“Revisiting Jane Jacobs in Global Sustainable City Discourse” Architecture_MPS 19, 1 (2021): 3
This journal article that extends upon my 2020 Architecture, Media, Politics, Society conference presentation, as published in the journal Architecture_MPS.
The article can be accessed here.
“Oakland Ecopolis” (with Trisha Barua) – UC Critical Sustainabilities project
“The Crystal: Architecture Calibrating Climate Change for the Urban Future” – Essay in Climates: Architecture and the Planetary Imaginary (2016)
My research is currently focused on these two projects focused on the logics, imaginaries and ideologies of the technological city vis-à-vis the Anthropocene.
Extending upon my dissertation, I am working on developing a book manuscript project on how forms of systems-theory influenced design discourse from the 1960s onwards becomes the basis of a global ‘Smart/Eco/sustainable’ urban infrastructural imaginary [Anthropocene City]
Examining the notion of ‘urban future(s)’ through modalities of speculative design and (non)fiction that project – and operationalise – urban worlding and worlding of the urban as design.
I utilise various methods (i.e. discourse and visual analysis, archival research and ethnography) in approaching the analysis of representations and practices of the ‘urban,’ ‘design,’ ‘infrastructure’ and the ‘environment.’ In particular, I am interested in these concepts as situated material semiotic assemblages, and instantiated through relationship(s) often established between the categories of ‘theory/abstraction’ and ‘practice’ and ‘projection’ and ‘operation/execution.’
My research interests and projects have been influenced by my experiences inside and outside of academia. My undergraduate thesis critically examined the question of control behind the code as manifested in post-WWII American information and communications technology developments. Working as a teacher at a school prior to entering academia, I was introduced to management theory as organizational strategy, as well as the use of design thinking and scenario planning techniques in the context of planning ‘learning journeys/environments,’ events and expeditions. My Masters thesis looked at the notion of criticality in contemporary architecture theory and the conditions of possibility behind the Israel Defense Forces’ use of Architectural/Poststructural theory as operations theory of urban warfare.
At UC Davis, I developed methods of ethnographic and interdisciplinary research through my participation in the Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT) VIII, the activities of the STS program, the Militarization, Policing, and Security Studies working group, and the Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds Research Cluster. [Various projects with orgs]
May Ee Wong, PhD 