Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

FOAM CITY

In a context that suggests human activity must remain autonomous from nature, Peter Sloterdijk says the current nature of the human environment is defined by the fact that nature and human activity must be considered parts in a larger network, a whole that must not be managed by simple urban planning strategies. Sloterdijk says, "If the phrase "everyman is an island" has become virtually true for most of the population in the modern metropolis, how can we still think of "society" as a concept? While agencies analyzing "the real" work at the pure depiction of individuals in their own households, the agencies of social synthesis are engaged in producing the comprehensive forms under which these insulated individuals can be integrated into interactive wholes." We do not exist as independent objects unaffected by other outside forces, instead we all exist completely dependent on each other and the contents of our personal "bubbles" within a large adapting network."

All people and things in this world are interconnected; nature does not exist as this vast space outside of us. Sloterdijk's Foam City is described as a co-isolated foam structure within a society conditioned to the ideas of individualism and a combination of neighboring bodies, but must be considered as loosely touching cells of everyone's personal "bubble." Sloterdijk suggests that there is no outside, which puts emphasis on the interconnectivity of all things in nature as a global whole of the human environment. Cities can no longer be considered as independent pieces within an urban space, but we can now imagine the city as a changing adaptable organism. Charles Darwin says," It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Japanese Metabolist and Archigram also theorized about the city in terms of relationships like an ego-sphere foam structure. These ideas are similar to that of interconnection between everyone within a co-isolated environment opening up new questions regarding bottom up planning in our architectural discourse.

Citations
Sloterdijk, Peter. Cell Block, Egospheres, Self-container. 2007, Log 10, pp.92
Sloterdijk, Peter. Cell Block, Egospheres, Self-container. 2007, Log 10, pp.64