Programming

Definition

Programming is the design discipline of organizing uses in and around buildings — and, in Rafael Luna's 2018 chapter, the twenty-first century's classificatory axis for building typologies: "programming can be classified into four categories: single-use buildings, mixed-use buildings, metropolitan, and hybrids, and we can postulate that a relationship exists between the different levels of urbanity and the different building typologies they create." The four categories map onto four levels of urbanity — the village (population 100–1,000, single-use), the town (1,000–100,000, mixed-use: "generally one program on top of another… apartments on top of retail stores as low-rise or mid-rise buildings"), the city (100,000–1,000,000, the high-rise that "allows multiple programs to exist vertically… the prototypical mixed-use development, which attempts to maximize real estate… the quintessential typology for the conception of metropolitan architecture"), and the metropolis (1,000,000+, "starts generating the metropolitan hybrid").

The concept's central analytic is the practical/conceptual split: "Single-use and mixed-use buildings belong to a more practical group of programming, while metropolitan architecture and hybrids belong to a conceptual group. Single-use and mixed-use buildings are defined through real estate regulations, zoning, and building codes for occupancy… Architecturally, this is a very compartmentalized relationship between programs, which is why they become terms mostly used in real estate with the intent of maximizing value." Programming is thus not a neutral technical exercise but the site where commercial and conceptual intents divide: "Change in occupancy often becomes a factor of real estate commercialism" — the observation behind Luna's Jacobs/McMorrough critique ("Diversity cannot rely on simple commercialism") and the warrant for "conceptualizing programming as urban cores, urban systems, or infrastructure."

The term's theoretical depth comes from Tschumi: "distanciation between the architecture and the program" — cross-programming, trans-programming, dis-programming — the program as "an independent condition" from the architectural shell, which makes program appropriation (injecting a new, unrelated program into an existing shell — the jail-hotel) a generative design operation (see form-vs-program, metropolitan-hybrids).

Key Thinkers

• Rafael Luna — the concept's classifier: the four categories and four urbanity levels; the practical/conceptual split; programming reconceived as urban cores, urban systems, or infrastructure.
• Bernard Tschumi — the concept's theorist: distanciation, cross/trans/dis-programming; the event-program lineage (event-space).
• Jane Jacobs — the diversity programmer: "Her argument for mixed-use programming, short blocks, mixed-use buildings, and sufficient density are valid toward that ideal while reusing the existing building stock" — and the cautionary tale of its commercial exploitation.
• John McMorrough — the critique's relay (no page — see log): "Good Intentions" (Guide to Shopping, 2001), on retail appropriation of Jacobsian reuse.
• Josep Lluís Sert — the civic-core planner (no page — see log): programming as recentralization, "The Human Scale in City Planning" (1944).

Related Concepts

• Metropolitan Hybrids — the conceptual group's fourth category: the metropolis's programming output.
• Metropolitan Architecture — the third category: the microcosm-creating conceptual programming of the city-of-millions.
• Typology — the parallel classificatory order: Luna's ladder makes programming the generator of typology ("new typologies derived from programmatic relations") — the program pole of the form-vs-program debate, extended to the urban scale.
• Change of Use — the process programming manages in the existing stock: change in occupancy as "a factor of real estate commercialism" when done practically, as conceptual appropriation when done hybridly.
• Urban Systems — programming conceptualized as network: visitor-center-hotels, the city-as-museum.
• Polycentrality — programming conceptualized as urban cores and catalyst buildings.
• Adaptive Reuse — the operation that carries a program into an existing shell ("adapting an existing structure with an existing occupancy" vs. injecting an unrelated program).
• Housing — the mixed-use ladder's dwelling half (apartments over retail; micro-housing in the micro-industry programme).
• Event Space — Tschumi's program-adjacent concept: the event as what happens in the distanciated shell.

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Metropolitan hybrids: Programming for a thriving urbanity (Luna 2018) — the founding source: the four categories, the urbanity ladder, the practical/conceptual split, the commercialism critique, and the threefold reconceptualization (urban cores, urban systems, infrastructure).
• Inside-out and outside-in (Vanucci 2018) — the concept's 1960s history and paradox: "the programming process was introduced by means of systematically collecting project-related data… for schools, hospitals, and housing projects for the new capitalist (affluent) society," with Sarkis's paradox — programming "helped unleash new formal possibilities beyond its suitability to function" (see form-vs-program, flexible-interior).
• The Apartment (Perec 1974/2006) — the domestic program in its plainest, satirical form: Perec's nycthemeral timetable is the apartment's functional program, quarter-hour by quarter-hour — "The activities of the day correspond to slices of time, and to each slice of time there corresponds one room of the apartment" — the program as the schedule the rooms execute (nycthemeral). The essay also stages the program's displacement operations that Tschumi theorized: the four alternative layout-principles (functional relationships, the senses, heptadian rhythms, thematic arrangements) each dis-program the given apartment — the themed room is the program injected without the shell, the timetable the shell without the event. Where Luna's programming is urban and Luna's critique commercial, Perec's is domestic and its critique functionalist: the program that fills the apartment so completely that no other arrangement can be imagined — until an arbitrary constraint supplies one (see thematic-arrangement, heptadian, voluntary-constraints).

Open Questions

• Is the four-category ladder exhaustive or ideological? It classifies by program configuration (one use / stacked uses / microcosm / hybrid) but the practical/conceptual split is an intent, not a form — can a single building be classified twice (practically mixed-use, conceptually hybrid)?
• Luna's ladder implies strict population thresholds — but does the programming category actually follow population, or land economics? The "expanding urban field blurring the lines between city boundaries" suggests the boundary conditions themselves are dissolving.
• How does programming relate to typology? Vanucci's history has typology's form-privilege superseded by "programmatic hybridization"; Luna inverts this — programmatic relations generate new typologies. Is programming typology's successor or its engine?
• Tschumi's three alternatives (cross-, trans-, dis-programming) are never exemplified separately in the chapter — which operations do Luna's cases (jail-hotel, overpass, visitor-center-hotel) actually perform, and what would a dis-programming adaptive reuse look like?
• If programming is "conceptualized as infrastructure" (the second intent), does the program outlive the building that hosts it — and does programming thereby become the wiki's urban-systems concept, a durable relation rather than a spatial allocation?