The retrovisual method of conceptualizing novelty in the city discourse

The aim of the article is to study the concept of novelty in relation to the visual components of the city discourse. There exist different forms of novelty, and they can be generalized and conceptualized through the retrovisual method, which allows carrying out procedures for recreating visual images of the “new” formed in the past. The retrovisual urbanistic “fate analysis” makes it possible to identify three forms of novelty in the city discourse: reconstruction in combination with quasi-innovation, innovation, and upcycle. Examples of quasi-innovation are skyscraper piles, which, in their technical design, lagged far behind the projects of avant-garde artists or early modern architects of the first third of the last century. Recreating the past (sculptural and architectural creations lost during extreme events: revolutions, wars, and natural disasters) is one of the most popular trends in designing the future today. In addition to the well-known restoration (restoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow or the monument to Alexander III in Irkutsk), one can observe specific variations of reconstruction: post-reconstruction and reconstruction relocation. Post-reconstruction involves the creation of urban landscape objects that did not exist before, but which could have existed if history had developed differently (for example, the monument to Admiral Kolchak in Irkutsk). Reconstruction relocation (full or partial) is the localization of lost objects in new areas (for example, the transfer to urban localities of buildings that were previously located in places flooded as a result of the construction of hydroelectric power plants). On the one hand, the restoration of the lost can be considered as a form of historical continuity. On the other hand, reconstruction also often contains an element of destruction: the memory of the period when the lost structures were temporarily absent and in their place there were other, possibly also significant, objects is erased. Using the example of the so-called “cities of the future” (for example, Arcosanti in the modern USA or Akhetaton in Ancient Egypt), the thesis about the “curse of innovation” is put forward. Attempts to create something fundamentally new often end in failure; innovative cities turn out to be “non-functional projects”. Creative upcycle means a new life of ideas and projects from the past and, in our case, implies a creative urban project based on a certain pattern. St. Petersburg is an upscale of Amsterdam, and Helsinki, Makhachkala and Poltava are upscales of St. Petersburg, but Amsterdam is also an upscale of Antwerp, which, in turn, repeated the structural combinations of cities of the early Middle Ages. Creative upcycle as an integrative form of novelty in the discourse of the city is often more meaningful and durable than reconstruction, reproducing the past for the future, or innovation, rejecting and devaluing the past. The retrovisual method makes it possible to identify and conceptualize the forms of novelty that realize themselves in the discourse of the city. The same method allows one to model the success parameters of urban design. A four-dimensional coordinate system of the city discourse is modeled, including vectors of social communication and cognition, on the one hand, and vectors of subjective activity and creativity, on the other. It is established that, in quasi-innovations, reconstructions and innovations as forms of novelty in the discourse of the city, these vectors are extremely unbalanced, while in the technology of upcycle these vectors often turn out to be quite balanced and, therefore, ensure the viability of urban projects.

retrovisual method, the city discourse, novelty, city of the future, utopia, city-project, subjectivity, creativity, innovation, quasi-innovation, reconstruction, restoration, upscale, relocation, ecosystem