Parallaxis

Intro

2010-11-29T00:43:00.000-04:00

Parallaxis

or the 100^tthMonkey Effect

J.G. Ballard once stated that the uneasy marriage of reason and nightmare which dominated the 20^th century gave birth to an increasingly surreal world. Being part of this increasing madness it should be important for us to re consider things that we have taken as a given up until now. With a fragile, almost collapsing economical structure upon us and a mounting social tension, one comes to question what should the position of architecture be today, as a contributing form of science.

To cut a (really) long story short, the scenario of this thesis is the deformation and substitution of principles that would follow in the aftermath of a systemic collapse and the subsequent evolving process that would arise. Of course despite the immense questions (a.k.a. opportunities) that would come out of a situation like this, we have constrained ourselves only to a small part of the spatial enigma. According to David Harvey, it is easier for people today to conceive a future on Mars than a future not under Capitalism. So we made it our difficult task not only to imagine a different future but also to position architecture in it.

If the creation of the Soviet Union in the early 20’s was equal in importance and magnitude with the discovery of a new continent, then we can safely assume that the pilgrimages of the era were the newly invented Social Condensers. There were supposed to be the up most important elements in a society that would not structure itself around the market but around its interrelationships. As we know it didn’t take more than a decade to bring all this utopian thinking and acting to a flaming end.

But this is the point of our departure. We are imagining a world that could come into peace with the Marxist confrontation of the city versus the countryside. In the process of doing it, we are showcasing the re actualization of Manhattan as a contemporary urban intensification node, and main Capitalist stronghold to something completely different.

In order to do so, we are using the same spatial pilgrims the Soviets invented. This time around, they are not the sturdy, uneventful ancestors of their originators but they themselves have evolved. As we argue, the “human condition” is a constantly changing one, and our spatial elements should also be able to follow up. This feature is a key ingredient of our final outcome as a material totality and as a way of thinking.

It is our firm belief that things are a changing. It falls on us to choose the paths to follow, to be influenced and finally to influence. History has taught us, that we cannot change society through spatial formations alone, but we can still try to influence it. On the other hand, our desired outcome is based on the amazing unpredictability of introducing a new perspective into this world. So in plain terms the end goal here is to come up with a set of tools rooted mostly into the spatial realm, although the influences are coming from a vast variety of sciences (psychoanalysis, history, physics, geology etc), and give the opportunity for a new social order to use it and abuse it for its own scopes and purposes.

After all “freedom can only exist as a necessity”. (K. Marx)

we can live without architecture

2010-10-28T03:35:00.002-03:00

“Architecture never touches the great themes, the fundamental themes of our lives. It remains at the limit and intervenes only at a certain point in the process, usually when behavior has already been totally codified, furnishing answers to rigidly stated questions. Even if its answers are evasive, the topic of their production and consumption avoids any real upheaval. […] Architecture presents no real proposal since it uses instruments accurately predisposed to avoid any deviation…”

SUPERSTUDIO manifesto

“If design is merely an inducement to consume then we must reject design; if architecture is merely the codifying of the bourgeois models of ownership and society, then we must reject town planning and its cities[…] Until all design activities are aimed towards meeting primary needs, until then design must disappear. We can live without architecture… "

Adolfo Natalini (1971)

“The problem is not to furnish rooms and not even to produce objects both amusing and perishable… The problem is to furnish deserts, to awake consciousness from long dogmatic sleep and force backward the monster created by the sleep of reason…”

“House of Calm Serenity” SUPERSTUDIO

Superarchitettura (1966)

2010-10-28T02:07:00.005-03:00

Superstudio or SUPERSTUDIO as the team preferred to name itself, was an avant garde architectural team created in Italy in 1966. The founders were Adolfo Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia both architects from the famous Architecture school of Florence. Along with another architectural and design team of the era and closely related to them even in terms of spatial proximity , the ARCHIZOOM ( an association by Andrea Branzi, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi; and two designers Dario Bartolini and Lucia Bartolini), they formed what was coined as the Radical Architecture Movement.

We will not go in depth into the history or the implementations of their work, because this is firstly easily traceable throughout the internet and secondly it is not the goal of the project. Instead we want to investigate some elements that this radical movement explored and see if we can also rely on their interpretation to further enhance our projected goals.

One of the first elements of their work that we are interested in is the way the SUPERSTUDIO and the ARCHIZOOM use the grid formation. We focused on two projects (one for each team), the Continuous Monument (SUPERSTUDIO) and the Non-Stop City (Archizoom).

Although these two projects share a lot in common they also have a lot that differentiates them. Common is the utopian perspective of them and the use of the grid as a starting point, also similar is the ideal that they have upon commenting on their contemporary consumerist society.

Almost everything else is contradicting one another. In the Continuous Monument the ideal of a society held together only by a thin grid (or grid structure), that can supply them with their necessities, is central. In Non-Stop City, the inhabitants of this limitless urban (?) formation are actually depending on a multitude of newly invented pieces of furniture and their houses that are completely self-enclosed and artificially air-conditioned. There is much more in this comparison and we will not address it here. What we are really interested is the use of the grid (the similarities and the differences) and the way that the two revolutionary thinking teams regard its relationship with nature; and of course Mies…

.the grid

In the Continuous Monument, Superstudio use the grid and the grid structure to create an overcoat that would make the totality of our planet habitable. In the graphics that follow their utopian project we can see the spatial formation that is constituted by a rectilinear grid, literally in every environment found on our planet.

In one of the very few (and early) sketches we can take a glimpse of what is happening inside this grid. We can see structures like the ones we are used to inhabit today, stacked one on top of another, like a linear city of humongous proportions. In this case we understand that the grid and its spatiality create the environment for the city structure (urbanism) to invade everywhere. Inside of this seemingly uniform grid, everything can be happening. The exterior façade of this project in no way is able to depict or even interact with what is happening inside of it. But in a very strange way, the exterior is the only way for the interior to exist.

This is in very close proximity to the Miesian way to think about a façade.

Furthermore, in another set of envisioning the team sketches out an entirely new condition for the grid. Here we can see a family of inhabitants roaming around a open plane field that is constituted by a never ending grid. According to the team this grid is the ultimate provider of the needs that those people have. What is really interesting to us at this point is the way that this particular grid interacts with nature and the native ground.

In the collage we see the grid plane covering the whole extent of the field. In the same extent there are parts of the grid that seem broken off and reveal the reality that it was protecting us from. Even the presence of the cactus as a natural element, is indicative of the team’s attitude against nature.

In the same way, when we take a closer look at Mies work (Farnsworth, Seagram, Stadtgallerie, Lake Shore drive etc), then we realize an important similarity between the two. When the grid wants to host a natural element, it does not distort its presence, it doesn’t even react, it just opens a whole wide enough for the element to fit in.

It is not a reactionary measure it is an involuntary one.

The same can be said about the Non-Stop City project; although here the moves are more randomized and the set of rules seems a lot more figurative and free. The natural element has no continuity, and it is still encased in the grid. The grid here is much more two dimensional, and all of the focus is being laid on the architectural objects themselves.

.learning

Having these great examples to look up to, we had a hard time realizing the difficulty of the process we elected to follow. The diagrid formation that will cover our structure, is not two dimensional or three dimensional per se. It relates upon the elements it encounters, and it formulates itself accordingly. It never breaks or subsides, but it can be taken apart when need.

Design.

2010-10-27T23:33:00.002-03:00

Design.

2010-10-27T23:29:00.002-03:00

Clearing Out.

2010-10-27T23:12:00.007-03:00

In response to the midterm review it has deemed fruitful to think over the commentary that took place from the critics. The main problematic focused in the linking between the final result and its predecessor.

This text aims to regain the linkage between these two phases and while doing that to strengthen the approach on the work of Mies van de Rohe. The main questions that will be answered here concern firstly the choice of the actual site (why the Seagram bldg, why Mies) and then will move forward through an in depth look in basic Miesian elements to (re) discover the linkage that seemed lost.

So why the Seagram’s bldg? What it could possibly have that would interest us so much, as to place it as the ground zero for our scheme?

In late 1999, just before the millennium entered our way, there was a major public vote in New York City. Those days, as in every other big or small settlement people got the millennium frenzy. That meant that everything around them had to be reevaluated in order to be accepted into the completely advanced and new era (or not so). So the frenzy included a mass public participation in all kinds of voting contests that all had in common the millennium reference. In those days everything had the denomination 2000’s or “of the millennium”, as if people in a massive scale were reevaluating their life’s work and surroundings.

Of course, not eluding this mania, in New York City there was a rather extensive competition organized by the New York Times in order to find out what was the millennium’s most important building. The result was rather (or not) surprising. The then 42 year old (now it is 52 years old) building surpassed every other major construction in NYC, and was voted first. What is impressive is that the bldg itself has been overly criticized through the years from almost everyone. Even Rem Koolhaas once stated his disappointment when he first came to the big apple, excited to see it but was left discouraged and strangely disaffected.

Still, even today it remains the most expensive piece of real estate in NYC and one of the ten in the western hemisphere. The name and the figure of the building is one of the most recognizable in the history of modern architecture whilst it has been copied more times than any other. This love to hate structure has defined the skyline of the modern cities more than any other man made element of construction.

In all honesty, no matter how subjective somebody is, there are other impressive projects around us that have existed the past 40 years, many of which were more radical, utopian, even more extravagant, but none had ever proven to be so successful. This success is a key point to understand why we wanted it to be a main figure in our transformation. When the game is changing nobody wants to deal with the losers because it doesn’t really matter. On the other hand, taking down the competition’s head may as well lead to a paradigm shift.

This is not the only reason. Furthermore, in the Seagram, people can witness one the most successful fusions of classic and gothic elements that have ever been erected. On the one hand, the classic elements easily spotted in the absolute symmetry, in the balanced massing, the raised plaza, even the triple division of the tower into the base, the shaft and the crown. In addition to that the same goes for the stable repetition of the columns and the beams. Some critics have also made the linkage with antiquity because of the presence of bronze.

On the other hand, the gothic elements can be traced to the materiality of the selected components, the pink marble, the travertine, the bronze. Even more in the relations of the working elements of the construction, the glass wall (reminding us the great gothic churches), and the steel frames…

Ultimately this means that messing with the Seagram means taking on thousands of years of western architectural taste being balanced between the classical and the gothic tracery.

So that is why the Seagram’s and no other.

In this second part we will have to analyze the Seagram’s in order to show the obvious and the not so obvious traces that link our end result to it.

.the grid

The first obvious thing that we want to discuss is the grid and the way it functions not only in the particular example but in most of Mies work. This is one of the most elemental components that the architect was basing his projects and subsequently, is the key in understanding our transformations later on.

In most of his mature work Mies van de Rohe was using the grid as a key ingredient not only for his programmatic manifestations but also for the final realization of his projects. The grid that was used obeyed most of the times to two rules. The first one was the span of the given structure and the actual length that could be accommodated according to the given materials, technical solutions or even desired effects on the ground (i.e. the Neue Stadtgallerie). The second rule was the configuration of the grid to be fitted into the site, or the necessary portion of the site that was linked to the project.

Those two main parameters, when combined, gave the architect the necessary base for the introduction of the final compositional grid. Based on that particular grid where all the rest steps of the procedure.

The clue here is not only to understand the significance of the above statements but also to trace this procedure into the course of time into Mies work. From the time that the grid was introduced as a design decision maker there has been practically no significant change until the Seagram’s. It didn’t matter if the project was a warehouse, an institution or a summer house; furthermore it made no difference the volume, height or even the placing of the construction.

So as we can see the Seagram’s obeyed the same rules the Farnsworth did. The only addition was the fact that the plan was repeated in height as many times as needed. In essence what we have in hand is an absolute two dimensional grid.

The two dimensional grid, so profoundly praised by Mies, for its ability to create such an agile environment (open plan), is only partly successful. All of the open space created and the consequent “functional mobility” in the operational plan, is heavily constrained in the X, Y plane. Even if we multiply this in the Z axis in order to create the skyscraper formation, then we still keep the design constrained to the same axis. That is the situation that occurs for every bldg Mies has ever made and is more that a floor in height.

The easy way to witness this is by tilting the Miesian high structure on the side and evaluating the result. The tilted construction resembles a completely different ideal than its previous state. Here we have a weird analogy between the height and the width of the floors; some kind of traditional Dutch housing extravaganza.

This exaggeration helps us define the element of our research. When the slab met the two dimensional grid the result is deceiving. The supposedly open space falls victim to the constraints of the plane. That is why we say that the two dimensional grid that Mies operated on is only the bearer of the signal to the road of open and fully functional space. Still in the project plans that were made for most of the constructions we can sense a secluded will to break free. We are mostly referring to the plants and supporting elements that were drawn on them. Many other architects at the time, as they still do today, present the surroundings rather minimally. Mies on the other hand did not. The trees elude in the grid invading it and making them distinctively obvious for the observer in most of his finished plans (take a closer look at the plans for the Farnsworth house, the Toronto bank, the Lake Shore drive, the Bacardi bldg etc.)

In our design the slabs give their place to another grid in order to form a completely three dimensional spatial realm. As arbitrary as it might sound, the element that bounds all of it together is that of the Soil. It is the form in which the grid lives and operates. In order for the grid to fully progress in the three dimensional environment and because antigravity machine remains fictional, materiality is needed. Every grain of sand is in its own relative position a point in a vast extent of gridirons. Furthermore this gets even better when the Soil itself can be continuously re-appropriated, allowing the unending construction and destruction of unending grid patterns.

The Z axis is now free to intermix with the rest of the parameters set by the given functions and demands. The only constraint here is in reality the human imagination and its consequent drives. Paraphrasing Mies we can surely agree with his trademark quote “Less is more”, if only less is all it can actually become.

.the frame

The second element of the upmost importance for the definition of our work is the frame and its use in Mies work. Most of the bldg structures he created in his mature stage were containing a given hierarchy. This given hierarchy firstly placed the grid, then the functions and then concluded with the skin of the enclosed environment.

This skin was used mostly to segregate the interior from the exterior but also to visually connect it. This connection came in the form of transparency of the frame. Starting from the first glass skyscraper that he presented as the future of the urban settlement, right to the end (his last built work the Neue Stadtgallerie in Berlin), the glass (transparency) has always been a key element.

In the same degree what also mattered was the way he was making the frame part of the façade and consequently relating it to the built volume.

The exterior façade always comprised of a multiplication of similar elements masterfully resolved to create a unity. This multiplication is especially obvious in the Seagram bldg and is what constitutes a great deal of its character. He called the frame as a “reflexive architectural ornament” but in real terms we do not see this happening.

One of the rare moments that something like this takes place has been infamously called “the bank joke”.

“…building the Toronto Dominion Bank he had to model specific partitions in order to block his transparent windows, or else everything would become seeable (sic).[…] So he made a display of everything and nothing and vice versa.”

What we have here is a case when instead of making the frame and the façade react to the needs he evades the action. Instead he creates a supplementary move to counteract with his unwanted transparency. The same move has been done in the Seagram bldg when we take a look at the sides of the construction that host the main circulation core.

Transparency here in not needed but instead of giving away the uniformity of the façade system he prefers to enclose an opaque element (in this case the marble) to counter it.
We really are interested in this activity, but we want to take it a step further. As with the grid (passing from a 2d grid to a 3d one) we would like to transform a non reactive façade to one that can really participate into the creation or host the volume it confines.

In order to do so, we also will follow Mies first steps by taking as a façade base a simple element that would create our unity via multiplicity. In our case, this element is the most agile in terms of spatial mobility in the 3 dimensions, the triangle.
By using the triangle we succeed into creating the diagrid. The diagrid is a planar formation that can (depending on the resolution of it) recreate any geometric shape or condition. Following the conditions that we set, this diagrid is going to be created by a light, waterproof material that also has the ability to stretch. This material is called elastic polymer and it has an added benefit to it, it is translucent.

The translucency will give us the lighting conditionality that we want because it would be able to allow light in but obstruct the eyesight. When vision is needed then the material is removed as a whole. In addition to that the structural system we have created to host our surface, is capable of doing that.

In this way the flexibility of the plan and the section is not being followed by the façade.

.the sculptures

Continuing on the analysis of Mies work on Seagram we come into a very interesting point, the sketches. While Mies was working on the bldg, he created a series of sketches in order to think about things that he was interested in.

What is fascinating about his sketches is that he did only 2 documented sketches of the Seagram and the Plaza. On the other hand, there are more than 15 pages of documented sketches that deal with the sculptures that would be hosted on the plaza. That is an indication of the importance that the architect gave to the specific element.

Maybe the elements that act as depots for the surplus soil can be the sculptures of Mies. His ideal of a plaza able to host a vast variety of sculptures will be revised and revived.

Mies

2010-10-27T23:02:00.002-03:00

"To whom you might ask does Mies "belong"? The architects, the artists, the warlords? Or to 20th century itself?[...] I cannot hide my own bias and I will affirm it here, today.

Mies is a problem for the 20th century, and to this infinite process that is our century no witnesses may be justifiably excluded"

S. Kwinter.

Ants

2010-10-19T02:09:00.001-03:00

system

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Grasshopper

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2010-10-18T06:17:00.001-03:00

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Design.

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Design.

2010-10-18T06:05:00.003-03:00

Design. [Urban Context]

2010-10-18T06:04:00.002-03:00

Design. [Urban Context]

2010-10-18T05:59:00.003-03:00

Design. [Urban Context]

2010-10-18T05:55:00.003-03:00

Design. [Urban Context]

2010-10-18T05:40:00.004-03:00

Design. [Urban Context]

2010-10-18T05:35:00.003-03:00

Design.

2010-10-18T05:32:00.002-03:00

Design.

2010-10-14T15:15:00.002-03:00

Design .

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Another Repost

2010-10-10T20:41:00.001-03:00

from the same source , http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=338

Sorry Mies

In 1937, Mies van der Rohe arrived in New York on his first journey to the US. He was the most enigmatic of all the European architects who were leaving Nazi Germany at that time – either because of persecution (most of the others) or convenience (Mies). Mies was renowned as an artist-architect through a few small projects. The most famous and published the German pavilion at the Barcelona Expo – known as the Barcelona pavilion: a building without a function, but a series of contemplative spaces formed by planes of glazing, marble and a moment when Modernist architecture came of age. Despite (or perhaps because) of his reputation for this most exquisite and unusual architectural project, a number of luxury homes, and some drawings of experimental skyscrapers, and an unsuccessful period running the Bauhaus.

The Barcelona Pavilion made architecture out of reduction – of almost nothingness and vanishing. A new and opposite way from 19th century architecture, which was full of stuff. And that stuff was all about history and meaning. Modernism proposed an escape from history through abstraction – or the evaporation of meaning and narrative from architecture. The Barcelona Pavilion doesn’t tell a story; rather it is intended to be an experience of material and space.

Mies’ Chicago was something new, something that had only been dreamt have in pre-war Europe. Mies found himself in enormous, simple, innocent America. The cranks, and nooks and soon-to-become ruins of 19th century European cities a long steamer ride away. Europe: organic, dirty, old, riddled with History, and plunging into catastrophe.

Four years before Mies arrived in Chicago, Americas Most Wanted Man was gunned down in an alleyway after leaving a movie theatre with a woman on each arm. John Dillinger was the dashing heartthrob of Chicago’s gangland. Dillinger optimised the glamorous and chaotic romance of jailbreaking, heist pulling, on-the-run city of rooks nests, alleyways, and safe houses, of Al Capone, of no-go zones and J Edgar Hoovers nascent FBI G Men. His death marked the decline of Chicago’s gangster culture which had grown up around Prohibition, supplying the liquor that the government had tried to ban, but the citizens just couldn’t live without.

Hoovers dogged pursuit of Dillinger and gangsterism was a victory of a certain kind of urbanism. One that is reflected in Mies’ Chicago projects. Mies is on the side of Hoovers bureaucracy, rather than the ad hoc opportunism of the gangsters. But there is mysteriousness and an impenetrability to his architecture too, just as Hoovers bureaucracy of power was, deep down, dark and paranoid. Mies made bureaucracy into a form of poetry, monumentalising though precision and a ruthless editing of architectural possibility.

In Robert Anton Wilsons ‘Illuminatus Trilogy’ – a sprawling hippy/counterculture/conspiracy epic, John Dillinger becomes a kind of super spiritual guru of the forces of chaos. His break outs from captivity are retold as a supernatural victory over matter. Dillinger dematerialises the prison walls by the power of concentrated thought – a little like the attempt to raise the Pentagon building by the Chicago led yippies and zippies. The Illuminatus Trillogies retroactive dramatisation of jailbreaks describes that weird Miesian dematerialization of solid stuff. Mies’ concentration of architectural vision beams out of his eyes like X-ray vision, vaporising the corner of buildings so that enclosing walls seem only like planes, emptying city blocks so that gigantic buildings and plazas feel as lightly arranged as still lives. Chicagos history of chaotic freedom and incarceration is mutely articulated through Mies’ architecture.

As Mies left Europe behind, he left a country and a continent full of ideological problems. America, comparatively, was new, was innocent, and was only just coalescing as an urban form. In the vernacular grid of Dodge City, perhaps Mies saw new possibilities of his formal and highly architectural use of the grid that had obsessed his urban visions. There is an intersection between an American pragmatism and an intellectual European avant guard. And this unlikely paring built big and raw in Chicago.

Having first arrived in New York, Mies was drawn to Chicago because of pragmatic issues – looser controls on architects licensing, and the offer of a job as head of the AIT architecture school. But perhaps there was something else. Perhaps Mies recognised something of himself in the flat plains and the gigantic skies of the Midwest. That strange Miesian absence in comparison to the dense narrative of his native German countryside – a sentimental and nostalgic narrative which had become central to Nazi symbolism. Perhaps he saw in a landscape made up of city grid, the flat expanse of Lake Michigan and the plains stretching out beyond the horizon a vision of nothingness that mirrored his architecture of reduction.

His Chicago projects might be read as remakings of this landscape. The Federal Centre plaza remakes the midwestern plains as a grid of tiles – a plainer plain, with a flatter horizon, and a bigger sky, with corn and dust abstracted away. The regular joints between the tiles encouraging an exaggerated sense of perspective. A big flat space for the wind to blow across.

At Lake Shore Drive he made cliffs for Lake Michigan. As iconic and immovable as the White Cliffs of Dover but shorn of sentimental narrative, a blank silhouette against the shore.

As well as versions of nature, other projects in and around Chicago are about the modification of nature by architecture. The boiler room became the centre of the IIT campus, as it should always be if we could only think clearly enough. After all, it is the thing that enables all of these buildings to be habitable during the freezing winters. It’s the heated water flowing through pipes that allows all of this architecture to happen. It’s the thing that modifies nature into architecture.

This idea is developed at Farnsworth House, in rural Plano in what Peter Smithson describes as “ruburb” – a mixture of rural and urban. The house is as invisible as architecture can be. A glazed box with no internal walls and a central service unit that houses all of the servicing. Essentially, it is a raised platform of temperature controlled air, with sanitation and running water held between two slabs of whiteness. As though the winter snows have been quarried like the marble of the Barcelona Pavilion.

The Farnsworth House is nice, its cute, its luxurious. It’s small and desirable. The Federal Centre, IIT and Lake Shore Drive are hard to like. Their beauty is almost invisible – we need to be guided to understand it. And it feels like it’s our fault – for not noticing, for not looking or thinking enough. Mies’ architecture recedes behind a veil of everyday banality.

When you see the piles of dirty snow piled up on the plaza of the federal Centre, the photocopied notices sellotaped to the walls, you see the logic of architecture verses the logic of badly organised, underfunded, unenthusiastic, wishing it was on holiday life. Abstraction lapped by endless waves of dull narratives of everyday banality. The ever-growing blobs of chewing gum dotting over the grid like spits of rain before a storm. The metal detectors at the entrance to the Federal Building as additions to an architecture which couldn’t foresee backwoods white supremacists or fundamentalist religious opposition to the rational bureaucracy of democracy. The A4 printouts taped to the marble elevator lobbies are additions and modifications to Mies’ architecture. Since Mies left the building, the life that fills it every day has added to the architecture. Forming like a crust over the surface of the building. Interrupting, diverting, these are part of an architecture that is entirely opposite to the completeness of Miesian vision. They are ad hoc, amateur, ephemeral, unaesetheticised, confused. From missing persons notices to gonks on top of monitors, we’ve made something new out of Mieses place.

Small yellow plastic cones that warn us of wet floors as the teams of cleaners that polish Mies’s vision. And perhaps the cleaners are the only people who use the building in an appropriately Miesian manner – schedules of floor polishing, timetables of bathroom cleaning, the regular and precise application of cleaning products to the surface of the building – spraying, wiping, sponging, sweeping, sucking. The same regular human actions choreographed through out the landscape of the building. And what they are removing is the dirt, the spills, the crumbs that have fallen, the detritus of activity. Wiping up the coffee breaks, bits of salad dropped from a lunchtime sandwich, piss from the floor, and shit from the bowl. Straightening piles of paper, rewinding the building to its immaculate state, returning the building into beautiful Architecture.

Like Prohibition, temperance and abstinence motivate Mies’ architecture. And just like Prohibition, the attempting to exclude behaviours only serves to highlight our vice. Mies’ Chicago landscapes are a kind of sober architectural or urban “lack”. It’s only through our use of them that they become part of and engaged with the city. Perhaps we should recognise our own creative co-authorship of Mies’ architecture, encourage the build up of ephemera across the surface of the buildings. Somewhere between the extremes of confused intoxication of ephemera and the rational sobriety of architecture that the essential uniqueness of these places can develop.

Mies, you cut precise slabs of marble from the earths crust, you rearranged iron ore into long straight lines. You took the ground and made it new. Stacked things one top of the other lined things up next to each other more neatly than anything had ever been stacked.

Mies. Forgive us. Mies, we couldn’t handle abstraction, we wrote banal stories across your plazas, around your lift lobbies. Maybe our only excuse is that we had to live. That we couldn’t resist eating French Fries, that we felt an uncontrollable lust, that we were too lazy, too dishonest, too busy, too human.

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Text from Strange Harvest

2010-10-10T20:02:00.005-03:00

this is a repost, it is not my text (Although I wish it was)
the original can be found @ http://strangeharvest.com/wp11/?p=83

"The Ruins of the Future

Every success harbours the seeds of its own failure. Somewhere in the hubristic peak of what feels like complete accomplishment lurks the complacency, arrogance and absence of doubt that fans the inevitable, all-consuming bonfire of vanities. It’s just this kind of raging self-immolation that has cindered the global economic landscape – in days, the terrain completely transformed.

This swiftness of the transformation hits built culture hard. The economic collapse has revealed the world as a place undescribed by the maps and charts we had drawn. Designed for one scenario, buildings find themselves completed in a different landscape, appearing on the skyline like giant mausolea for a failed ideology, or abandoned half-built like freshly minted ruins.

The markets had evolved into hyper sophisticated, super-calibrated, cleverly geared systems whose logics supported an ever-finer kind of abstraction. They became a machine for manufacturing value and growth in vaporous form, decoupled from substance. Their failure is the failure of a particular kind of technological, algorithmically programmed fantasy of abstraction.

History suggests that the construction of the most ambitious architectural projects immediately precedes the deepest economic slumps. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen in progression from the Guggenheim Bilbao to the cities from zero in the Gulf. This headline grabbing architecture has been driven by the logic of the boom. That’s to say, the ideology of the global market has been the context for architecture. These projects attempted to turn the flush of cash and credit delivered by fluctuations of abstract systems into something real: a thing or a place. They sprung up in the ruins of industry or were fueled by the fleeting bounty of mineral extraction. And they were designed around the most distracted and least reliable kind of programme: tourism. Each project competing as a destination to max out vacationers credit lines. It’s created an architecture of spectacular, hollow unreality: based on unreal money, housing unreal programmes.

This unreality has infused architectural production, often finding resolution in hysterical, liquid, fluid form at audacious scale – the kind of thing recently dubbed ‘Parametricism’. (Note: Just as the height of building might be a warning sign of impending turmoil, the articulation of a stylistic manifesto is a sure sign of hubristic overconfidence). Displays of beyond-human formal complexity drop out of the computational design systems employed in the search for exoticism and difference – a difference that was demanded by the market pluralism of ultra capitalism. Appropriately, these projects seem to use the very same kind of tools that has maximized, magnified, and deepened our current financial crisis. If the Modern movement had the abstraction of industry as its reference, millennial architecture had the systemized abstraction of late capitalism.

This union of ideology and form has decoupled in dramatic fashion. The swift disjunction leaves a generation of architecture rendered instantly out of time – as un-possible as Gothic architecture in the Renaissance. These glistening new-ruins are adrift in the landscape of global recession, abandoned like ghost ships, doomed to unknown fates.

Architecture stands as a record of sensations long vanished. Through it we can vicariously experience sensations of vanished cultures. At Versailles we can feel the vanity, excess, and self-glorification of pre-revolutionary France; At Chartres, the soaring, overbearing might and mysticism of medieval religion; At Stonehenge we feel the presence of something than we will never know.

Tomorrows visitors to todays (or yesterdays) iconic buildings will feel the swoosh of volumes, the cranked out impossibility of structure, the lightheadedness of refection and translucencies. They will marvel at buildings that hardly touch the ground, which swoop into the air as though drawn up by the jet stream. They will feel stretched by elongated angles that seem sucked into vanishing points that confound perspective, and will be seduced by curves of such overblown sensuality. And in this litany of affects they will find the most permanent record of the heady liquid state of mind of millennial abstract-boom economics. We might rechristen these freakish sites as museums of late capitalist experience, monuments to a never to be repeated faith in the global market."

OMG what a text (this is my comment)....

2010-10-10T00:28:00.000-03:00

[The Super Surface]

In the late 60’s the already provocative studio of Superstudio presented and shocked the architecture and art world with a conceptual study under the name of The Continuous Movement. The goal of the project was to start a debate on the modernist exaggerations on the potentially utopian future of architecture.

The exhibit consisted of a single structure of ridiculous proportions that engulfed the extents of our planet. The structure was a single surfaced gridiron that was situated unaltered in every environment and condition on earth. This idea came as an emblematic contradiction to the contemporary norm of the time that spoke about monolithic ideas turning into the ultimate solutions for the future.

The grid is, above all, a conceptual speculation…in its indifference to topography, to what exists, it claims the superiority of mental construction over reality” - Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

In their own words: “(A)ll architecture will be created with a single act, from a single design capable of clarifying once and for all the motives which have induced man to build dolmens, menhirs, pyramids and lastly to trace a white line in the desert”. It is easy to feel the underlying sarcasm of the architects in this statement. In the same context Charles Jencks added that the project “was a mixture of ‘fascist’ total urbanization and absolute egalitarianism.”

Jencks remark is really a significant one although it seems to contradict itself. The absolute urbanization realized with the infinite expansion of the grid, was the agent that provided the nominal inhabitant with the absolute freedom not only to be able to live nomadically wherever he desired but also due to the functions of the grid he could also be sustained by it.

This extreme depiction of human control over not only the elements of nature but also man himself, wanted to act as a parody of the modernist to tamper with space. Ultimately this gesture also stood ground against the capitalist fetishism of objects, when we witness the family of people living in a bare tent and the grid providing all of the rest necessary supplies. In its extreme striation the grid provides all of the appropriate elements for the creation of smooth space, as Deleuze taught us.

Following this idea we would like to add the famous Ode of Horace, exegi monumentum aere perennius, (I built a monument more lasting than bronze). Although Horace stated the above to prove the superiority of the soul against materiality, it is suitable to note that in the same way this project, in its own way, found a way to buy in this drama of monumentality.

But that was then, in the late 60’s. More than 50 years have passed and the introduction of the World Wide Web, has given a reasonable amount of approval to their point. It might not be able to supply humanity with housing, but it sure can provide everything else. Despite this, the words of C. Jencks about egalitarianism and freedom continue to buzz in our ears.

So we would like to have another go into the implications of this particular project in our contemporary world. In order to do this more efficiently we would like to connect the notion of the grid, with that of the Surface, and in the same way that of the Void to that of the Solid. Also we are not willing to investigate the implications of whole range of newer and older propositions but just to come up with a result that would give us an idea of a contemporary rival of the Supersurface.

[Acting]

One of the most obvious but also important differences between the two elements of our contradiction (surface and solid) is that the former is mostly bonded with the idea of open space as simultaneously the latter is with the idea of the underground. When we think about what defines a surface what comes into mind is most often the idea of a plane, distorted or not. On the other hand the idea of the solid is tied with the notion of any shape in the three dimensional environment.

[Construction vs. Excavation]

In our debate on a surface somebody constructs or erects a component, whereas in a solid we can merely excavate or dig into. This is a fundamental difference in this contradiction.

When we think about construction, especially in a surface, the conceptual idea is only the first step in this process. The lack of materials and the necessary hunt for them is a major disturbance in the actualizing process. If it was possible to have the materials in situ, then it would be much easier for us to formulate and again reformulate the concept.

That is exactly what the presence of the soil signifies. The infinite possibilities of conceptual aggregation of space, when the material is already present. Of course this doesn’t mean that there is no further material necessary for the stabilization of this perpetual space. We could look into this supplementary material as the type of elements coming off a mining facility. It is only there to keep space from collapsing, not to define it…

In another level it is really easy to understand how this stabilizing factor can be managed in terms of parametric formations. Undoubtedly, the functions that necessitate the full extent of given elements that cannot be omnipresent will not be included in the interior of the condenser, but in the exterior of it. Examples of these functions are the gardens (crops etc), the open space, education (part of it) and sport activities (again only part of it).

[Create vs. Demolish]

Creation is mostly linked with the merging and erection of materials, whereas demolition is its counterpart. If we take the two definitions literally then we could also argue that creating means bonding as demolishing means dissolving. Having in mind this feature, it will be really interesting to investigate the appearance of space as the result of the demolition of the solid. Again it is not a profound neologism as the creation of space in the underground (solid) is something long materialized by the miners of the world.

[Add vs. Subtract]

This contradictory pair needs not much of an explanation. As we have further noted the act on the surface always has been that of adding elements to create space, where in the solid realm this creation can only be achieved by subtracting. Provoked from this nihilistic negligence, the negative action of dis creating the space is in reality what might as well provide us with part of the answer …

[Material vs. Debris]

We have involved ourselves so far in the investigation of the actions that constitute the contradiction between surface and solid. If we look a little bit later in the same process there are more interesting facts popping out. One of these is the remains of the actions once those have finished. On the one hand we have the part of the materials that went unused and can be either reused or recycled and on the other hand we have the plain debris as a result of the excavation. There two major differences here.

The first one is that in the first case the materials that remained unused can be salvaged in order to be once more active ingredients to another structure whereas in the latter case the remains cannot constitute any activity in the future. That comes as a result of the fact that the space in the void is consisted of anti volume, so the volume of the debris is no longer desired in this situation and under any form and condition.

The second major difference has to do with the inherent quality of the remains. The surface structure will give us a multiplicity of different materials like the ones that we have to use in order to build a sustainable construction. The solid will only give us part of its self that we no longer desire. So the immediate result is the uniformity of the extracted material as a (w)hole.

[Combination vs. Fragmentation]

As we previously demonstrated a key element of differentiation between our main participants is the way they interact with materials around them. In the same perspective we would like to add that although in the case of the surface the (various) materials have to be combined in order to create a uniformity, in the latter case the uniformity of the sole material has to be fragmented in order to create the spatial quality.

[Height vs. Depth]

When a construction is situated on the surface one of its main indicators is that of the height of the construction. Even today in the middle of the 21^st century depression buildings are still trying to surpass each other in terms of height. Contrary to that the space engulfed in a solid does not count height as its primer characteristic but depth. Again the visual example to be stated here is again the mine.

[Build vs. Shape]

So far we have investigated the results and the excuses behind our two elements. Now it is time to think about the actions that create them.

When we imagine a structure on the surface the most logical term that could follow this activity is building. Everything that we have previously stated regarding the erection of structures on a surface can be incorporated into this term. On the other hand, the same term fails to apply to the soil condition. Despite of the close resemblance of the two actions, the most appropriate term for the inter soil activity would be shaping.

So shaping and building are the two different sides of the same coin in this situation. The operational difference between them is something that will also help us define the way that this newborn functional “device” will be able to operate.

[Hut vs. Cave]

The last but not least comparison for our two basic elements, the surface and the soil is historical. We do not argue that this is an absolute composition but at least a relative one that will be able to help with the advancing of our study.

In the most accurate anthropocentric history, our earliest ancestors took refuge to the caves. Physical structures created as cavities in the same soil that surrounded them, they were the ideal housing locations for our not so sophisticated ancestors. On the other hand, with the advancement of our mental capabilities and the acquisition of the most delicate techniques, human beings became the builders of their own habitat, the hut.

So we can safely argue that there was a shift from the soil formations to the ones of surface. Maybe this would be the ideal moment to re propose a return to basics, a return to the soil. Now that we mastered the surface, we can try our very best into taming the soil itself…

[What is next?]

Maybe it would constitute the upmost detrimental cliché, but the whole meaning of the present article was to make an excuse for our introduction of the Soil (Void) element. Although an initial proposition of this thesis was aiming towards introducing a more approximated approach, one that would also include a transitional background, this has changed. For it is more important to be able to make direct and as detailed as possible bold propositions for the future, than simple predictions that fluctuate like the wind.

Karel Teige argued in his 1950’s article that the contemporary metropolis was a city of “spatial proximity but social distance”. The truth is that his argument is still very well alive and kicking nowadays. All of the institutions forged since then, even if they have had some limited success never were successful enough to close an already chaotic gap. That is true for either side of the Cold war. “The human being is above all a social product” Marx always has reminded us, so the failure of our societies to impose and stabilize social peace and justice, is always intravenously fed to the newborn members.

What we lack is neither communication nor information, we already have more than can handle of both of them. In fact I.Buchanan stated that we suffer from having much of both. As he adds what we lack is “creation and will to experiment. ‘To be able to resist the present’. The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist…”

The story of all our institutions is one of historical process and not of stabilized objects. But we have not witnessed much of a change in our institutional formation in the past century, or at least not as much as in the other sectors of life. Even now with the incorporation of new forms of communications and cyber relations, the institutions are trying to adapt merely their façade to match the changes. Nothing has changed. Our political regimes seem more resilient than ever, even nowadays when the economic structure of their own liking and choice fails to provide us with answers.

We are sure now, that reproducing ghosts of the past can give us no answers. As S.Kwinter argued “What is certain is that in the coming age we have lost the option of standing still”.

[Return or Enter]

Returning or entering the spatial design field with our results is on its own a challenge. What we have learned is not to fold on the powers of the past because they have failed miserably. On the other hand “the kingdom of freedom can only be situated on the kingdom of necessity” stated Marx and we have no reason to contradict him.

The formations of the “old” society must be understood and fought from within, not from the interventionist god, a role frequently played by the architects but by the society itself. What we concretely understood is that our role is to provide them with the tools that would facilitate an experimental dialogue between what is necessary and what is not, between what is being imposed and what debated, between what is surplus and what essential, what is now and what is tomorrow…

Usage plan (draft)

2010-10-06T05:09:00.003-03:00

Aggregation II

2010-10-06T05:08:00.000-03:00

Aggregation

2010-10-06T05:05:00.002-03:00

Simplification

2010-10-06T05:02:00.002-03:00

Schematics II

2010-10-06T04:58:00.003-03:00

Schematics

2010-10-06T04:54:00.001-03:00

Program Layout

2010-10-06T04:52:00.001-03:00

(R)evolution

2010-10-04T22:24:00.002-03:00

Transpiercing

2010-10-03T23:27:00.018-03:00

“Transpierce the mountains instead of scaling them, excavating the land instead of striating it, bore holes in space instead of keeping it smooth, turn the earth into Swiss cheese.” G. Deleuze + F. Guattari

Text inspired from “Machines are digging” (chapter of Reza Negarestani’s Cyclonopedia)

[Poro.mechanics]

Poromechanics is a term widely used by H.P. Lovecraft in order to talk about the conditioning of what he calls “the inner field”. Negarestani on the other hand takes on this term and uses it in an way that adds not only to its meaning but also to its productive effect as a (w)hole. Therefore he turns it into a system, a way to talk about the relationship of the solid and the void and the subsequent results that they provide. In his essay titled “Poromechanics: archeology of psychoanalysis and militarization of archeology” he states:

“Deleuze and Guattari’s holey space can be addressed both as an event and entity. As an event it demarcates the limitropic degeneration of a whole which never effectuates full annihilation or complete effacement (hence the nomenclature ( )hole complex) and for this reason it perpetuates a poromechanical decay whose incessant dynamism is maintained by differentiation between solid and void. As an entity, the holey space is characterized by its anomalous distribution of consistencies through the poromechanical space.

The politics of the holey space is defiant toward the existing models of harvesting power, manipulating and analyzing events on the surface. For the world order, inconsistent events around the world are failures or setbacks since they resist the contemporary dominant political models. According to the politics of poromechanical earth, however, inconsistencies, regional disparities and insidious non uniformities across the globe constitute the body of the ultimate politics. The emergence of two entities (political formation, military, economic, etc.) from two different locations on the ground is inconsistent, but according to the logic of ( )hole complex they are terminally inter-connected and consistent. In terms of emergence, consistency or connectivity should not be measured by the ground or the body of solid as a whole but according to a degenerate model of whole and the poromechanical entity. “

Following these ideas, a few years later he adds up to the previous passage that void might exclude the solid, but solid must include void in order to architectonically survive. In addition to this, according to Negarestani, solid needs void to engineer its composition in case and under every circumstance.

If we get back to basic Deleuzian analysis, it is quite obvious that the solid/void contradiction as expressed by the previous excerpts, can be easily translated into a striation/smoothing condition, where the solid takes the place of the smooth space and the void the place of the striated topography.

As an analogy, but as a real life condition, this relativity is stunning. As we will try to show later on, the Deleuzian line of emergence can penetrate all the vast field of possibilities that lie in the materialized substance of the solid. This reminds us of the indeterminacy factor that came as a conclusion when Koolhaas was addressing the congestion element. All of this is necessary in our effort to provide our project with a systematic approach that will not only be able to metabolize itself but facilitate the transition to new social forms, that we are not yet capable to grasp or even foresee.

Continuing with the text, Negarestani claims that in terms of Earth “the holocaust of freedom can be attained by engineering the corpse of solidus through installing underground machines at molecular levels that exhume (ex + humus: un-ground) the earth from within and without, turning it into a vermicular and holey composition whose strata is not dismantled but convoluted in every level of its composition.[…] By correcting its consolidating processes, the solid sells its integrity to the abysmal convolutions inspired by the void, through which the pathological survival of the solid becomes the most basic factor in its irreversible lysis and degeneration.”

This exhumation process is the key to understanding the interaction between the solid and the void. We may not be able to predict the exact way that the future generations will try to direct their experiments, but what we can do is provide them the tools to start with. Even in terms of pure materiality, it is way easier, given the correct tools to carve your way into something, than try to construct it around you.

“In any composition, the solid narrates the anomalies created by the void […] It is a short analytical step to witness that the solid works mainly as two different entities overlapping each other and functioning concurrently:

1. As a compositional entity whose behavior, can induce changes to the compositional side of the void through Surface Dynamics.

2. The solid as an entity is inherently possessed by the void.”

So to conclude this early setting up, the solid and the void will be the main element that we are going to have to implement into our system of solutions. As previously exemplified the solid plays the role of the infinite possibilities and the eternal phasing of evolution. Anything can happen when the material of creation is already present. Another important fact would be the use of the surface in the “game”. That could give us the necessary background actualization, because after all, the surface has been the main habitat of the human kind so far… Lastly but most importantly, the void… That is the real protagonist, in every aspect of this matter. All of the experimentations, the trials and even the figurative ideas, can be address through and with the void. The exact results may never emerge to be what we nowadays expect them to be, but this is the ultimate beauty of providing the material elements that can be indeterminately utilized in the future, near or far…

The next stage is to try to define the aggregators of the interactions. The element that will ignite the void creation, by addressing the process of exhumation. Again, Negarestani in his text has a very interesting suggestion to make about these elements. As he states, by using the foreword of Lovecraft’s work, he introduces the idea of the Rats as exhumation machines...

[Rats]

Negarestani uses Lovecraft’s poromechanical cosmology where exhumation is “undertaken and exercised by units called Rats.”

“Rats are exhuming machines: Not only fully fledged vectors of epidemic, but also ferociously lines of un-grounding. They germinate two kinds of surface cataclysm as they travel and span different zones. Firstly, static damage in the form of ruptures rendered by internal schisms, uplifts, dislocations, jumps and thrusts which expose the surface to paroxysmal convolutions and distortions; and secondly the dynamic anomaly of seismic waves dissipating as the rats flow in the form of tele-compositions (ferocious packs).”

There is a lot of interesting facts about the use of Rats as the acting proprietors. First of all, even if we take the term literally, as every action taken in nature rats act like that to fulfill a basic chain of demands. Either they are digging to create the passage way that will lead them to a food source, or they are digging in order to escape, or even to hide their newborns. In any and every case the action of digging not only has a more specified goal, but also the literal exhuming comes as a consequence, that has neither been though about nor been calculated.

In the same type of actors, where the creation of void refers mainly to the meeting of basic necessities, we could easily put a more manageable element, the ant. For thousands of years the ants have roamed the earth, literally exhuming gigatons of soil in an effort to sustain their way of living. Every corridor, every chamber they have ever created had to fulfill a specific function. There is a very strict hierarchy included in the very being of the ant colony. As we learn from Steven Johnson’s “Emergence”, everything starts to be created around the queen ant.

The queen being the main aggregator is also the key provider of the colony. All the ants are being born from her. So in a not so strained analogy, she is the literal Rat. Everything begins to fall into place around her, the main corridor are created, the chambers, the storage and the circulation compartment. Still following the most basic rule of nature, that of survival. The same adheres to the structures made by termites.

On the other hand, if we decide to see the rat term metaphorically then we have a totally new problem in our hands. This is the way that we are willing to use the rat term, so we will try to maneuver through the delicate metaphorical structure consisting of humans and our life structure.

The basic idea behind this research is to be able to provide an experimentation zone. As we said before, we are not willing to return to the misfortunes of the past, where architecture was expected to create single handedly a brave new world. But on the other hand we definitely don’t want to fall victims of today’s indifferent stance towards the experimentation of the social structure.

The ideal balance has to be researched.

In our case, we are mainly trying not to direct, but only provide and influence experimentation. As with most cases in human history, only when we have the appropriate tools, we can start the testing runs…

So what if, instead of providing old retrofits or failed utopian predicaments, we actually provide the appropriate tools? Then maybe people can transform themselves to Rats, in order to address themselves, according to their own necessities, the basic evolutions that they want to pursue.

[The five elements]

Following up on the previous research on what the void could really specify, we come across the Japanese religious theory of the five elements. Those elements in ascending order of power are earth, fire, air, water and void.

Void is referred to as Ku and is the strongest among elements because it represents spirit, thought and unrestrained creation. It is also associated with power, creativity and inventiveness.

We can easily understand the importance of the void as the ultimate functioning layer of all importance, since it is what exists before anything becomes.

[The presence of Void as an event]

Here we would like to involve ourselves we the idea of the Void as an event. Negarestani himself tried to give this functionality to the Void but instead he preferred to talk about it as an entity.

“The world is everything which happens” Wittgenstein

First of all, in order to prove the eventful nature of the void, we must understand and define what an event really is. To do this we will mention and refer to an extensive array of excerpts in Deleuze’s work especially from the book The logic of Sense.

“Axiom 1: ‘Unlimited becoming becomes the event itself “

The Void, with its unlimited possibilities and endless boundaries, clearly constitutes what Deleuze refers to here as unlimited becoming. The position, the role or even the function of the engulfed space is ever – changing and therefore eternally becoming. In a peculiar turn of terms it could ideally constitute the materialization of what Trotsky called “constant revolution”.

As Badiou argues, the event “is the ontological realization of the eternal truth of the One, the infinite power of Life, it is in no way separated from what becomes. […] To the contrary it is the concentration of the continuity of life, its intensification, it is what gives the multiplicities of life” and he concludes “The event is the becoming of becoming: the becoming of unlimited becoming”.

Axiom 2: ‘The event is always that which has just happened and that which is about to happen, but never

that which is happening’

The main difference for this second axiom is the introduction of the element of time. Again, we would like to follow Badiou with his analysis where he states :

“The event is a synthesis of past and future. In reality, the expression of the One in becomings is

the eternal identity of the future as a dimension of the past. The ontology of time, for Deleuze as for Bergson, admits no figure of separation. Consequently, the event would not be what takes place ‘between’ a past and a future, between the end of a world and the beginning of another. It is rather encroachment and connection: it realizes the indivisible continuity of Virtuality. It exposes the unity of passage which fuses the one-just-after and the one-just-before. It is not ‘that which happens’, but that which, in what happens, has become and will become. The event as event of time, or time as the continued and eternal procedure of being, introduces no division into time, no intervallic void between two times. ‘Event’ repudiates the present understood as either passage or separation; it is the operative paradox of becoming. This thesis can thus be expressed in two ways: there is no present (the event is re-represented, it is active immanence which co-presents the past and the future); or, everything is present (the event is living or chaotic eternity, as the essence of time).”

The sheer importance of the time element in the event structure is intriguing. We can also attribute this importance to the most basic arguments of the necessary creation of what we call the “spatial experiment realm”. The past is what will help us create and promote an evolved future, but in order to do this present must provide us with the appropriate tooling and resources.

“For Deleuze, the event is the immanent consequence of becoming or Life.” A. Badiou

Although the Void itself would be sufficient into translating the function of becoming, there is here something much more than that. The Void that gets created always has to serve the function that made its existence necessary. In order for this function to arise and to be actualized, through the creation of the Void, there has to be a whole procedure of human interaction in multiple levels. These levels can be from the most basic organizational levels (administration, work force) to the more complex ones of spatial decision making (assembly meetings, proposals etc.) these are exactly the core elements of what Deleuze names becoming, this unitary activity comprising of all levels of intellectual and physical activity, and finally this is what we want to address through our “spatial experiment realm”.

“The outside is not a fixed limit but a moving matter animated by peristaltic movements, folds and foldings that together make up an inside: they are not something other than the outside, but precisely the inside of the outside.” Deleuze

[The spatial experiment realm]

Apart from the already given justifications that necessitate the creation of such a realm, we have to think in more reactionary terms.

“ In other words, this is the fundamental action of a society: to code the flows and to treat as an enemy anyone who presents himself, in relation to society, as an uncodable flow, because, once again, it challenges [met en question] the entire earth, the whole body of this society. […]There is a fundamental paradox in capitalism as a social formation: if it is true that the terror of all the other social formations was decoded flows, capitalism, for its part, historically constituted itself on an unbelievable thing: namely, that which was the terror of other societies. […]Because it was the ruin of every other social formation.” Deleuze

It will be interesting to turn this weaponry on the system itself. This negation of flows can turn in to a negation in spatial arrangements, capable of producing the elements that will tear it down. The evolution will begin, the (re)volution will ignite its beginning…

[Examples]

Thinking of actualizing our realm, the first thing that comes into mind is soil. The penultimate material that our civilization has relied on, for centuries. Since the end of the hunting – gathering period, soil was used to define the most essential figures of human evolution. Manuel deLanda states that, the differentiation on the use of soil, among a vast amount of elements, led to the final phase of the human settlement. Through his analysis it is easier to understand the significance that the use of the soil can have to the evolution of a given society. The first example would be to investigate the way that ants and termites correlate to it.

There is a vast bibliography on the way that these insects have used the ground since the beginning of their existence. It is not only their hunting ground; they feed, make war and circulate in and through it. They make their nests and passage ways on it. In reality there is no other living organization, more sufficient than the ants and the termites, to witness the use the soil.

What is particularly interesting to us, regarding this research is the way the ant society defines its structure in the most concrete way, by the presence of specific chambers. These chambers constitute an unwritten pattern and rule book that has to be followed by the entire colony if they were to survive. In some given relaxed perspective, so does the human society structure. The difference here is that we humans mainly elect to construct our edifices instead of using space already provided by the underground. That usually necessitates much more resources and effort, than the excavating process, and also does not give the opportunity for a more direct approach to what is being achieved, since for many years structures were slaves of the technical deficiencies of their contemporary methods.

Imagine, if one day a group of ants, suddenly and unexpectedly, started to dig a completely new chamber structure in the nest. Let us look beyond the reasonable doubt of the fact that in nature nothing ever “just” happens or that there has to be a pretty good explanation for such a move. This new element, would completely throw of the sum of the hierarchical structure of the nest. It would be a time stopping experiment that would most probably lead to the fast extermination of the members that created it.

Imagine if this new chambers where to be implemented in order to constitute a new kind of change in the society figure of the time. Of course the ants are in no such position as to be able to incorporate a drastic change like that under democratic or even experimentation means.

But what about the people?

If only this kind of elaborate experiment surfaced in a human community willing to try it out. Maybe it would actually lead to a complete disaster, or not. Then maybe a new kind of social formation would start to emerge and articulate itself spatially. The least it could actually provide is a kind of playground for though that could only mean that a better chance would be given to the advancement of socializing or even the way we regard any given institution to date.

So if the ant farm provided us with the elemental material, then the next step would be to find an analogy fittingly sufficient to our scales and values. For this particular research timing is all that matters.

In the recent D. Cameron film Avatar there is an unimaginable depiction of what we are looking for. The floating islands.

The floating islands are a formation known, for water use of course, and experimented upon for many years. Even geological formations have been given this name due to their physical resemblance. The islands that we witness in the virtual realm of the movie are air floating structures, that seem like a monstrous force ripped them of the surface and by ignoring every term of basic physics, it left them levitating in mid air.

A small historical background reveals that the idea of the floating islands is not new or profound. The first time that something similar is actually mentioned, is in the ancient Greek epos of Odyssey, written by Homer around 8 century BC. There he talks about a floating island on which the mythical city of Aeolia is situated. Aeolus the god of winds was born in that city according to the text. The next important mentioning of a similar formation is Laputa a city in the book Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726). The writer includes in his description detailed views of this imaginary place and its inhabitants. Also it is very interesting to add that the floating island has a detailed area, in which it can maneuver, that itself is part of the same kingdom. The third example comes much later in 1943 when C.S. Lewis writes his fictional novel Perelandra. In the novel there are a lot of floating islands featured in the surface of Venus. The final example, although these references do not exhaust the vast amount of material available on these formations, is the Cloud Nine project by B.Fuller. Based on the architect’s calculations, a small increase in the internal pressure of the spheres would result to their instant and safe levitation without the use of other technology. It was a utopian project trying to discover the importance of space and time regarding to big communities. In the end it was not favorably recognized, but it did mark the beginning of the first realistic approach to an airborne human settlement.

Apart from the visually stunning imagery, the floating islands create an ideal precedent to the object of our research. It actually redefines all the bad qualities of the underground structures (light, air circulation etc) and keeps all the attributes that we have been arguing about. As a bonus element the surface that remains on these imaginary sightings, can act as an ideal direct analogy to the contemporary way of formatting.

So in order to summarize in the second research level, the floating islands, although unrealistic, are an ideal element to make visibly comprehensible our basic ideas. We will use them as they incorporate the 3 main factors that we have been referring to; the surface (s), the soil (S) and the void (-S).

In another level of thought, these three key players actually fall well into the category that we have started to set up since the first phase of our research, the Lacanian Elements (Symbolic, Real, Imaginary).

In an attempt to clearly state what we are thinking about this comparison, we will try to make a small parenthesis here in order to explain further.

[The surface, The soil, The void]

Using the previous mode of distinction, we will define each element in question as part of the three categories.

The Surface. It has been used to host the constructions of human civilization ever since man came out of the protective womb of the cave. It functions as a level of consistency for everything that has ever been built. During every age of the human history, situations changed, institutions changed even settlements advanced, but the element of the surface retained its pre historical significance. As has been frequently stated in the political thoughts of the 19^th and 20^th century, surface and the notion of ownership over it, gave rise to the presence of capital and its repercussions. It became not only the base that we step on, that we build on but also the measure of our collective value.

Given the foretold arguments, it is easy to understand the central role that the Surface element has played in the evolution of human civilization. In short, not only it has been the plane of our existence but it constitutes the Symbolic since all of the symbolic structures are not only laid upon it but also defined by it.

The Soil. It is the element that first and foremost shapes and supports the surface level. As Negarestani states, the surface merely depicts what the underground (the soil) wants to express. The obvious visualization of this would be the mountain ranges or even the lakes, formations that have been created due to the subsequent manipulation from the soil.

Also apart from being the supporter of all that stands above it, soil also is a vector of change. Not only though centuries of small and almost unnoticeable formations but also sometimes through the use of more violent and abrupt natural incidents (i.e. landslides, quakes, volcanoes). It has been used also to produce a steady flow for material leading to construction or other uses that deal with everyday needs, but its main role was always to be there, because when it went away, in any form, cataclysmic events occurred to the adjacent civilizations.

Due to the characteristics attributed to the Soil, it is quite safe to say that it fits perfectly with what Lacan named the element of the Real.

The Void. The last element of our small parenthetical analysis is what will have to prove itself in the course of this whole research. The void, in various forms during the course of human history and especially in the field of utopian thinking, has always played a key role. Some of the forms it could take where obvious, like the ideas of flying into the void (air), living into the void (underwater or underground) or even living into a void that flies into the void (space).

The first set of ideas, regarding flying structures, where not so utopian in context as they were in terms of how close they came to be realized. From living (flying) into the air for a few seconds during the first human flight (Wright brothers) to the creation of magnificent air levitating cities (Fuller), the airborne structures were not mere figures of imagination but were goals in active pursuit.

Next in line is the underwater and underground realm. There is a vast bibliography on success and failure to build habitable spaces and communities underwater. This research however will not involve itself with this kind of formations, since we believe that there is no particular advantage for new social institutions to be created while in the water due to the fact that there is an immense lack of all that make up a healthy human settlement (i.e. air, light, food) On the other hand there has been more than a simple urban legend surrounding the underground communities. For different reasons every time (production, protection, burial, circulation etc.), there are a handful of constructed underground spaces active even today. Mines might be the first thing that comes into mind, but we are more intrigued by the fictional myth of the inner Earth. Although we are well aware of the fake character of it, the scientific interest of formations being created in such an environment would be immense.

Last but not least is space. No need to mention here the availability of projects in this particular area, and because of this specific over-exploitation we would not prefer to involve ourselves with it.

The extensive list of examples comes to prove that the Void and its features have long ago captured the imagination of artists, politicians, utopian thinkers, authors and many more. The key word in order to define the place of our element in the Lacanian trio is imagination. The void has always had protagonist roles in works of fiction and fantasy. There would be no other ideal definition for it, if not the Imaginary.

[More examples]

This section is reserved for a more specific architectural example. The example in question is the proposal by OMA for the Tres Grande Bibliotheque Jussieu. Despite the fact that the proposal does not adhere to the sum of our intentions, we feel that is a good precedent to look into and analyze.

The first interesting element of the proposal is the initial effort to break the striation of the grid. To achieve this, the architects presented a system of inclinations (most of them operational in the form of theaters, amphitheaters etc) that deals with the gridiron. The next step is even more radical, as they introduced into the core of the building a milieu of voids. These voids where to house specific functions attributed to the building’s program.

One of the feelings left from the proposal, is that the maneuvers did not go all the way. The inclinations were not enough, and most importantly the void formations were not communicating with each other. So the project can be viewed as a really important ancestor to the way we would like to address the building.

[The name of the game]

Now that we have defined the basic players of this research, it will be a bit easier to track down their evolution, as the design and theoretical approach advance. We are interested not only in the juxtaposition of the three elements and the spatial results that they can provide, but also to see if from these provisions there would be any chance for a differentiation in the already established institutional formations of today.

Under no circumstance can we act like a fortuneteller, although for systems sake will try to put our own imagination to the test, what we would like to do is to provide with the appropriate tools a society of people willing to experiment.

6.

2010-09-26T03:50:00.000-03:00

Diagrams II

2010-09-19T05:59:00.002-03:00

Diagrams

2010-09-17T17:15:00.002-03:00

Thoughts part II

2010-09-17T17:11:00.004-03:00

[Forming the strategy]

Taking into consideration the method previously explored by the Constructivists and Koolhaas, in order to deal with an identical problem, we will closely follow in their footsteps as long as this is to the benefit of the project.

Firstly we will start by posing the question of the programmatic indeterminacy. Not quite as the previous counterparts did, we will attempt to map out the programmatic formations of the soviet condenser, the La Villete Park and lastly as far as we can the “American Skyscraper”. This is been done by keeping in mind the fact that we are talking about spatial solutions aging from nearly a century back to 20 years old. It is necessary to investigate what types of programmatic elements could be further needed, or on the other hand would be considered obsolete.

Of course the goal of this project is not to act as a fortuneteller or even more as a anthropologic study, so the investigations are only valid under the scope of creating the strategy needed to address the specific problem.

After referencing the programmatic elements, the next step would be to assess the requirements of each and every one. Different needs of light availability, volume, structure o even situational issues that need to be dealt with. The multiple nature of the elements, makes it necessary for us to map out these relationships in order to be able to pre calculate them later on.

Following the requirements investigation, we believe that we should take a deeper look into the circulation diagrams. Firstly by investigating the available circulation modes, or even search for additional ones, and then proceed to cross examine them with the already set up programmatic formation. Through this process, the conditional state of the provisional neighbors or clusters will become much clearer and easily articulated.

Parallel with the previous research, it will also be crucial to state some kind of hierarchy between the different elements of the program. That will give the necessary weight lists in order to result in a direct and adjustable result.

An additional important element of the strategic implementation, although not in first glance functional, is the division of space between the smooth and the striated. This also can be considered as a succession on Koolhaas theory of the void, in his infamous Berlin Wall project.

The main idea behind this duality, apart from the obvious interconnection procedure, is the ability to host and serve even wider forms of program. When G. Deleuze talks about striated and smooth space, he masterfully uses the example of the nomadic and the sedentary. This distinction coincides also with the one between the war machine and the state apparatus.

If we suppose here that the ribbon structure, the “real” element upon which everything else is projected, can constitute the idea of striated space, then it is easily admittable that the void could take the role of the war machine.

Neither the roles, nor the names are coincidental. On the one hand, the condenser, being a structure and furthermore using a completely pre striated space as its emerging realm, will absolutely be a striated space. Even more it needs this kind of striation in order to further implement Leonidov’s multi subdivision tactic. So it is a striated space, emerging from striated elements aiming to further striate it.

The above action although at first glance looks like an extremity, in reality it is something that helps a lot with the definition of its oppositional space; the smooth space. In this case the smooth space can be traced as the void created between the slabs, or the habitable space all over. Someone may also argue that taken into section view, the Seagram – as every American Skyscraper – is an absolutely striated space that engulfs multiple voids.

The idea here is to reformulate these voids, and set them free to cluster, disperse and ultimately to be able to serve our basic programmatic formalities. This is the real war machine, the ever changing element. The war is between the continuous re institutionalization of the society as a whole. Here is where the prominent, the expected (the law) meets the unforeseen, the unexpected (the logos). In order to visualize this struggle we would have to use another part of Deleuzian terminology and talk about the primacy of the line (striated) and the primacy of the point (smooth).

These voids, with nothing in particular to add to the structure, but the whole point of the structure would be to accommodate them, can also act in another level of physicality. The ribbon, posing as the striated and rigid structure can only formulate itself by means of Euclidean space, after all it has to be capable of continuous registry and expected behavior. On the other hand, the void can be the host of Riemann space. That can be an experimental procedure, solely part of minor science, which awaits its turn to become part of the striation. After all as Deleuze argued, between the state and the nomad, the state always wins, so why not try to change the state from within by influencing its own formulations on the strategic perceptions of the state.

The last thing to be added to this strategic list of actions is the idea of circulation methodology. One of the things that Leonidov and OMA share in common, under different reasoning, is the strict set up of the basic moving axis. Although once off these axis, the movement is more or less set free, before this it completely appropriated. The Seagram due to its medium size provides us with the unique opportunity not to pre appropriate the circulation routes and therefore try to predict the movement of the people. The plaza gives us the ideal starting point for the diffusion process that can actually be transformed into the element that inserts the incoming population. Another advantage gained from using this method is that we can completely eradicate the centrality of the axis, once the entry point becomes a multiplicity.

[The void strategy]

As we mentioned before, the voids are incorporated into the condenser in order to act as the experimental forefront of the given structure. In reality, the soviets did not have the luxury of establishing something of the kind, so they used the open plan arrangement instead.

In our case we would like to take this notion a step further and add the third and fourth dimension into it. Not all of the empty space between the ribbon elements can be appropriated as void, but also no space can be excluded from this functionality. The idea would be for them (the voids) to be occupied by short lived experimental structures, test the institutional framework to its limits and beyond. There will be no specificity for the form, function and goal of these occupancies, after all there is no possible way to predict now the spatial formations of tomorrow, but you can provide the space for it to evolve from.

Thoughts part I

2010-09-17T16:56:00.010-03:00

[Social condenser]

Social condenser. The term originates from the early 20’s in the post revolutionary Soviet Union.

According to Moses Ginzburg, one of the most prominent figures of the constructivist wave , the “goal” of architecture had changed. It was not to merely erect buildings, but to transform the nation’s way of life, to mutate the ordinary man to a new inconceivable social creature. The revolutionary rhythm was taking everything into consideration and revision, under this glance the word “social condenser” came to life.

This was not an ordinary leisure place. It was the center of gravity for the emerging new culture. Lenin himself once stated that the founding of the Soviet Union was equal with the discovery of a new continent. Not only he was right, but having said that we come close to realize that the condensers and their given formations were the pilgrimage of the new adventurers.

“Like the electrical condensers that transform the nature of the current , the architects proposed the social condensers were to turn the self centered individual of the capitalistic society into a whole man, the informed militant of socialist society in which the interest of each merged with the interests of all.” Kopp

To realize these formations the soviet architects mostly used two main types of structures; the Club and housing. We will involve ourselves mostly with the first case as this is the type of formation that we are mostly linked to through the thesis.

[The Club]

First of all what must be explained is that the Club had nothing to do with the term that coins today’s common sense. What we have today refers to the private, closed spaces reserved only for small groups of people or wealthy members. To quote El Lissitsky:

“The important thing about a club is that the mass of the members must be directly involved. They must not approach it or be channeled into it from the outside as mere entertainment. They themselves must find in it the maximum self expression. […] The ultimate role of the club is to liberate men from the oppression of the State and the Church. “

Lissitsky went a step further when he named these new formations as “social powerhouses”, as he believed that freed from centuries of oppression, finally the human intellect would find the time, the space and the combined resources needed to create the driving shaft of the society.

The first years that followed the revolution the idea stood mostly on improvisations. That was a result of the still fluid state of the project in hand. It was not until 1925 that the first Club was actually realized and immediately came face to face with a whole new world of problems.

The most important one, that will also follow us to the design table, was the question of program. With a vast set of goals like the one the clubs were expected to serve, it was almost impossible to come up with a multifunctional plan of that extent. The original Clubs were supposed to have some amenities, but nothing could prepare them for the demands they had to fulfill.

The answer that was given was a twofold one. On the one hand, the element of improvisation took over the structural part of the demands. Nobody knew better than the workers themselves what was that they needed, so in the Clubs they were the masters of themselves. Improvisation and direct democracy was the hand solver in the first part of the equation. For the second part, the spatial riddle, the answer had to come with a form flexible enough to serve the ever transforming needs of the inhabitants and also stand still as a symbol of a new era.

As it is commonly known, that answer was given by the constructivists, when they abandoned the older designs of a failed society, create something new and capable of meet the above criteria. The most important aspect is that they also decided to trust the inhabitants, as much as the institutional system did. The spaces were designed to be extremely multifunctional and completely transformable in terms of space, volume, quality and in extreme cases even locality.

In order to be able to sustain at least a minimum of referenced activities, the central guidelines gave an example of proposed Club activities.

“According to central guidelines Proletkult clubs had to provide extensive educational services, including classes in the social sciences, art history, law, and socialist theory. In addition, they were supposed to offer a broad array of creative artistic workshops. Yet another crucial function of the club was the transformation of daily life (byt ) to reflect the values of socialism. In this area, however, the center issued no specific instructions; presumably, new patterns of social interaction and collectivity would emerge in the laboratory of the club itself.”

Lynn Mally

In addition to that most of the Clubs that had adequate space, tried to extend the horizon of their activities by incorporating exterior facilities such as sports grounds, pools and even cinemas. Of course the list of these programs had to be extensive and literally unending, as the transformation process of these spaces was indefinite.

[Leonidov]

In an attempt to broaden the extent of our research and also make clearer the spatial formation that we are presenting, we will analyze the work of Ivan Leonidov, one of the most important and influential figures of the time. More precisely we will investigate his proposal on the Club of a New Social Type.

The proposal started its process sometime in the early 20’s , when there was special interest in the mass production of the new workers clubs . Finally in 1928 Leonidov published two variants of an experimental design for a “ Club of a New Social Type”

“Leonidov treated the club complex as a kind of social culture center, with a winter garden , a general purpose hall for lectures, cinemas, planetarium, laboratories, an open ground for glider competitions , motor racing, war games, a sports hall, a pool and a park. In architectural terms , it represented a broadly conceived and loosely organized park like composition with , as its centerpiece the great hall roofed by a parabolic vault like covering.” S.O.Magomedov

One of the most interesting elements of his proposal is that Leonidov conceives the social club as some kind of a park, which contains various cultural and educational facilities. In addition to that , he further extended the usual program of a workers club ( library, conference hall, labs, cinema etc), to involve a whole new spectrum of events like sports areas, winter gardens and more. This not only shows his will to test the new formation to its limits but also to experiment with the vast frontiers of emerging programmatic desires.

In terms of design, he proposed a linear formation that aligned the four specific programmatic sectors. Then each sector was in turn subdivided, using a strict gridiron pattern, to further accommodate the proposed facilities. The first sector was reserved for scientific and historical research, the second for mass activities, the third for demonstrations and the last one for physical activities.

Instead of following his predecessors and using a single elemental building, Leonidov used his program as a series of repetitive events. Under this scope he succeeds into creating an environment prone to improvisation, and in the same time to keep the over unity of the project intact.

“These are the headquarters of the cultural revolution, which on the basis of mass independent work and of wide ranging development of workers’ initiatives will organize the whole system of spreading political knowledge , the whole system of cultural development…” I. Leonidov

The same ideas we can follow also, although in a completely new scale, when he proposes the new urban settlement of Magnitogorsk. He designed a linear settlement, which composed of three interconnected lines of separated programs (sport, residential, cultural) that were served by a major highway, the main provider of communication for the settlement. Apart from the obvious similarity in terms of linearity, with the previous project, he also uses the same design trick by dually subdividing the elements of the plan. By this way not only he defines the different programs, but he also manages with the checkerboard system to create some kind of fractal organization, that on the one hand does never repeat itself, and on the other through repetition it succeeds to go on forever. It is this subdivisions that organize the settlement.

[Formalities of a Social Condenser]

It is easily understandable that one the main challenges when we deal with this kind of program is the simple fact that there is no actual program, or to be more exact, the possibilities of it are infinite. In order to escape this really dangerous shallow waters, we must investigate the way, that the pioneers of the term, use to steer themselves out.

At first glance it seems that one of the most important elements of the solution can actually be found on the problem itself. The multiplicity that creates the problem will eventually be the factor that will give birth to the solver of the riddle. Much like the DNA based algorithms of modern day biophysics, the people that create the demand, will be engaged through a system of solutions, in order to discover and subsequently create the solution that fits the society they are a part of.

Catherine Cook, gives rise to the question when she explicitly speaks about the “general unknowns” and the “particulars”.

“General Unknowns were those identifying characteristics of the epoch as a whole, whose influence must permeate the entire design and construction process of the new society. In Style and Epoch, Ginzburg, discusses the ‘social, national and economical peculiarities’ of a culture, as inevitably influencing building form. From further analysis of their own he recognizes four of these peculiarities for the soviet transition. The first was that the individual client had been replaced by a collective one, a whole society, which was trying to build a new way of life; the second was a concomitant shift in the position of architecture, to become a member of the overall plan. The third was a conjunction of these factors to produce a new, ideological and technical status of norms and standard types. The fourth and final one was an overriding methodological obligation under the new ideology, to solve the architectural task like any other, only through precise evaluation of its unknowns and the pursuit of a correct method of solution.” C.Cooke

“How form should relate to an evolving content.” C.Cooke

This last observation shows us the extent of the problem. An ever evolving content can never be productively served by any spatial formulation, except one that has been recreated to fit its specific needs in relation to time and space. This recreation needs to be done co temporally with every evolution. The only way for a spatial form to do such a thing, is for it to be constructed, every time by the sheer element of the evolution, the participants.

So if the participants are the ones that recreate the space every time, where is the architect’s role and consequently what is the quality of the spatial solution to be given?

The only way for the architect to be involved a solution like that is to become himself a participant. By this we do not imply anything different than for him to trust the evolution of his design to the hands of those that it is being addressed to. In architectural terms this can only mean only a handful of things, and of those it is our concrete belief that the only way is the production of a strategy.

[Strategy and tactics]

When we are talking about the definition of strategy, we could not avoid the reference to the work of Michel de Certeau. What he does is that he defines the term “strategy” by introducing to us another term, “tactic”. According to him “strategies are able to produce, impose and tabulate spaces in which they operate, whereas tactics can only use, divert and manipulate space.” Following his example we can refer to strategy as the syntax of an established language, when the tactics is the act of speaking.

“In reference to Certeau’s discussions, strategy is mainly an index of governing principles, and defines what we do. When tactics are actions of operational logic, and define how we realize what will be done. This mutual, diachronic and interactive relationship between strategy and tactics constructs the mechanism of strategic way of design and produces, reproduces, manipulates and controls the operational tools to cope with the programmatic indeterminacy of an unstable context…” O.Ozkan

So if we add in the equation the above elements we can clearly understand that a participatory design refers to a strategic process that must be formulated for a defined and given space, but furthermore it can be forever evolving in order to fit what Koolhaas calls “programmatic indeterminacy of an unstable context.”

[Example: La Villete Park Proposal , OMA]

In order to follow on the previous considerations, we felt it would really enhance our research if we were able to track down a modern equivalent. Of course due to the historical events that shaped our century, the Soviet Union no longer exists, and even if it would, the Constructivists and their theories, were scrapped before the 15^th celebration of the October revolution.

There is however a project that tried to play around and reintroduce, in a somewhat distorted way the old notion of the social condenser. This was the 1982 proposal for the La Villete Park that was submitted by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture. Strangely the whole project tends to signify an important turn for OMA’s future work, but in the same time it really consists of all the theories that Rem Koolhaas was working on since the beginning of the 70’s.

Most importantly for this thesis, there is another crossover with the theoretical work of Rem Koolhaas, since in his book Delirious New York; he first recognizes the ability of the American skyscraper to act as a social condenser.

The ultimate goal of this research will be to come up with the basic rules , on which we will try to set up our strategic approach to the Seagram building.

[Similarity & Difference]

Koolhaas is a well known studier of Leonidov’s work. So it is not shocking to discover major similarities between the theoretical approaches of the two. But similarities are not the only things that someone discovers in such a cross-reference. Where Leonidov talks about the social role that a condenser ought to play in a rapidly emerging society and in front of him a whole nation takes form and shape, Koolhaas defines it as part of a programmatic architectural process.

“Layering upon vacant terrain to encourage dynamic coexistence of activities and to generate through their interference, unprecedented effects.” R.Koolhaas

We can understand the immediate relative positions of the two architects, but is still very intriguing to investigate what a 1920’s idea can do in the 21^st century dynamics…

[Skyscraper]

As we noticed before in Delirious New York Koolhaas provides the facts that give ground to his argument that an American skyscraper can indeed be a social condenser. First in hand comes his notion of the Grid as transformation of a strategic “individuation tool” and the Skyscrapers as a tactical tool within each plot of the Grid will be analyzed in detail.

He goes on to describe how the grid acts as a main strategy , that formulates the rigid parts of what he calls the “Culture of Congestion”. It is also very interesting to mark his positions as we are well aware that if there is one monolithic gridiron structure in the world then that is the Seagram building. The important part is to note that the grid may engulf the blocks but because of that it allows the inside of them to turn completely wild, baring no relation whatsoever with the neighboring blocks.

Using the same tools and with the addition of A.D. Walkers sketch, Koolhaas turns his attention to the American skyscraper. Easily he notes the similarities between the horizontal grid of the city and the vertical grid of the skyscraper. He also refers to them as “activity generators”.

“As a vehicle of Urbanism, the indeterminacy of the Skyscraper suggests that – in the Metropolis – no single specific function can be matched with a single place. Through this destabilization is possible to absorb “change that is life” by continuously rearranging functions on the individual platforms in an incessant process of adaptation that does not affect the framework of the building itself.” R.Koolhaas

The individuality of the blocks becomes the condition for the separate planes of the scraper. This multi functionality poses as the ignition for the building to be given the term social condenser. The instability of the Culture of Congestion, finds its spatial match in the skyscraper. Once again the participants were up to the task of creating a form effective enough to survive and shape the concurrent timeframe. The grid retains the valuable specificity while the scraper hosts the madness of the congestion. Problem solved; for now.

[La Villete]

In brief, what OMA did in the La Villete competition is to firstly regard the park like a park-like condenser, the kind that Leonidov was envisioning in his sketches. Then use the primmest example of a contemporary condenser, the skyscraper, and manipulate him in order to create a strategy that addressed the site. That manipulation, as Koolhaas himself admitted, was to lay the section of a skyscraper on the site and use the basic functions of it to work.

Here we must introduce another important element that OMA used in the proposal. As Leonidov had done years before, they also needed a vessel to act as a carrier for the formulation – like the grid acted for the city or the line for Leonidov - . Their answer to that was the two-dimensional strip that was multiplied and applied to the north – south axis of the site and acted as the signifier of the system, the specificity.

Next in line were the circulation paths that were already predefined. And they acted as a skyscraper designer would by tolerating them. After that they applied a formula for the dispersion of the minor elements of the site, the causes of congestion.

The biggest elements on site were already there, but gained a new significance with their inclusion to the strip system. So the last but also important detail of the design was the element of nature. They organized this, using three different kinds of formations in order to cover their linear, free formed and programmatic needs.

[Today]

Interestingly, there still exist types of social condensers today. Under different scopes and programmatic goals of course but it is still really fascinating to recognize elements in contemporary formations.

“

Museums and Libraries

- bring visitors together for the shared aim that they require the resources held there. Although some areas within these buildings may be restrictive to certain activities and so may inhibit true social interaction, they may still encourage some level of 'social collision' between the users of the building, perhaps stemming from what visitors may observe within.

Swimming Pools and (Theme) Parks

- may be used in a similar way to the above, yet in a more recreational sense. It could be said that these spaces are used generally for entertainment or sport, most likely by groups rather than individuals, although it is argued that the fact that visitors usually have to pay to use these facilities would limit their true potential to encourage social interaction between the broadest demographic.

Student Accommodation

- similar in function to some aspects of the Narkomfin Communal House, student accommodation (particularly the catered type where only limited kitchenettes are provided) is intended to cause inhabitants to occupy their own private spaces (study bedrooms) for only some of the time, as cooking/ dining/ entertainment facilities are located elsewhere, usually in communal blocks nearby to the study bedrooms. This encourages inhabitants to make use of the communal facilities in order to carry out everyday jobs, and it is usual that social interaction occurs during the course of this. It may be said that the occupation of student accommodation acts to 'socialise' students in the transition (usually) from the private family home environment to university life and its context. Even in self-catered student flats, or 'clusters', inhabitants still live in groups where the kitchen/ bathroom etc is shared; interaction between members of this unconventional 'household' will still take place, yet in a limited way in comparison with larger student halls.

Bars, Clubs and Restaurants

- although seemingly very everyday, the purpose of these establishments is to provide a place for visitors to socialise against the backdrop of food/ drink/ dancing/ celebration and so on. Generally speaking, people visit such places in groups, with the shared intention to socialise. Again, visitors have to pay for the privilege of eating/ drinking in the ambience of these establishments, and perhaps they are not a social condenser in the true sense. Yet they highlight the so-everyday-as-to-be-almost-overlooked connection between social gatherings and the consumption of food/ drink as a communal activity.

The House

- does, in some ways, act as a micro social condenser. Should a house be occupied by a family or group of individuals, it is likely that each resident will have their own private space within the house, or at least a space that they see as being their own. The living room, kitchen and similar spaces are pseudo-public, in that although they are private in a sense that they are not accessible to non-residents, they are shared by the residents of the house. As the residents of the house are very likely to meet or 'bump into' each other in these pseudo-public spaces, this implies that social interaction may occur in these areas, in a more 'public' sense than in the more private realms of the house . “

OMA

[Formula(tion)s]

Following the phenomenal analysis of O.Ozkan, where he analyzes in its full extent the Villete proposal made by OMA, and his consequent investigations of Koolhaas manipulations and their causes, we would like to quote his resulting theory and use it to further enhance the investigation for a new social condenser.

“

Formula 1: “Socially interactive, programmatically condensed architecture”

+ to define a flexible and unified organic process with active improvisation of users

Formula 2: “Minimum architecture, maximum program”

+ to define a script that combines the void with an intense program.

Formula 3: “Innocent pleasure inside versus corruption outside”

+ to define the limits of the inside and to establish a spatial relation between the inside and the outside

Formula 4: “A city (the skyscraper) within a city (the grid)”

+ to create a pattern of activity generators that guarantee perpetual programmatic instability

Formula 5: “Architectural specificity with programmatic indeterminacy”

+ to create an envelope that can absorb perpetual state of revision”

[Seagram]

All of the above research is aimed at the proposed transformation of the Seagram building into a social condenser. This effort shares a lot of similarities with both Koolhaas and Leonidov visions. On the one hand, it is set up to be situated in an environment pretty much in the same state that Leonidov was living in. A society in the (r)evolutionary verge, with a lot of questions to ask and few answers to give.

On the other hand, the same society would evolve out of the Culture of Congestion that Koolhaas describes. The madness, the overflow, the indeterminacy will all be present elements. The same can be said for the need of a society to acquire understand and affiliate itself with an important element like that. As Ginzburg stated, there always were and always will be social condensers of sorts, those are the powerhouses of any given society. Restructuring them essentially means that the society around them has already re institutionalized itself, and the keepers are to follow.

The Seagram offer all of the above mentioned elements to constitute an ideal new formation. It is a monumentary spatial solution that acts as a very particular symbol. And symbols are for change to pass right through them.

In terms of design elements, it is a building situated in a grid, strictly posed on a grid, and Cartesian in every possible way. Mies would never have acted differently, as he actually never did. Using the evolution of the rigid concrete slab, the three dimensional ribbon as a vessel of real proportions, we will attempt define the ever-changing programmatic indeterminacy.

.?.

2010-09-11T06:17:00.003-03:00

solely incompatible in nature and attitude

.?.

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.?.

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.Design Process.

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.Design Process.

2010-09-06T19:45:00.002-03:00

.Design Process.

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.Design Process.

2010-09-06T06:21:00.001-03:00

.Design Process.

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.Design Process.

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.Design Process.

2010-09-06T05:31:00.003-03:00

.Potlach.

2010-09-06T05:24:00.001-03:00

Potlach is a form of festivity so incomprehensible by today’s standards that was banned in the beggining of the century. It was an extremely important element of the Indian culture , as it was used in multiple ways and meanings.

First of all the tribe would gather around in the fire place of the camp and once a year they would exchange the goods that every family possessed with the others. In this way every person of the tribe created an interconnection, a form of an owing bond . This pre – commercial form of goods circulation is founded on the need to fight excess. The same excess that created the base for capital , with it came the pinning down of our civilization as a consequence .

Taken this into effect it is now easier to understand how the fundamental issue of the spatial life expectancy is indissoluble bonded with the institutionalized forms of a society. As the deurbanist saying went “it is hard to understand why our buildings stand the same for decades , when simultaneously we , human beings , change every given minute..”

We are bonded by social relations anymore, only by processes…

“We're not interested in a fond place in your memories. But concrete powers are at stake. A few hundred people haphazardly determine the thought of an era. Whether they know it or not, they are at our disposal. By sending Potlatch to effectively positioned people, we can interrupt the circuit when and where we please. Some readers have been chosen arbitrarily. You have a chance to be one of them. “

I.S.

.bldg analysis.

2010-09-05T23:42:00.003-03:00

In the late 40's Seagram hired elite teams of scientists to investigate a series of technologies that would dominate the world scene in the decades to come..

Analyzing the accumulative repetition behind the Seagram bldg. Every element of the project is taken into consideration. Dimensions , relations , scales and materials are all included to the final product that came to resemble the most important building of the millennium of city that defined our way of living.

.facade.

.positioning.

.elements.

.seagram bldg.

2010-09-05T23:38:00.002-03:00

“The Seagram Company assumes the aesthetic raiment of government, bestowing on the public space of the street an imposing demonstration of social hierarchy and the ethical relationships of New York’s social classes. The rich give, the poorer receive. The rich are generous—they bestow on the teeming masses beauty, and space for gathering and enjoyment, and ask, in return, what the givers of all gifts ask, appreciation and a kind of fealty that amounts to a confirmation of the social arrangement the gift expresses. “I would rather be respected than loved,” the old saying goes. That is the Seagram Building, in short. Respect is the essence of an ethics based on power and its separateness from more common, and ambiguous, everyday emotions. This is what the aesthetics of its architecture has achieved, in the name of a company that makes and sells everyday liquors and wines and stands for no lofty ideals of public life.”

L.Woods

.scenario.

2010-09-05T23:28:00.003-03:00

“If you wake up at a different time and in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”(2) the narrator asks us.. Our question, after taking a good look at our society’s achievements in a globalized scale , could or better still should be; if we were to wake up in a different time and in different place, could we awaken in a whole new civilization?...

The concurrent crisis is not merely an economical one. Economy is only its withering façade; the whole structure that the western world had been dreaming and constructing for the better parts of the 19th and 20th century, is at its knees. The global wealth and commodity distribution network, is showing its limits and its real intentions. As David Harvey has stated, the name of the game has transformed into “Accumulation by dispossession”(3). People all over the world are stripped away from their basic rights, and of course left with no means of reacting, in order for the wealth to be accumulated by the “havs”. Wealth is not being mentioned here only as pure capital, but every form that it can transform itself to, from major firms to real world resources… We have really entered the stage of capital- cannibalism…

To continue with Professor Harvey’s theory, he makes clear that a revolutionary theory is needed right away. In his proposal it is stated that social change is attributed through the dialectical unwrapping of relations between seven stages within “the body politic” (sic) of capitalism, as viewed in an ensemble of activities and practices.

These stages are
1. technological and organizational forms of production, exchange and consumption
2. relations to nature
3. social relations between people
4. mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and cultural understandings and beliefs
5. labor processes and production of specific goods, geographies, services or affects
6. institutional, legal and governmental arrangements
7. the conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction
There is no macro scale for architecture away from today’s realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilization’s foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world.

We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.

Bring the obligations, the duties and the responsibilities back to the people , and not to institutionalized departments that operate under the umbrella of representational democracy. People should be “citizens” rather that “consumers”.

Architecture must once again re-play a vital role into the society’s shaping. Not to be cornered as expensive tool for just a few. It could set the framework into which, as some time ago H. Fathy suggested, peoples, cultures and whole societies would be able to define their space.

So in order to conclude our scenario in a macro scale, it would be set into a future not much further than today. When the situational awareness of the society would call for a critical rethinking of the way we inhabit our cities. The infrastructure would still remain relatively intact from the class war that would have erupted, but civilization would have to cope with the new questions that would have risen.

There is no macro scale for architecture away from today’s realities. Utopia and dreams help us set the path, but critical thinking that derives deep from within our civilization’s foundations is what should help us follow trajectories that could reshape us and the perspective in which we engage the world.

We need to find ways that alienate themselves from what we call “consumer economy”. Let us find pleasure and gratification far off the coastlines of profit and its counterparts, for if we settle with anything less Sisyphus will be our nemesis, once again.

The micro scenario will of course be a more in depth view of the macro scale. So in this base we will use the urban context of the city of New York, and more specifically the borough of Manhattan, that has long served as the showcase of new liberalism and the profit “uber alles” concept. We will look into a specific building, and see how it could interact will all the new concepts and ideas that would be formed around it.

The sustainability of the city, even in scales of buildings will play a great role to the whole project. After all, nobody would somewhere without food and water… The micro society and the way it would organize itself inside the buildings, not as simple tenants but as active ingredients of the built environment is also a critical element of our project.

Using the examples given by S. Latouche and T. Fotopoulos, we could use the “localities” to establish a new kind of ecological, immediate democracy. Especially Takis Fotopoulos pursues a critique of representative democracy :

“The introduction of representative ‘democracy’ had nothing to do with the size of the population”: it “was intended to act as a filter, i.e. as the very antithesis of isegoria, which means equality of speech ―a necessary requirement of classical democracy […]Representative democracy is democracy made safe for the modern state”

.intro.

2010-09-05T23:20:00.003-03:00

“You cannot say I hold the present time in too much esteem; and if I do not always despair of it , its only on account of its own desperate situation, which fills me with hope”
Karl Marx

“If one means by violence a radical upheaval of the basic social relations, then, crazy and tasteless as it may sound, the problem with historical monsters who slaughtered millions was that they were not violent enough. Sometimes, doing nothing is the most violent thing to do.”

Slavoj Zizek

Using a showcase I would like to experiment on the way buildings could be able to be reactivated , a kind of “derive” action. By saying this I do not only imply the building as a volume , but as social and functioning entity of a larger human community.

Starting from analyzing the building itself , through extensive studies that have revolved around it since the late 50’s , I would try and deconstruct its elements in an effort to see the problem that needs to be dealt with. Everything is part of this analysis, from the construction method to the architects peculiar thought about the users habits.
A particularly interesting element of this part will be the documentary by William H. Whyte called “The social life of small urban spaces” [1980]. The film itself deals with the ideal criteria that urban spaces would follow in order to be successful. As a prime example of this, the plaza in front of the Seagram is used. The lessons learned from the film will be directly incorporated into the design procedure of the thesis project.

The thesis will mainly deal with the idea of conversion. Architecture is a vessel that travels through the seas that society has chosen for a path. Based on the scenario of a total systemic collapse , that would give ideas for a new approach to the way architecture would be thought as, I choose to work on one of the most oppressive buildings present , the Seagram building by Mies Van de Rohe

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