Inside cities, where countless ongoing exchanges and clashes take place, we experience daily incidents together with our own private struggles ─ some that can be identified as forms of war, and others that are forms of interaction and negotiation. Such phenomena can be described as plasm, which refers to the primal state of living that has long been ignored and misintepreted in architecture and city planning.

The multinucleate mega-cities manifest this dispersed situation of permutations and complexities. The hidden underside beneath the visible forms in fact occupies the bulk of the public realm, which is bewildered by irrational fluctuations of emotions and actions. In entering the public domain, in-situ interactions function as art that goes beyond set rules and modes of negotiation. The unstable and chaotic flow of encounters and engagements exemplifies the bursting energy in the city which can be equated to the fourth state of material in plasma that excites human behavior and building activity.

The fear of increasing density is contingent on the mounting pressures of ever-scarcer resources and insecurity regarding the exploitative nature of society. Density as a quantitative problem may be resolved by distribution and disposition. However, there are unavoidable congestions that arouse a sense of uncertainty. Congestion is more critical and often more a psychic issue than a pragmatic problem. The levels of personal tolerance and modes of interactive strategy are in fact various and conditioned by socio-cultural background. In China and India, where the number of people at a busy street corner could easily reach ten times more than in Europe, people have developed certain ways to emit signals during movement and made their way out as the consequence of a proto-warfare.

Our instant encounters now have even more fluctuations with the universal use of mobile telecommunications. Following rapid market demands and the immediate-response of capital investments, cable lines, antennae and halfway stations, often without integrated planning or permits, are installed above or below the city's existing buildings. These attached transmitting accessories do not usually follow the conventional infrastructure but spread in the direction of the transmitter's broadcast patterns. As nodal links to individuals and other coexisting worlds, they change the cityscape and divert activities in the city from within and afar.

Technological progress, however, does not necessarily ameliorate life's many confusions. Neither do growing levels of transit mobility and speed capacity provide any more freedom and safety. An individual is easily overwhelmed by consumerist techno-fever. Floating signs, information billboards and digital media have built a new dimension that stupefies our consciousness and forms of dominance. For those living in the cities, the need to be mobile simply means the possibility of deviated circulation, the adaptation to countless restrictions, an ability to shield and the chance to escape surveillance.

The plasmodium, or slime mould, is a primitive life form commonly found in forest ecosystems. When unfavourable conditions occur, the plasmodium changes from an animal-like multi-nucleate protoplasm to a single-nucleus fungus, thus adapting to its surroundings via migration and a renewable life cycle. The plasmodium reflects the content of our clammy urban living. People survive by utilising simple technology and the resources at hand, and by maintaining interdependent and intramural proto-organic relationships.

Architecture and city planning were once surgical exercises that were little suited to treating urban internal micro-scale problems, while building activities are assumed to be regulated and controlled by pragmatic operations. The formalistic urban structure of a sanitary building project excludes the latent tumorigenic factor from its formula. Meanwhile, the neoplasm-like illegal constructions and settlements are vital and spread quickly across cities, evidence of how the residue is transformed into inseparable parts of the larger city.

In many ways similar to plasmodia, people tend to migrate into new territories to begin a new life. When the given living conditions are bad, or when the conditions get worse, people manage to recycle their limited possessions and reinvent their cocoons. The convertibility and self-help nature of the ghetto community has become a forgotten factor inside a preconceived ready-made society; worse, it has been gradually discarded as the remnants of an anarchic criminality.

The study of slum areas in Mumbai shows that occupants manage their everyday life through a greater sense of sharing and collaboration. The unavoidable intimacy in a group may intrude upon individual privacy, but none-the-less is of necessity and comfort for sustaining more active momentums. The infrastructure of main water pipelines in the Dharavi area, allegedly the largest slum area in Asia, is above the ground and being incorporated into passageways, bridges, public baths, shelters, playgrounds, and work places. Multiple stacks of living quarters and connections inside and outside of the agglomeration mix with raised highways and major railroads to produce another landscape that offers wonder and excitement.

The notorious nomads of the city, the homeless, might not be without homes. Rather they are taking a pathway leading to the reconstitution of their lives, resembling a drifting spore of plasmodia waiting to reproduce itself. Wandering peddlers move around the streets with simple personal artifacts, committed to their carts and their routes. Beneath the facade of fragility and poverty, this can in fact be read as a form of eco-wise human behaviour, used to survive in a harsh environment, and possibly to transcend it spiritually, as practiced by followers of Buddhism.

Abandoned industrial sites, private and public vacant buildings and the urban peripheries are the empty areas of a city, places that provide refuges and alternatives for people who need room to breathe and roam. These areas of urban emptiness signify the darker side of master-planning and grand-scale development, yet somehow, even within these environments, there is room for beginning anew. Worse yet would be to fill these voids using single-minded planning methods that merely cage the potential urban vitality.

War awakens the need to understand confrontations. Today we observe hectic conflicts and fighting both on the streets as well as through the media. People are constantly seen making strategic moves to gain advantage or to escape from danger. Modern planning however, does not take account of daily activities that are often marked by the degree of uncontrollable human will. Instead, planners use grandiose hypotheses to sanction these inevitable ongoing actions.

These in-situ moves are the immediate solutions and consequential behaviors mobilized by people in order to manage limited resources and adapt themselves to the man-made environment. They are fundamental survival tactics, as deployed in the battlefield, and need to be recognized, detected and further transformed into design apparatus. They are themselves the core of the socio-political dynamics that induce change within cities.

The following are major tactics derived from observations of the more obscure aspects of daily life that can be taken as the point of departure for the micro-urban approach.

Taoist metaphysics attends to the world's neglect of the weak and other intangible behaviours. Less is not only considered to be more, as Ludwig Mies van der Rohe may contend, but more critical, no matter how vulnerable it appears to be. By appropriating Tao-Zen thinking, minimalists have also worked on the purification of the preconceived form, assuming this would lay a path to a spiritually abundant state. However, this concern with presupposed aestheticisation has never reached the heart of the transient and formless side of being.

Non-Euclidean geometry and digital genetic systems are now being employed to accommodate the ever-changing context in the hope of representing the free spirit. In fact, while forms and shapes may in themselves be awe-inspiring and seductive, as in the category of classical romanticism, they do not necessarily bear transitory meanings that appeal to basic human needs. It is the overall setting that allows for the interplay between the formal and the formless and which influences people's common comprehension and judgment.

The Art of War emphasizes the subtle play of intangible substances that form the strategic deployments that are most decisive in winning a battle. The formless or transient substance can be utilised in either a visible or invisible manner. And the ultimate strength depends on the total effect of the arrangement of minimal devices in time and space. The author, Sun Tze, who grew up in ancient China in a small kingdom in the shadow of surrounding major warlords, opened up the foundational dimension of Taoist philosophy and how it could be reflected in the mundane world.

The modern design culture originating in Europe has long been directed towards tangible representation and completion. On the reverse of the visual magnitude of masses and volumes, architects have to learn to work with common resources, usually with small or insignificant elements, to create preferred conditions that help things to flow in the indeterminable milieu.

The ground we are attached to raises the innate awareness of our existence, which is invisible but nonetheless incomprehensible. Alteration of the grounding plane results in the mobilisation of senses and perceptions. The topos constructs our horizons and conditions our biological mechanisms and physical activities on earth.

Paul Virilio's suggestion of oblique circulation was an earlier attempt to gear towards this fundamental revolt. My installation work in the Tangibleintangible exhibition¹ was a case, on a very manageable scale of operation, of how people and goats walk on slightly slanted or sloped ground to further unveil the insignificant determinant in space.

The surface of the new plane in the gallery was composed of steel plates, which made sounds. It indicates that the pavement on the ground is another unnoticeable factor that greatly influences the experience of walking. Small details on the paving could cause minor disruptions, sights or sensations that may accumulate into collective motions. The area in between defined or non-defined textures and the edges of the pavement in open space already draw the front lines in the public domain.

To occupy a strategic location in a city devoted to seeing and being seen should become a priority for reconnoitering in the field. Selection of location can be based on the knowledge of the topography, scenery and psycho-geography of the area, which offers insight into choosing the relationship to the surroundings, in order to ignite positive engagements and prevent fatal entrapments.

The ancient geomantic technique of reading the natural landscape to seek ideal locations for settlements should be reconsidered as the fundamental guidance. Taipei was the last Asian city consciously designed under "Feng Shui" principles in the 19th century. The system refers to the figure of the mystic dragon. The old city was located on a carefully selected dragon's vagina-like basin area between the dragon's tail-like mountain flank and riverside. This kind of area is considered safer and probably less prone to seismic activity, as earthquake records show.

The strategies of bridging and dis-bridging are both crucial in building up accesses for manoeuvres. The efficiency of these techniques includes the speed of construction or destruction and the understanding of the banks to be connected or disconnected. In Hong Kong, thriving commerce is markedly backed up by the overhanging walkways between high-rise buildings and higher grounds, which make new layers of free movements.

Appearance is understood as direct contact with perceivers. Instantly, this produces the impression of the substance behind the surface. To shape a preferred look, it is almost unavoidable to apply camouflage or mount illusion. There was an "Empty City Trick" legend from Sun Tze's time that describes how to scare an overpowering enemy away by doing nothing but maintaining the everyday conditions at the city gate to create an illusion of well-prepared confidence. However, the deceptive approach is not about delusion making or just a psychological wrestling, but also aimed at finding a channel through uncovered human nature for deeper and more effective engagement.

Betel nut is the seed of a tropical palm-tree flower common in Southeast Asia, and has a stimulant effect when chewed. In Taipei, the young girls who sell such nuts are referred to as 'Betel Nut Beauties'. Dressed in sexy costumes, they stand inside or outside a flashy glass booth to entice those driving by to stop and buy betel nuts. The wheeled booths are custom-made to be movable so as to reach the edge of the road when in operation. The lavish bodies and settings are designed for interaction, therefore to be constructive parts of the city.

Illegal vendors need to be able to disappear when chased by the police. Their carts, containers and sheets are therefore designed to be movable, dispersible and restorable. The retreat is planned in advance. These time-conscious apparatuses are effectively inserted into intervals of dullness and commandment.

Taste is considered the basic reference for discerning the nature and quality of food in ayurvedic practice. 'Pan' is a kind of herbal refreshment similar to betel nut seen almost everywhere in India. It contains various spices, sweets, herbs and tobaccos wrapped up in an edible green leaf. The flavours and scents infiltrate people's minds and atmosphere and constitute the character as well as the original taste of the city.

Besides introducing a mode of knowledge and an operational system, globalisation silently brought in certain tastes and smells from imported goods, cooking recipes, fragrances, textiles and lifestyles. The bewilderment experienced by the tongue and the nostril is part of the original drive of urban transformation, which is finally concretised in the physical environment.

To survive in a highly dense and competitive environment, one has to take the risk of being on the fringes of norm and danger. In order to play safe, sometimes one needs to subvert the dangerous zone. This detour can be seen on the collective level practised long before the emergence of Situationist ideas regarding "détournement."

In Bangkok, street vendors gather along the sides of railway tracks, forming the city's daily food market. As trains approach, the vendors move their goods and sheds off the track. When the trains have passed, the marketplace is reassembled. Using radiophones, taxi drivers who share the same interests may gather on certain sections of the road to protest or to unite in pressure against the police or an opposing group of taxi drivers. They are turning the road into an action arena coexisting with its civilian use for transportation.

By instinct, children will always shape simple things and surroundings to their experiences — a segment of rope becomes a serpent or an area with leftover rainwater on the ground becomes a swimming pool, for example. Detour is by nature a set of disappeared actions during the formation of the city. When squatters came to the 'dead city' in Cairo, where people made their home in the graveyard, the inherent urban multiplicity was returned to the ancient links to other space-times of the afterlife.

In reality, they play a game in the grey zone of regulations, while, the authorities in these cities kindly set up under-table agreements to maintain the coexistence. In Mumbai, some temporary shelters sustained over more than five years have been claimed as legal entities with the right to stay and to be facilitated, as is also the case with Christiana in Copenhagen where hippies testify to their way of life amid the city.

The third stage of speed revolution, as Paul Virilio pointed out, suggests that we are now more than ever living in a reduced bunkerised space. With the aid of digital technology, cyber travel provides an autistic virtual womb from which dwellers can be reborn. The space we need may not have walls, but rather is a point with moments of solitude that allow hyperlinks.

On the other hand, nomadic workers flood into the city for opportunities or a better life. In Bogota, Columbia, recent warfare in the rural areas impelled a sudden increase in population from 50% up to 80% in the urban areas. People, no matter rich or poor, see the city as a battlefield and are always seeking their bunkers.

A bunker is not necessarily a monolithic fortification. The bunker can be found spaces and temporary structures when its location is strategically near points of observation and access to supplies — like true stories of warriors spread over the vicinity. Though the facade of an idyllic house may remain, underground cellars and tunnels become the living spaces for retreating troops.

Originating in Japan, KTVs (karaoke rooms) are a new type of meeting and drinking place consisting of a complex of rooms equipped with TV screens and facilities designed especially for lay singing, which have spread over major cites in Asia since the mid-80's. People swarm into these small rooms after work for fun and relaxation and also for secret negotiations and intercourses including sexual acts in a heterotopia. The capsule hotels in Tokyo are precursors of high-tech urban bunkers for travelers. Similarly sized and divided resting spaces in the spa houses serve as cocoons for homosexuals in the same city.