ABSTRACT:
Ever since there was a desire to design invisible…
Considering philosophy of phenomenology, beginning from Merleau Ponty and his ‘Phenomenology of Perception’, ending on Steven Holl and his way of understanding architecture, we could think of architecture dealing with the phenomenological approach, with spaces generated simply by phenomena – any observable occurrences. Defining space by smell, light and sound could create a wide range of potential directions, in which architecture could aim in the near future.
The new, potential approach to contemporary architecture could be compressed in the void. Amplifying its geometrical and spatial characteristics by emphasizing the already existing there phenomena, could create infinite design possibilities. It provides potential for designing spaces that on the one hand would be strictly defined, but on the other hand would play with the weaknesses of human perception and use it to create illusion of immateriality. Furthermore there appears a question how to balance defining and limiting space with its immaterial aspect.
Architecture operating with phenomena would add new qualities to the traditional approach, offering spaces that could be freely penetrated, entered and left without having to cross any physical barrier.
Moreover, considering recent development of nanotechnologies, mobile and wireless technologies, geographical information systems, sensors and long-range interaction systems and digital technologies, we could think of creating that kind of space by constructing those phenomena artificially. New available materials, which one of physical features has been reduced, provide undiscovered possibilities of implementation into the design process.
Architecture of the void, offering its physical no-existence and sensor experiences is a challenge for both designers and users, creating infinite design possibilities and opening wide spectrum of new spatial qualities.
December 16, 2007
'Clouds in the Bottles'
December 1, 2007
'Clouds in the bottles'
Refernces:
- ‘Phenomenology of Perception’ Merleau Ponty
- ‘Being Digital’ Nicholas Negroponte
- ‘Questions of Perception: Phenomenology of Architecture’ Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, Alberto Perez-Gomez
- ‘Anchoring’ Steven Holl
- ‘Quantum City’ Ayssar Arida
- ‘Interactive Architecture’ Kas Oosterhuis
Examples
-diller scofidio, the blur building
The Blur Building is a project for the Swiss Expo 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. The lightweight tensegrity structure measures 300 feet wide by 200 feet deep by 75 feet high. However the primary building material is indigenous to the site, water.
It is one of the first examples of architecture of atmosphere and looking for the nature of the space.
Diller Scofidio created the final form of the project by using water vapor. Thanks to it they achieve a building structure, which is visible, and have specific shape, but on the other hand you can go through it, it is man-made very dense fog.
When you enter the fog mass, visual and acoustic references are deleted, you only walk through an optical "white-out" and the "white-noise".
- research for invisible materials by Dr. Ulf Leonhardt at Scotland's St. Andrews University 
Dr. Ulf Leonhardt at Scotland's St. Andrews University has recently published two papers concerning the potential realization of invisibility using modern MetaMaterials. He looks for a new class of ordered nanocomposites that exhibit exceptional properties not readily observed in nature. These properties arise from qualitatively new response functions that are: not observed in the constituent materials and result from the inclusion of artificially fabricated, extrinsic, low dimensional inhomogeneities.
According to Dr. Leonhardt, the key to achieving invisibility lies in creating transparent materials capable of bending light around objects hidden behind them. While seemingly far-fetched, light-bending phenomena such as hot road mirages or water refractions occur naturally.
- ‘Atomic: full of love, full of wonder’ by Nike Savvas
Nike Savvas made this sculpture/installation “Atomic: full of love, full of wonder”, which is a room filled with colored polystyrene balls, suspended with nylon wires. There’re some industrial fans too, which blow from time to time, and make the whole installation wobble.
That is an interesting example of an art installation which is focused on the micro elements of materials. Nike Savvas presents a zoom into structure of every physicall object and shows relationship between atoms.
-Printable solar cells
Ludger Hovestadt, a professor for architecture and CAAD at ETHZ, looking through the technological development of the "information society", described how the granularity of objects is becoming smaller and smaller, until today matter can be investigated and described at sub-atomic scale. "The Big Zoom" as he called it, gives us an understanding of the materials available to us which has led us to reconstructing objects from their most fundamental parts. We can build our environment from atomic scales upwards developing new smart, responsive and communicative material constructs. "No longer are objects or processes the constituting elements of a building. Now they are described as technical networks of communicating nodes, which balance themselves in contrived patterns."
An example of Nano materials providing base materials for new technologies, is ’spray on’ solar collection material that is capable of capturing energy in the infra red spectrum, developed by University of Toronto. "Printable" solar cells are coated with a common ingredient used in toothpaste and suntan lotion and are able to produce electricity from direct sunlight as well as low-light and indoor lighting. They are manufactured with a process similar to inject printing.
Considering current solar technology, perhaps one day we could print onto virtually any other material, mixing previously unlike material combinations, to generate sustainable power supplies in the most unlikely of scenarios.
With the ability to rapidly create our environment as and when we need it, Ludger suggests that "We are going towards the end of devices and instead the construction of devices by print processes."
Considering the near future of architectural practice and the freedom it will provide for artists, architects and designers will have possibility to generate their own technology and suprising applications from microscopic up to the architectural scales.
characterize it and describe it. In this kind of geometry it is very hard to define spaces for people without any decisive obstructions.
This is one of the most important roles for contemporary computation and digital tools…how to find that kind of spaces and make it somehow visible, how to define it. One of the possible ways would be to use new materials, that can offer illusion of immateriality- materials that on the one hand are still physical, but from a level of perception become immaterial; their physical structure is fine enough to make them be perceived as invisible.
That kind of architecture would have no physical barriers, but would be open by his physical no-existence, being a challenge for designers and receivers as well.
It has also another important aspect of designing process. The space created in this way is not strictly being related the people, but to the atmosphere of place. The creation process could involve climate or different temperatures, being independent from human activity.
-hypersolid
As Kas Oosterhuis mentioned in his book “ Interactive architecture", recently there has been discovered in laboratory conditions a material called hypersolid, which is invisible and has got the ability to penetrate one another. If it becomes possible to create hypersolid in normal conditions, that would open infinite possibilities for applying it into architectural scale.
November 19, 2007
Designing People
There are many different ways of understanding term mass-customization. The first and the obvious one would be an issue of adjusting the material goods to our needs and preferences. Nowadays it tends to be one of the most developed and examined problems concerning mass production.
However we could look at this problem from different perspective, changing the approach and searching for new possibilities. According to the recent biotechnological progress, the adjustable part, in terms of mass customization, can be a man, not his surrounding or background. This phenomenon was studied by Francis Fukuyama in his famous publication called ‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’. He argues that as a result of biomedical advances, we are facing the possibility of a future in which our humanity itself will be altered beyond recognition. He states that in the near future it will be possible to manipulate human DNA in order to achieve all the most desirable characteristics in one person. Fukuyama examines influence of genomes on human behaviors, based on innovative technological researches. He claims that our existence is determined by genes, which have the biggest potential for shaping our everyday life.
Medicine already uses differentiated technologies to prevent from diseases and eliminate psychological deviations. Curing children with ADHD is an example of adjusting people to the existing social norms. ADHD is psycho-physical system, inextricably related to human behavior, rather than simple being a disease. Thus, this kind of intervention changes their character is being in order that they fulfill social expectation being politically correct.
We slowly achieve the point in which biotechnology allows us to ‘design’ people. Fukuyama considers problems of creating children’s genomes by their parents, already before their birth. On one hand controlling what was previously impossible and unpredictable (in that case human DNA) could be the greatest achievement of our decade of mass-customization; however it also brings up lots of anxieties and fear. Considering in a large scale, could lead to enormous problems, like dehumanization and gradual lost and disappearance what is generally being perceived as human, meaning diversity, individuality and personality.
Paradoxically mass-customization, understood in such a way, doesn’t aim to non-standardization. Contrary what could appear as a result is homogenous world full of ‘ideal’ desirable people. This stage Fukuyama considers as ‘Posthuman Era’.
References:
-‘Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnological Revolution’ Francis Fukuyama
-http://sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200602/000020060206A0002705.php
-http://genomeathome.stanford.edu/
-http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/21/3/325
November 2, 2007
(re)inventing materiality - immaterial materiality
There appears a dichotomy between the virtual and the material world. Despite the increasing to conversion of atoms into bits, as Nicholas Negroponte points out in Being Digital, we still need atoms interact with the bits. If Being Digital is a state of being hooked to the network with one's point of view flying through empty space, then it is Being Material that makes that connection a reality.
What follows is a question how different is embodiment in the virtual realm from the embodiment in the material realm. Merleau Ponty in his exploration in Phenomenology of Perception comes to the conclusion that the mind and body are intricately intertwined in the project of being in the world. Our vision is perspectival, our body parts determining what perspective we will obtain of the object that is the focus of our attention. . Body without consciousness is dead matter and consciousness without the body has no way to materialize itself. Thus, subjectivity is always embodied in the lived world.
However we can go in our considerations one step futher.
What determines the physicality of materials is its sensual measurment possibility, like for emample visual appearance or touch.
Nowadays technology gradually tend to invent materials, where one of it’s sensual physical characteristics is reduced, like transparentness ( transparent concrete), shapelessness, interactivity a.s.o. Integrating some of those characteristics would create materials, which are still in some way physical, but on a level of perception became immaterial. Their physical structure is fine enough to make them be perceived as invisible. Nanotechnologies enable working on the smallest possible structures, what created a wide spectrum of new possibilities. Understanding material as a structure consisting of milliards cooperating atoms and opportunities of designing them can let us omit thresholds of human perception in the sphere of feeling materiality. For instance there are enormous undiscovered possibilities while working with substances others than solids, like liquids or gases. Particularly among gases, their existance understood in a physical way, is rarely noticed- human senses does not register their physical features. Therefore repartitioning them main functions like dividing, creating barriers, isolating a.s.o. creates a huge potential for developement and evaluation of science or architecture. Ever since, there was a desire to invent materials that could be visible and invisible in the same time, or such that you can go through them. In consequence the boundaries between material and virtual realm slowly start to blur. Somewhere between reality in virtuality atoms and bites could overlap each other, physical substances could be perceived as virtual and virtual – materialized.
October 19, 2007
complex geometry - geometry of the void
A term “complex geometry” is usually treated as a developed, sophisticated and parametric system, useful in creating new objects. In architecture it is generally related to physical structures and used as a good design tool. However, much more stimulating can be perceiving the same geometry as a void around us. Changing stereotypic point of view and looking at the same things in a different way, not through matter but inmatter, not through mass but through space in between, can open new possibilities and bring us new experience.
It seems to be necessary to use the same geometric system to describe both mass and void. We have to treat matter as well as inmater as complex structure. As well in mathematics as in philosophy we can find a lot of proves that there is no difference between them. For instance, Paradox of Zenon brings us another point of view, claiming that we can’t be sure if anything like physical being exists. That is why we should think about a void exactly like about the physical objects. We are supposed to measure it, to divide it, to explore it in the same way as we usually do with places strictly arranged by matter.
It allows us to discover new spaces, generate any kind of geometry, play with the whole surrounding, and with all the natural sources. For example in the void we can try to find new spaces generated only by the sun and shadow, noise and silence, by different smells. The only anxiety for architecture is to amplify feeling of that kind of space; to characterize it and to describe it extremely precisely. In this kind of geometry it is very hard to define spaces for people without any deceive obstructions.
In this way void can offer much more complicated and complex geometry, to be arranged without using any physical barriers, pure geometry.
G10 - Agata Kycia, Magda Osinska, Krzysztof Gornicki
Some sites with philophy, maths and new architecture, which devolop this subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes
http://mathworld.wolfram.com
http://hipercroquis.wordpress.com/