Taking a Look at Urban Acupunture

Urban Acupuncture

There is an interesting theory nowadays called urban acupuncture, which refers to the idea that carefully considered as small-scale architectural interventions have the potential to bring about positive change to a larger urban field. (Deyond, 2012) “Acupuncture” is a Chinese medical treatment procedures involving penetration of the skin with needles to stimulate certain points on the body. In Chinese medicine, doctors proposal that our bodies are able to heal by ourselves, and use some method such like acupuncture and cupping to simulate points to treat patients. Similarly, many modern cities are sick, facing the problem of excess urbanization: cities are full of buildings and become concrete jungles, and large numbers of transportations cause pollutions in the cities. If we take a city as an organism with different kinds of energy inside its “body”, which is similar to human being, urban acupuncture cure the city through changing small parts of the city.

In the first article Urban Acupuncture and the paradoxical logic of systems, Deyond points a concept “leverage points” provided by Donella Meadows. Leverage point is the place in the system where a small change could lead to a large shift in behavior. The idea of leverage point can be used not only in management, but also can be used in urban design. The author points out two leverage points: material stocks and flow, that is, a urban infrastructure built by stocks and flows will have big effect on system operation; and self-organization, that is organism and social system can change themselves by creating new structure and behavior. Deyond gives the example of Urban-think tank (U-TT), an architecture firm, using their projects vertical Gymnasiums (VGs) and Metro Cable to illustrate those two leverage points.

The second article From Product to Process: Building on Urban Think Tank’s Approach to the Informal City introduce a firm named Urban- think tank (U-TT) that focuses on the city problem and tries to start proposal for the city in building projects in conflict zones. They have designed many projects in different parts of the world. Similar to this urban acupuncture is the way that “cures” the city and social problems by making changes of certain part in the city. Although there are cultural and social specificities, cities are facing problems in common. Connecting the formal and informal city is their main aim of activities. They attempt to put together communities, design ideas and urban actors on the ground that are the stakeholders in order to produce high-quality architecture.