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Vision 1: Informated Aesthetics (Student: Richard Arave)
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JULIO BERMUDEZ
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Work presented at the 4th CyberConf, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Canada (1994). Published in: Collected Abstracts of the Fourth International Conference on Cyberspace. The Banff Centre for the Arts. Banff, Canada, p. 19 (1994)
© copyright 1994 Julio Bermudez. All rights reserved
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This work presents a series of architectural designs exploring the relationship between architecture and cyberspace. These visual essays are intended
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It is not an exaggeration to say that the architectural community's understanding and vision of cyberspace remain under a cloud of either ignorance or apathy. For despite the existing valuable work on cyberspace, most architects' knowledge and image of virtual reality still start and end with building walk-throughs. Considering that no other medium or technique of architectural representation and design may have ever offered so many architectural opportunities as cyberspace, this situation is at the very least amusing. [*1]
There are two interlinked reasons for this awkward situation. On one hand, the best insights on cyberspace have been aired through verbal media which, although perfectly fit to most disciplines, is not the mother tongue of architects and designers. Looking at any architectural publication is sufficient to realize that architects are strongly geared towards the visual medium. As a result, the existing literature and work on cyberspace is in a format that architects find hard to understand and use and therefore choose to ignore. On the other hand, there are very few examples of architectural design related to cyberspace. This is a major obstacle because the architectural mind uses design work as the text through which visions, reflections, and recommendations are built, recorded, and communicated. Architects carry out their work and develop their ideas through neither detached scientific experiments nor written humanistic critiques. Rather they get involved with the issue at hand as a design issue, that is, they understand it by trying to give a design response to it (Cross 1986, 1982, Lawson 1980, Rowe 1987). It is these design proposals or 'visual essays' that are then used as examples to learn from and build architectural knowledge upon. With few examples and almost no actual architectural work related to cyberspace, architects see little relevancy in working with cyberspace. [*2] The net result is that valuable design attempts at dealing with cyberspace encounter unusual theoretical, technological, ideological, or practical resistance and skepticism from within the architectural community.
By providing architectural visions on cyberspace this paper wants to help change this situation. The assumption is that a library of architectural examples (visual texts) would stop the negative cycle by showing the value and use of cyberspace to advance architecture.
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Following are four architectural visions exploring the architectural significance and implications of cyberspace. They are the result of a design exercise conducted in desktop (i.e. PC/Mac generated) virtual environments and done as part of a quarter-long computer studio I directed at the University of Utah Graduate School of Architecture. Efforts were made to keep the design investigations at the conceptual level so that broad territories of architectural thought and practice could be recognized for later study.
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This vision is a critique of the material understanding of architecture in a world increasingly dominated by disembodied, electronic information. Two questions guide the design exploration: (1) how does an informational interpretation of form and matter affect our understanding of architecture? and (2) what is an architecture of/for information?
The architectural proposal tackles the issue by arguing that any (virtual or real) architectural artifact -by virtue of its cultural nature- already is and broadcasts information. There is just a step away from here to the transformation of architecture into a literal information-made and driven construct. Yet, such a design move towards 'informatization' has a parallel 'side effect': the dematerialization of architecture. For in order to increase the information carrying/broadcasting capacity of a medium (i.e. the architectural artifact), that medium must become informationally neutral, that is, it must lose its formal and material specificity so as not to be in the way of conveying information. Making an architecture of and for information requires an aesthetics and a language assuring total information neutrality, that is, a formal order based on purity, simplicity, and abstraction.
The architectural outcome of Vision One challenges the traditional understanding of the wall as enclosure. Walls (the planes through which architectural artifacts and users interface) are transformed into screens or flat 'tubes' that broadcast messages normally extrinsic to architecture (though it needs not be so). As a result the concept of wall takes on at least two new interpretations:
1. walls are opaque windows to other worlds. By being able to display/broadcast video/electronic productions of any kind (e.g. art work, cinema, daily news, environmental scenes, video-games, virtual worlds, etc.) the wall becomes a window to the real and/or virtual world at large. Although the wall still retains its traditional architectural property of no through-view, its most important function is now to offer representations of other real or unreal places, events, etc.[*3]
2. walls are planes under continuous superficial metamorphosis. As walls may mutate their appearance, character, role, etc. by displaying different 'masks' (of textures, light shades, shapes, materiality, colors, etc.) they become changing stages sets. Considering that walls are the background against which space and activity unfold, implementing this concept would significantly affect the function and experience of architecture.
Essay One's poetics of changing screens conjures up architecture in the sense that it is still planes (i.e. the screens) which define the architectural order and form but at the same time conceals architecture behind relentlessly fluid layers of representations. In so doing, this vision exploits the dialectic between information (always in flux, immaterial) and architecture (static, unchangeable, material) in a way that relates and perhaps even complements that of Vision Four (architecture as a mobile assembly - see below).
Designing an architecture of screens means to produce architectural artifacts that change their informational content following functional, aesthetic, or contextual demands. By choosing information over matter, the virtual over the real, the changing over the stable, representation over presentation, this vision fundamentally challenges and finally breaks down the solid, static, enclosing, and semiotic nature of architecture as we have understood it for millennia.
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Vision 1: Informated Aesthetics (Student: Richard Arave)
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Finally, Vision One argues that an informated aesthetics may be accomplished in both virtual and 'classical' realities bounded architectures. If such claim could perhaps be accepted in cyberspace, it is less clear how it could be defended in classical reality. However, making actual architectural artifacts that follow the ideas hitherto discussed may prove less difficult than it seems. Present day technology would allow the actual construction and existence of Essay One type architectures by "informating" (Zuboff 1988), "augmenting" or "cyberizing" (Kellow, Carroll & Richards 1991) them, that is, by incorporating cyberspace (through information and virtual reality technologies) within the material matrix of architecture. [*4] In this sense, Vission One offers the appealing insight that virtual and classical realities encounter and affect one another in and through the body of architecture. An informated architectural construct in cyberspace would allow information pertaining to classical reality (e.g. TV news, real world images, etc.) to spill over its virtual surroundings, and vice-versa. Concrete informated buildings would import, sustain, and 'splash' virtuality into the real world.
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Cyberspace, a reality of representations, is a virtual place with nature, functions, aesthetics, order, etc. not necessarily following or referring to classical reality. In this immaterial world, people may work, meet other people, seek entertainment, find and generate information, etc. According to Vision Two, architecture should play a major role in the conceptualization, organization, and design of such an alternative reality.
Essay Two takes on this challenge with an interesting twist. Instead of concerning itself with the practical uses of cyberspace (e.g. work, communication, etc.) [*5] this vision is committed to the creation of a new, distinct type of reality geared toward what might be called a fictional, mind-expanding, surreal, or 'edutainment' type of environment.
The architectural approach is to design the underlying fabric of cyberspace and the types of experiences bounded to occur there. The guiding idea is bringing together the two major realities available to us -waking and dream realities- so that the stable rules of our ordinary world and the logic and imagery of dreams and magic get combined to produce some kind of conscious dreamscape. The objectives are (1) to avoid mirroring classical reality; (2) to take advantage of cyberspace's high flexibility for designing the perceptive and functional qualities of space and form; and (3) to use the coherence of conscious reality to establish a stable visual and logic datum (so that people can still conduct some kinds of activities there). The result is an alien yet familiar cyberspace where abstraction and figuration, literality and symbolism, realism and surrealism, and logic and magic coexist, inform, and enhance the aspects of each other.
Essay Two considers sound as an essential dimension in the design of cyberspace. Whereas Vision One uses sound to complement the visual display of information, Vision Two utilizes sound to add 'thickness' to the cyberspace experience. Music and other auditory signals are an essential resource to induce moods or feelings that (1) establish the bridge between the real and the virtual (first) and then (2) maintain the 'reality' of the virtual.
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Vision 2: Designing the Cyber-Dreamscape (Student: Eric Tuttle)
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Vision Two implicitly assumes that time is the ultimate dimension that a designer must be concerned in cyberspace. For if the free architectural modulation of virtual form and space teaches us something, it is that time (and not the 3 spatial coordinates) is the hardest dimension to design with in cyberspace. Essay Two brings home the need to pay careful consideration to time in the organization and design of cyberspace.
The question is of course how to address this insight. According to Vision Two, the answer is to take a narrative approach to the architectural design of cyberspace. This means to study and design the kinds of experiences (as stories or events) that cyberspace will support. In this essay, experience is the substance driving the design process and the purpose of cyberspace itself. Such a phenomenological approach is a significant departure from the historical way (i.e. object-centered, synchronic, and observer-independent) architects have thought, designed, communicated, and criticized architecture. This paradigm shift in architectural consciousness (from the design of objects to the design of experiences) calls for new design methodologies and tools. Having little or no knowledge and tradition in how to design real-time and immersive experiential events, architects must research and incorporate the knowledge of fields traditionally dealing with audio-visual narratives, such as cinema, stage design, theater, storytelling, etc.(Laurel 1991, Rheingold 1991, Walser 1990).
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Vision 3: Architectonics of Data
According to Vision Three, cyberspace will impact architecture by giving rise to an exponential growth and transformation of the existing building typologies. This programmatic and functional revolution (which may transcend the explosion of new building typologies of the 19th and 20th centuries) will be fostered by the formal, visual, navigational, technological, and functional demands of information.
As the need for storing ever larger amounts of data in cyberspace continues, arguments supporting a 3D representation and organization of data may eventually win and generate a cyberspace thirsty for 'data buildings'. [*6] Since architectural expertise consists in giving formal and functional organization to visual and informational environments, architects appear as the natural designers of these new 'building' typologies and their world.[*7] Consequently Essay Three argues that non-dwelling and data related design services will eventually enter the range of architectural services. This will require the architectural community to extend its idea and practice of architecture to include an 'architectonics of information', that is, the design of architectural objects and spaces that represent and organize information in cyberspace.
The architectural outcome of Vision One can be traced to the systematic 'architecturization' of information and knowledge. Responding to the programmatic, technological, and formal requirements of data storage, accessibility, visualization, and extraction results in a cyberspace that is a clearly organized, logical, object-oriented, and functional environment. (In a way, the form of this cyberspace comes from some eclectic mixture of library storage design, information/knowledge cataloguing, and urban planning and design). However, it must also be acknowledged that the proposal owes much to Gibson's descriptions of cyberspace: a limitless virtual world peopled with uncountable Euclidean boxes (standing for huge data bases) floating in some sort of navigable, 0-G, pseudo-urban 3D fabric (Gibson 1987). The architectural essay portrayed below offer representations of such an environment.
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Vision 3: Architectonics of Data. Studio Collaborative Work
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Vision 3: Architecture as Mobile Assembly
By proposing architecture as a dynamic construct, Vision Four liberates us from the static way in which architecture has been conceived, represented, made, and used since its beginning. A mobile architecture is a real or virtual artifact under a mutation process that responds to functional, aesthetic, contextual, or informational demands. This kind of architecture is concerned with dynamic order, movement, transformation, and time, things that only the arrival of cyberspace has made possible to describe, visualize, simulate, and design.
This essay consciously retakes and continues the path left incomplete by the Futurist and Archigram movements. In some way, Vision Four may also be read as referring to the idea of architecture as machine that was so popular at the beginning of the Modern Movement. However such interpretation is not really appropriate for describing the informational and literally mobile understanding of architecture behind this essay.
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Vision 4: Architecture as Mobile Assembly (Student: Jory Walker)
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If a mobile architecture is fully conceivable and feasible in cyberspace - for instance, see Novak's idea and example of liquid architecture (1991) - it encounters hard but not insurmountable obstacles in physical reality. A real world mobile architecture would call for physical structures with some similarities to Krueger's experiments on artificial reality (1991, 1983) or to the idea of 'cyberized' and 'augmented' reality of Kellogg, Carroll & Richards (1991). A material mobile assembly would be a combination of 'smart' building elements and flexible, transformational architectural layouts. As in the case of Vision One, this essay would depend on complementing/integrating the technologies of the virtual (information, communication, AI, electronics) with the technologies of the real (hardware, building construction, mechanics, etc.). This points at yet another architectural area of promising practical and research possibilities opened by cyberspace.
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Conclusion
As both the skepticism and 'hype' surrounding cyberspace vanish under the weight of ever increasing power, knowledge, and use of virtual reality technologies, the architectural profession must begin to prepare for a significant expansion in its professional services.
Such a preparation should be at least partially done through design tasks exploring and responding to the new issues emerging at the interface between virtuality and architecture. Relevant examples and results of such activities should be shared with the architectural community at large so that a serious discussion on cyberspace can occur. Without such public debate, architects will not be up to the challenge presented by virtual reality technologies and environments.
This paper wanted to begin such a discourse by presenting four architectural proposals offering different design visions of (1) the visual nature and organization of cyberspace, and/or (2) the architectural implications and applications of cyberspace. Despite their diversity, there are some commonalties among them. First, they all take advantage of cyberspace's representational and immersive nature by making heavy use of the concept of reality as representation. Second, the four visions implicitly agree that although it is all right to utilize cyberspace as a virtual studio where to visualize, develop, communicate, and test architectural projects for classical reality, this use of virtuality falls short of the potential architectural applications of cyberspace. Third, even when Essays Two and Three create realities of their own, the four visions must and do relate to the known, classical reality for insight, support, and guidance. Fourth, these essays are somewhat compatible among themselves, thus permitting further insights if they are combined. For instance, cyberspace could be conceived as peopled with architectonics of data that are able to move and work as informated constructs. This would probably better accommodate the complex demands of data. The 'cyberization' of architectural artifacts would hold most hopes for a practical application of the mobile assembly and informated aesthetics visions in classical reality architecture. Finally, the four visions see cyberspace as providing great opportunities for advancing our understanding of architecture in both classical and virtual realities. In this sense, they see cyberspace as eventually changing the traditional ways of seeing, thinking, making, communicating, criticizing and practicing architecture.
If the visions here presented are a good example of what is to come then architects are up for quite provocative if not ground breaking novelties in their field. For the development of cyberspace will require architectural services and functions of unprecedented nature which will largely expand what we today consider architectural work. For example, the conceptualization, organization, and design of cyberspace are a natural arena for architectural reflection and practice and one in which architects should play a leadership role. These added professional duties will not come without benefit. Getting involved in the construction of cyberspace will not only help the profession better cope with and utilize virtual reality technologies and environments but also, and as important, allow architects to have a say in how cyberspace evolves.
Hence and contrary to the gloomy architectural futures that so many people forecast in our days, tomorrow offers great promise if architects do not shy away from cyberspace.
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Footnotes
[*1] The situation is surprising given that (1) architects are experts in the use of representations and the design of 3D objects and immersive environments; and (2) cyberspace is (a) a representational matrix supporting depictions of any real or imaginary construct; and (b) a place of immersive experiences (thus perceivable, usable, and designable as a true environment). In other words, there is a direct, almost natural relationship between cyberspace and architecture that needs to be brought to light and exploited for the mutual benefit of both parties.
[*2] An exception is the work of Benedikt & Novak at the University of Texas School of Architecture at Austin. See for example Benedikt 1991.
[*3] In fact, a few contemporary architects are beginning to consider this possibility (e.g. Wolf Prix, Merdhad Yadzani). for resolving some multimedia and entertainment facilities.
[*4] This also refers to Krueger's work on artificial reality (1991, 1983)
[*5] Pruitt & Barrett (1991) provide a good example of using cyberspace as an environment designed to support and enhance the real world demands of work.
[*6] Cognitive studies show that the human mind deals better with complexity when it is displayed in real-world analogical representations than when abstract, verbal driven representations are used. Evolutionary theory further supports this claim: the human sensorium (developed over a billion years) appears better equipped to deal with large amounts of information than verbal representations (barely +/- 50,000 year old).
[*7] For example, architectonics can be used to provide representational order to information unfolding in (1) mathematical space; (2) semantic space (refers to spaces wherein information is organized along different semantic dimensions: e.g. author name, subject matter, and title provide a 3D semantic space useful for searching a book); (3) physical space; and (4) data space as a combination of all the above.
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Bibliograhic References
Benedikt, M. (1991). Cyberspace: Some Proposals; in M.Benedikt (ed.): Cyberspace, First Steps. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (pp.119-224)
Cross, N. (1982). Designerly Ways of Knowing. Design Studies 3:4, pp.221-227
Cross, N. (1986). Understanding Design: The Lessons of Design Methology. Design Methods and Theories 20:2, pp.409-438
Gibson, W. (1987). Neuromancer. New York: Ace Books
Kellogg W., Carroll J. & Richards J. (1991). Making Reality a Cyberspace; in M.Benedikt (ed.): Cyberspace, First Steps. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (pp.411-431)
Krueger, M. (1991). Artificial Reality II. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Krueger, M. (1983). Artificial Reality. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Laurel, B. (1991). Computers as Theater. Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Company
Lawson, B. (1980). How Designers Think. London: Architectural Press
Novak, M. (1991). Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace; in M.Benedikt (ed.): Cyberspace, First Steps. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (pp.225-254)
Pruitt, S. & Barrett, T. (1991). Corporate Virtual Workplace; in M.Benedikt (ed.): Cyberspace, First Steps. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. (pp.383-408)
Rheingold, H. (1991). Virtual Reality. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Rowe, P. (1987). Design Thinking. Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press
Walser, R. (1990). Elements of a Cyberspace Playhouse; in: Proceeding of National Computer Graphics Association 1990. Anaheim, CA: (March)
Zuboff, S. (1989). In the Age of the Smart Machine New York: Simon & Schuster.
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