Project Lexicon
Actor: noun, a group, community or professional body with similar obligations, values or mandates which influence or are affected by other actors, artifacts or environments.
Affordance: noun, the obvious or most feasible possibilities for action, growth, or change provided by the structures of permanence for a specific environment or locality.
Agonism: adjective, the generative potential which emerges from creative differences and respectful debate of differing views. (Chantal Mouffe)
Anthropocene: adjective, the current geological phase in which human activity has become the greatest influencing force on the global biome, leading to climate change.
Anthropocentric Environment: noun, expanding the scope of the built environment through a terrestrial model in recognition of the anthropocene, in which human influence over the planet has affected ecosystems previously viewed as natural and autonomous.
Armature: noun, a geological or urban feature which disrupts the continuity of its surroundings and influences the formation of subsequent adjacent development. Creates a border conditions at the interaction between discontinuity and continuity.
Artifact: noun, an object or assemblage created by humans which holds cultural, societal or technological significance.
Assemblage: noun, a collection of immaterial and material components brought together by an actor(s) in a state of flux caused by internal and external forces. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Broken: adjective, a socio-spatial-economic system that is no longer working as it was intended or is causing unintended negative effects, especially if those effects are disproportionately affecting specific groups or demographics
Broken World Thinking: noun, a school of thought which views the socio-physical world in a constant state of transformation through decay and collapse, in which repair is viewed for its generative potential as an opportunity for reevaluation and adaption of existing sociotechnic systems. (Steven S. Jackson)
Building: noun, a dwelling or structure constructed to support human activity and inhabitation. verb, the action of assembling or constructing new buildings or, expanding existing buildings or urban fabrics.
Care: verb, engaging with something other than oneself to perform a beneficial action in a non-self referential nor self absorbed way.(Joan Tronto)
City: noun, a settlement with sufficient employment pull leading to a high population and continual growth, which interweaves residential, commercial, and civic services within its urban fabric and is governed by jurisdictional hierarchies which inform urban development and spatial patterns.
Compact: adjective, a space in which program and activity are in close proximity, which prioritizes utility and functionality over spatial generosity.
Complex: adjective, a layered composition of interconnected relationships across various scales. noun, when a system boundary or scalar view point is placed on an interconnected system.
Densification: verb, increasing the population density of an area through the creation of additional dwelling units.
Densification, Hard: verb, the construction of new multifamily dwellings at or above the adjacent density, typically involving the demolition of existing building.
Densification, Soft: verb, the introduction of additional dwelling units through retrofit of existing structures, or through infill construction at a similar density and is architecturally contextual with its surroundings.
Density, Building: adjective, an evaluation of the built environment through the quantity of built form within a given area, simplified to the net floor-area-ratio of a urban area.
Density, Population: adjective, an evaluation of the built environment through the quantity of people residing or working within a given area.
Density, Unit: adjective, an evaluation of the built environment through the quantity of dwelling unites within a given urban area, used in conjunction with building density and population density to understand the potential capacity of given area compared to its current use.
Deterritorialization: verb, the separation of social, cultural and political practices from its terrestrial location or relations. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Domestic: adjective, the personal relationship one has to their home and those they share it with, and to the objects within it that hold meaning and give them a sense of normalcy. Functions related to providing for one’s self and family.
Domestic Unit: noun, refering to a group who cohabitate within a shared dwelling.
Duality: adjective, simultaneously containing or experiencing multiple conditions, meanings or differing qualities, both intensive and extensive.
Dwelling: noun, a contained space in which one resides and maintains their domestic autonomy. A unit within a building that is separated for fire, noise and services from adjacent units, in which one has an emotional and legal sense of ownership and responsibility over.
Emergence: noun, complexity or structures which form within a system to dissipate energy or intensity.
Emergy: noun, a calculation of the embodied energy with matter accounting for solar, ecological and geological forces used in the transformity and generation of that material. Measured in emjoules (sej). (Howard Odum)
Energy: noun, the power generated through metabolic processes or chemical reactions used by an organism or machine to do work
Environment: noun, an organism’s surrounding conditions, including its spacial, climatic, industrial, ecological and geological qualities.
Extensive: adjective, qualities of matter that are additive, measurable and based on boundaries, composition, and/or stored energy.
Externalization: verb, to intentionally remove an intensive or extensive operation, function or condition from consideration within a system boundary or definition.
Fabric: adjective, the homogeneity of objects and their distribution pattern expressed within a system; noun, a collection of objects that function a field from a particular scalar view.
Failure: noun, an outcome which differed or was in opposition to the original intention of a design or system, or was opposition to the intended or desired results.
Flexibility: adjective, a system, object, or set of interrelationships which are capable of being adapted, or adapting, to changing external forces without breaking or experiencing failure, returning to either its original state or a new state as external forces change.
Formation: verb, the gradual growth or development of a pattern in response to existing immaterial or material conditions and forces.
Gentrification: verb, the process of renovating and improving a neighbourhood or district to raise its socio-cultural standing, often resulting in increased real estate value and lack of affordability.
Green Gentrification: verb, improvement to the landscaping and ecological amenities of an area which gentrification and intentionally or unintentionally leads to a lack of affordability.
Green Washing: adjective, perceiving an object, system, or solution as environmentally responsible above its other qualities. verb, failing to critically evaluate an object, system, or solution beyond or based strictly on its environmental agenda or response to environmental factors.
Hierarchy: noun, differentiations or rankings of components within a system to create organizational structures
Infill: verb, construction or development of a vacant plot or opening within the existing morphology
Intensification: verb, creating greater complexity or interconnectivity within a system to better accommodate growth.
Institutional Pathways: noun, processes, protocols, and procedures which structure the daily operations of institutions or organizations and cumulate to affect their actions.
Intensive: adjective, qualities of matter that are indivisible and often unobservable, yet critical to its formation. Intensive qualities are only altered when there is an intensive difference within the extensive addition. Intensive differences are generative and lead to new matter states and structures.
Landscape: adjective, the image or cultural connotations of a typical land’s identity, and are projected onto a place. noun, the visual identity of the land capturing its distinctive physical, ecological and morphological features to form a singular image. verb, to reshape existing land, vistas or ecosystems according to a priori image. (James Corner)
Locality: noun, a specific place which has developed its own set of material and immaterial permanencies, and socio-cultural values, which forms its cultural identity and inform its affordances.
Malleability: adjective, a system, object, or set of interrelationships which are capable of being reshaped into a new form by external forces without breaking or experiencing failure, persisting in its transformed state.
Map: noun, a two-dimensional representation of spatial relationships within cartesian space.
Mapping: verb, externalizing data to show specific interrelationships through a visual, cartesian medium.
Methodological Cityism: noun, a bias within urban studies that evaluates the built environment through its similarities to the traditional city(s) and city urbanism.
Metroburb: adjective, suburban periphery(s) which contain sufficient employment, commercial, and amenity pull as to lead to the rise of inter-suburb commuting. noun, the interconnected suburbs which transform the metropolitan periphery into a polycentric network.
Morphology: adjective, the configuration and relationship of similar physical forms and typologies within a fabric.
noun, a preexisting relationship between form, material and fabric within a region or subregion
Multiplicities: noun, an autonomous system that is internally complex with its own hierarchies and structures.
Municipality: noun, a settlement, town, or city defined by a jurisdictional boundary which maintains local government, regulations, oversight, taxation, and infrastructure, but is subject to higher government.
Normative: adjective, evaluating, relating, or comparing a system, object, action, or behavior to broader societal standards, often placing a positive or negative judgment on that deviation.
Non-Human: noun, an actor or force which exists or acts outside of human control
Ontology: noun, a series of concepts within the same discipline or field which show their individual aspects and collective interrelationships.
Organs: noun, a definable structure or operation that encapsulates and represents subsystems within a larger system. A form of shorthand for bypassing complexity while recognizing the complexity contained within it. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Organism: noun, a clearly defined entity comprising of numerous interconnected systems and subsystems.
Palimpsest: noun, an object or artifact created through the layering of different patterns or constructions over existing matter to alter or create new relationships, meanings, or patterns.
Path Dependency: noun, a process in which each stage is dependent on the outcome(s) which preceded it.
Peripheral: adjective, regions of predominately self-similar land uses separated or located outside of the urban region. noun, the [sub]urban edge of a city or metropolitan region which marks the transition into rural land.
Prewar: adjective, the period of between the late 19th century, following the Industrial Revolution, and World War II
Porosity: adjective, a measure of the spatial permeability or means of physical accessibility within the ground plane or local [sub]urban fabric.
Postwar: adjective, the period following World War II, naming referring to the beginning of the 1950s through the to the end of the 1970s.
Post-Suburban: adjective, artifacts which has been adapted to meet changing socio-cultural qualities of suburban. noun, a suburban setting or dwelling which has outlived the socio-spatial priorities of the time in which it was constructed and as been adapted to meet changing socio-cultural needs.
Post-Suburbanization: verb, the process adapting suburban fabrics and dwellings to meeting changing socio-cultural-economic needs through spatial transformation with in the intention of improving accessibility, connectivity, diversification or density.
Refuse: noun, unwanted or unused materials, or byproducts, within a system or organism which are discarded and responsibility for is intentionally externalized.
Representation: verb, the act of distillation and conveying of meaning, relationships, or qualities—both material and immaterial.
Repair: verb, the subtle acts of care by which order and meaning in complex sociotechnical systems are maintained and transformed, human value is preserved and extended, and the complicated work of fitting to the varied circumstances of organizations, systems, and lives is accomplished. (Steven Jackson)
Retool: verb, to adapt existing socio-political structures or mechanisms to better address their application to new and emerging socio-political and/or terrestrial issues.
Rhizome: noun, a non-linear, layered and hierarchical system in which any point can be traced through the system to another point. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Ruin: noun, an object or artifact which has lost its cultural significance yet physically persists.
Settlement: noun, a cluster of buildings in which some form(s) of urbanism emerges, ranging from a small town core to a metropolitan region.
Soft Densification: verb, the act of increasing dwelling density within an existing [sub]urban fabric that respects the existing morphology and milieu.
Specifically-Generic: adjective, a deterritorialized formation which can be translated or related to other socio-spatial-cultural sites.
Sprawl: noun, the low-density and car dominated polycentric periphery of metropolitan areas. verb, low-density peripheral construction with limited restrictions, typically in areas of singular land use.
State: noun, a governmental body or organization. adjective, related to the governance of, or provided by a civic institutions.
State Apparatus: noun, an organization or entity which continually accumulates political and/or economic power in order to assure its own success and prosperity. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Structures of Permanence: noun, enduring practices within regulatory frameworks, socio-cultural inertia, and the physical embeddedness of built form effecting formation. (Caniggia & Maffei)
Suburb: noun, a predominantly residential setting located outside of the metropolitan center which forms its own jurisdiction, possessing internal civic and commercial amenities and social infrastructures, but in which the majority of residents commutes to other hubs for employment. adjective: describing the geographic, jurisdictional, or employment relationship of a suburb (noun) to it a major city or its census metropolitan area (CMA).
Suburban: adjective, a predominantly residential area of low density and comparatively low traffic, in which residents have typically own their property and have full agency to transform it to their changing needs and desires, while also being surrounded by communal amenities.
Suburbanization: noun, the redistribution of populations from the central urban areas into the suburban peripheral, beginning in the early 20th Century but significantly increasing following the Second World War.
verb, the massive construction of low density, car dominated suburbs during the later half of the 20th Century.
Suburbia: noun, a cultural image of repetitive, self-similar, suburban dwellings within a homogeneous car dominated fabric, typically based on cultural images from the mid to late 20th Century, but used to describe the majority of large residential areas within metropolitan suburban sprawl.
[Sub]Urban: adjective, denoting the spectrum between urban and suburban qualities, or referring to relationships thats existing within urban and suburban settings.
Sustainable: noun, the ability to maintain a certain level or rate of growth for long periods of time without external support or influence.
System Boundary: noun, defining the scope of study for a subject or system, indicating which factors or elements are being investigated and which are being externalized.
Technic: noun, the study of the history and evolution of a process or technique.
Technique: noun, a methodology which has emerged through a particular formation of processes which is both generative and deterministic
Technological Dependence: noun, the reliance on a specific technology to perform actions within a process, including the limitations and path dependency(s) of that technology.
Terrestrial: verb, the recognition that all actors, forces and entities within socio-political-environment systems are interrelated through their relationship to the planet. A means of overcoming the local-global binary; noun, a system model in which every actor or entities is connected through ecology and geomorphology. (Bruno Latour)
Tradition: noun, socio-cultural structures, values or practices which have been maintained across generations and provide continuity through their permanency.
Tool: noun, an object or instrument designed to perform as particular action and informs the process or technique to become a generative force
Trace: verb, to follow or outline the movement, development or presence of an object, actor or action.
Translate: verb, to transplant or appropriate a design strategies from one context to another.
Typology: noun, an artifact identifiable at a certain scale by a clear system structure and internal logic which has emerged through a particular process of formation.
Typological Process: noun, an analytical concept for understanding continuity within urban transformation through the study of progressive deviations within historic building or urban typologies as they relate to evolving cultural practices.
Urban: adjective, a settlement with complex socio-spatial relationships, clear hierarchies, high levels of connectivity, and mixtures of land use or program as to allow for greater complexities and intensities to emerge over time.
Urbanism: noun, the interrelationships between inhabitants, buildings, public space and infrastructure within the built environment.
Waste: noun, unused and disregarded surplus. verb, dismissing the value of, or discarding material or energy which is not directly beneficial to a system.
War Machine: noun, an entity or force which actions to disrupt to accumulation or maintenance of power by a State Apparatus. (Deleuze & Guittari)
Work: noun, the application of energy through metabolic and/or industrial mechanics for productive means. The product of force and displacement. (Physics) verb, to engage in a process or activity to achieve an intended purpose.