john walsh quest essay
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Architecture and Information:
How will the rapidly increasing database of digital information beutilised to generate a more relevant architectural form for society?
Word Count: 3095
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Contents
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Introduction: Architecture and Information Page 3
Spatial application Page 3
A New Virtual Reality: Urban Possibilities Page 5
Information as experience Page 7
Conclusion Page 10
Additional Information Page 11
References and Terms Page 11
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Architecture of Information:
How will the rapidly increasing database of digital information be utilised to generate a more
relevant architectural form for society?
In the present realm of architecture we are experiencing a transitional period within design
with the increasing emergence of “digital places”, these hybrid spaces contain both physical
and electronic characteristics. These places are undoubtedly not an ends mean but part of
the evolutionary process of adaption whilst we continue to seek to link “bricks to clicks” as
the intersection of electronic and physical spaces occurs at an increasing rate, through
necessity. We must ask the question, as our access to information changes, how will
architecture embrace the vast world of new data and will space become increasingly
virtual?. It is unlikely, no matter how far this evolutionary process continues the importance
of physical space will disappear, as it is1“human need to attach meaning to physical places
as part of their culture” (Horan 2000:86) and the need for physical place and interaction willnot cease, but continue to evolve.
At present we are living in one of the most exciting periods in the world’s history. Society is
being transformed rapidly around us by a growing need for information and how it is being
distributed. Accessing this vast constantly growing database of information from any point
in the world is now a reality. Through these advancements and the constantly growing
prosthetic digital networks we are becoming ever closer to one another, developing
alongside an increased understanding of the world. Recent innovations have lead modern
society to share and generate information now in more abstract methods.
Spatial application
2“Progressive information technologies are constantly evolving and mutating, and if
communities do not evolve they will be left behind” (Wilson 2004). As the world of
information progressively moves faster around us it is imperative that this process of
evolution is integrated into the fabric of the space we occupy.
The virtual information networks attracts a deal of negative stereotyping with some of social
critics such as Mark Slouka taking the view that the growing trends will unintentionally
eliminate social interaction as virtual life becomes a escape of the real. However3“despite
the rise of intoxicating virtual places, social science research continues to find that the built
environment plays a key role in defining our sense of self identity” (Stokols 1999). The
concept of digital place does not eliminate the need for the design of meaningful building
types that we are accustomed to; instead the ambition should be to focus on alterative
combinations to complement the meaning of physical place. The additional electronic layer
can give rise to new functions not feasible without.
In the modern urban world with the increasing privatisation of space, the necessity of
relevant public space as a stimulant for encouraging cultural, educational and social
1
Horan, T. 2000, Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits, ULI-The Urban Land2Wilson, E.J. 2004, The Information Age and Developing Countries, MIT Press.
3 STOKOLS, D. (1999) Human development in the age of the internet: Conceptual and methodological horizons. In S. L. Friedman &
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interaction is becoming increasingly important. “Public Space, both real and virtual- have
the capacity to provide a perceptual and functional meeting grounds for friends and
strangers alike” 4(Horan 2001:15) and have the capacity to transform a sense of place into a
sense of community. Public buildings must become important points of entry for members
of society into the digital realm.
Architecture has always had a symbiotic relationship with scientific technology throughout
time and the architecture of the information age should continue to embrace this
relationship. Designing to accommodate the needs of this generation one must bridge the
gap and utilise the structures components as a link between the physical and virtual worlds.
Design must surpass the simple screen and physically interact, change, update and stimulate
users. Essentially it is required to rethink conventional building programmes and functions
for the creation of a more immersive knowledge experience.5“Architects of the twenty first
centenary will shape, arrange and connect spaces (both real and virtual) to satisfy human
needs. They will still care about the qualities of visual and ambient environments. They will
seek commodity, firmness and delight. But commodity will be as much a matter of softwarefunctions and interface design as it is of floor plans and constructio n material” (Mitchell
2000:105).
The inevitable effects of current resource storage systems are that bytes are replacing the
once physical, removing requirements for large storage areas; this creates implications
regarding form as some previous necessities no longer apply, creating the potential for a
more relevant brief. Planners and architects are beginning to comprehend the importance
of “space flows” and their ability to create new dialogues among educational institutions in
a manner that stimulates social interaction. Advancing technology will continue to impact
our communities and social communications; the success of their integration will bedependent on the quality of design. This awareness has resulted in the materialisation of
some modern public structures whose programmes provide electronic and physical access
to residents. Particularly effective examples that illustrate this transitory process include:
Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque and OMA’s Seattle public library. These multimedia learning
environments encourage both electronic and face to face communications.
4 Horan, T 2001 Digital PlacesDesign Considerations for Integrating Electronic Space with Physical Place
5Mitchell, W.J. 2000, E-topia, Paperback Edition edn, MIT Press, USA.
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A New Virtual Reality: Urban Possibilities
Representing the Virtual is proving to be a problematic challenge for architecture. The very
nature of virtual realms is the issue, as their presence lacks visibility and physical expression
being currently primarily perceived through un-stimulating mediums. To perceive the
invisible it is imperative that we reshape the space that houses it as senses such as seeing
and feeling are central to the way we comprehend information.6“Vision is especially
important when dealing with architecture. Technology and architecture often met in their
common attempt to shape or reshape the categories of visual perception”. (Picon, Lerner
2003:295). Our perception of the virtual information is related to our level of understanding
and it can only flourish through our understanding and how we engage with it. This virtual
reality of information is but a potential awaiting its full realisation.
Programmatic datascape development
Attempting to establish a more related method of designing to embrace this realisation, a
partial new generation of architects are becoming to embrace the scientific based ideology
of “deep planning” and “datascapes”. Architects MVRDV are among the forefront of this
new generation of architects who choose to incorporate this massing of digital information
we create as a central tool in analysing the city to influence design in ways never
anticipated. The modern creators of the architectural datascape process, MDRDV has
sought to create a new visual means of representing architecture as it relates to the
mapping of urban phenomena. Mapping these urban phenomena involves data driven
visualisation to represent the “unacknowledged” features of the city. Through mapping this
invisible information in a perceivable manner bearing scale, creates the possibility to merge
6 Picon, A. & Lerner, R. 2003, Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors
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information and form to create a more relevant structure for modern society. Brett Steele
describes datascapes as7“visual representations of all quantifiable forces, which can have
an influence on the work of the architect or are even able to determine and to steer them”
(Steele B, 1998).
The work of Maas (MVRDV) exhibited in
the Metacity/ Datatown publication seeks
to give visual expression to the numerical
value of the information incorporated.8“Data do not yield information except
with the intervention of the mind.
Information does not yield meaning
except with the intervention of
imagination” (Harvard.B 1985) and this
approach allows the complex statistical
information to be presented in a muchmore perceivable way through the
medium of digital art. The publication
explores various data from both real and
theoretical scenarios in Mexico City, San
Paulo and as a contrast Netherlands.
Datascapes expose extreme conditions,
new unexpected spatial boundaries and
are considered to have paradoxical
properties. The process is considered to
be rational as it is derived from scientificinformation and irrational because the
spatial restrictions exposed can give a
surreal image of the area under
examination. The datascapes are
controlled and critical in nature offering the dweller of urban space a visual critique of that
in question. They can examine the effects that external forces have and the implications
that trends may have if they continue in terms of spatial consequences.
Datascapes are much more than persuasive illustrations, they reveal urban influences and
when transformed into images (digital art) become maps with multiple dimensions. Thesemaps can then become a tool to guide the urban designer to achieve potential new
development in current practise’s and used as a persuasive power to guide public policy.
One of the most interesting features of datascapes is that they can continually be updated
as information in the world around us changes. Information however when materialised
into a physical object becomes an artefact and is quickly outdated as information changes.
Architectural firms such as UN studio have begun to embrace a similar method, however
there approach is more clearly related to finished final constructed form than that of
MVRDV, whose initial datascape projects are primarily theoretical works. In order to do
7 Brett Steele, “Reality Bytes: Datascapes in Daidalos” 9/70, 1998, p.10.
8 “The Globalization of Markets” in Harvard Business Review, May/June1985, p.99
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things differently we need to see things differently and UN studios in projects such as
Arnhem Central Masterplan in the Netherlands have embraced the use of digital
information as a means to generate habitable space through a process known as deep
planning.
Deep planning incorporates a variety of aspects including economics, infrastructure,
programme and construction. This result is similar relationships as appose to the use of
individual data, form the parameters of a project and illustrate suitable space.9“The typical
product of deep planning is a situation-specific, dynamic organizational structural plan that
uses scenarios, diagrams, parameters, formulas and themes, encompassing the mapping of
political, managerial, planning, community and private relations.” This allows for the
generation of increased possibilities and more functional space as one of the primary
focuses in Arnhem is the concentration on overlapping spaces that contain shared
parameters, with movement studies becoming an important focus and generator of form.10
“The reason why such a large effort is a made to map information on the actual flow of
movement, as well as projected future movement, is that this information, together withtime, defines use; and use is the most vital ingredient determining the future of a location.
Since no program is thinkable without people, no value exists without users”. By analysing
the site for its spatial flows areas that may be problematic and positive are highlighted. The
primary aim of deep planning is not to generate a design proposal, but to create a concise
development policy that relates specifically to that which surrounds it.
Information as Experience
Emerging as a result of current practise methods in the architectural realm and our shifting
perception of the world, there is an increasing alteration in the way scale is being perceived.Unlike physical matter whose dimensions define building scale, virtual information has no
scale; its scale is only established through the medium of representation.11
“Information
ignores the distinction between the large, the medium and the small, between the macro
and the micro.” (Picon, Lerner 2003:30). This transformation in scale has been brought
about due to our ability to perceive a much broader perspective than was possible of
previous generations; we can now focus on molecules or complete images of planet earth.
The implications of this shift in the perception of scale is important when considering the
impact of creating a hybrid environment, that will nurture and stimulate users of future
buildings to enjoy a more complete learning and cultural experience. Some modern
experimental innovations have begun to explore the relationship of spatial flows by the useof interactive displays that relate to human scale.
9
http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/deep-planning/ accessed 11
th
May 201110www.unstudio.com/uploads/.../e54d03f7-7614-4b1e-8d6a-44d709c08450 accessed 11th May 2011
11 Picon, A. & Lerner, R. 2003, Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors
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Increasingly members of the virtual information age are becoming equipped with an
electronic body that manifests itself in the form of personal media devices that circulate
information linking us to the world through a network of information.12
“This virtual body of
electron flow is drastically changing the mode of communication in family and community,
while the primitive body in which water and air flow still craves for beautiful light and wind”
(Ito Toyo 1997). The issue arising is how can design consolidate these two contrasting body
types, traditional architecture form has its origins rooted in the movement of fluid physical
characteristics. Contemporary architecture must establish a more intimate relationship with
the digital environment by arrangement of “information vortices”. How primitive space and
nature will be connected to virtual space is its link to the world through the growing
electron network. People who occupy this new space will experience the built form as an
extension of the skin, nature and information simultaneously.13
“Architecture today must
be a media suite” (Ito Toyo 1997), people who are immersed in this suite will have their
consciousness expanded as the suite will act as an external brain feeding information to the
mind.
“Hyperhabitat” by Vincent Guallart
Vincent Gullart’s “Hyperhabitat: Reprogramming the World” installation for the 2008 Venice
Biennale engages with these themes in a provocative, innovative way. The project was
12 T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18
thApril
2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html13
T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18th
April2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html
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developed in tangent with MIT’s The Centre for Bits and Atoms. The installation suggests the
need to re-programme the spaces that we as users inhabit by14
“distributing intelligence in
the nodes, networks and environments with which we construct buildings, cities and
territories” (Wiley John). The project highlights the multiscalar relationships between
objects, (from that of the individual to more worldwide spans) and illustrates the line codes
that previous interacting users were encouraged to follow. The project was also connected
simultaneously to the internet and proposals visitors created for reprogramming the world
were able to be submitted by use of “line codes” that illustrated how by establishing
different relationships we can create more efficient interactive urban environments. One of
the primary ideas of the digital space was that as the project was a node in broader digital
network15
“any person will able to register their personal objects belonging to any of the
categories, and propose the relations that they would like to establish with the world,
between same category and scale objects (books with books), objects of same category but
different scale (book with the Congress library), different category and same scale (book and
cross) or different category and scale (book with the Vatican)”(Gullart Vincent). The exhibit
sought to be a platform for the sharing of ideas through an abstract medium and promoteinnovations within architecture. All the furniture used in the project contained interactive 0
micro servers that correspond to one another to create relationships intended to be similar
to neurons of the brain.
Conclusion
It is inevitable that world of the virtual as has been illustrated throughout the last two
decades will increasingly become a more fundamental part of design across all forms of
urban architecture. Embracing this digital extension of the mind promises to redefine the
way we interact and create relationships leading to a more efficient, sharing society.16
"Weof the modern age are provided with two types of bodies, writes Ito. The real body which is
linked with the real world by means of fluids running inside, and the virtual body linked with
the world by the flow of electrons" (Ito Toyo1997).
Innovations such as datascapes promise to create more efficient and equal cities through
more informed urban planning. It is imperative that the new structures we design go
beyond simply just relating to the surrounding urban syntax but embrace the invisible acting
forces that can lead to the creation of more profound and functional spaces. Recent work by
Paul Krugman who received a Nobel Prize (in economics 2008) for his contribution, gives rise
to greater potentials of datascapes in urban planning. His studies examined geographic
concentration of wealth and consumer preferences for goods and services; this promises toadd a new dimension when incorporated into future datascapes.
17“In the highly digitised
age of the 21st
century, architecture has become so thoroughly enmeshed within a network
of other disciplines that what we are witnessing are new hybrid, mutant forms of practice
that serve to reinvent the discourse of architecture as we know it.”
(Leach Neil)
14 Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, pp.89
15http://www.hyperhabitat.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hyperhabitat_eng.pdf accessed 12th may 2011
16 T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18
thApril
2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html17 Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, pp.89
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Additional Notes
I only was able to look briefly into the work of Pipilotti Rist. Her work looks really interesting
and her grasp on digital media as a means to create immersive space is amazing. I was
particularly interested in her “Pour your body out” installation, that’s a space I could chill in
for a few hours!. Unfortunately I have been unable to come across any solid text in relation
to her recent work so that is why it has not been included as a reference. I wish I had a
greater amount of time to work on the essay as I feel I was just beginning to uncover some
interesting ideas and the essay does not necessarily reflect that.
I would like to wish you all the best for the summer months and thank you for your guidance
in Quest. The subject was very interesting and scary, but refreshing to know that there are
still so many ideas in architecture and the world left to explore.
Terms:
“Digital Places” term coined by Thomas A Horan
“Space Flows” refers to our virtual interactions and the components that make it possible.
“Deep Planning” term coined Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos UN studio’s to describe the
process of computer based information input used to create building forms and advanced
spatial programmes.
“Line Codes” Description by Neil Leach: The line codes proposed in hyperhabitat are
essentially relationships poised in abstract form, and can be emotional or functional. Theydo not identify the kinds of relationships that are established directly between objects.
Image Referencing:
Cover Image: “Hyperhabitat” Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley,
2009 pp.86
Bloomberg Ice: https://reader009.{domain}/reader009/html5/0515/5afa264496529/5afa264a8eb34.jpg
[accessed 19th
of april 2011]
Programmatic datascape development. Image accessed 11
th
of May 2011http://www.arch.columbia.edu/work/courses/studio/sp10-rothstein/collin-anderson
Data Town Image: http://media08.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/mvrdv-datatown_02.jpg
“Hyperhabitat” Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, 2009 pp.87
Text References:
Included in footnotes at bottom of page
.