Identity in a Technical Object: Architectural and Urban Scales in a Residential Elevator

Abstract

The verticalization of cities has brought with it the massification of technical phenomena whose management, previously only relevant to each building, must be dealt with at the urban level. Through ethnographic observations, interviews and documentary analysis, this work studies the links between the social and the technical aspects that occur in the coordination of an elevator as it moves between situations of different scales. Its identity, far from being stable, is observed to be constantly reconfigured and to constitute a connector that facilitates its coherence in each situation. The relationship between identity and coherence may verify the effect that the scalar variation has upon technical objects and on the relationships between society and the technology of its cities.