Rhythmanalysis: Live, Work, Grow

Havana is a complex city. It exists in between the formal and the informal. Designing urban futures in such cities must consider the interstices of everyday life as much as the built environment. Studying such moments within a city are largely undocumented as they depend on serendipity as much as methodology. However, Henri Lefebvre made the powerful supposition that cultures dynamically produce space over time, which in turn shapes society. He started to develop rhythmanalysis as a tool to understand this relationship. Rhythmanalysis captures the everyday, heterogeneous, and evolving urban narratives of a city, making it a valuable tool for interrogating places to challenge how such quotidian moments could be used to (re)imagine urban futures. This design work outlines how rhythmanalysis, assisted by multiple methods of mapping, work hand in hand to listen and record the urban realm as a basis for designing in the city. Moving beyond the morphological and typological, this method measures the quotidian and the seasonal, uniquely place-specific rhythms that collectively help to describe a city. Using a site of urban agriculture as a case study for this research, this work offers a way to understand the difference between how the city is made and how people actually dwell and work within it. These studies of rhythms surrounding this garden develop into an architectural proposition in Havana to intercede in the everyday, not to change life but to accomplish a tiny revolutionary transformation in the city.

Volume Editors

ISBN
978-1-944214-30-2