Design Methods in the Emergent City: Assemblage, Acts, Performance

The paper seeks to define urban design in relation to the specific challenges of emerging cities.
The emergent city is a three month field research project conducted in the winter 2012-13 in Sao Paulo, Rio and Santiago. Through a case study of the making of Muda Coletivos temporary structure, Bolha Imobiliaria, and the making of it, I wish to outline a design approach for urban design in cities in lack of public spaces.
Urban design is understood in a broad sense, not as architectural design but also as spatial design and artistic interventions in public space.
Through the paper I will address how the designer can co-create and reassemble existing urban spaces through his/ her situated acts. The approach suggests a situated design methodology for the description of the design process. However, the paper also draws on a theoretical and epistemological understanding of emergence and becoming. By looking into the emergent properties of urban spaces, instead of its physical and cartographical outlines,the paper proposes design as an act of distributed agency rather than durable object design.