3個案例?；冢ǔＤ辏Σ晒獾年P(guān)注，在曼哈頓新一輪高層項目的背景下，人們對由SHoP、Vinoly和其他頂級建筑師設(shè)計的新超高層住宅樓產(chǎn)生了廣泛擔憂。市政藝術(shù)協(xié)會（Municipal Arts Society, MAS）已經(jīng)恢復了其歷史角色，為解決這些問題提供支持，并且最近還發(fā)布了一個在線工具來幫助說明問題的嚴峻性。

最近，各界展開關(guān)于紐約超高層住宅及其在中央公園的陰影的討論，這表明日照性能這一話題的緊迫性。2013年12月，《紐約時報》發(fā)表了一篇文章，描述了由于新住宅開發(fā)而陷入永久陰影的曼哈頓公寓[9]。該文章描述了曼哈頓中城的超高層、超薄型住宅樓以及住宅項目的發(fā)展趨勢和整個城市的龐大開發(fā)數(shù)量?！短┪钍繄蟆泛推渌襟w認為這些住宅項目長期在住區(qū)視閾、游樂場和公園以及中央公園里投下陰影。《泰晤士報》的文章歷數(shù)了過去一個世紀以來，圍繞紐約的高層建筑、密度和采光的一系列長期焦慮[10]。紐約的市政藝術(shù)協(xié)會曾經(jīng)反對1987年的Moshe Safdie哥倫布圓環(huán)項目在紐約進行，通過2013年12月發(fā)表的報告《偶然的天際線》（“Accidental skyline”）和一個交互式地圖工具使人們重新關(guān)注該話題。該工具描述了高層建筑所帶來的迫在眉睫的威脅，及對其隱蔽整個公園的擔憂[11]。同月，康奈爾大學獲得了規(guī)劃許可，可以開始在羅斯福島新技術(shù)園區(qū)建造一座巨大的零能耗建筑，將由大量位于屋頂?shù)奶柲茈姵匕逄峁┌l(fā)電服務。彭博中心（Bloomberg Center）由Thom Mayne/Morphosis設(shè)計，通過增加用于太陽能收集的建筑表面積，大幅度優(yōu)化能源目標[12]。在Morphosis設(shè)計的彭博中心，對建造零能耗建筑的追求促使他設(shè)計了巨大的屋頂景觀，以優(yōu)化生產(chǎn)和減少排放，但同樣也增加了建筑物的陰影投射面，使新園區(qū)中心建筑的大部分區(qū)域陷入黑暗。最近，珍妮·甘/甘建筑工作室（Jeanne Gang/Studio Gang Architects）在曼哈頓下西區(qū)第十大道40號的高線附近設(shè)計了一個日照雕刻塔。該項目通過向城市提出請愿，獲得許可將部分開發(fā)量轉(zhuǎn)移，從而避免在高線上方蒙上陰影。在這種情況下，下方高架生態(tài)長廊的采光需求促使甘采用雕刻的形態(tài)語言并考慮重新分配場地上的可用開發(fā)權(quán)。與Mayne對能源生產(chǎn)的關(guān)注相反，甘的塔扭曲自身，以避免在下方的公園投下陰影。該項目有效地顛覆了1916年《紐約州分區(qū)決議》（New York Zoning Resolution）中約定的邏輯[13]。最近，有關(guān)讓·努維爾（Jean Nouvel）的努維爾建筑事務所（Jean Nouvel/Nouvel Architects）設(shè)計的位于西57大街的MoMA塔樓的爭論也同樣印證了新的陽光都市主義經(jīng)濟學：盡管設(shè)計方案關(guān)注了1916年及以后的分區(qū)法令，塔的高度和退線也限制在304.8 m（1 000英尺）之內(nèi)，但Nouvel提議的塔仍然受到紐約市規(guī)劃總監(jiān)Amanda Burden的嚴厲抵制[14]。3個看似矛盾的案例表明，日照朝向和城市形態(tài)這一話題在當代文化中重新獲得了契合度。該主題衍生出一系列問題，涉及社會正義以及城市的日照和空氣權(quán)，還衍生出城市生活相關(guān)的可再生能源生產(chǎn)和消費這些同樣引人深思的問題。這項研究將建立一套關(guān)于該主題與當代實踐和政策的潛在相關(guān)性的知識體系。

全球許多項目，包括上述的近期項目在內(nèi)，促成了日照性能相關(guān)的、復雜且矛盾的新經(jīng)濟學（更不用說新的政治）術(shù)語。2016年 9月，哈佛大學設(shè)計研究生院城市化辦公室在成立大會上重回城市秩序相關(guān)的這一古老議題[15]。會議通過3種話語框架探索了“新的”陽光都市主義城市項目的潛力：插件（plugins）、公眾資源（commons）和零和（zero-sum）。

拉爾夫·諾爾斯的“日照包絡體”概念提出了一種設(shè)計工具，該工具預示了當代對設(shè)計參數(shù)化和關(guān)系化建模的興趣。包絡體提供了一種預測形態(tài)，從而將城市形態(tài)與日照性能相互關(guān)聯(lián)。過去10年的技術(shù)發(fā)展帶來了意想不到的精確度和反饋程度，也許能為這一有著半個世紀歷史的創(chuàng)意注入新的可能。“插件”從概念及預測角度出發(fā)，重新審視了當代計算機幾何模型對該設(shè)計模式所帶來的變革。不受位置或緯度限制，在許多文化中，曬太陽被認為是一項古老而不可侵犯的權(quán)利。當前有幾種政治經(jīng)濟概念出于健康考慮對其進行保護，另一些則出于能源方面的考慮對其進行監(jiān)管。盡管上述2個概念有別，“公眾資源”都將2種類型的太陽能獲取重新定義為社會公平問題，繼而考察了來源于資本積累的建筑形態(tài)與基于環(huán)境共識的采光需求之間的矛盾關(guān)系。20世紀70年代的能源危機和經(jīng)濟沖擊引發(fā)了建筑和城市主義的一系列實驗性的、反文化的實踐。這些實踐使得在新的太陽能政治經(jīng)濟中，日常應用和自我研發(fā)的出現(xiàn)成為可能。當前的環(huán)境危機包括零碳應對策略和將操作規(guī)模推向新自由主義的公司行動以及政府城市化進程。“零和”策略審查了從國家到城市、從個人到大集團（政治或經(jīng)濟）、從替代到新常態(tài)的轉(zhuǎn)變。總體而言，這3個設(shè)計研究空間為城市形狀設(shè)計框定了“新的”陽光都市主義的潛力。

圖片來源：

文中圖片由哈佛大學設(shè)計研究生院城市化辦公室提供。

（編輯/王亞鶯）

Towards a“New” Heliomorphism

Contemporary discussions of the status of the city in design culture tend to bend towards one of two self-referential and ultimately irreconcilable logical loops. On the one hand, many discussions of the contemporary city in relation to design devolve into an obsessive preoccupation with the social and political abstractions of policy, participation, and governance. On the other hand, it is equally common for these discussions to be delimited to the description of individual sites, projects, and protagonists as singularities in the history of the city. In between these two scopes and scales of urban agenda, we seem to have lost the potential for describing the design of the city as a collective cultural project. This broad statement clearly oversimplifies the situation, and runs the real risk of overstating the case. Yet, it remains true that in the vast majority of cases the discourse and practices of design associated with the contemporary city trend towards the scales, sites, and subjects associated with either policy on the one hand or individual development projects on the other.

It has become commonplace to situate a critique of an urban proposal in the broader failings associated with a lack of political leadership, an absence of robust regulatory mechanisms, or ineffectual public participation(… if only we had the right mayor, an enlightened governance model, progressive tax incentives, a better educated public, etc.). It has become equally commonplace to locate this critique in relation to the specifics associated with a single parcel of land, individual development interest, or singular architect’s identity(… a oncein-a-lifetime opportunity, unlocking a singular urban site, the Olympics are coming, the world’s most famous architect is attached, etc.). While there remain perfectly reasonable and necessary dimensions to both of these scales of critique, what is most often absent in contemporary design discourse on the city seems to be the capacity to articulate interests or values beyond the singular project, operating at the scale of collective urban form of some dimension, yet not at the scale of the city itself. In short, we seem to have withdrawn from the sites and scales at which urban form manifests itself in collective and cultural terms.

There are many well-founded historical reasons beyond this atrophy of urban propositions. In both instances, we witness a retreat into alibis and explanations associated with the lack of a larger political economy or those specific to the self-interests of those directly and immediately invested in the project in material terms. Surely much of this stems from the relative autonomy of realms enjoyed by urban planning and architecture since their professionalization in the academy post-1968. Equally, much of this stems from our broader political economy and civil discourse in which the potential for collective consideration of shared interests and mutually beneficial outcomes seems harder and harder to come by. In the wake of planning’s radicalization around the social, and architecture’s radicalization around autonomy, who speaks for the city as a cultural aspiration? Who is capable of articulating the potential of collective urban forms? In this context, the design disciplines broadly, and the urban arts specifically, share the potential to redress this historic formation through the development of discursive forms and projective potentials.

In this discourse on the status of the city as subject and object of design, one potential subject for a rapprochement between the polity and the project might be found in the relationship between solar orientation and urbanism. While this admittedly ancient topic has been available since the earliest regulations on building in the city, it is, once again, a timely question for the design disciplines. This is particularly true as the topic promises to bolster contemporary interest in the relations between ecology and urbanism. While much of the discourse and many practices of ecological urbanism have focused on the adaptation of urban form for contemporary hydrological and ecological conditions, the prospect of heliomorphism affords a new set of relationships between ecological function and urban form. As such, the topic promises to extend contemporary interest in a range of subjects from landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism through thermodynamics and urban metabolism. Rather than a technical question associated with any one specific design discipline, heliomorphism proposes a return to the design of the city as a collective and cultural act. Instead of making a false choice between architecture’s cultural autonomy and more interested engagements in ecological parameters in urban form, heliomorphism affords a third term. In this regard, the heliomorphic“turn” shares much with the topic of thermodynamics as an agenda for mobilizing architecture’s autonomous cultural production through drivers found in the externalities of climate and carbon, energy and environment.

The twin topics of landscape urbanism and ecological urbanism have focused much attention on the terrestrial topics of hydrologic networks and their ecological performance in relation to urban form. While these preoccupations remain central for many, the topic of“heliomorphism” proposes a new line of inquiry through which an“ecological urbanism” might be conceived.

The perennial topic of urban form and its relationship to solar orientation is an ancient one. The earliest texts on architecture and town planning invoke the importance of considering the orientation, layout, and correspondence of the shape of the city to its relationship to the sun. Various versions of ancient laws regarding the“right-to-light” as a fundamental social construct can be found in cultures around the world, irrespective of latitude. Over the past century, this topic was inscribed in a long-standing tension between the right to light as a social contract versus various forms of capital accumulation through urbanization.

Some of the earliest English-language regulations on limits to building were developed in response to this tension between solar access as a human right and the impact of tall buildings in the city. Many protagonists of modern planning proposed projects in which minimum equitable conditions for solar access across time were built into the shape of the modern city through limits to building height, setbacks, and orientations. Some of the most enduring and powerful images of twentieth-century urbanization stem from the extreme conditions of delirious vertical accumulation versus more socially equitable horizontality. British common-law conceptions of a“right-to-light” shaped the earliest Anglo forms of planning; among other precedents, these ideas informed the formation of the earliest planning regulations in the United States.New York’s Zoning Ordinance(1916) is one example of this cultural inheritance in which the social contract on the right to solar access was codified in canonical urban form. This form of collective social contract is also inscribed in our images of the city as cultural form. Hugh Ferris’sTheMetropolis of Tomorrow(1929) delineated the cultural ambition of the city as informed by a collective sense of social equity around solar access.

A contemporary return to heliotropism recommends a rereading of the history of the topic in twentieth-century architecture and urbanism. A number of notable architects and urbanists explored various aspects of the heliomorphic project over the second half of the twentieth century. This would include a reexamination of German planner Ludwig Hilberseimer’sNew Regional Pattern(1949)[1]. Hilberseimer’s post-war planning was equally informed by a profound sense of social solar equity in relation to the dominant spatial fix of the decentralized industrial economy. The topic recommends a reconsideration of how concepts of solar orientation informed the work of British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry in their twoTropical Architecturebooks(1956, 1964) as well as their republication ofArchitecture and the Environment(1976)[2-4]. The work of American architect Ralph Knowles and his concept of the“solar envelope” as described inSun Rhythm Form(1982)[5-6]is essential to the rereading of heliotropism. Knowles developed his conception of the“solar envelope” in response to the energy shocks and economic transformations of the 1970s. This reconsideration of the second half of the twentieth century for antecedents to a“new” heliotropism would be further reinforced by a rereading of contemporaneous theories, including, among others, Reyner Banham’sArchitecture of the Well-Tempered Environment(1969)[7]. These historical cases will be leavened by a reading of more recent commitments to digital paradigms for urbanism and the potentials of relational urban modeling of urban form in relation to solar performance.

In his 1988 publicationDesign for Northern Climates,Canadian urbanist Vladimir Matus referred to the design of“heliomorphic urban spaces.” In his formulation, Matus suggested the potential for a biologically informed urban project: “For decades the optimal milieu for a variety of human activities has been achieved mainly through energy input. ... (Now) a building can be transformed into a quasi-biological system that sensitively responds to environmental variations, opening itself like a blossom, harnessing and absorbing ambient energies.”[8]

These examples, and countless others, rehearsed a central tension in the regulation of urban form, pitting capital accumulation through the aggregation of built form against social equity around the right to a minimum standard of solar access. This longstanding tension between vertical accumulation and horizontal regulation has defined the topic of urban form and solar orientation for much of the modern era. More recently, however, architects and urbanists have articulated the potential of a new range of solar economies. Many of these projects propose to transcend longstanding tensions between capital accumulation and equitable access through an expanded field of solar performance, architectonic expression, and urban form. The prospect of a“new” heliomorphic agenda suggests the interrelated articulation of a pair of distinct tensions, each of them endemic to the design of the city. First among these is the longstanding anxiety between the city as a site for social equity versus the city as an engine for capital accumulation. Second is the more recent tension between solar access for ecological processes as opposed to the capture of solar access for renewable energy. Taken together, these terms offer a potential bio-politics of urban form in relation to social, economic, and ecological parameters for urban form. This expanded bio-political urban field is made possible by the intersection of three distinct modes of design research attendant to the heliomorphic agenda: computational geometry and relational urban modeling in service of thermodynamics; energy modeling and performative measures in the service of architectonic and urban form; and the pluralization and politicization of ecologies and ecological thinking through design.

Some examples from recent practice might be helpful to illustrate this expanded field of solar performance. For the sake of symmetry, and given the disproportionate role that the city has played in the history of the topic, three cases are drawn from Manhattan in the past five years. In the context of(perennial) concern over the access to sunlight and the most recent round of tall buildings in Manhattan, there has been a great deal of collective anxiety about new super-tall residential towers designed by leading architects such as SHoP, Vinoly, and others. The Municipal Arts Society(MAS) has returned to its historic role as the venue to convene these concerns, and it has recently published an online tool to help illustrate the dimension of the problem.

Recent debates over the impact of supertall residential buildings in New York and their shadows across Central Park suggest that this is a timely question. In December 2013,TheNew York Timespublished an article describing Manhattan apartments plunged into perpetual shadow by new residential development[9]. The article described the tendency toward super-tall, super-skinny residential towers in midtown Manhattan, as well as residential projects of enormous overall volume across the city. These projects were described in theTimesand other media accounts as casting shadows across longstanding residential viewsheds, across playgrounds and parks, and into Central Park itself. TheTimesarticle rehearsed a set of longstanding anxieties around tall buildings, density, and access to sunlight in New York that have persisted over the past century[10]. The MAS of New York, which led the opposition to Moshe Safdie’s Columbus Circle project in 1987, returned to the topic with its December 2013Accidental Skylinereport and an interactive mapping tool which describes the looming threat of tall buildings casting shadows across the park[11]. That same month, Cornell University received planning permission to begin construction of an enormous net-zero building on its new Roosevelt Island technology campus to be served by enormous arrays of rooftop solar panels. Designed by Thom Mayne/Morphosis, the Bloomberg Center achieved aggressive energy targets by increasing the surface area of the building dedicated to the collection of solar energy[12]. In Morphosis’s Bloomberg Center, the provocation of a net-zero-energy building prompted the development of an enormous roofscape attuned to optimizing production and mitigating emissions. In so doing, it also increased the shadows the building casts, and plunged much of the center of the new campus into darkness. More recently, Jeanne Gang/Studio Gang Architects have proposed a Solar Carve Tower adjacent to the High Line at 40 Tenth Avenue on the Lower West Side of Manhattan. This project successfully petitioned the city for a variance to allow a transfer of allowable development volume in order to not cast shadow over the High Line. In this case, the desire for solar access to the ecological function of the elevated promenade below prompted Gang to carve and redistribute available development rights on the site. In contrast to Mayne’s concern for energy production, Gang’s tower contorts itself to avoid casting shadows on the public park below. This project effectively inverts the logic embedded in the

New York Zoning Resolutionof 1916[13]. Equally indicative of the new economy of heliomorphism was the recent debate around Jean Nouvel/Nouvel Architects’ West 57th Street MoMA Tower. In spite of its attentiveness to the 1916 (and subsequent) zoning ordinances shaping the height and setback of towers up to 304.8 m(1,000 feet), Nouvel’s proposed tower was infamously and unceremoniously circumscribed by New York City planning director Amanda Burden[14]. The coincidence of these three seemingly contradictory impulses suggests that the topic of solar orientation and urban form has renewed relevance in contemporary culture. The subject raises a range of questions from social justice and the right to light and air in the city. It also raises equally compelling questions regarding renewable energy production and consumption in relation to urban life. This research will build a body of knowledge on the potential relevance of this topic for contemporary practice and policy.

These recent projects, and a range of others around the world, suggest the complex and contradictory terms of a new economy(not to say a new politics) of solar performance. The inaugural conference of the Harvard Graduate School of Design Office for Urbanization returned to this ancient aspect of urban order in September 2016[15]. The conference explored the potential for a“new” heliomorphic urban project through three discursive frames: plug-ins, commons, and zero-sum.

Ralph Knowles’s concept of the“solar envelope” proposed a design tool that anticipated contemporary interests in parametricism and relational modeling. The envelope offered a projective form through which urban morphology was indexed to solar performance. The technological developments of the last decade have enabled an unanticipated degree of precision and feedback, potentially infusing new possibilities into an idea that has a half-century of history. Plug-ins revisit the changes, conceptual and projective, that contemporary models of computational geometry have brought to this design model. Independent of location or latitude, access to the sun is considered an ancient and inviolable right in many cultures. Several current politico-economic conceptions, however, protect it for health considerations, while others regulate it for energy reasons. Regardless of these two distinctions, the commons reconsiders both types of solar access to be issues of social equity, and it examines, accordingly, the tensions that exist between built form through capital accumulation, on the one hand, and access to sunlight through environmental consensus, on the other. The energy crisis and economic shocks of the 1970s led to experimental and countercultural practices of architecture and urbanism. These practices enabled the emergence of domestic applications and DIY methods of implementation in a new political economy of solar energy. The current environmental crisis embraces zero-carbon responses and has pushed the scale of operation to neoliberal corporate and governmental urbanizations. Zero-sum reviews the shifts from the domestic to the urban, from the individual to the conglomerate(political or economical), from the alternative to the new normal. Taken collectively, these three spaces of design research afford the potential for a“new” heliomorphic agenda for the shape of the city.

Sources of Figures:

Provided by Courtesy Harvard GSD Office for Urbanization.