#beyondentropy

In Angola’s capital, Luanda, every space simultaneously performs a diversity of programs: each space is constantly becoming other from itself thus turning the city into a morphing conurbation that resists any “zoning.” By avoiding any radical destruction of the urban fabric, the plantation of Arundo Donax in the interstitial space between buildings produces a new urban condition. Simultaneously garden and infrastructure for filtering waters and producing biomass for electricity, this energetic “common ground” develops an alternative method of imagining the African city.

Luanda, formerly named São Paulo da Assunção de Loanda, is the capital city of Angola, and the country's most populous and important city, primary port and major industrial, cultural and urban centre.

Despite the complexity and difference among urban areas, two recurring paradoxes define the peri-urban areas of Luanda: high density without high rise buildings and large cities without infrastructures. Beyond Entropy proposes the model of ‘morphing space’ to understand this condition. In fact, each space is ‘undecidable’ as it simultaneously performs a variety of uses - it is at the same time house, office, warehouse or garage, etc. We have formulated three proposals at the Biennale in Venice in the form of a prototype of a common ground, an encyclopedic palace and a cinematic exploration of modernist architecture. Each proposal complies with the irreducible complexity of the transformative nature of the African city, resistant to (or systematically subverting) any conventional zoning.

No space is fixed: as streets turn into markets, houses into shops and pavements into shop windows. Conventions such as private property and destination of use are irrelevant as each space has simultaneous uses at different times of the day. High-density is the condition for such a transformation as it concentrates different programmes, and functions onto the same site.

From the info we’ve now gotten, we know that each of Robin’s specials correspond to different magic, which I find really cool.  I think they’re more of a medium ranged fighter with some close combat options, and I hope that works out well.