Edith K. Ackermann

European Network of Heads of Schools of Architecture European Association for Architectural Education

International Conference International Symposium File to Factory: The DesignRethinking and Fabrication the of Human Innovative Forms in Technologyin a Continuum Driven Architecture

Host: CMA (Centre for Mediterranean Architecture), Chania, Crete, Greece, 3-4 September 2009

This project has been carried out with the support of the European Community and in the framework of the Socrates Programme.

The content of this project does not necessarily reflect the position of the European Community, nor does it involve any responsibility on the part of the European Community. enhsaeuropean network of heads of schools of architecture enhsaeuropean network of heads of schools of architecture enhsaeuropean network of heads of schools of architecture

European Network of Heads of Schools of Architecture - European Association for Architectural Education International Conference Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture

Transactions on Architectural Education No 55

Editors Maria Voyatzaki Constantin Spiridonidis

Cover design: Emmanouil Zaroukas Layout design: Dimitris Apostolidis Printed by: Charis Ltd, Thessaloniki, Greece

ISBN 978-2-930301-53-2

Despite the attempt to transcribe with accuracy the debates from the workshop, the editors wish to apologise in advance for any inaccuracies of the interventions of individuals that could be attributed to the quality of recording. List of contents

Initiations

Maria Voyatzaki, Constantin Spiridonidis, Kostis Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece Rethinking the Human in Technology-Driven Architecture ...... 13

Inspirations

Manuel DeLanda USA Form-Finding through Simulated Evolution ...... 19

Edith Ackermann USA Emergent Mindsets in the Digital Age: What Places for People on the go? New media ecology / New genres of engagement ...... 29

Antonino Saggio Italy GreenBodies - Give me an Ampoule and I will Live ...... 41

Kostas Terzidis USA Digital Culture and Permutation Architecture ...... 57

Reflections

Chris Younès France Towards a Responsive Architecture: Paradox of the Metamorphoses in Play ...... 69

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK Hacking the Symb(i/o)tic eld of Architecture ...... 73

Alessio Erioli Italy The Fashion Robot ...... 91

Anastasios Tellios Greece Human Parameters in Technology-Driven Design Research: Formal, Social and Environmental Narratives ...... 111 Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands A 4EA Cognitive Approach for Rethinking the Human in Interactive Spaces ...... 121

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece Network Protocols / Architectural Protocols: Encoded Design Processes in the Age of Control ...... 135

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece From Μachines to Μachinic Αssemblages: a Conceptual Distinction between two kinds of Adaptive Computationally-driven Architecture ...... 149

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK Embodied, Μediated and Performative: Exploring the Architectural Education in the Digital Age ...... 163

Kostis Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece Rethinking the Human: An Educational Experiment on Sensponsive Architecture ...... 175

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece Pleat and Play ...... 189

Contributions

(Re)searching a critically responsive architecture

Henriette Bier The Netherlands Recon gurable Architecture ...... 207

Natassa Lianou, Ermis Chalvatzis UK Krama Proto-Tower Systemic Interactions Design Research ...... 211

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain Hybrid Architecture - Hybrid Tools ...... 227

Dimitris Psychogyios Greece Collective Design for Hybrid Museum Environments ...... 241

8 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece Responsive Architecture as a Tool to Suppress the Psychological Disorders of an Individual and Replace Medicines ...... 251

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus Architectural Design Studio: Reconsidering the Digital through Embedded Technologies ...... 265

Mihaela Harmanescu Romania Responsive Architecture through Urban Planning, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design ...... 277

Sally Stewart UK Mapping the City: the possibility of developing a rich picture place through experiments with conventional, digital and stolen techniques of mapping ...... 293

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy Rethinking the Public Space for Urban Intensive Performance Places ...... 305

(Re)thinking a critically responsive architecture

Christian Drevet France Form and Information ...... 321

Konstantinos Grivas Greece Constellation Pattern: A Spatial Concept for Describing the ‘Extended Home’ ...... 343

Anastasia Karandinou UK Beyond the Binary ...... 355

Ada Kwiatkowska Poland Architectural Interfaces of Hybrid Humans ...... 363

Pau Pedragosa Spain Immaterial Culture in the Age of Information Technology ...... 371

Yannis Zavoleas Greece House-as-Machine: the Inuences of Technology during early Modernism ...... 381

List of contents 9 Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark Tectonic Thinking - Developing a Critical Strategy for a Responsive and Adaptive Architecture ...... 395

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece Have we ever been Postmodern? The Essential Tension within the Metamodern Condition ...... 409

Ana Maria Hariton Romania Reading-Rewriting-Learning from and Building on an Exemplary Precedent: Bucharest`s Blind Alleys ...... 421

Beril Özmen Mayer Northern Cyprus Digital Design Thinking and Moving Images Syndrome ...... 439

Charalampos Politakis UK Skeletal Apotheosis of the Human Body ...... 447

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy Wall-e ...... 457

(Re)scripting and fabricating a critically responsive architecture

Jan Slyk Poland Interactive Shadow Play ...... 471

Alexandros Kallegias Greece Machinic Formations / Designing the System ...... 485

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France Digital Materiality: an Experiment with Smart Concrete ...... 501

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria Developing a ‘Next Generation’ Collaborative Design Platform ...... 513

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark The Origin of Change ...... 527

Rodanthi Vardouli, Theodora Vardouli USA, Greece The Digital Liminal: Reections on the Computational Transition in Architecture ...... 539

10 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Daniel Comsa Romania Contemporary Ways of Space Envelopment – Adaptive Architecture? ...... 549

Lucien Denissen Belgium Simulation of Comfort and Health ...... 563

Stella Dourtme UK Prototypical Matter: Digital Plaster ...... 577

Maria Mandalaki Greece Sustainable Design Technology: Human Senses versus the Measuring of Environmental Conditions ...... 597

Lemonia Ragia, Chrisa Tsinaraki Greece A Framework for DYNamic and Interactive Architecture (DYNIA) ...... 609

Teaching a critically responsive architecture

Joanna Crotch UK Linger, Savour, Touch ...... 619

Giovanna Franco Italy Archetips, Symbols, Memory Which Tectonic in Digital Culture? ...... 631

Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere, Evelien Verdonck Belgium IT Tools and Human Voices in Teaching Architecture ...... 641

Susanna Fülöp Hungary Holistic Integrated Approach of Architectural Education & Practice Terminology & Strategy ...... 655

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland Learning to Imagine the Invisible: Using New Technologies to Enhance User-Friendly Architecture ...... 671

Java Revedin Sweden Architecture with the People - Teaching a Critically Responsive Architecture with a Human Aim ...... 683

Balázs Balogh Hungary Changes in Architecture: Think - Design - Practice - Education ...... 695

List of contents 11 Antonis Papamanolis, Katherine Liapi Greece Thoughts on Digital Architectural Education: in search of a digital culture of architectural design ...... 701

Peter Staub Liechtenstein Imagining the Real ...... 709

Anastasia Tzaka Greece Digital design pedagogies A critical case study approach ...... 721

Alexandros Vazakas Greece High Technology - High Aesthetics ? ...... 729

Helle Brabrand Denmark Body-Space Interface Re-scripting and re-fabricating a responsive architecture ...... 741

Contributors ...... 749

12 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture

Initiations Rethinking the Human in Technology-Driven Architecture

Over the past 10 years the research record of architectural education institutions in Europe have signi cantly shifted from research primarily based on the Humanities to research directed in and supported by Information Technology on experimentations in architectural design, materials and construction. This shift, now a distinctive trend in architectural research, has a direct impact on the entire construct of architectural knowledge and design skills, as well as on the creation of the pro le of the architect and the priorities for pedagogical strategies in architectural education. The more IT becomes ubiquitous by being integrated into almost everything people get their hands on, the more architecture tends to absorb this technological impulse, by becoming adaptive, responsive, transformable, intelligent and customized. These new conceptions of architecture are accompanied with new terms like liquid, hybrid, virtual, trans, animated, seamless, interactive, emergent, parametric, algorithmic, machinic and self generating, thus producing a new architectural culture. That is a culture in which the terms and conceptions that have nourished architecture for centuries are replaced by their opposites: stability and solidity replaced by change, simplicity and clarity replaced by complexity and space replaced nowadays by (real) time. In the design domain, emerging techniques and methods seem to have absorbed the bulk of IT, mainly with regards to software applications, which inuence greatly the way architects think, design and visualize their ideas. Meanwhile, the area of fabrication has been rapidly evolving so that the versatility provided by design software can now be materialized through advanced manufacturing equipment, previously employed only by the industry. Moreover, advancements in material science have also been supporting experimentation in that direction. Last but not least, this new culture has progressively established its ethos in the education of the architect detectable in student design works, in the new nature of the design studio (lab) as well as the gradual devaluation or even elimination of modules related to the Hu- manities in the architectural curricula and their being replaced instead by modules on scripting, biology, representation and simulation software. The paradigm of nature, the development of more powerful, sensitive, interactive and intuitive software as well as the ability to experiment with electronic assemblies have facilitated an ever-growing tendency for responsive architecture. One of the most signi cant shifts of contemporary architectural thinking in our fast changing world is a strong inclination towards an innovative experimentation adaptable to the speed and pace of changes occurring in our mind, soul and body. As a result the whole practice is nowadays moving towards responsiveness. Thus, design tools are used according to user demands and needs, which are now conceived as unstable and transformable while fabrication methods develop to respond to design idiosyncrasies, and space is designed to respond directly to changing human behavior and environmental conditions. However, voices criticizing this digitalization of architectural thinking are becoming more boisterous. Not only are they the voices of practitioners and educators, who steer clear from avant-garde ideas and experimentations but, more signi cantly, of those who have been strongly involved and engaged in the development, implementation

14 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and theorization of the contemporary technology-driven architecture from its infan- cy. The common grounds of these critics focus on three main orientations; the design process, the nature of the outcome, and the role of the architect. The digitalization of the design process and its development as an imitation of the biological, morphogenetic process is questioned on its potential to continue to be considered as an act of creation when it follows a purely mechanistic development, sterilized by the decisive presence and the creative role of cultural values. The architectural outcome of such a process is questioned on its merit to adequately represent our contemporary culture when the dominant characteristic through which it gains its value is its capacity to be passively adaptive and responsive to preprogrammed external human or environmental stimuli. Finally, what is questioned is whether the architect more as a script editor- programmer than a thinker-maker working on values to give form to our everyday life, can safely translate, in parametric terms and the script language, the complexity of human senses and behaviors. The common denominator of all this questioning is a broader concern that, by overemphasizing the technological capacity of the available means, we risk considering the means as objectives and thus lose the human being as the ultimate end of architectural creation. Is IT the end or a means to an end?

All the above issues are translated into new questions that have nourished research and experimentation, trigger o debate, contemplation and inuence the practice and education of the architect. Is it possible to nd the human being in IT driven architecture? Is it possible to have an adaptive architecture in which the presence of the human being will be more inuential and decisive? Can the contemporary technological means assure a value-based responsive architecture? Can we have an architectural production, which will not only reect some of the abilities, constructions and properties of the alive, but also made to be receptive to the senses, the feelings, emotions and sensations of the human being which will inhabit it? Can we use advanced information technology to protect architecture from becoming a consumable, self-complacent object, fascinating for its elementary intelligence, admired for its advanced technical competences, attractive for its formal peculiarity but distant from those who are invited to appropriate it by investing in its spaces and forms feelings, aspirations, cultural attitudes, and values emerging from social life?

This volume contains essays the authors of which have been invited to give answers to the above questions in the framework of the International Conference entitled “Re- thinking the Human in Technology-Driven Architecture” organised in Chania, Greece by the European Network of Heads of Schools of Architecture under the nancial support of the Lifelong Learning, Erasmus, Academic Networks Program, the European Association for Architectural Education and hosted by the School of Architecture of Technical University of Crete. The authors of the contributions are architects, teachers and researchers in architecture and their texts have been produced after their presentation in the Conference incorporating this way the comments, remarks and outcomes of the debates that took place in the context of this event. The reader of this volume can nd a record of the research undertaken in dierent parts of Europe on architectural design and the output produced by schools of architecture aiming at advancing responsive and adaptive architecture critically towards a more sensitive involvement of the human values. It also presents cases of architectural design and fabrication where information technology is amalgamated with a values-

Initiations 15 based rethinking of architecture. Last but not least, it follows the ways that the output produced (or imparted) by research, practice and contemporary contemplation on architecture is (tran)scribed into and recycled in architectural design teaching practices. The volume is structured on three main parts. In the rst part there are four essays introducing with inspiring way signi cant aspects of the reconsideration of the human in the way we conceive and understand architecture as creation and practice. Manuel DeLanda, Edith Ackermann, Antonino Saggio and Kostas Terzidis open with their contribution new directions and avenues for reection on the main theme of the volume.

The second part contains essays, which can be considered as coherent introduction to four dierent topics. The rst topic is the research in contemporary responsive architectural design. The second is the theoretical and philosophical considerations of the responsive architecture through the contemporary conceptions of the human. The third topic is the scripting applications, which support the design of responsive architecture. Finally the fourth topic focuses on the teaching of responsive architecture and the nature and form of methods and pedagogic approaches that could be implemented. The Scienti c Committee of the Conference1 selected these essays to represent each one of these topics.

The third part of the essays contains the papers that the Scienti c Committee selected to be presented in the Conference grouped according to the four afore-mentioned topics. A broad spectrum of approaches, conceptions and views can be found on the way contemporary architectural design becomes subject of research, contemplation, experimentation, materialisation and education.

The editors expect that this volume will formulate the conditions for an interesting academic input on the basis of which a constructive debate can be formulated on the issue of integration aiming at bridging the most signi cant but arti cial separations in our educational systems, between architectural design modules, construction modules and theory modules. The editors also expect that the innovative approaches presented in the volume constitute a collection of good practice examples able to inspire more teachers and to inuence changes in our educational approaches.

Maria Voyatzaki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, ENHSA Coordinator Constantin Spiridonidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, ENHSA Project Leader Kostis Oungrinis, Technical University of Crete, Faculty of Architecture Marianthi Liapi, Technical University of Crete, Faculty of Architecture

1 The members of the Scienti c Committee were (in alphabetical order): Henriette Bier (Technical University of Delft), Ava Fatah (UCL, Bartlett, London), Christian Friedrich (Technical University of Delft), Kostis Oungrinis (Technical University of Crete), Antonino Saggio (Rome Sapienza), Constantin Spiridonidis (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), Maria Voyatzaki (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki).

16 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Inspirations

Manuel DeLanda

New York USA Form-Finding through Simulated Evolution Algorithms are the soul of software. They are mechanical recipes for the performance of tasks like sorting or searching, and are indispensable because computers lack the judgment necessary to use procedures in which every step is not speci ed unam- biguously. Search algorithms, in particular, are highly valued in computer science because many routine operations in personal computers involve looking for and nding something: a document, an application, a web page, or just free space in a hard disk to store a le. But more importantly search algorithms matter because many problem-solving techniques can be modeled as a search: a space of possible solutions to a problem is constructed and a mechanical recipe is created to explore it. If the space of possible solutions happens to include a single best solution then the process is called an “optimization”, a term familiar to engineers. But the search space need not be structured in such a simple form so its exploration may demand a more exible type of algorithm. While computer scientists are not normally drawn to biology for inspiration, those concerned with the design of search algorithms are. The reason is that biological organisms may be viewed as solutions to problems posed by the environment: by the climate or topography, by predatory or parasitic species. In other words, adapting to a particular environment involves nding the appropriate changes (in anatomy, in behavior) to cope with the challenges that it presents. Although individual organisms may be said to cope with challenges throughout their lives, evolutionary biologists are typically more interested in longer term adaptations, that is, in solutions to environmental problems found by a given species over many generations. In the 1960’s the computer scientist John Holland looked at evolution as a process involving a search for solutions, and abstracted its basic features from the details of its biological implementation. Or as he put it, his task was “lifting the reproductive plans from the speci c genetic context...”. 1 The result was a new type of search algorithm, the genetic algorithm, that diered from older procedures in that the space of solutions was not itself directly explored. Rather the search was conducted in a space that coded for those solutions. This reected the fact that in biology we face a double reality, that of the bodily traits of organisms (the phenotype) and that of a coded procedure to generate those traits (the genotype). Because the process of production of an organism can be coded into genes the process can be repeated every generation, a repetition that is crucial to en- dow the entire species with the ability to nd solutions. Another signi cant dierence is that while other search algorithms may look at one solution at a time, comparing it to older solutions and adopting it if it is better, evolutionary searches can look simultaneously at many solutions, one for each member of the population. This captures the insight that, in biology, the repetition of the process that generates organisms always includes dierences, dierences that are distributed throughout a population making each member a slightly dierent solution. When applied to algorithms this implies that evolutionary searches are conducted not serially, one solution at a time, but in parallel as the entire population moves across search space like a cloud. Finally, while genetic dierences are generated by random processes (mutation, sexual recombination) the environment selects only those that increase the degree to which the solution ts the problem, giving the search process a certain directionality. This reects the idea that natural selection sorts out the members of the population into those that get to leave many copies of themselves and those that do not, capturing in the process historical information about the adequacy of the solutions.

20 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The concept of using a search process to solve design problems is not new to architects. They can easily come up with examples of procedures that have been used in the past to nd forms using the inherent tendencies of certain materials and structures to perform analogue computations. Search spaces structured by a single optimal point, for example, have been known to mathematicians for centuries and have been adapted by architects for design purposes. Such optimal points (minima and maxima) were rst studied in the eighteenth century by Leonard Euler via his famous calculus of variations. One of the rst variational problems to be tackled was the so- called “catenary problem” which can be characterized by the question: what form will a chain nd if allowed to hang freely while constraining both its ends. Euler framed the problem in terms of the potential energy of the gravitational forces acting on the chain. He realized, and proved mathematically, that of all the geometrically possible forms the one realized by actual chains is the one that minimizes this potential, that is, that the chain will be at equilibrium when it’s center of gravity occupies the lowest position.2 In a sense, the hanging chain performs an analogue computation to nd this form among all the other possible ones. Among architects, it was the Antonio Gaudi who at the turn of the twentieth century rst realized the potential of hanging chains or ropes. He used them to nd the form of the arches in the facade of his Sagrada Familia church. But chain models can be used for more complex design problems than arches or vaults:

“Chain networks showing signi cantly more complex forms than freely suspended individual chains can be constructed from small pieces of chain or short bars fastened together exibly. Freely suspended networks of this kind open up the gigantic formal world of the “heavy tents”, as the so-called gravity suspended roofs can also be named. They can be seen in the temple and pagoda roofs of the Far East, where they were originally made as exible bamboo lattices. Today roofs of this kind are made of rope nets with a wooden or lightweight concrete roof” .3

The authors of this quote are Frei Otto and Bodo Rash of the Institute for Lightweight Structures in Stuttgart. Frei Otto is perhaps best know for his use of soap lm as a membrane-forming liquid capable of nding minimal forms on its own. Form- nding for tent designs can also be performed with thin rubber lms, knitted or woven fabrics, and thread or wire nets, but soap lm is perhaps a better illustration of the technique. As is well known, soap lm can spontaneously nd the form possessing a minimum of surface tension. Like the inverted chain, the space of possibilities associated with soap lm is structured by a single optimum, a topological point that attracts the population of soapy molecules to a speci c form. Without any constrains (such as those exerted by a frame made of wire or rope) the form that emerges is a sphere or bubble. Adding constraints can break the symmetry of this sphere and yield a wide variety of other minimal surfaces, such as the hyperbolic paraboloids (saddle-shaped surfaces) that Frei Otto needed for the roof of the German Pavilion at the Expo ‘67 in Montreal. That roof was the rst of a series in which Otto deliberately used soap lm as a form- nding instrument. Despite this exemplary achievement, however, some of Frei Otto collaborators realized that performing form- nding procedures on search spaces structured by a single global optimum was too constraining. Peter von Bue- low, for example, argued this point by contrasting the task of engineering analysis

Manuel DeLanda USA 21 with that of architectural design. While in the former one normally tries to nd a single best solution, and there is the expectation that dierent analysts will reach basically the same solution, in design there are always a variety of ways of solving a problem, and dierent designers will typically arrive at their own solutions. In the latter case, the search space is structured by multiple local optima, a condition that favors the use of simulated evolution to perform form- nding. As von Buelow wrote:

“[Evolutionary search] goes beyond a set procedure of analysis to aid the designer in exploring form- nding problems in a creative way. Unlike analysis tools it is not intended to yield one correct solution, but rather to supply the designer with stimulating, plausible directions to consider. [Evolutionary search] is intended to be used in the early, form- nding stages of a design problem. As such, it deliberately avoids leading the designer to a single ‘best’ solution, but instead follows the designer’s lead in exploring the design space.” 4

Let’s describe in some detail a typical implementation of evolutionary search. A simulation of evolution consists of the following components: a strategy to code a problem into a simulated chromosome (a way of mapping genotype into phenotype); a procedure to discriminate good from bad solutions to that problem (a tness function); a procedure to translate this assessment into reproductive success (a selection function); and a set of operators to produce variation in each generation (at the very least, mutation and sexual recombination operators). Some of these components involve human creativity while others are used in an entirely mechanical way by the computer. Coding the problem to be solved and devising a way of correctly estimat- ing the tness of evolved solutions can be highly challenging tasks demanding imaginative human intervention. But once the creative decisions involved in these preparatory steps have been made the rest of the components can take care of themselves: a population of random chromosomes, most of which start with very low tness, is rst created; the few members of the original population that happen to be a little better than the rest are then selected for reproduction; pairs of chromosomes are mixed in a way that imitates sexual recombination, or single chromosomes mutated asexually, producing a new generation; the tness of the ospring is evaluated, and the steps are mechanically repeated until a locally optimal solution is found.

The creative preparatory steps - inventing a mapping between a coded problem and a solution, and implementing a tness function - are the points at which an artist or designer can make the greatest contribution in this area, so we will need to describe these two steps in more detail. The task of coding the design problem depends cru- cially on the nature of the simulated chromosome. In the case of genetic algorithms, for example, strings of symbols play the role of chromosomes. This linear structure gives them a certain similarity with their real counterparts, except that unlike real chromosomes the length of the strings is kept xed, and the alphabet providing the symbols has only two entries (“one” and “zero”) instead of four (the four nucleotides used in DNA). In other words, the chromosomes in genetic algorithms are bit strings whose length remains constant throughout the simulation, and in which the variables de ning a given problem must be represented by ones and zeroes. If the variables happen to be switches that can be either on or o, the coding is trivially simple: each

22 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture bit in the string represents a gene, and each gene codes for a switch. But most problems do not have this simple form. The variables may have, for example, numerical values, ranging from a minimum value to a maximum one. In this case, we must break down the range of continuous values of each variable into a discrete series. If this series contains, say, sixteen dierent values, then a string four bits long will be enough, the gene “0000” representing the minimum value and “1111” representing the maximum one. The tness function that evaluates solutions on each generation can be used to handle values that are out of the range, that is, to enforce the constraint that values must belong to the allowable range by penalizing strings that violate it.5

The standard example of the kind of problem that can be solved by genetic algorithms is the control of a pipeline for natural gas. A pipeline must geographically link the point of supply of gas to the point of delivery using a series of compressors linked by pipes. The problem is to determine the relation between the suction pressure of each compressor to its discharge pressure (the pressure gradient between its input and output) in such a way as to minimize the overall electrical power consumed. Coding this problem into a form that a genetic algorithm can use involves two steps. First, the gradient for each compressor must be given a binary representation (a bit string long enough to give a series of numerical values) and several of these bit strings must be concatenated into a larger one to capture the whole pipeline. Second, a t- ness function must be created to evaluate the power consumption of each combination of values for dierent compressors, as well as to enforce global constraints, such as the minimum or maximum of pressure allowed in the pipeline. Genetic algorithms have been shown to search the space of possibilities de ned by problems like these in a highly ecient way.6 There are dierent ways to adapt this approach to the task of form- nding. The simplest one would be to de ne the space of possible forms in a parametric way, so that it matches exactly the template oered by the pipeline example. De ning signi cant parameters that can be varied independently is not a trivial task: a good parameter should not be a single variable, such as the height or width of a particular design component, but a relation between dierent properties, at the very least a ratio of two carefully picked variables. Another possibility, explored by the architect John Frazer in 1971, is to adopt a modular approach to design. In one implementation, for example, Frazer created two modules (two folded plate components) that could be oriented in 18 dierent ways relative to each other. Then he devised an arbitrary code to match binary numbers to each of the modules and their transformations. Creativity enters here in the choice of pre-designed modules (they must have a great combinatorial productivity) as well as in the choice of transformations. In Frazer’s case the latter were simple rotations, but more complex transformations can be used as long as they are adapted to the combinatorial capacities of the modules.7 Frazer realized early on that the way in which one represents the design problem in order to be able to code it into a bit string, what he calls the “generic representation”, is a key step in the process since it implicitly de nes the space that will be searched. As he writes:

“In step one, the generic representation largely determines the range of possible outcomes. A tight representation based on previously near-optimal solutions may be ne for some engineering problems but might seriously inhibit the range of

Manuel DeLanda USA 23 more creative solutions in another domain. For example, parametrization is a valuable technique for exploring variations on a well-tried and tested theme, but it is limited to types of variation that were anticipated when the parametrization was established. [On the other hand] a very open representation is often dicult to imagine and can easily generate a vast search space.” 8

Given the importance of the generic representation of a design problem, and more generally, of an adequate mapping between genotype and phenotype, architects must consider all existing alternatives. The bit strings used by genetic algorithms not only force the designer to nd a numerical way of coding the design problem, but the fact that the strings are of a xed length implies that the complexity of a problem must be speci ed in advance. This limits the range of problems that can be coded and solved. Although these limitations can be mitigated by allowing the string to vary in length (as in so-called “messy” genetic algorithms) other chromosome designs can af- ford more exibility. In genetic programming, for example, chromosomes are not static strings but dynamic computer programs capable not only of varying in length but also of breaking down a problem into a hierarchy of sub-problems, and then to literally construct the solution to the design problem following the evolved building procedure. The idea of using a procedural generic representation of a problem, instead of an arbitrary numerical code for modules and transformations, may seem obvious to any architect that has built a 3D model using a script (in, say, Maya’s MEL scripting language). But most computer languages do not allow the creation of programs in which random substitutions of instructions can be made while the overall program remains functional. In other words, the functionality of most scripts or programs is destroyed after undergoing a few random mutations or sexual recombinations. There are some languages, however, that do possess the necessary resiliency: they use mathematical functions instead of step-by-step recipes, and generate control hierarchies by recursion, that is, by de ning higher-level functions in terms of lower-level ones. With this kind of computer language the range of design problems that can be coded into simulated chromosomes can be increased dramatically.

In genetic programming the creative preparatory steps include selecting the right kind of elementary functions out of which more complex ones can be built by recur- sive composition, as well as the constants and variables that can act as inputs to those functions. This elementary repertoire must t the type of problem to be solved: if the problem is a logical one, the elementary functions should be operators like “And” or “Not”, while the variables should be True and False values; if it is arithmetical, the operators should be like “Add” or “Multiply”, while the variables should be numbers or matrices; if it is a problem of robotic motion, it must contain functions like “Move Left” or “Move Right”, and variables specifying distances or angles; and nally, if the problem is creating a 3D model of a building then the functions must include extru- sion, surface of revolution, bending, and twisting, while the variables must be polygons or NURBS. In other words, the basic repertoire must be matched to the details of the problem’s domain. A chromosome in genetic programming is not a linear string but a branching graph, a “tree” in which each branching point is labeled with a function while the “leaves” are labeled with variables and constants. These tree-like graphs capture the hierarchical relations between elementary and composite functions, and

24 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture can be manipulated by the same genetic operators (mutation, sexual recombination) that are used in genetic algorithms. Much as the oil pipeline problem is an exemplar of the use of genetic algorithms, the design of analog electrical circuits ( lters, ampli- ers, sensors) has been the area in which genetic programming has demonstrated its full potential. Unlike digital circuits in which the design task can be automated, analog circuits are basically handcrafted. To make the problem even more “human-like”, John Koza, the creator of genetic programming, chose as his targets designs that had already been patented. The reason is that for a patent to be accepted it must typically contain signi cant dierences with respect to existing designs and these dierences must be “creative”, that is, not logically deducible from a previously patented invention. 8 Using this criterion, the designs produced by genetic programming can be classi ed as true inventions, rather than mere optimizations: in several cases evolutionary search has rediscovered circuit designs that had been previously patented; in other cases it has matched the functionality of patented designs by using novel means; and in at least one case it has produced an entirely new patentable design.9

The repertoire of elementary functions that allow the circuit design problem to be coded include functions that insert a new component (a resistor, a capacitor, an in- ductor); functions that alter the connectivity of these components (the topology of the circuit); and functions that set the intensity (or sizing) of a component, that is, the amount of resistance of a resistor, the capacitance of a capacitor and so on. Fitness evaluation is more complex than in genetic algorithms because the evolved programs must be ran to construct the solution. In the case of analog circuits, once the topology and the sizing have been set for a given generation, a circuit must be built (as a simulation) and tested. To do this, a kind of “embryo” circuit (an electrical substructure with modi able wires and components) is placed into a larger circuit in which no component is modi able. Only the embryo evolves, but its placement into a larger functional setting allows it to be easily checked for viability.10 Koza decided to use existing software to check for the functionality of the circuits, a strategy that could also be followed by designers of architectonic structures, since these need not only be assessed for aesthetic tness but also be evaluated as load-bearing structures. Like Koza, users of genetic programming in architecture could have the program build 3D models in a format that is already used by existing structural engineering software (such as nite element analysis) and use the latter as part of the process of tness evaluation. And like Koza, only a certain part of a building need to be evolved (the embryo) the rest being a non-evolvable template into which the embryo can be placed to be checked for structural integrity.

It should be clear from this remarks that tness evaluation is another aspect of simulated evolution that demands a creative intervention on the part of the designer. The assessment of aesthetic tness, in particular, can be particularly dicult. One approach here is to let the designer be the tness function: he or she is presented with a population of solutions on every generation, perhaps one that has already been checked for structural integrity, to be ranked by their aesthetic appeal. This approach has the advantage that the designer has more control over the direction of the search, steering the evolutionary process in promising directions. Peter von Buelow’s use of simulated evolution for form- nding uses this strategy, not only allowing the user to

Manuel DeLanda USA 25 rank proposals as a way of measuring tness, but also letting him or her add new vari- ants to the population to redirect the search away from evolutionary dead ends.11 Re- placing a tness function with a human, however, has the disadvantage of making the process painfully slow, and of limiting the evaluation of every generation to a small subset of the entire population, a subset small enough to be displayed on a computer screen and be surveyable at a glance. Given that aesthetic criteria are very hard to for- malize it would seem that using the “eye of the beholder” is inevitable when evaluating tness in terms of fuzzy concepts like “elegance” or “beauty”. But there is another alternative: not a mechanical assessment of aesthetic tness but a means to store the taste or stylistic preferences of the designer so that they can be applied automatically. This can be done by the use of another type of simulation called neural nets. Like Ko- za’s use of external software to assess the functionality of electrical circuits, this would extend the meaning of the term “ tness function” so that it encompasses not only a xed criterion coded mathematically but any complex set of procedures, using any existing software, that can be reliably used to assign tness values.

Simply put, a neural net is a learning device that maps patterns into patterns, without any intervening representations.12 One pattern may be, for example, a sensory pattern produced by features of the environment (captured via a video camera), while the other may be a motor pattern, that is, a sequence of actions produced as a response to the sensory stimulation. Learning consists in correctly matching the motor activity to the sensory information, such as eeing in the presence of predators. Both sensory and motor patterns are implemented as activity patterns in simple computing units arranged in layers (input and output layers in the simplest designs) linked to each other by connections that can vary in strength. Unlike other implementations of machine learning a neural net is not programmed but trained. In the simplest case, the training consists in repeatedly presenting a pattern to the input layer, activating some units but not others, while xing a desired activation pattern in the output layer. The reason the output pattern is xed in advance is that, as with animal training, the human trainer has a desired behavior that he or she is trying to elicit from the animal. Once both activation patterns are set, the computing units in each layer can begin to interact with each other through their connections: units that are simultaneously active will strengthen their connection to each other, and vice-versa, simultaneous in- activity will weaken a link. Thus, during training changes in the connection strengths store information about the interactions. After many presentations of the input and output patterns the connection strengths will converge to the combination needed to match the activation patterns to each other. And after the training is over and the xed output pattern is removed the neural net will be able to reproduce it whenever the right input pattern is present. In a sense, the neural net learns to recognize the sensory stimulation, a recognition signaled by the production of the correct motor response. And more importantly, the neural net can not only recognize patterns that were included in the training set but also patterns that are similar to those.

To be used as an aesthetic tness function, a neural net needs to be trained with a set of examples corresponding either to the designer’s taste or the stylistic preferences associated with a particular project. A set of photographs or 3D renderings of the appropriate architectonic structures would comprise the training set, presented to the

26 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture input layer via a video camera, in the case of photographs, or in some coded form in the case of 3D renderings. The output layer, in this case, would not have to perform any motor response but only produce a pattern of activation representing a numerical value: a number that ranks dierent inputs by their aesthetic proximity to the designer’s taste or stylistic preferences. During training these numerical values would be given explicitly by the designer (making sure that they do indeed capture his or her aesthetic values) but after training they would be produced automatically to be used as part of the tness score. Using neural nets to replace the “eye of the beholder” has advantages and disadvantages. It can greatly speed up the process since there is no need for the designer to sit at the computer following a simulation, and it can evaluate as many evolving entities as needed, without the restriction of having to present these to the user on the screen. On the other hand, it can constrain the search space to those areas containing possible design solutions that are already pleasing to the user, preventing the simulation from nding surprising forms, that is, forms that the designer did not know he or she liked.

Another component of tness evaluation that is important to architects is the kinds of activity patterns displayed by the human users of a given architectural space. Certain circulation patterns, for example, may be desired, with rapid and unobstructed circulation in some areas, and gatherings of small groups in other, more intimate zones. To check whether an evolved design does indeed facilitate such circulation patterns we need to include simulated agents that are spatially situated with respect to one another, and that can interact with the simulated walls, doors, hallways, stairs, and other components of the 3D model of a building. Space can be structured through the use of cellular automata, populations of simple computing machines placed on a tiled plane (or volume) in which spatial relations like proximity are easily captured by the sharing of edges or vertices in the tile. Traditional cellular automata, like the famous Game of Life, use the simplest type of computing machine: nite state automata capable of carrying computations without any memory. They can, for example, perform multiplications as long as they do not have to carry a number. But the restriction to memoryless automata can be removed, allowing each automaton to perform more complex tasks. When this is done the result is called a multi-agent system, a hybrid of cellular automata and object-oriented programming.13 With the right set of rules, such agents can avoid collisions and plan motion paths in a given space that take into account the opportunities and risks aorded by the physical layout of a space, as well as the movements of neighboring agents. A small population of such agents can be unleashed into every proposed design solution in a given generation, and a simple piece of software can be added to check for the emergence of the desired circulation patterns, with a score given to each candidate relative to its distance from the ideal pattern. This score can then be added to the one produced by the neural net to determine the overall tness value.

Thus, just as devising the right mapping between genotype and phenotype, between coded design problems and their solutions, involves the creativity of the designer, so implementing a good tness function demands the imaginative coupling of multiple simulation genres. Neither task can be accomplished by software engineers designing general products for general audiences, since it is only the speci c artist or designer

Manuel DeLanda USA 27 who has enough knowledge of his or her eld to make the right decisions about how to code a problem, how to unfold the possible solutions embryologically, and how to evaluate their adequacy. There is plenty of room for individual creativity in the use of evolutionary search as a form- nding procedure.

References

1 John Holland. Adaptation in Natural and Arti cial Systems. (Cambridge: M.I.T Press, 1992) p. 18. 2 Stephen P. Timoshenko. History of Strength of Materials. (Dover: New York, 1983). p. 31. 3 Frei Otto, Bodo Rash: Finding Form. (Fellbach: Axel Menges, 1995). p. 62. 4 Peter von Beulow. Using Evolutionary Algorithms to Aid Designers of Architectural Structures. In Creative Evolutionary Systems. Edited by Peter J. Bentley and David W. Corne. (San Diego: Academic Press, 2002). p. 317. 5 David E. Goldberg. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning. (Reading: Addisson-Wesley, 1989). p. 82-85. 6 David E. Goldberg. Ibid. Pages 125-130. 7 John Frazer. Creative Design and the Generative Evolutionary Paradigm. In Creative Evolution- ary Systems. Op. Cit. p. 260-262. 8 John Frazer. Ibid. p. 257. 9 John R. Koza, Forrest H. Bennett, David Andre, Martin A. Keane. Genetic Programming: Biologi- cally Inspired Computation that Exhibits Creativity in Producing Human-Competitive Results. In Creative Evolutionary Systems. Op. Cit. p. 294. 10 John R. Koza. Ibid. p. 280. 11 John R. Koza. Ibid. p. 284. 12 William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen. Connectionism and the Mind. An Introduction to Parallel Distributed Processing in Networks. (Cambridge: Basil Blackwell, 1991). p. 106-107. 13 Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell. Growing Arti cial Societies. (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1996). p. 179.

28 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Edith K. Ackermann

MIT USA Emergent Mindsets in the Digital Age: What Places for People on the go? New media ecology / New genres of engagement Where we are—the places we occupy, however briey—has everything to do with who we are (E.S. Casey. Getting back into place, 1993. P. xiii)

Many new tools and mediations are at today’s children’s avail that we couldn’t dream of when we were growing up. At the same time, the millennium generation is also facing many new challenges, which call for creative solutions. Today’s youngsters are growing up in a world increasingly shielded from nature; of ever more busy work and entertainment schedules; longer commutes; disappearing third places; reorganizing neighborhoods; and recomposed families. And yet the children are extraordinarily re- sourceful. They invent their own ways of navigating rough seas and of seizing opportunities. Much can be learned from their genres of engagement. While wary of claims that exacerbate the divide between so-called “digital natives” (people born after 1980) and what Marc Prensky refers to as “digital immigrants” (people born and raised in the post-Gutenberg / pre-digital era (Prensky, 2005)., it is fair to say that we are witnessing a major cultural shift, or epistemological mutation, the symptoms of which are only magni ed in today’s youngsters’ infatuations with all things digital1. This paper addresses six areas of change that, in our view, inform how today’s youngsters play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, dwell in place, and treat things. Together, these areas form a framework to rethink some of our own assumptions on what it means to be literate, knowledgeable, and creative, and what it takes to be so. Looking into the “digital natives” genres of engagement, and how they mediate their experience through tool-use, provides a unique window to understanding their needs, and appreciating their contributions. Our purpose is to open new venues for designers and educators to cater the native’s strengths while, at the same time, providing for what they may be missing on, if left on their own. Of particular interest for the scope of this publication are the questions: How do the “natives” nd their ways into the media-saturated jungle in which they are born? What can be done to restore a viable balance between people’s increasingly hurried lifestyles and nomadic tendencies (desire to go places, move between worlds: physical, virtual, digital) and an equally strong desire to feeling grounded, centered? Why does “being in place” and “living in our bodies” have everything to do with who we are?

The Importance of Place in People’s Lives Every child needs a place that they can call their own.

As philosopher Edward Casey puts it, “places are what humans make of space and time”, and it is that making, which is of present interest (Casey, 1993, p. xiii). Places are the homes in which we live, the distance we keep from one another, and the squares we traverse, or play in. They are the oces (or classrooms) in which we work, the vehicles we travel in (car, metro, mobile home), and all the in-between, sometimes referred to as “third places” (the mall, the café, the hotel, all the way to the schoolyard, the park, and the gym) (Oldenburg, 1989).

30 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture In his studies on “proxemics”, anthropologist Eduard Hall has provided countless examples of how human behavior is regulated by the hidden dimension of space (1969) and the silent language of time (1959), and how culture itself mediates our perceptions of, and actions in, space. People need places to dwell in, depart from, and revisit, and places, in turn, hold their own unspoken rules on how “they like to be inhabited”. They whisper to us some of the paths worth following and how to nd our ways. And it can take a while before a young child grasps the clues that set adult’s expectations in dierent settings. Young kids speak loud at church, wave at their parents during a school performance, run around in restaurants, and can stare at unfamiliar faces until they blush. Likewise, a newcomer to a culture often unknowingly infringes upon the tacit rules, and habits, that prevail in given places, or habitats (strangers may speak too loud in a café, sit too close to an other person on a bench, or leave no time for others to come forth). Early on, children develop their own views on how space is to be arranged, inhabited, and shared, and how time is to be spent (often dierent from adults), and even very young infants are alert to surrounding moods and tensions. They play a proactive role in seeking or avoiding contact to make themselves comfortable. Born with a knack to keep incoming stimuli within a viable range, human infants are experts in the art of distancing: They open up or shut down, come close or step back, and reposition themselves to optimize exchanges. As the saying goes: when a child is interested in a hammer the whole world looks like a nail. Children are also master navigators and explorers. They feel their way through things, stake their territory, and wander about to see what’s on the other side of the fence, or beyond the surface of things. The children also seek corners to rest, grounds to play, stages to perform, and safe places to return to. To conclude, at once man-made (or, in the case of nature, domesticated) and lived in, places constitute the grounds on which we stand, the springboards from where we leap, and the destinations we seek to reach2. They are the culturally mediated spatiotemporal arrangements, designed (or evolved over time) for speci c purposes, and not always used as intended.

Shared Spaces, Mediated Experience – People, Places, Props It takes a whole village to raise a child.

The contribution of thinkers like Lev Vygotsky (and others in the socio-cultural tradition) is to remind us that it takes a whole village to raise a child. And what is true of children is also true of adults. In other words, although every person in the world needs a place they can call their own, no person would survive, let alone thrive, without being a part of a wider community. Conversely, no community would live for long without the active participation of its members (Vygotsky, 1972, 1978). To be is to belong and be loved! According to Vygotsky, children (or any other learners for that matter) can operate at one level if left on their own (which he refers to as their ‘level of actual development’) but at a higher level if ‘scaolded’ by caring and knowledgeable adults, or experienced peers3. Vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development” (ZPD) constitutes that sweet-spot in- between, where the child feels challenged but can succeed with the appropriate support, or guidance. Human guidance, or relational support, in the socio-cultural tradition, refers to the mutual enrichment that comes from inhabiting a place together, and

Edith K. Ackermann USA 31 communicating with others through language (and other mediational means). Techno- logical mediation, on the other hand, refer to the tools, artifacts, and objects (mobile or ubiquitous, physical or digital) used by the inhabitants of a place to make their lives more livable, enjoyable, and convenient, both for themselves and for others. Communal places (in the sense of villages) are at once the contexts, or ambient conditions, in which we operate, the depositories of what we (and others) have left behind (those who were there before) and the interface between who we are, when and where we are, and where we want to be, in relation to others. They become ours to the extent that we feel the presence of trusted others “standing behind” us, and available whenever needed. In sum, besides people and place, humans also rely on tools to mediate their experience, and if given new tools and media, they won’t just accomplish new tasks, but the will begin to view the world in new ways. Bruno Latour and John Law have shown how the social dimension emerges from the interactions between both human and non-human actors, and is maintained through associations between things. Said otherwise, people are who they are because they belong to a patterned network of heterogeneous materials. In Law’s words: “If you took away my computer, my colleagues, my oce, my books, my desk, my telephone I wouldn’t be a sociologist writing papers, delivering lectures, and producing “knowledge”’ (Law, 1992, p 4). What may be dierent in this day and age, as compared to previous generations, is that most of us belong to more that one community or “village” at once, and that no one seems to stick to any one in particular for very long. Instead, we live our lives in- between, and we move across realms: physical, virtual, digital. We do so at ever faster pace and, more often than not, we go places without even moving our physical bodies (Abbas, 2011). These new forms of mobility, and the sense of “dematerialization” that comes with living our lives on the screen (Turkle, 2011) call at once for stronger an- chors and more exible ties, for safe harbors and new routes.

Who are the Natives? What’s to be Learned Today’s kids don’t always play, learn, or mingle the ways we expect them to. What if they did so in their own clever ways that we don’t always see?

Based on recent research ndings and our own work on children’s uses of digital technologies, we have identi ed six areas of change where there seems to be more going on than the usual generational gap. Each constitutes a dimension that, in conjunction with others, informs how the natives play and learn, and, more generally, how they see themselves, relate to others, treat things, and use place. Each captures a core generational trait that runs across ndings (Ito, & Al. 2010, Mc Arthur, ILLM, 2009, Jenkins, 2010). Together, these traits provide a framework to understand youngsters’ needs and aspirations, appreciate their contributions, and rethink some of our own assumptions about their infatuations. Dimensions are:

Plural identities / Fluid selves New ways of being - Shifting boundaries between ME / NOT ME Identity refers to distinct personal traits that remain persistent, and recognizable, over time and across contexts. More than in previous generations, today’s children seem

32 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture to exist and evolve in multiple realms: physical, virtual, and digital. Their sense of self is at once more uid and more distributed. In their play, the youngsters may take on dierent personae, or masks, which they then incorporate as a host of voices-within. While putting on a mask and moving in and out of character are not new (carnival, bal masqué, role play), digital environments have this particularity that they let you put on several hats at once! You can simultaneously exhibit dierent facets of self in dierent contexts (often shielded from one another) and in each you are taken at face value.

Sharism - New ways of relating - A growing precedence of co-creation over individual construction and personal elaboration. Another noticeable generational trait is that the “natives” don’t seem to rst think and then act, or rst try out things for themselves, and then share them with others. In- stead, they mingle before they make, and hey share before they draft! The natives are eager to collect and disseminate half-baked ideas and creations—either found or self- made—which they then bounce around, often at a fast pace, instead of keeping them to themselves. They often do so with kindred spirits, present or absent, before they seek help from knowledgeable adults, or more experienced peers.

Border-crossing - New ways of way-making and path- nding– Taking a walk on the wild side! More than in previous generations, today’s youngsters are constantly on the move. They zap between channels, roam about online, and surf between worlds (physical, virtual, digital). The “natives” may feel at home in more than one place, or not live in a place in particular. Some seek their grounds in virtual habitats or videogames. Others carry along the stu they care about (hence, ever heavier backpacks) and ask for cell- phones and other mobile devices to stay connected while on the go. Others yet, especially the children who live in split families, will request that parents buy replicas of a preferred toy, so that it awaits them whenever they will stay over. Their urge to cross borders, geographic and cultural, puts an end to the notions of home and territory, as we know them.

Literacies beyond print— New ways of saying it - Deep shifts in what it means to be literate. Write to Sp[w]rite (speakwrite). Notate to annotate. With the proliferation of digital presentation and authoring tools, the gap is slowly but surely closing between the acts reading and writing, as well as between speech and writing. Writing is an ever quicker assembly of cut-and-pasted fragments, a blending of text, images, and sounds. And reading turns into ever more meticulous acts of highlighting, earmarking, and extracting bits for later use. Annotations and editing are the new mid-ground between reading and writing. “Texting”, on the other hand, is about typing-to-speak, and since typing is slow, the youngsters invent many clever ways to speed it up or, alternatively, to make it short (using emoticons, twitting, re-inventing spelling). Lastly, today’s authors rarely start from scratch. Instead, they borrow from those who inspire and they address to those whose opinions matter. And if time permits, they will happily reassemble and remix what they found in order to add their mark (Ackermann, 2008).

Edith K. Ackermann USA 33 Enactments and simulation -Gaming and simuling - New ways of playing it safe! The use of the word “simuling” requires some explanation. Unlike simulating, which implies the faithful reproduction of an original in an attempt to mimic an existing reality (e.g., a professional ight simulator), ‘simuling’ is here meant as the creation of an alternative world, virtual or physical, that is ‘true’ or believable in its own right. More than in previous generations, today’s youngsters expect the tools they use to provide them with immediate feedback, and most important, the tools should let them undo previous moves (recover) and keep track of what they are doing (revisit). This “good- enough-mother” quality of digital tools (attentive, responsive, and forgiving) breads a culture of iteration (try again, build on top) and of playful exploration (go for it, no move is fatal) in ways that pre-digital tools hardly could. In the worlds of gaming and simuling, like in children’s pretend play, you are always given a second chance!

“Bricolage and fabrication” - Makers, Hackers, Hobbyists – New rapports to things. A bricoleur is a Jack-of-all-trades who knows to make do with whatever is at hand. Comparing the bricoleur and the engineer, Levi-Strauss portrayed the bricoleur as being adept at many tasks and putting together in new ways preexisting things that usually don’t belong (1962). More than in previous generation, today’s youngsters are bricoleurs, eager to collect, repurpose, and trade things, preferably tangible although not necessarily. Like today’s authors, they nd great pleasure in tweaking what they nd (giving it a second life or extra powers). And as they perfect their skills, our master “pro-ams” (professional amateurs) invent many new ways of making things (crafting, fabricating); making things ‘do things’ (controlling, programming); and repurpos- ing things. If given a chance (and provided with the appropriate support), today’s kids won’t merely consume and dispose. Instead, they will create and recycle. Alias, they may care!

To conclude,

While not all youth may exhibit the “neomillienial” traits as here described, the trends are signi cant enough to be worth paying attention to. This is especially needed at a time when larger societal eorts are being undertaken to address the gaps between the natives’ interests and genres of engagement and the concerns of the older folks in charge of their upbringing.

21st century Requirements4: What Support for the Natives? – Restoring Inner Balance Today’s youngsters, we have seen, entertain an altogether dierent rapport to one another and to the world—man-made or natural, digital or physical, animate or inanimate. This, in turn, brings about new ways of being, thinking and doing--and new expectations that ideas and artifacts can be borrowed, re-purposed, and recycled, and that the tools we use should be responsive and forgiving. Questions remain: How to

34 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture live a life in-between and still feel rooted and centered? How to stay connected while on the go? What to carry along or leave behind? How to share and with whom? What does it mean to settle in a place that is anonymous, temporary, not yours. While emerging practices, mindsets, and lifestyles hold great potential they also breed new tensions that call for re-adjustment. Boldly put, there may be a price to be paid for being constantly on the go yet without moving one’s body, and perpetually connected yet out of touch! In what follows, we shift focus from what the natives bring to the table in order to what they may be missing on, if left drifting on their own. For each of the generational traits previously identi ed, we highlight a contrasting urge, or compensatory strategy, that is already observable for those who know how to listen, and the importance of which cannot be under-estimated.

Plural identities vs located self / Fluid selves vs feeling centered) Fluid selves may foster empathy, yet for a person to feel whole also requires that she be centered, and nd her voice. In the cultural psychology of self, Cearan Benson welcomes a certain containment of what he calls the “located self”, arguing that the primary function of the self is to orient and eciently stabilize a person’s erring within the ux of ever changing experience (Benson, 1993, p. 4) One of the biggest challenges for today’s youngsters is to remain true to who they are (keep their identities), and stand behind their ideas as they are moving in and out of character, and putting on dierent masks.

Sharism – Connected vs dependent / Attached vs detached In today’s participatory cultures, being in it together seems more important than doing it yourself (from DIY to DIT) and, as a consequence, the nature of social formations and group loyalties are changing fast: Groups are easy to start and sustain. Yet they are also more volatile and tend dissolve faster (Jenkins, 2010). This in turn changes how the youngsters think about personal accountability and negotiate the terms of their commitments. Lastly, a culture of Sharism, like any consensual group, calls for trust- worthy allies, and, while forthcoming and warm, it tends to blur the line between intimate, private and public. Hence the need to learn who to let in on what, and who better to let out!

Border-crossing - Mobile vs grounded / Dislocated vs rooted / Erring vs anchored Whether chosen or forced upon, the displacements and relocations characteristic of today’s youngsters’ lifestyles have a profound impact on how they transit and settle, on what they bring along or leave behind, what they choose to remember or forget, and when (and with whom) to engage or keep at a distance (Kristeva, 1991). A big challenge for the millennium generation is to nd new ways of reconciling their desire of evasion and their need to remain securely attached.

Edith K. Ackermann USA 35 Literacies beyond print - Cut-and-paste vs. authoring / Borrow and pass on vs create and own One of the biggest problem among educators these days is to come to grips with what they conceive of as students’ plagiarism: Today’s youngsters’ tendencies to pick-up and pass-on ready-made imports, without taking the time to get mind- fully engaged (Langer, 1997), let alone add value to what they borrow! It is our view that borrowing and addressing are quite alright as long as: 1) the incoming bits are “massaged” long enough to become an expression of who we are, and 2) the borrowed sources are recognized, mentioned, and brought to a next step through our intervention.

Gaming, simuling - Make it up vs Play it out Moving in and out of pretense - Most children are quick to know when something is for good or for fun. And they usually won’t mistake an invitation into fantasyland for the “real” thing. Instead, they see pretense as an opportunity to play out otherwise ‘dangerous’ ideas on make-believe ground, which in turn allows them to then return to “real life” better prepared, refreshed, and stronger. This said, today’s culture of simu- lacra, as exhibited in some reality shows, docudramas, and subliminal ad campaigns (including political self-promotion ads) can be confusing—especially if no readable clues are given on just how fake or truthful they are. Today’s kids need the space-time to critically reect on what they are made to believe by whom, for what purpose, through which medium.

Making/ Hacking / Crafting - Do it fast vs Do it well! Starting from scratch vs. Composing with what’s there. While digital technologies open up new possibilities to breakdown objects into subparts and reassemble them in an attempt to curtail, or recuperate from this breakdown, hacking alone won’t make for a culture of caring (Sennett, 2008). In other words, even “doers” can be careless if “hurried”: Things well done require that one slows down, dwells in, and composes with what’s there. Craftmanship, in the digital age, has everything to do with today’s youngsters’ willingness and abilities to develop an “intelligent hand” at the service of a “grounded self” and a “playful mind”. Craftsmanship, to Sennett, is an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake (Sennett, 2008. p. 9).5

Guidelines for Educators and Designers: From a Fragmented Field to a Learning Ecology New environmental qualities are needed to make for the unsettling consequences of both desired and imposed physical as well as mental “displacements”. By “displacements, I here mean the shifting habits, habitats, and the sense of disconnect (estrangement, detachment) that emerge from leading ever more nomadic lives (Abbas, 2011). It comes as no surprise, then, that increasing numbers of people are already actively reclaiming their bodies, and territories, in a quest to live a fuller life. And it is not just the natives, but the immigrants themselves, who come to rally under a new common call (I put words in the neo-native’s mouths):

36 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Make me able to explore and show my creative skills locally, globally, anytime, anywhere but please don’t forget: I do have a body, and I like to use it! I’m exuberant! I’m physical: so, let me unleash my imagination (transport, teleport me). but also make me touch, feel, and move (ground me)!

This new form of collective wisdom, the signs of which are popping up everywhere, is likely to turn the tide faster than we think. Today’s natives, ironically, are often more steeped in the concrete, ecologically sound, and caring for the grounds on which we stand.

Digital natives to Digital wisdom6 - Reclaiming the body, Rethinking the territory We think the ways we thing because we have the bodies that we have, and live in the world in which we live (Lako and Johnson, 1980)

People of all ages and walks of life need places to dwell, traverse, furbish, and get lost and found again. They need occasions to gather and disperse, and the time for things well done. And more than ever, people need to use their bodies for more than just “mousing” their avatars around in second-life, driving cars to go places, or taking the escalator to go to the gym! No doubt, roaming about in cyberspace, or talking to friends on Facebook, can be enjoyable and, in many cases, is as bene cial as hanging out in the street. Likewise, following beaten paths feels dierent than venturing into the unknown, with no possibility of return, and doing so on- or o line has dierent risks attached. Each makes for a unique experience. While in today’s new media ecologies there is place for any combination of the above, it is the wisdom of not getting struck a single mode, or genre of engagement, that matters7. The concept of learning ecology, as de ned Uri Bronfenbrenner, oers a useful framework for the design of educational setting, and to assess the ambient qualities needed to foster everyone’s physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing, especially in times of uncertainty. Bronfenbrenner called his theory “bio-ecological systems theory” to emphasize the notion that, indeed, a child’s body itself is a primary environment that fuels her development (Bronfenbrenner, 2004).. Our bodies are our “closest” life support system, mobility system, and mediation: that with which, and through which, we perceive and interact with our world. To study a person’s development then, we must look not only at her immediate environment (personalized and relational interactions), but consider the well-being of her mind/body (health, nutrition, exercise) as well as the impact of the larger, more remote, environmental conditions that aect our physical, mental, and emotional well-being ( elds of forces that propagate through distributed networks of inuences). What is true of the growing child is equally true of the learning adult. Bonfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model comprises 4 layers, or circles of inuences, including a temporal dimension, which form a tightly interwoven system:

1. The microsystem (the layer closest to the person includes relationships and interactions with the immediate surrounding, including her body). 2. The mesosystem (one step removed, enables the child to distinguish between rst- hand interactions, or close relationships).

Edith K. Ackermann USA 37 3. The exosystem (the larger social/relational and build/natural environments, in which we are embedded—yet have no direct control over) 4. The macrosystem (the outermost layer comprised of cultural values, customs, and laws, whose eects have a cascading inuence throughout the other layers. 5. The chronosystem –encompasses the dimension of time, and transitions over time. Inuences at this level can be external, such as the timing of a parent’s illness, or internal, such as the physiological changes that occur during puberty. They can be sudden or progressive, cyclic or incremental.

Important in Bronfenbrenner’s model are the notions that: (1) bi-directional inuences at the micro-layer are strongest and have the greatest impact on the growing child; (2) mutual inuences can be direct or indirect, and their impact mastered dierently over time; and (3) interactions at the outer levels, while out of our control, still impact us very directly.

To Conclude In recent years, ecological approaches to human development have regained mo- mentum, which comes as no surprise at a time when educators and policy makers are tackling highly complex issues, such as the balance of needs and resources, the uses of digital media and technologies, and the need to provide new venues and opportunities for students’ academic success, youth development, and lifelong learning (Herr- Stephenson, Rhoten, Perkel, & Sims, 2011). It is our belief that a host of new initiatives, programs, and institutions will need to be developed, including places, times, and occasions for incidental learning (that are not intentionally designed to teach, at least in the didactic sense of the term). And existing programs will have to be readjusted to t the needs of all learners, everywhere, and all the time. The role of digital media and technologies will be signi cant, but more than anything else it is the learner’s physical and mental health and wellbeing that will become a priority. Learning, in the future, will be about the art of living as much as the science of learning, long-term bene ts as much as short-term achievements, and sustainability beyond development. The gardener’s metaphor, as exampli ed in Alan Kay’s Vivarium Project will prevail over the information-processing paradigm, still dominant in educational parlance8.

A “vivarium,” in Kay’s sense, is an enclosure or reserve, especially designed for keeping plants and animals alive and thriving in their “natural” habitat (“natural” is not here meant in opposition to the built but as a viable niche, or ecosystem, for its inhabitants). The role of the children and researchers in the project was to observe and study

38 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture what makes [and how to make] their vivarium a “better place” for its dwellers! Initially launched in the eighties to gain insights into the design of human-machine interfaces, the project diers from others of its kind (olpc, LOGO, Microworlds) in that the children were working in a real “augmented garden”. Most important, Kay didn’t just use the gardening metaphor as an entry point to using computers, but the computer, and many other tools, as a means to keep the garden alive And to Alan a primary school seemed an excellent choice because younger children are still “in their bodies”, steeped in the here and now, and open to their senses. Their thinking is not yet bound by adult certainties and conventions. It is also Alan, working with children, who reminded us of the obvious, regarding digital technologies: “we adults call technology any tool that was invented – after I am born : ) Not so for kids! One could write an entire new essay, just on that!

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Maria Voyatzaki, Constantin Spiridonidis, Marianthi Liapi and Kostis Oungrinis, and the participants in the 2011 “sense[res]ponsive environments for children” workshop, in Chania, Greece. I extend my thank to Yasmine Abbas, Cearan Benson, and Sherry Turkle, as well as to my colleagues from the LEGO Learning Institutes, Exploratorium Science Museum, and AIANY, whose works are an inspiration to my thinking about people and places.

Notes

1 We call the changes “epistemic” because they question how pre-digital cultures have come to de ne knowledge and to think about thinking itself, and how their views on how to promote everyone’s potentials are projected on those who don’t think like them! 2 Cearan Benson de nes place as a “humanized personalized space”, and he uses the term place- time to indicate that “in personal and collective memory certain places are inexorably constituted by their […] connections with, and embodiement of, certain moments in experiential time […] Place situates time by giving it a local habitation. Time arises from places and passes between them (Benson, 1993. p. 6). 3 Scaolding is about supporting learners to achieve beyond existing capabilities by giving them a ‘step up’ through questions, pointers, or encouragement, rather than direct instruction. Ultimately, the learner should reach a point where they wont need the scaolding support. In this case, the mere knowledge, or perception, that there are trusted others on whom one can rely on, becomes enough to support self-reliance. 4 There is much talk about 21st century skills and standards these days, and much research is being fueled into rede ning what today’s youngsters ought to know, or learn, in order to become active and successful players in tomorrow’s world (Jenkins, 2009; Weigel, James & Gardner, 2009). While important, such guidelines often emerge from adult projections and as a result, they tend to downplay what the youngsters themselves are contributing. As mentioned earlier, our focus as a psychologist is on the emergent traits, as exhibited by the natives, more than on adult projections. 5 The craftsman establishes an intimate connection between head, eyes, hands, and tools. And as he perfects his art, the materials at hand speak back to him through their resistances, ambi- guities, and by the ways they change as circumstances change. An enlightened craftsman is one who falls in love with the materials and becomes so uent in using his tools that he feels at one with them. According to Sennett, such appreciation and uency are in no way contrary

Edith K. Ackermann USA 39 to play, since it is in play that we nd the source of the dialogue the craftsman conducts with materials, such as clay, wood, or glass. 6 We borrow this title from Prensky’s latest book of the same name, published by Corvin, 2011 7 The term “new media ecology” refers to environments in which traditional tools and mediations, intersect with, are augmented by, and in some cases mimic or invert, their digital counterpart. “Genres of engagement” refer to they ways the digital natives (and immigrants) navigate, stake, inhabit and furbish today’s hybrid media environments—with the assumption that no one ever lives in one realm, mode, or channel, alone. Instead, we all move between realms, physical/virtual/digital all. 8 For more on the history of the Vivarium Project, visit http://www.beanblossom.in.us/larryy/ VivHist.html

Bibliography

Abbas, Y. (2011) Le Néo-Nomadisme: Mobilités partage, Transformations Identitaires et Urbaines. Editions FYP (France). Ackermann, E. (2008). “Notation chez l’enfant : Du Graphique au numérique”. In Apprendre demain: Sciences cognitives et éducation à l’ère numérique (Eds. Andler, D., Guerry, B). Paris: Hatier. (p. 77-94). Benson, C. (2001) The cultural Psychology of Self. London & New York: Routledge. Bronfenbrenner, U., (2004) Making Human Beings Human: Bioecological Perspectives on Human Development. Sage Publications. Casey, E.S. (1993) Getting back into place: Toward a renewed understanding of the place-world. Bloom- ington, Indiana University Press. Herr-Stephenson, Rhoten, Perkel, and Sims (2011). Digital media and technology in afterschool programs, libraries, and museums. The MIT Press. Ito. M. & Al. (2010). Hanging Out, Messing Aroung, Geeking Out. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press. Jenkins, H. (2010), “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century.” White paper. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Kristeva, J. (1991) Strangers to Ourselves. New York: Colombia University Press. Lako G. and Johnson, M. (1980) Metaphors we live by. Chicago & London. University of Chicago Press. Langer, E. (1997). The power of mindful learning. Cambridge, MA. Perseus Books. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (1992). Notes on the theory of the actor network. Systems Practice (p. 379-393). Levi Strauss (1962). La pensée sauvage (in English: the savage mind, 1966). Oldenburg, R. (1989). The Great Good Place. New York: Paragon House. Prensky, M. (2005).”Don’t bother me mom: I am learning!” New York Paragon house. Sennett, R. (2008) The craftsman. Yale University Press. Turkle. S. (2011) Alone Together. New York: Basic Books. Vygotsky, L. S. (1962) Thought and Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Weigel, M.; James, C.; Gardner, H (2009) Learning: Peering Backward and Looking Forward in the Digital Era. The International Journal of Learning and Media, Volume 1, Number 1, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.

40 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Antonino Saggio

Sapienza University of Rome Italy GreenBodies Give me an Ampoule and I will Live This essay summarizes my research of the last ve years and is projected to become the next chapter of my last EAAE-ENHSA keynote speech delivered ve years ago.1 When I delivered that speech according to my usual practice, I created a hidden link, which expanded the lecture so that the audience could see the images, read the texts, access further pages and,when the conference was over – listen to the audio, all from this one link.2 This use of the Internet is relevant because content and container are interwoven. If I want to speak about processes, interconnections, ecological systematic thinking and IT how can I do it with a linear (and private) slide presentation? We are on the web; let’s share, and particularly use the inner philosophy of electronics: Interconnections.3 The 2005 keynote was entitled “Give me a cord and I will build.... Construction, Eth- ics, Geometry and Information Technology”.4 This one is entitled “Green Bodies. Give Me an Ampoule...and I Will Live. Rethinking the human: Ecosystems for today’s architectures.” It is evident that key words have shifted from: “construction,” “ethics” and “information technology” to “ecosystems” and “green bodies.” The two main key words have also changed. “Cord,” which was used then as a symbol of geometry and construction and at the same time as the instrument to build; has transmuted into: “Ampoule” as the symbol of life and at the same time as the instrument with which to create ecosystems.

The title “Give Me an Ampoule...and I Will Live” should begin to create the mental framework in which we are moving in this essay. I apologize for the length and complexity of some passages. It is more challenging to go along new lines of research than to present well established ones. This essay is organized in seven parts. Each part is a “city” which we can inhabit for all our scienti c life or just look at briey from an airplane. Nevertheless, all seven cities are part of a common territory. It is a system of relationships to facilitate the birth of design ideas, which are relevant to our topic. Here are the seven parts of the talk:

1. Hybridization between Systems of Architecture and Systems of Nature. 2. Parallel Lines Do Meet. The Awareness of Limited Resources. 3. Processes, not Objects. 4. Synergy. Vernadsky + Buckminster Fuller = John Allen’s Scienti c Experiment. 5. Biosphere 2 and Closed systems. 6. Current researches. 7. Principles of Green Bodies.

Hybridization between Systems of Architecture and Systems of Nature The idea of today is that architecture must become a reactive landscape, complex, animated and alive in a process of combination with other elements of technology and of the environment. The aspect of hybridizing the natural and the arti cial is thus moving towards the center of the conception of architecture nowadays.

42 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The nature intended in this concept is no longer oral or “art nouveau-style;” neither is it the nature of the masters of Organic Architecture, counterpoint to the mechanical and industrial world. Current concepts of nature have in fact become much more complex, much more dicult, much more “hidden.” This nature is also investigated by architects and designers with an anti-romantic eye through the formalisms of contemporary science (fractals, DNA, atoms, the leaps of an expanding universe, the relationship between life and matter, topological geometry, animated forms), in other words, through the categories of complexity. Hidden in this context are the gures of ows, the wave, whirlpools, crevasses and liquid crystals; uidity becomes the keyword. It describes the constant mutation of information and places architecture face-to-face with the most advanced research frontiers, from biology to engineering, to the new fertile areas of superimposition such as morphogenesis, bioengineering or biotechnology. IT endows architecture with reactive systems capable of simulating types of behavior in nature, in reacting to climate, usage ows and ultimately also emotional behavior, and so oers a new phase of esthetic research.

The approach described above, opens the path to dierent research. In order to better understand the idea of hybridization between architecture and nature, I went back to a moment in which there did not exist separations between man and land, construction and nature, rational and magical. It was a moment in which the interconnections among things were more important than the things per se. The Etruscans had an integral, magical, heuristic relation with nature. Vie Cave are the most relevant examples of this attitude. They are long, human-excavated proces- sional streets down which the dead were brought to sepulture. At the same time, the Vie Caves were used to celebrate nature. For the Etruscans, nature speaks. She lives and breathes in a sphere shared with all the other creatures. Nature is alive. Humans, animals and land were interrelated, interconnected; they were part of the same “system.” The governing forces of this system could not be explained by “analytical” reductionist means but only by “ecological” ones (i.e. based on interconnections, therefore antiscienti c from a positivist, reductionist, analytical point of view). This is the central concept derived from this research path. Hybridization is not only a “formal” device; it is rooted in profound ecological thinking. It is an action that is part of an “ecosystem.” From a more direct and “architectural” point of view, Etruscan is the civilization of the “section,” because it is the section that celebrates the marriage between the earth and human artifacts. The “plan” is the symbol (and the instrument) of the Roman military and expan- sionist attitude. If the plan is the symbol (and the instrument!) of rational domination, the section is the symbol/instrument of ecological inhabitation. If Etruscans hybridized architecture and nature through section, the Romans “posed” independent objects on the land: Aqueducts, streets, and bridges.

Antonino Saggio Italy 43 Later on, towards the beginning of the nineteenth century all the world of mechanical arti ciality related to the Industrial Revolution developed that “rational” idea of domination and in nitive conquest much further.

If an “ecosystems” approach to architecture should take place, then architecture must belong simultaneously to the land and to the cloud (i.e., Information Technology). This interconnection is the crisis and the challenge in front of us.

The proposal for a Museum for Francesco Borromini in Rome5 is a good example of how these ideas of Land, Architecture and IT may take shape today. This nal thesis starts from the notion that “Modernity is what turns crisis into a value and gives rise to an aesthetics of rupture.”6 The crisis that precipitated this project was the fracture provoked by a thruway in the old historical park of Villa Pamphilj. From historical research, the presence of Francesco Borromini emerged in the planning and design of the villa. The Doria Pamphiljs were indeed his clients for the Piazza Navona Palace in downtown Rome. From the Borromini presence emerged the brief: A mixed use project that, as a driving force, proposes a Museum dedicated to Roman Baroque architecture - MOB. The project’s development was based on the use of a diagram inspired by one of Borromini’s ceilings. It was an inspired choice. As the ceiling lines “connect” the different walls of Cappella dei Magi, in Rome, the same family of lines may connect the opposite sites of the park. Borromini’s drawing was pulled and stretched to adapt to the site that had been cut by the thruway. The project idea developed as a membrane structure, half natural and half arti cial that was modeled along the diagram’s lines. The architecture is indeed a hybrid: Building, land, bridge and nature at the same time. This architecture belongs, at the same time, to the Clouds of Information Technology.

In this process of hybridization the catalyst role is, of course, that of Infor- mation Technology that is the key for an entire group of connected reasons. In the rst place, the information era provides an overall dierent model of the city and urban landscape, as well as in part the surrounding territory that has mixed uses with overlapping ows, open 24 hours a day for production, leisure, social, and residential activities, where natural and arti cial elements are woven together with the combination of functions and uses. In the second place, information technology supplies the “mathematical models” to investigate the chemical, physical, biological, and geological complexity of nature. These simulation models permit structuring new relationships in projects that consider reasoning and dynamics. In this process, information technology supplies the essential tools for rst creating, then designing, and nally constructing designs conceived with these complex systemic approaches. In the third place, information technology endows architecture with reactive systems capable of simulating natural behavior in their reaction to weather, ows and usage, as well as to ultimately emotional behavior, and

44 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture thus oers a new phase of investigation into a concept of landscape that is not just “simulated” in architecture but actually and physically represents several aspects. This means de ning an environment and an architecture that not only evoke the formative rules of landscape and nature, but also propose environments capable of interacting and evolving. In this context, information technology enters directly into the ber itself of new buildings, rst by digitally designing them, and later building them using new construction techniques, but above all by exploiting dynamic electronic interconnections to create environments that react to variations in real situations and ows to form a sort of IT landscape in new buildings.7

Not only is IT indispensable in the process of ideation and of taking shape of many projects today; in many cases the architecture incorporates contemporary electronic technologies to actively partner in the environment. In the case of MOB, the edi ce transforms and puri es the air, heavily polluted by the passage of cars underneath it. The building becomes active and can be seen as an alive being.

Among the research work produced by NitroSaggio is the built prototype of “A New Primitive Hut.” This is a good example of an architecture that creates a hybrid half natural and half electronic environment. The movement of the person in this new “hut” molds the environment by changing interactively the sound. In this way, “the occupant shapes information while he/she moves demonstrating that the current idea of space ’is’ also informational.” 8

Parallel Lines do Meet The Concept of Limited Resources The idea of the city for the Functionalist CIAM (the International Congress of Modern Architecture) evoked a city in constant centrifugal movement as if it were a ywheel that could “youthfully” and mechanically expand, absorbing pieces of the surrounding territory. We know this model has entered a crisis period over the past few decades for a whole range of reasons, not the least the awareness of the limited nature of resources and the birth of an ecological consciousness. As we have mentioned, the presence of the information era has contributed greatly to this because the change in the production model (robotization, miniaturization, the decentralization of heavy, polluting industries) creates new opportunities and frees up resources. In particular, the great industrial areas becoming available create the possibility of an epochal reclamation project. Reclamation is an essential key word here since green spaces, nature, and park facilities can now be introduced into areas frequently lled with high-density construction. At the same time, large natural areas must be conserved and respected and not eroded in nitely by the undierentiated expansion of new suburbs even if they are supplied with wireless broadband. More speci cally, if CIAM’s idea of nature was “green,” i.e., something that resembled a patchwork on a plane where green zones contrasted with residential, industrial, or oce areas, the modern concept is one of land-

Antonino Saggio Italy 45 scape (cf. Landscape); in other words, a much more complex idea that sees nature and constructed areas “together,” a constant hybridization between the formative rules of the urban landscape and the architecture itself of buildings. To sum up, architecture and urban planning themselves make up today’s landscape. Architecture takes what it does not have, absorbs it, transforms it, makes it its own, and reconstructs a new idea of nature.9

We do not believe in the presence of unlimited resources and therefore architecture and the city cannot inde nitely expand. The vision of the never-ending railways at the conquest of the Far West or of the Urban highway extended towards the horizon shaped a long phase of architecture and urbanism. It was an idea still embodied in the Deconstructivist movement of the eighties and the nineties. You may recall from Between Zero to In nity by Daniel Libeskind, for example.

To think about ecosystems for today’s architecture I propose another formula, another vision: instead of “From Zero to In nity” I propose: “Parallel lines do meet”.

We have to change our point of view once again. “Parallel lines do meet,” means that we live in a closed system with limited resources. We do not live in the never-ending at plateau of Euclidian math, but in the curvilinear, negotiable topological world of planet earth! We “are” in this closed system, we are in this planet, and in planet earth parallel lines meet. Not only are we in a world of limited resources, we are also in a world in which our actions can kill or mend the world. If we continue to perforate the earth, for example, it is rather clear that we are going to kill it at the end. It is Earth’s crust not only as a metaphor: Just think of the “cycle” of petroleum. But at the same time we can think of actions that can mend, ameliorate, and be compatible. And Architecture must be with science at the forefront of this search.

Systems: Processes not Objects The idea of the functionalist city was implicitly tied to the idea of the assembly line that organized a series of operations to be performed se- quentially so as to achieve eciency in the production cycle. Each phase was constantly perfected and optimized to then move onto a subsequent phase. But the concept of “before and after,” “cause and eect,” “if … then,” related to mechanized, serial production has now been replaced by a concept of simultaneous processes, subdivision of cycles, the presence of alternatives, in other words of “what...if.” The network that diuses, interrelates, interconnects, and makes the development of processes both global and local has inevitably replaced the gure of the line. The aim of the production system is no longer the uniformity and ho- mogeneity of the nal result (guaranteed by constantly greater improvement in the various production phases) but exactly the opposite. It is the

46 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture personalization of the product based on individually activating several different connections each time in the informational network.10

We want to focus on issues related to education and curricula. Up to the recent past, architecture was expected to produce primarily artifacts, i.e., objects. To produce objects in the industrial era, the assembly line was the way to go and the owchart, the model from industrial production, moved to education. Accordingly, teaching was chopped in areas and subareas following the same principle used for the industrial production. But if “We have to change at lot,” as professors Spiridonidis and Voyat- zaki stated, and if we want the address the issue of Ecosystems, we have to modify that.

We have to start addressing teaching through the development of “processes” and not “objects.” Electronic and ecological thinking are both based on interconnections. Architecture should not produce one “object” but a series of methods to implement relationships and families of solutions.

Therefore, scripting and parametric design, so popular in these days, are not only a fashion, they are rooted in this shift from object to process! It is a Copernican revolution. This brings us to two other rather important factors of change. The rst one is that contemporary teaching must be more oriented towards the development of “Projects.” In a world dominated by information, and with extremely easy access to knowledge, what becomes critical are the motivation, the methodology and the instruments to study. If we create projects that motivate students by their inner strength and necessity, if we teach how to structure the search of information, if we provide the basic guidelines to the direction in which to look and in the complexity behind it, students will educate themselves. Recently this pedagogy of “teaching by projects” has been proven highly successful.11 The other interesting factor of modi cation is what we call, in our teaching jargon, “maratonda.” This reverses the old “in-out” linear ow and substitutes a circular, cyclical “in-out-in” process which is attentive to the use and re-use of resources. Here is one example. This project is called “Place Less. From Playground to Urban- ground: Monitoring and recycling”12 and the crisis was the condition of homelessness in Rome, the pollution and the way to have more intelligent and creative tourism for the young. Well, you may think that we are crazy. How can all these three elements be put together? The solution was rather interesting. The students designed a little mobile device (car, chart and bicycle at the same time) that had dierent positions. The user can cycle, collect, trash, recycle, and check the pollution or just tour. The mobile device can be oered to homeless or poor people to earn some extra money, or can be rented. The device has also a place to rest in a sort of urban park that is organized as movable landscape.

We do not ask, “design a vehicle for the homeless.” We frame knowledge and challenges; we provide methods and instruments. The students nd “a crisis.” We work with them to shape the concept, articu-

Antonino Saggio Italy 47 late the brief, and develop the project. Pedagogically, students “do not learn by doing” in Deweyan terms, but rather “learn by necessity and by desire”.

In this process students face a number of issues, study dierent matters, and develop speci c skills. This example refers to a class based on the relationship between IT and Architecture. When a more direct architectural design is required, other approaches are developed, but we cannot address them here for lack of time.13

Synergy Vernadsky + Buckminster Fuller = John Allen’s Scienti c Experiment Now let’s go to the more typical cultural-informative part of the conference. I want briey to talk about a fundamental project for the creation of Ecosystems for Today’s Architectures. In 2006 I met John Allen, the inventor of the scienti c project Biosphere 2. I consider myself lucky because I entered the ecological world with one of the top ecologists. Through Allen I understood things that I could not get “just” studying the literature. What follows are some of these ndings. Let me underline one of the most important principles of ecological and systematic thinking: synergy. I understand synergy as “biological mathematics.” While in alge- braic mathematics 1+1 = 2, in Synergy 1+1 can make 3 or 4 or 5 or -1 - 2. If the minimum principle of synergy applies than 1+1 equals 3.

Now, 1 + 1 = 3 is a good formula of “creativity.” Creativity is a term that applies to creative thinking as well as to the most creative action of all: The “creation” of life.

Is it not true that in sexual reproduction 1+1 makes 3? Starting to think in these terms opens new doors indeed. For example, architecture is one of the greatest synergies one can think of. We take rough materials and by putting them together we increase the value of the product. We cannot calculate the “cost” without algebra, but we cannot understand “the value” without a feeling of the synergetic process we went through to create it. We create energy, to a level that is impossible to create with a normal sum. John Allen created an incredible synergy between two men. The two men were, on one side, Buckminster Fuller, and on the other Vladimir Vernadsky. Allen, by 1971, was already calling his ranch in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Synergia Ranch. It was his vision of life and also a homage to the chapter “Synergy” dedicated to the subject by R. Buckminster Fuller in his coeval volume Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Nowadays, interest in Buckminster Fuller has been revived but for my generation he was almost completely cut out, as if he did not exist. He was considered a strange, humanistic engineering fellow who wanted to put humans and technology together! Allen and Buckminster Fuller had a strong relationship in the last phase of the latter’s life and many ideas took form. His book Operating Manual ... is a fundamental book, some kind of “manifesto” of ecological thinking. It is a small book, important to

48 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture read, where several ideas are interconnect. Crucial is the idea of nite resources and of closed system: The Spaceship earth of the title of the book. Second, is the need for being interdisciplinary, a concept that Bucky takes from the culture of sea people. Sea people must know everything, from stars to winds, to un- derwater rocks, to geography and animals, to culture habits, religions and languages. Buckminster Fuller dedicates fantastic pages to pirates. Let us not forget, on the other side, that the technology for “the rest of us,” that which we are using today, was created by a small group of people at Apple Cupertino under a pirate ag. So the idea of “energy” created by an interdisciplinary group of people “closed” in Renaissance Florence or in Apple’s “Texaco Towers” applies quite well to Bucky’s thinking. Allen underlined some aspects of Buckminster Fuller’s method, through an algorithm that shows a method to have a synergetic approach. Here is the citation:

If you take the synergetic overall approach then proceed to a comprehensive anticipatory design; if you’ve started on this, then make detailed macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive studies; if these are completed, then proceed to do more with less; ephemeralize; if you’ve ephemeralized, then computerize to check rationality and to communicate; if you’ve computerized then check if you’ve increased the wealth of all involved. (...)This algorithm constitutes his greatest contribution to dealing with the challenges coming toward humanity in the next century, a time of great planetary troubles, which he metaphorically referred to as humanity’s nal examination.14

Do not forget therefore these ve steps: 1. Comprehensive design (“have the whole”), 2. Macro and mini tests, 3. Do more with less, 4. Computerize and 5. Assure the increased value! If there is an indispensable point of reference for Ecosystems for Today’s Architectures, it is represented by Buckminster Fuller.

And here comes the second man whose contribution allowed Allen’s synergetic invention:

Vladimir Vernadsky (Russian: 1863 – 1945) was a Ukrainian Soviet mineral- ogist and geochemist who is considered one of the founders of geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and of radiogeology. His ideas of Noosphere were an important contribution to Russian cosmism. He also founded the National Academy of Science of Ukraine. He is most noted for his 1926 book The Biosphere in which he inadvertently worked to popularize Eduard Suess’ 1885 term biosphere, by hypothesizing that life is the geological force that shapes the earth. In 1943 he was awarded the Stalin Prize.15

Antonino Saggio Italy 49 We will talk about Biosphere later, for now let’s notice that Russians - via Vernadsky - use the word “cosmos” while Americans use the word “space.” The dierence is important because the idea of Cosmos underlines that forces “are together,” they are interconnected and interrelated. Technically, Vernadsky was the rst to prove that “oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere result from biological processes.” 16 This nding gives shape to the development of the concept that the World can be seen as a series of interlocking spheres. They belong, for Vernadsky, to the sphere of life (which is of course called “Biosphere”), to the sphere of Geochemistry, to those spheres of cultural knowledge and technology.

If cosmos is “solid,” space is “empty”. If cosmos is regulated by complex and probabilistic interrelationships, the absolute Newtonian laws of physics can govern space, if space implies the possibility of an unlimited expansion; Cosmos implies the necessity of the coexistence of dierent forces.

Now, not only animal behavior inuences the inanimate sphere but cultural and technological ones inuence the biosphere. This is the crucial aspect of this approach. As Allen clearly underlined to me, in an ecological approach there is no such thing as the environment on the one hand, and man on the other. The concept of environment is anti-ecological by de nition, whilst ecology is about the interconnections!

John Allen, a geologist like Vernadsky, and at the same a personality profoundly connected to literature, put together the operative, profound, revolutionary, noncon- formist, holistic thought of Bucky and his own geodetic technique with a philosophy stemming from farfetched and, in fact, politically opposed culture in the era of the USA-USSR Cold War. Vernadsky achieved cosmic reasoning and saw geological, biological, atmospheric and human phenomena as an interacting whole of forces and forms. After the construction and invention of the Synergia ranch, Allen built a ship, following Bucky’s understanding of the interdisciplinary practices of sea people. Called the Heraclitus, the vessel has since 1974 been circumnavigating the world collecting data from all its dierent spheres. But the great achievement of Allen and his Ecotech- nics group was the ideation in the eighties (after a series of interdisciplinary conferences, and the construction of other preliminary projects) of Biosphere 2: a great, probably the greatest and most interesting ecological experiment ever built.

Biosphere 2 is a 3.14-acre (12,700 m2) structure originally built to be an arti cial, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona (USA) by Space Biosphere Ventures, a joint venture whose principal ocers were John P. Allen, inventor and Executive Director, and Margret Augustine, CEO. Constructed between 1987 and 1991, it was used to explore the complex web of interactions within life systems in a structure that included ve areas based on natural biomes and an agricultural area and human living/ working space to study the interactions between humans, farming and technology with the rest of nature. [2] It also explored the possible use of closed biospheres in space colonization, and allowed the study and manipulation of a biosphere without harming Earth.17

50 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Biosphere 2 has little to share with the greenhouses that have been built around the world - the most famous one being the Eden Projectin Cornwall, Great Britain by Ni- cholas Grimshaw. These projects can be considered very interesting from an architectural point of view, but they are not “ecosystems,” they are not “scienti c experiments:” Biosphere 2 is dierent! It was built as an experiment and it did work. Not only were dozens of patents on dierent issues created, but also Biosphere 2 was fully tested. Eight people lived in this completely closed system not for one but two years!

Biosphere II and the Closed System At the core of this project there was the ingenious intuition that the idea of the biosphere as promulgated by Vernadsky could be combined with the ecological observation and technical inventions of Fuller. Biosphere 2 was thus built in 1991 at Oracle in the desert near Tucson, Arizona, and still arms itself as an extraordinary work of both engineering and ecological science. Allen, assisted by a team of numerous consultants, of whom the architect Margaret Augustine and the engineer William Dempster should especially be remembered, so realized a project according to the image and likeness of the terrestrial biosphere that an interacting whole of geological, ecological and human forces formed of seven biomes (ecologically balanced systems) could serve to study systematic phenomena. Biosphere 2 was based on these dynamically balanced systems where carefully studied percentages of plants, microbes, water, animals and air were in a cycle of continuous regeneration. Through complex research with many experts specializing in dierent areas, the seven biomes were thus determined (from the Amazon forest to the Great Coral Reef, from the anthropological Mediterranean environment to the same ocean’s marine environment) all housed within great glass paneled surfaces that covered an area of more than a hectare. Living and relaxation areas and laboratories were also integrated into the structure. The experiment allowed, among other things, the patenting of various systems and technologies that brought up to 100% the recycling of water, human and animal waste as well as the autonomous generation of food and a minimum loss of air inside the great closed environment. Eight scientists, including Mark Nelson and Ray Walford, lived sealed up in this environment for two years, experimenting with its eciency. After this period, Biosphere 2 was conceded to Columbia University and then to the University of Arizona that modi ed its structure. Nonetheless, this extraordinary event marked the basis of a possible systematic development of architecture, an architecture that need not necessarily be connected to infrastructural networks but is autonomous with regard to its own vital and energetic cycle.18

This is a picture of scientist, Dr. Clair Folsome19 who in the mid-sixties did the rst experiment to prove the perpetuation and development of life in a closed system. It is the key image of this talk. Folsome’s work proves that water, air and microorganisms can be in equilibrium for a long time if they are sealed in a close environment. An ampoule is an image closer to our earth and its atmosphere than is a never-ending rail- way track! Give me an Ampoule… and I will live. From this link20 it is possible to access a site created by the Italian photographer Toni Garbasso, and to watch and navigate in a spectacular 3D immersion Biosphere 2

Antonino Saggio Italy 51 which is currently managed by the University of Arizona. Unfortunately, today many of the scienti c aspects of Biosphere 2 have been dismissed. The cruel destruction of the scienti c data and material of the project, even the removal of the original soil, of all plants and seeds, was an act that in some moment in the future will be the subject of a movie. Biosphere 2 was built with donors’ contributions and money from a private developer who was seeking the possibility to use the technology in a eld of increasing interest including that of NASA. But, after a couple of years after its completion a terrible attack was undertaken against it. The establishment cannot accept the idea of the ecological “system” as shown in Biosphere 2 because it was a real challenge for the way to operate in the current economic “system.” One system was against another. Just imagine what it means to prove, in a real experiment of that magnitude, how to avoid the use of pesticide or of any other chemical products for agriculture. Try to imagine what this means for the huge market of chemicals in agriculture. Energy is another issue, recycling of water, use of waste etc. At that moment the Internet did not yet exist and the media were controlled from the top with very little possibility to react. A converging attack of the media, governmental ecologist and politics succeeded in moving the original creators out of the projects and, exactly as happened with the Apple Macintosh when Jobs was red, destroying the basis of the project. I recently published a book on the history of the last century - Architecture and Modernity. From Bauhaus to IT Revolution, Carocci 2010 -and in this book I proudly included Takis Zene- tos, Samuel Mockbee, Paolo Soleri and the history of Biosphere 2 and John Allen.

If Bucky can be an indispensable reference I think that Biosphere 2 is a fundamental example to study in order to address Ecosystems for Today Architectures.

Some Examples and Current Research New designers seek to give form to an idea of architecture born out of systems of dynamic interconnections, interrelations, mutations, and topological or parametrical geometries, typical of the world of information technology. A whole series of architects are giving shape to a sort of hybrid environment between nature and technology. Although this may not have the clarity of that “collectively shared” representation assumed by the early works of Hadid, Gehry or Eisenman, its features have already been outlined. This notion of a computerized landscape is closely linked with contemporary scienti c methods of investigation and simulation. Structured through information technology, this idea uses the term “complexity” as a sort of key word. At various times it can show typhoons, cloud formations, the reproductive mechanisms of DNA, or sedimentation of crevasses or terrestrial masses. But the dierence between this generation and the previous is that these experiments are not performed with sketches or metaphorical images, but are investigated directly through computer simulations. The genetic mechanisms of various phenomena are studied and formalized (i.e., interpreted with mathematical equations) in these simulations.

52 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The mathematical formalization guaranteed by information technology leads to the birth of real project strategies (particle systems, attractors, modi ers, etc.) that guide and conceptualize the logic for developing the project. In this case, computer technology is not a tool for realizing a complex landscape considered independently from electronic media, but rather it studies phenomena taken from the world and matter, and by formalizing these phenomena identi es variations that slowly but inexorably lead to new concepts of architecture, in an inextricable weave between the object of study, computer modeling, and architecture.

We can pinpoint, very briey, some of the current architectural research in this area. One case of interest is surely Francois Roche and R&Sie(n). Roche is working towards an idea of architecture as a hybrid body. Recently we discussed Biosphere 2 and he was not very interested. Roche may sometimes be too focused on the formalization in architecture of outside aspects of nature rather than on the inner functioning of ecosystems. Many are waiting for a small but convincing built project from him, but I think his work is crucial and must be studied seriously. A younger emerging group is Ecologic Studio formed by two Italians, Poletto and Pasquaro who moved to Lon- don. They came out of the Emergent Technologies Masters Unit at the AA headed by Michael Hensel, who has been on the forefront of the idea of combining engineering with Information Technology and ecological thinking. One of the best examples of an innovative approach is the work of the Polish scholar-scientist and artist Zbigniew Ok- siuta, who collaborates with Max Planck Lab in Cologne, Germany. Oksiuta is developing prototypes of habitable spaces that grow from arti cial material in water. These new structures are not only habitable, but can be used in dierent contexts and circumstances and, in some cases, they can also be edible. I was very impressed by Unit 23 led by Bob Sheil and Emmanuel Vercruysse at the Barlett School, UCL - for their capability to create prototypes of cyclical ecological behaviors within high design and graphic standards. I have dealt, in depth, with several of these groups in the last book I edited . In this book there are essays of members of the Nitro group that go into great detail to describe the above mentioned current research.

So, Green Bodies, at the end. In order to give life to “something” we, as highly symbolic beings, must give it a name. Giving a name means recognizing that from in nite and often-accidental creations only that one is what we really desire and is the one we were looking for. Giving a name is an inscription in the sphere of desires!

So we have named the long trail of this lecture “Green Bodies.”. Green Bodies share at least six fundamental characteristics:

1. Green Bodies are not “add on” or “plug-in” technological support for environmentally sound buildings but, on the contrary, represent a dierent and complete rethinking of the very same idea of building. Green Bodies are living and dying organisms. 2. Green Bodies are generated through a process of Convergence. This means that we are aware of the role in the Biosphere, of all interconnected spheres including the cultural, technological, historical ones.

Antonino Saggio Italy 53 3. Green Bodies are strategically designed based on Buckminster Fuller 5 Rules’ algorithm. 4. Green Bodies are capable of intelligent, interactive, even emotional behaviors. These behaviors become an active part of the world. 5. To describe, design or - even better - generate Green Bodies creators must use appropriate verbs: Not only the old verbs (to fold, to bend, to graft) that metaphorically relate to the form of land as in the land architecture phase, but also really organic verbs. Green Bodies do sleep, smile, breathe, and sweat. Bucky wrote “I Seem to Be a Verb” in 1970. 6. Each generation of Green Bodies generates - in a progress of natural evolution - new specimens.

You can interpret these six points in many ways. They could implement an “operating manual,” a soft manifesto, a checklist, a chart to add modify or expand, the index of our next book, or the topics for 2017 talk.

Notes

1 The conference was entitled “(Re) searching and Rede ning the Content and Methods of Teaching Construction in the new Digital Era” EAAE-ENHSA at ESTAV in Valles, Barcelona, 22 September 2005. 2 http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/Conferenze/Creta/ 3 Among many other books in the “The IT Revolution in Architecture” series it appeared The Architecture of Intelligence (Birkhauser, Basel, 2001) by one the best continuators of Marshall McLuhan, Derrick de Kerckhove. See http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/it/ 4 EAAE-ENHSA ETSAV Barcelona 22 September 2005 published in AAVV Maria Voyatzaki (ed), (Re)searching and Rede ning the Content and Methods of Construction teaching in the new digital era, EAAE-ENHSA, Athens 2005, pp. 13-34 see http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/conferenze/ Barc/Eaae05.htm 5 Matteo Alfonsi Thesis, Antonino Saggio Advisor, Univ. La Sapienza, Facoltà di Architettura L. Quaroni Roma 2006 “MOB il museo dell’opera Borrominiana, una macchina atmosferica per trattare la crisi di villa Pamphilj”. See http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/didattica/ Tesidilaurea/Alfonsi/ 6 See Antonino Saggio, La rivoluzione informatica in architettura, Carocci, Roma 2007 (English translation: The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a Paradigm Shift, 2008) The phrase was originally pronounced by Bruno Zevi. 7 In A. Saggio, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a Paradigm Shift cited p. 47. 8 See chapter “Information” in A. Saggio, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a Paradigm Shift. 9 Ibidem p. 38. 10 A. Saggio, The IT Revolution in Architecture. Thoughts on a Paradigm Shift, cited p. 35. 11 One author who devoted many talks and books to the topic is Ken Robinson. For example The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (with Lour Aronica). Viking, 2009 A good successful case is that one created in Great Britain by the “Studio schools” an English private organization part of The Young Foundation that created projects such as the Open University. A clear talk on this was on TED by Geo Mulgan. In more technical terms this approach can also be referred to as “Project based learning”.

54 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 12 See http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/DIDATTICA/Cad/2006/Ass/FInale/ authors are students Agnese Canziani, Alessandra Cao, Chiara Conte, Giustino Di Cunzolo, Maria Ragosta. A. Saggio’s Course on IT fth year Sapienza University of Rome 2006. 13 I am referring to “Urban Voids” and “Urban Green Lines” teaching strategies on urban and architectural designs. The second project can be partially seen on my web pages and it is in publication. I talked on several occasions of Urban Voids, one in English is in “Paradigms in Architecture and Architectural Education” Conference: Assignments assuring Competences La Antigua Guatemala, ENHSA South America. www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/Conferenze/ Guatemala/ 14 John Allen, “Buckminster Fuller’s Synergetic Algorithm and Challenges of the Twenty-First Century” Speech delivered by for Buckminster Fuller Memorial at U.S. International University, San Diego June 4, 1996 http://www.biospheres.com/pubjabucky.html 15 From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vernadsky 16 Ibid. 17 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2 18 An important source of study on this question is described in John Allen’s in Me and the Bio- spheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2, Synergetic Press, Santa Fe, 2009. The book provides the opportunity to follow in detail the history and conquests of this and other of Allen’s projects. There are few architects and engineers, I’m sure, who know what I’m talking about, but thanks to the Web and Wikipedia in particular, in-depth information is available to all. “John Polk Allen (born 6 May 1929, Carnegie, Oklahoma) [1] is a systems’ ecologist and engineer, metallurgist, adventurer and writer [2]. He is best known as the inventor and Director of Research of Biosphere 2, the world’s largest laboratory of global ecology, and was the founder of Synergia Ranch. Allen is a proponent of the science of biospherics. Allen currently serves as Chairman of Global Ecotechnics, and a director of Biospheric Design and of Institute of Ecotechnics. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, the Linnean Society, and the Explorers’ Club. In the early sixties, John Allen worked on regional development projects with David Lilienthal’s Development Resources Corporation in the U.S., Iran, and Ivory Coast where he became an expert in complex regional development. Before that, he headed a special metals’ team at Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corporation, which developed over thirty alloys to product status. He has led expeditions studying ecology, particularly the ecology of early civilizations: Nigeria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Tibet, Turkey, India, and the Altiplano. He studied anthropology and history at Northwestern, Stanford, and Oklahoma Universities, and served in the U.S. Army’s Engineering Corps as a machinist. He graduated from Colorado School of Mines and received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School. In the early 1960s, Allen headed a special metals’ team at Allegheny-Ludlum Steel Corporation which developed over thirty alloys to product status, then he worked with David Lilienthal’s Development Resources Corporation in the U.S., Iran, and Ivory Coast. Under the pen name of Johnny Dolphin, he has chronicled his personal history alongside the social history of his many destinations in novels, poetry, short stories and plays. “ from http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_P._Allen There is much literature inside and outside the web; it is interesting to note this section that is hosted by Columbia University itself http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/specmain.htm 19 Here is a bibliography http://www.biospheres.com/histfolsome1.html 20 http://www.studioargento.com/biosphere2/ 21 Architettura & Information Technology, (eds. A. Saggio, ) Mancosu, Rome 2011.

Antonino Saggio Italy 55

Kostas Terzidis

Graduate School of Design Harvard University USA Digital Culture and Permutation Architecture This essay may sound contradictory at times, not because of the lack of information or the complexity thereof but rather because of a shift in linguistic meaning in the technological jargon today. Over the last few decades, words have changed meaning in such a way that the same word means something completely dierent from what it meant to mean a few years ago. For instance, consider the title of this essay: digital culture. Even the phrase “digital culture” is a contradiction. ON the one hand, culture can be de ned as something entirely human that involves arts, literature, religion, or philosophy. It is the subjective realization, understanding, and expression of a group of humans at a particular time in history. On the other hand, digital is something that is objective, quanti able, neutral and therefore non subjective. So, from the very beginning we’re called upon to de ne the relationship between two antithetical terms, digital and culture. It is almost the same as trying to de ne what “subjective objectivity” really means.

Given my Greek heritage, it would be appropriate to start with a myth, an ancient Greek myth which may illustrate metaphorically this contradiction. It is the myth of Theseus’ ship or rather the paradox of Theseus’ ship. Theseus was a hero in the ancient Greek mythology that had done many great deeds, such as defending the people of Athens from monsters, daemons, and thieves, going down to the island of Crete and killing the Minotaur, saving people from disasters and famine, founding cities, and many more. Theseus did his heroic deeds by using his ship that he loved dear- ly. It was that ship that took him to foreign lands, let him escape from dangers, and opened new sailing paths for him. When he got old, he anchored his ship at the port of Athens. But the ship was made out of wood and over time it started to deteriorate. First, the sail fell o. So, Theseus ordered it to be replaced. Then the mast collapsed, only to be replaced immediately. Then the rows, the ropes, the ags, and then the hull fell apart. Eventually, at some point the entire ship was replaced with new parts and even though it looked the same, none of the original parts was present. And so, a question arises: which one is Theseus’ ship. The ship that he sees in front of him today or that ship that remains in his memory? Is that deck that he is walking on today the same deck than the one that he jumped on when he was eeing from the Cre- tans years ago? Does the sail he sees today on the ship be the same sail that years ago caused his father’s death? Is that mast the same one he climbed to see his beloved Ariadne when he fell in love with her? Why does it matter which one is the real one? Is it not what we see, touch, smell, hear, and taste the same thing as that which is in our minds? If we still use the same words to identify things, are they really the same? Or is there something deeper, something behind the visual appearances that contains a meaning that cannot be de ned with words?

Design in the last few years has gone through a similar transformation. Words that were used as recently as twenty years ago mean today something entirely dierent if not antithetical. Technical terms that are used in design to convey a concept, a technique, or a process have changed in such a way that their meaning is completely different leading to confusions, misunderstanding, and misconceptions. Let us consider the process of design as a sequence of actions starting with an inspiration, followed by a model that is then rendered and nally presented. So, we can say with a certain degree of certainty that even today the process of design has a starting point into

58 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the world of ideas and is progressively materialized into a more speci c form that is then sent for implementation. I will de ne these stages using the following words: inspiration, modeling, rendering, and presentation. So, within this paradigm, design starts with an idea, a concept, an inspiration that initiates the process. Then the designer needs to make the idea more speci c by using a pencil and paper to sketch out the main form. Then more details are added in order to produce a working model. Next, the designer is in a position to render the model in the order to convey the material and formal qualities. However, in the world of design today the process of modeling has been replaced by computer programs such as autoCAD, Rhino, or Maya. What used to be done manually using paper and pencil has been distanced by using a mouse and a virtual screen. Moreover, the process of producing a model has been enhanced, corrected, altered, and modi ed often with no direct control by the user of the software. Similarly, rendering used to be a manual tedious process involving artistic skills, perspective geometry, painting, and occasionally, collage, not to mention time consuming and expensive. Today, computer programs such as V Ray, Render- zone, or Maxwell provide virtual reality representations that often exceed the real not only in the accuracy of depiction but also in their ability to extend reality into arti - cial, illusory, and fantastic worlds. Meanwhile, the speed, eciency, and cost of such rendering mechanisms are far distanced from their original manual process. Further, the techniques, processes, and methods of presentation of models has also altered so much from the world of manual presentation so that the terms used today serve no help in demoting what really is happening and are therefore confusing and mis- guiding. For example, there is little if nothing photographic about Photoshop and the word Illustrator oers no connection to the profession of an illustrator at least as it is remembered some twenty years ago. Similarly, Rhino, Grasshopper, Maya, or max are part of a nomenclature that provides very little to address, de ne, and explain the logic, structure, and potential of digital systems.

As a consequence, words in the vocabulary of the designer today have changed meaning, especially with the emergence and application of computational methods. Most of the terms have been replaced by computational counterparts and we should probably take that as a sign that something is happening in the world of design, something very important, fundamental, and profound that may have strong inuences and repercussions. From Photoshop lters to modeling applications and from simulation programs to virtual reality animation and even more mundane tasks that used to need a certain talent to take on, such as rendering, paper cutting, or 3D printing/sculpting the list of tasks diminishes day by day being replaced by their computational counterparts. What used to be a basis to judge somebody as a talent or a genius is no more applicable. Dexterity, adeptness, memorization, fast calculation, or aptitude is not anymore skills to seek for in a designer or reasons to admire in a designer as to be called a genius. The focus has shifted far away from what it used to be towards new territories. In the process many take advantage of the ephemeral awe that the new computational tools bring to design by using them as means to establish a new concept or form only to be revealed later that their power was based on the tool they used and not their own intellectual ability. After all, the tool was developed by somebody else, the programmer, who, perhaps, should be considered the innova- tor if not the genius.

Kostas Terzidis USA 59 As a result of the use and abuse of design tools many have started to worry about the direction that design will take in the next years. As one-by-one all design tasks are becoming computational some regard this as a danger, misfortune, or in-appropriation of what design should be and others as a liberation, freedom, and power towards what design should be: i.e. conceptualization. According to the second group, the designer does not need to worry anymore about the construction documents, schedules, databases, modeling, rendering, animation, etc. and can now concentrate on what is most important: the concept. But what if that is also replaced? What if one day a new piece of software appears that allows one to input the building program and it produces valid designs, i.e. plan, elevation, sections that work. And, worse, what if they are better than the designer would ever do by himself or herself. Even though most designers would never admit that something is better than what they would have designed, yet what if deep inside them they admit the opposite. What then? Are we still going to continue demonizing the computer and seeking to promote geniuses when they really don’t exist? Or should we reconsider our knowledge, terms, concepts, processes, and methodologies and seek for new answers rather than old reassurances?

However, it may be that the above dilemma is important only because we are still considering design in terms of an old paradigm, that based on human intelligence and initiative. Is it possible that this paradigm is not valid any more. Is it possible that design is more than just a human activity and as such can be performed by non humans? Let me illustrate what I mean with a few examples: if I, as a designer, want to draw a dot on a piece of paper, most likely what a person would do would be to take a pen or a pencil and lower it on the canvas marking a dot. But the process involves apart from mechanical actions, an intellectual determination of the process of lowering the arm and pointing. Strangely enough even though, at rst sight, the process appears to be random most of the process is predetermined in the brain as the hands move down. The process can be said to be similar when using a digital tool instead of a pencil. Sup- pose you are faces with a canvas in Photoshop and you select a pen and then move the cursor on the screen until you press down on the screen leaving a mark. I see little dierence in that and the physical process. Now, consider the following commands on a computer system: x = 20, y = 30, and point(x, y). This will draw a point at location 20, 30. Replace now these commands with the following x = random(0,100), y = random(0,100), and point(x, y). I assume that the canvas is 100x100 pixels wide. Also, I assume that a command called random(min, max) exists that can produce and unpredictable to me number within a range set between min and max. Now, there is a lack of control/prediction of where a dot will show up. I know that I will see a dot but it is almost impossible to predict its location in advance. Consider also the following commands: x = random(0,100), y = random(0,100), and if x > 50 and y<50 then point(x, y). Now, I am not only uncertain about the location of a dot on the canvas but I am not even sure if I will see a dot at all. That is, in the case x <= 50 then point() will not be activated. You may start to distinguish a dierence between the human world and the computationally driven random world. There is a thin blue line that separates the two. The rst, is the human world with its intentions, mistakes, aspirations, etc. a world we have been familiar with for over thousands of years. The second world is new, non hu-

60 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture man, encountered for the rst time; alien and strange. Please cross the line between predictable and unpredictable.

Now let’s implement this theory using a simple human task, that of solving a puzzle. Suppose that you are presented with a puzzle composed of ten pieces that eventually ts into a rectangular canvas. Any human, consider for example a child, will start by selecting the rst piece placing in the canvas, then the next one and place it, then the next and so on until either all pieces match or in case there is a impasse, take out a piece or two and rearrange until a match is found. This process may take a few seconds or minutes depending on the complexity of the puzzle or the capabilities of the solver and it is considered as a task of human intelligence, or intelligence in general. Now consider the following possibility. I take the pieces of the puzzle and toss them in the air, let them fall and hope that a match is found. If it does not work I do it again; and again; and again. Over and over; hoping for a match. What are the chances that a match will occur? Most people will say impossible. And yet simple logic may reveal that while a match in unlikely to come soon yet, there is a very small chance that it may occur. Given enough time there is a possibility, once in a billion perhaps, that it will happen. However, nobody will try this method mainly because there is no time to wait. But with a computer such logic starts to be applicable. A billion for example is not such a big number. Think of GHz: those are billions of cycles per second. So, let’s try this process through a simulation shown to you in the screen. In the rst trial it took 1252 unsuccessful attempts to get a match, taking virtually only two seconds. Next time it took 2619 unsuccessful attempts until a perfect match occurred. So, if you were to choose between the two methods you are faced with the following dilemma: should I employ my intelligence and take several minutes to solve the problem or use a mindless chance mechanism and solve the same problem in just a few seconds? To some people this is a very fundamental question.

Here is another related problem to the previous one. In how many possible ways can we solve the puzzle? Is there in nite (I don’t like that word) or is there a specific number of possible permutations? Let’s take a set of 9 positions arranges in a 3x3 grid and assume that each position can be either black or white. What are the chances that a cross con guration will occur? By the way the pattern we are looking for (when laid out) is 010111010. One way to nd out is to start doing random con gurations until we get a match. But that may involve repeated patterns and it may take redun- dantly more time than by using a dierent method. The second method uses a simple enumeration of permutations starting with a 000000000, then 000000001, then 000000010, and so on. The pattern we are looking for, that is 010111010, will occur somewhere between 000000000 and 111111111. All possible combinations are 512, or 2 to the power of 9. The pattern we are looking for comes after 325 attempts (depending on the method of enumeration) (Fig. 1).

Now in design, although not the same, we have a similar process. In design, and, in particular, architectural design, the problem that a designer is called upon to solve can be regarded as a problem of permutations, that is, the rearrangement of design elements within a set of discrete positions, such as a grid, until a solution is found that satis es a set of criteria. Traditionally, such arrangements are done by human design-

Kostas Terzidis USA 61 Fig. 1 ers that base their decision making either on intuition (from the point of view of the designer) or on random sampling until valid solutions are found. However, in both cases the solution found may be an acceptable one but cannot be labeled as “the best possible solution” due to the subjective or arbitrary nature of the selection process. In contrast, an exhaustive list of permutation-based arrangement will eventually reveal the “best solution” since it will exclude all other possible solutions. For example consider the design of simple bathroom in an architectural plan consisting of four x- tures: a sink, a toilet, a shower, and a door arranged in a 2x2 grid. The slide (below) illustrates all possible arrangements of such a simple four- xture bathroom. The number of non-repetitive, rotationally-speci c arrangements is only 384. However, after eliminating all arrangements that have a toilet seat facing a door and eliminating any arrangement that uses more than 6 meters of pipelines (i.e. choosing the least expensive ones) the number of successful bathrooms is only 8. It can be claimed therefore that these eight bathroom con gurations are indeed the best possible ones since they exclude anything else. Of course, we may have to rede ne the term “best” and apply it only to quantitative criteria and pertinent only to the number of possible permutations. In other words, given the number of all possible permutations, the resulting 8 are the ones that satisfy our constraining criteria and are therefore considered to be the best (Fig. 2).

Let’s now take another example. Consider a sample architectural problem, relatively simple for the time and size of this essay. I will try to demonstrate the use of permutations as a method for the automatic generation of building plans. In this case, consider a site (b) that is divided into a grid system (a). Let’s also consider a list of spaces to be placed within the limits of the site (c) and an adjacency matrix to determine the placement conditions and neighboring relations of these spaces (d). One way of solving this problem is to stochastically place spaces within the grid until all spaces are t and the constraints are satis ed. The slide (below) shows such a problem and a sample solution (f) (Fig. 3).

62 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 All the possible arrangements of a simple four- xture bathroom (a). These non-repetitive, rotationally-speci c arrangements are 384. However, after eliminating all arrangements that have a toilet seat facing a door and eliminating any arrangement that uses more than 6m of pipelines (i.e. choosing the least expensive ones) the number of successful bathrooms is only 8 (b).

Fig. 3 A site (b) that is divided into a grid system (a), a list of spaces to be placed within the limits of the site (c) and an adjacency matrix to determine the placement conditions and neighboring relations of these spaces (d). A sample solution is shown in (f).

Kostas Terzidis USA 63 So, let’s run this algorithm and see the results. As you can see after 274 random attempts a solutions is found. If we do it again, another solution is obtained and so on. According to this algorithm, each space is associated to a list that contains all other spaces sorted according to their degree of desirable neighborhood. Then each unit of each space is selected from the list and then one-by-one placed randomly in the site until they t in the site and the neighboring conditions are met. If it fails then the process is repeated. Since the total number of units of all spaces is equal to the site’s grid units, there will always be a t. To illustrate the point, in (a) nine randomly generated plans are shown as a result of this algorithm. Then each plan is extruded into an architectural structure (b) to be potentially stacked into oors. While the algorithm can generate many dierent solutions, as shown in (d) my research will seek to produce all possible solutions, that is, all possible permutations. If that happens, then we can select from the exhausted permutation list the ones that best t the programmatic, economic, ecological, aesthetic or other criteria of the client.

While the previous example is quite simplistic compared to the number of possible arrangements involved in an actual architectural design, nevertheless it illustrates the potential of a system of permutations and presents a dierent way of approaching architectural design. As I mentioned earlier, the speculation of this work is to detect, test, and implement the use of exhaustive permutations as a means of synthesis for architectural plans of buildings. Such an eort involves the risk of increased complexity as the numbers of permutations increase exponentially. While the number of all possible permutations can be pre-estimated using polynomial theory, the actual production of these arrangements may involve algorithms that are np-complete, that is, possible to solve but would require extremely long time to execute. As an alternative, brute force techniques can be used instead but, of course, those would depend on the computational power of the computers used.

I would like conclude now with a few arguments based on my essay so far. The computer is not a tool. It is an intellectual entity and as such can simulate human thinking producing inferior, similar, or even superior results to those of a human mind. Some people do not like that comparison and perhaps there is a merit in that assessment. Then perhaps a better way to describe the computer is that of complementary, alien, or dierent. Perhaps it is has dierent way of thinking, a new way, a strange way. I would like to believe that it is complementary in the sense that it can address many of the things we cannot, or better, do not have enough time to deal with. So you should not treat it as a tool. That is my advice. Treat it as something else; a dierent thing.

This brings me to my next point; that of the human mind. I am afraid that it is limited. Whether we like it, believe it, or accept it is true. Factually true. If you do not believe me try dividing 22 by 7. Or try to plot all the connections on a social network. Or think of architectural complexity in a skyscraper. We are not as smart as we think. Yet, hon- estly, I do not want to be too smart, I do not want to learn everything, do everything. But I would like to know that one day I can break out of that limited world and do something more. Not alone but with help. Well, that is what the computer is: a ticket to that world. It is not a device that replicates what you already know. That would be redundant and useless. That would simply be like re-inventing the wheel. Unfortu-

64 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture (a) (b)

(d) Fig. 4 Three stochastically generated plans that ful ll the requirements of the architectural program (a). These plans were then extruded (b), and stacked into a building (c). In contrast, (d) shows a portion of what all possible solutions would look like. nately, that is what some designers do. Many think that computers are screens that replace light rays with pixels. I would like to suggest doing things that you cannot do or think in this world. Try to reach areas of intellectual capacity that you do not have but can obtain through a computer. Try to involve them to do things better than you can do yourself. Especially, when it comes to random processing where you can have things happen that you cannot predict. That is the true essence of what a computer is or does. We should stop this whole idea that computers are inferior to human intellect

Kostas Terzidis USA 65 as if there is some sort of a competition going on so as to prove to our colleagues that we are superior to the machine. It is ridiculous and should not even happen.

Finally, I would like to oer an experiment that was establish as a test of intelligence and referred to as the Turing test. According to the experiment, if something, no matter what that is made out of looks like, behaves convincingly as intelligent, then it is so. By de nition. So, if a computer oers you a solution that involves an awe of intelligence may be that is the case. In the original experiment, which is a theoretical one so far, a human converses with an entity that is hidden on the other side of a para- pet without knowing whether it is another human, a computer, or something else. The point of the experiment is to detach the eyes from the form or connotation that is usually associated with intelligent beings; those could be non-human provided they pass the test. You do not know what you are talking to: it could be a human or a computer. But you can’t see it. You cannot be inuenced by the form, shape, or voice of your interlocutor. If intelligence is what you are seeking for then its container should be irrelevant.

So that being said I would like to oer a concluding remark: we have something signi cant is going on and digital culture is emerging as a new prism of looking at the world asking us to rede ne almost all of our established terms. This may be the biggest opportunity ever in the history of humanity so please do not miss it.

66 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Re ections

Chris Younès

Nationale Supérieure École d’ Architecture Paris la Villette France Towards a Responsive Architecture: Paradox of the Metamorphoses in Play Like the sciences of nature and man, architecture has been overtaken by the techniques of information and communication. Professionals can no longer ignore these means that not only oer signi cant savings in time and eort for those using them but also help them gain in performance. But what kind of performance are we talking about? The digital tool is also the bearer of a certain vision of the world or at least a certain conception of the relationship between man and nature, between the subject and the object on which it acts. We must not forget that it was the bow and the ar- row which led to man’s dominance over animals, and that the lever inspired the idea of shifting the earth from its location, a hypothesis briey evoked as being fact by Descartes.

Re-thinking and Εxploring the Possible between Rationalization, Imagination and Mutation The dierent communications focus mainly on the possibles to explore, experiment and transmit in the training of students. The rationalization of the process of design and production in architecture, thanks to the contributions of arti cial intelligence, highlights other modalities of the project itself. And this by instrumental, methodical and conceptual mediations which determine it as both techniques of anticipation and critical assessment. It should be noted that according to Antoine Picon numerous aspects of digital design are linked to dierent episteme, from scienti c rationalisation to digital imagination, thus underlying the tensions between mobilized theoretical models. Rethinking humanity is to better situate and grasp the place which is given to these technologies in the work of architects. Digital techniques are still too recent to reveal all their secrets, but already they have turned upside down the relationships between people and nations by reducing space, by multiplying contacts between individuals, by displacing borders and by shrinking the planet to the size of a village. Maybe their speci city is even more striking in that they seem to interact even more on humans rather than on the objects on which they act. This is so true that for the rst time in its history, homo sapiens are in competition with machines on what has always set them apart: their intelligence. We have known and have often celebrated, since the beginning of modernity, the marvels which represented automatic machines: but these wonders were barely more than their displacement or their carrying out a few actions, or uttering a few words which we could consider with amusement, as they were so far away from being capable of imitating the least complex behaviour of animals, yet alone that of humans. And yet, nowadays it is a completely dierent story, as in a certain manner, the computer has extended the brain of man and software has become indispensable in activities such as writing, calculating, drawing or even building, but also that of living. The Internet network is becoming increasingly closer to the human brain and we are already asking ourselves whether it will be able to develop in an autonomous manner or even manage to recreate itself. We can even go as afar as imagining one day that computers will relieve humans from intellectual work in the same way that the rst machines relieved humans from manual work. Furthermore, a disembodied experience risks substituting itself into a perceptive and emotional experience in a body situated here and now. Where are men and women in all this? It should be noted rst of all that there is a notable dierence between clas-

70 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture sical technique, that of invention and the use of machines and computer-based techniques. The rst concerns a diptych: spirit and matter. The design and construction of machines was an admirable testimony of Plato’s thoughts. It is indeed the spirit which triumphs over matter. It is the sign of an ‘unveiling’ of man in which intelligence masters and overcomes materials. With information technology, the concept of materials becomes hazier. Man now nds himself in a new and shifting landscape, that of the virtual, with the risk, when leaving the sensitive of installing himself in the intelligible, that the body is no longer needed. Husserl has in particular analyzed how sciences are putting into peril1 a certain relationship in the world by veiling the carnal world. The construction of this never before seen disparity has left humans disorientated, confronted by a world of ideas which are distinct from the sensitive world which nevertheless gives it its shape. What asserts itself is the power of constructing the human spirit which attempts to give the illusion that it is reality itself.

The Issue of Management by Creative Synergies of anotherType The key question of ‘responsive architecture’ infers a strong preoccupation in terms of managing life spaces. Processing complexity, installing clouds of sensitive sensors, favouring interactivities, collaborative forms, nding balances, should contribute to succeeding the challenge of a sustainable architecture whilst at the same time transcending the imposed break between spirit and body. Concerns linked to the devastations of ecosystems and heritages, to the niteness of planet earth and the precariousness of human life threatened by a crazy exces- siveness has led numerous contributors asking themselves what are the appropriate strategies for transforming living spaces and what sustainable relationships are to be established between nature, techne and society. It is only in the arti cial which means ‘made by art’ (arte facere), designating skilfulness, know-how, cunning, that there is the possibility of a menacing promethean desire but also the possibility of inventing symbiotic mechanisms. Education is particularly necessary when imagining other possibles, when establishing synergies of another type between the dynamics of culture and those of nature, by taking into account both the limits and resources speci c to each milieu. This requires the deciphering of the ‘already here’, the harnessing of coming forces. The act of creation is also an act of resistance as stated by Gilles Deleuze2 against forms of deadly exploitation. All the more so since an architect is always confronted by what he or she is responsible for regarding the habitation of his or her fellow humans. It should not be forgotten that no technique is capable of acting on ethics. This issue is that of meaning, the senses, and values. Like all inventions, information technologies are a doubled-edge sword which can liberate man or enslave him. It is therefore vital to take measure today.

De nition and Inde nition of Humans3 The metamorphoses which operate with and within digital culture invite us to refer back to anthropology. Is it the swansong before being swept along by waves or a true watershed which expresses itself with the concern of building with care the habita-

Chris Younès France 71 tion of humans, in other words by grasping at the same time all the environmental, economic, social, political, technical, ethical and aesthetic dimensions. The question of a ‘technology-driven architecture’ naturally has a relationship with the de nition of man which his been endlessly deferred and postponed. The ancient de nitions have not purely and simply become outdated but they are inscribed in the sustainable future and form part of a quest which is endlessly renewed and which engages the in nite existence of the search for meaning.

Notes

1 Husserl , E. La crise des sciences européennes, Gallimard, 2004 2 Deleuze, ‘What is the act of creation’, conference at FEMIS, 1997. 3 Goetz, B., Madec, Ph., Younès, C. Inde nition of architecture. La Villette, 2009.

72 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Emmanouil Zaroukas

Computing and Design, CECA University of East London UK Hacking the Symb(i/o)tic field of Architecture All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace

I like to think (and I like to think I like to think the sooner the better!) (right now, please!) (it has to be!) of a cybernetic meadow of a cybernetic forest of a cybernetic ecology where mammals and computers lled with pines and electronics where we are free of our labors live together in mutually where deer stroll peacefully and joined back to nature, programming harmony past computers returned to our mammal like pure water as if they were owers brothers and sisters, touching clear sky. with spinning blossoms. and all watched over by machines of loving grace.

Richard Brautigan, 1967

In 1967 Brautigan had a very clear view on how the natural world would be in harmony with the post-war technological developments. The human free of labor would be able to sustain a balanced and peaceful world in an ecology that would be watched over by machines – the dream of machines of control that would eliminate the irrational aspect of human beings by taking away from them the privilege to decide – while being able to think for themselves. Forty- ve years later and the machines of loving grace are established in almost every aspect of human lives. Architecture as pedagogy, as research, as practice and as inhabitation is ooded with technological machines that watch and control the complexity of contemporary life. Technology is here forming a new context and Brautigan’s insight has turned reality. Built on the developments of the last sixty years in the systems theories, cybernetics and complexity theory architects discuss, design and build an architecture that is adaptive, performative, parametric and responsive. An approach that is based on the basic premises of Brautigan’s view; a view that understands any entity in a systemic manner capable to interact, communicate and be aected in the environment in which it is embedded. This essay aims to further explore this relation of an entity in its environment in order to rethink the human in a technological driven architecture. For that matter it takes a philosophical and theoretical position and brings together two rather peculiar and unfamiliar for the discipline of architecture concepts, that of symbiosis and that of hacking. The concept of symb(i/o)sis is proposed as a framework to think human meshed in a complex machinic assemblage and the concept of hacking as an ethos that allows the creation of new assemblages and the exploration of their capacities. The aim of the essay therefore is to rethink Brautigan’s insight under a new ontological and epistemological perspective. Diagramming processes of emergence, following the dynamism of assemblages and moving through the ontological scheme of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze the question of the emergence of the organism in the environment will be reposed. The essay at its rst part unfolds three types of emergence: the synchronic, diachronic and transversal emergence as they have been read by John Protevi. Before giving a full explanation of them two actions in ostensibly two opposite directions will be taken. A short description of the basic concepts of the Dynamical Systems Theory (DST) and a rough sketch of Deleuze’s method of dramatization will be coupled not only to reveal a shared common ground but in order to create a new framework in

74 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture which the concept of emergence will be re-examined. It is not the aim of this essay to trace a historical development of the concept of Emergence1. The second half of the essay will become more speci c and the discussion will fo- cuse on the use of computers and computational processes in the way architects design and people inhabit architecture. The concept of Emergence and the paradigmatic shift in the ontological and epistemological approach that this conception entails positions the architect in a new domain. In this domain the architect could take the role not of the mere designer of a system but that of a constructive hacker. The idea of hacking is introduced not as a disruptive but rather as a constructive praxis, bringing new things together, opening new domains. Hacking therefore, stripped from any connotation of criminality becomes a highly critical act in the symb(i/o)tic eld of architectural design.

Emergence The concept of emergence with no doubt has gained a lot of attention in architectural academia and industry despite its conceptual density in scienti c domains. A property or a behavior of a whole is Emergent when it is produced by the interaction and self- organisation of component parts at a lower level. Emergence hardly has any rigid de - nition and still its concept has not been explained. It comes with dierent avors at times as weak, strong, synchronic, diachronic or other as dierent disciplines and scienti c elds attempt to grasp it. Architects and architectural research groups around the globe tend to use a ‘uni ed’ conception that entails a bottom up approach to their design methodologies where an unpredictable new pattern or form occurs by the low-level local interactions without externally commanding its occurrence. The scope of this essay is to consider Emergence under the perspective of Complexity Theory and Dynamical Systems Theory. Paul Hamphreys distinguishes two broad categories of Emergence: the Diachronic and the Synchronic. “The rst approach primarily but not exclusively, emphasizes the emergence of novel phenomena across time; the second emphasizes the coexistence of novel ‘higher level’ objects or properties with objects or properties existing at some ‘lower level’.” (Hamphreys 2008, p. 431). Synchronic and Diachronic emergence appear to have dierent time spans and refer to dierent processes although they are not completely separate. John Potevi will attempt to restore the distinction of those processes by giving his own de nition: “The construction of functional structures in complex systems (diachronic) achieves a (synchronic) focus of systematic behavior as they constrain the behavior of individual components.” (Protevi 2006, p. 19). The articulation of the concept of Emergence appears to be crucial in the work of Gilles Deleuze although not explicitly referred to by him. Deleuze’s interest on Emer- gence comes through two main sources; rstly, his preoccupation with Leibniz’s phi- losophy2, monadology and dierential calculus and secondly, via Deleuze’s interest in the almost concomitant research on complex system and the philosophy of technology developed by Gilbert Simondon(1989). Deleuze constructs a method where emergence has an important role in the schematization and construction of his ontology. In a paper that he will deliver in 1967 he will call it the method of Dramatization. Later in 1980’s, Deleuze will be coupled with Felix Guattari and together will push the concept of dramatization further in order to construct a new category, that of transversal

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 75 emergence. This third category will be explained in some details later but for the moment it suces to note that Deleuze and Guattari are interested in the movements that travel transversally forming assemblages from biological, social and technical components.

Dynamical Systems Theory Avoiding any mysticism in the attempt to grasp the mechanisms of emergence a group of neo-realist philosophers and scientists will turn to Dynamical Systems theory to explain emergence as the formation of attractors in complex dynamic systems. At the same time sketching out the basic concepts of the theory, a common origin will be established from which Deleuze’s method of Dramatization will develop. That origin goes back to Henry Poincarée, one of the founders of the theory of dynamical systems, who developed the geometric model for studying physically, biologically or socially observed systems (Abraham and Shaw, 1985a). According to this theory every observed system can be modeled by being de ned in terms of “interesting Variables” or “degrees of Freedom”. A Damped pendulum, having two degrees of freedom that are related to its movement: the velocity and the o- set angle, is a good example to illustrate this. It is clear that the “interesting Variables” are relevant to the ways in which the object can change. The choice of the variables is subject to the modeler and the level of abstraction of the system under study. Every space has a phase space where the range of the system’s behavior is been represented and which is constructed using a manifold, which is an n-dimensional mathematical object. In the case of the damped pendulum the manifold is a two dimensional object. Any point of the manifold represents the global condition of the system. If the system will be followed across time the dierent states that the systems goes through construct the trajectory of the system. A computer simulates the process and maps together in the same graph the relation of the velocity and the oset angle. What is mapped is basically the behavior of the system and the construction of trajectories. Another more complex example will be to use predator prey computational model where trajectories of a particular con guration will be created (Abraham and Shaw 1985a p.83). These con gurations have a speci c shape, called attractors representing patterns of behavior of the real system. Attractors can be distinguished into three types:

1. Point (stable or steady state systems) Crystal Growth 2. Circular or Periodic (oscillating System) any predator prey system 3. Chaotic or Strange (Turbulent or ‘chaotic systems’).

In the case of the damped pendulum a point attractor, approached by a spiraling trajectory, is observed. There are cases however, where the attractor can be either Peri- odic or Chaotic3. The layout of attractors in the phase space, which describes the layout of the patterns of behavior of the system, is de ned by the layout of singularities, which are mathematical objects that de ne the topological structure of the manifold. Singularity, in mathematical terms is a point where “the graph of the function changes direction... as it reaches local minima or local maximal”(Protevi 2006 p. 24). A singularity is a turn that represents a threshold where the real system changes qualitatively.

76 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture This singular turn de ne the limit of the basin of attraction and therefore the existence of an attractor. Unlike the trajectory that is composed by actual states of the system Singularity belongs to a vector eld of directions composed by values of rates of change at certain instances. At the zones of crisis where the system is perturbed there is the irreducible element of ‘chance’ or unpredictability where the system can move into dierent basins of attractors under the aection of external triggers. Therefore “[s]ingularities may undergo a symmetry breaking transition and be converted into another one. These transitions are called bifurcations.” (Delanda 2002, p. 18). Chance and unpredictability are constitutive properties of any dynamic system, which is however thoroughly deterministic. A state space structured by one point attractor, for example, may bifurcate into another with two such attractors, or a point attractor may bifurcate into a periodic one. What has been illustrated so far is that the interesting-variables when they are coupled in dierential relations – like that between the velocity and the oset angle in the case of the damped pendulum – can produce dierent mathematical entities that can describe the system at every instance. However, it is the production of the singularities and their respective attractors that explain the mechanism of the emergence of the behavior of the system4.

Sketching Dramatization The description of the main concepts of dynamical systems theory sets the base for an understanding of the method of dramatization and Deleuze’s interest to open up ontology to creation and novelty. It is around the dynamic aspect of the world that he constructs an entire ontological scheme. What follows is a rough sketch of the method of dramatization, which in the course of the essay will be explained further through the dierent types of emergence. “... [Dynamisms] always presuppose a eld in which they are produced, outside of which they would not be produced... this eld is intensive, that is it implies dierences of intensity distributed at dierent depths” (Deleuze, 2002, pp. 96-97 ). Deleuze marks that experience accesses the world as already developed in extensions, that means as fully formed entities by covering at the same time all the intensities under qualities. Those pure intensities which are “enveloped in an intensive spatium” (2002, p. 97) is everything that exists prior to the formation of extensions and qualities, parts and species. Intensity is considered as “the unequal in itself”(2002, p. 97). It is the pure dierence in itself formed in series. At the depth of this spatium is where the intensive eld of individuation is constituted. This eld is populated by series of intensities. Those series however enter into communication and the task to bring the series into a coupling has been taken by an important operator for Deleuze’s scheme. This operator is called dark precursor and its role is to bring dierences into communication, which, in turn, will dierentiate further in producing “disparate series”(2002, p. 98) or dierence of dierences. The coupled intensities ‘resonate’ and the further dierentiation causes “inevitable forward movements” (2002, p. 98). The Subjects are not completely absent from the scene of dramatization. The Deleuzian subjects are more patients than agents. They are rough sketches, instead of fully quali ed and composed organisms. The larval subjects are the ones that can

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 77 sustain the dynamisms of the intensive eld. Deleuze turns to embryology and talks about the embryo as the larval subject that is the only capable to resolve the dynamisms of the egg. “Dynamisms... constitute not so much a picture as a group of abstract lines coming from the unexpected and formless depth. These abstract lines constitute a drama...” (2002, p. 98). Deleuze will elaborate further his scheme and he will reveal the “two inseparable aspects of dierentiation – speci cation and partition, the quali cation of species and the organisation of an extension”(2002, p. 99). These two aspects although inseparable are, on the one hand, the dierential relations among elements and, on the other hand the distribution of the singularities. So what he calls an Idea5 should be looked at from two points of view. The point of view of the variation of dierential relations and from the point of view of the distribution of singularities corresponding to particular set of values. These two points of view of the Idea will help to concretise two issues. First, Ideas have no actuality but they are only virtual6. The communications that form the dierential relations and the distribution of the singularities which construct the vector eld of the dynamic systems, are dierent mathematical entities – real but not actual – from the integral curves or trajectories which trace the actual states of the system. The multiplicity of the Idea is what for Deleuze constitutes his ontological modality of the virtual. The Second issue clari ed is that the Ideas are actualised “precisely only insofar as its dierential relations are incarnated in species or separate qualities, and insofar as the concomitant singularities are incarnated in an extension that corresponds to this quality” (2002, p. 100). These two operations of course have non- resemblance whatsoever with the incarnated qualities or extensions. The dierential relations between entities at one level doesn’t resemble the qualities of the emergent outcome and in same way the distribution of singularities are not represented in the formed extensions. For this reason this virtual part of the entities is independent of the underlying mechanism of emergence. Manuel Delanda will state that emergent phenomena can be explained through a mechanism-independent approach. Deleuze will state for the same matter that virtual realm formed by the dynamisms in the intensive eld is “not connected with any particular example borrowed from a physical or biological system, but articulate the categories of every system in general” (2002, p. 98). To conclude this sketchy presentation of the method of dramatization it will be necessary to get to the actual realm; the formed entities or objects with extensions and qualities. It seems, therefore, that for Deleuze things have two halves: the virtual half (or Ideal) that is constituted by the dierential relations and the distribution of singularities, and the actual half constituted by the qualities and parts. If the latter half has the capacities to aect the environment in which those entities are embedded, the former half has the capacity to be aected by it. For that matter the method of dramtatization and the construction of the ontological modality of the virtual favors openness, change, contingency and novelty. The two processes of dierential relations and dierentiation under the operation of the dark precursor and the distribution of singularities “expresses not only a mathematico-biological complex, but the very condition of any cosmology, as the halves of the object”(2002, p. 102) and guarantees the openness of the object to change. Based on this view the concept of emer-

78 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture gence will be re-approached and the whole relationship of entity in its environment will be re-framed.

Synchronic Emergence - Diachronic Emergence - Transversal Emergence John Protevi gives a de nition that grants the dierence and the inseparability for Synchronic and Diachronic emergence. “A synchronically emergent structure is that which enables focused systematic behavior through constraining the action of component parts” (Protevi 2006, p. 19). It could be argued that Synchronic emergence could be considered as the emergence of ‘order out of chaos’ as Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers wrote in 1984. The synchronic level of emergence mainly focuses on the systemic behavior as the functional structures constrain the behavior of the individual components. This mereological level distinction is relevant for the case of synchronic emergence and explains the relation between the properties of micro- level and the emergent properties of the macro-level. In other words synchronic emergence focuses on the part-to-whole relations. This mereological understanding caused confusion in terms of the direction of the determination either of the whole or the components. The argument stands for that group of researchers who grant a mutual operation of both bottom up and top down processes for the local/global determination of the entities. John Protevi initiates a critical stance to this position very much inspired by Deleuze and especially Delanda’s reading on the latter. Protevi points out that the upward causality (bottom-up) and the downward causality (top- down) which are braided together in what is known by Varela and Thompson as ‘the reciprocal causality’ involves a problematic reading of causation in the understanding of synchronic emergence. This problematic reading occurs from an implied purpose- fulness, a necessity of self-reproduction and self preservation of the process that locks the system in circularity and grants its totality and its identity. This creates therefore an understanding of the downward causation, as ecient causality that emanates from a rei ed totality the purpose of which is its self-preservation. He carries on claiming that the mutual constitution of upward and downward causality can be accepted as long as a reworked de nition of downward causality is possible. He will search for this reworked understanding of downward causality in Deleuze’s reading of Stoics and De- landa’s clari cation of the Deleuzian concept of ‘quasi-causality’. Delanda argues that Deleuze approaches the question of necessity by splitting the causal link: “One of the boldest moments of the Stoic thought involves the splitting of causal relation. Causes are referred in depth to a unity, which is proper to them, and eects maintain at the surface speci c relations of another sort. Destiny is primarily the unity and the link of physical causes among themselves. Incorporeal eects are obviously subject to destiny, to the extent that they are the eect of these causes. But to the extent that they dier in nature from these causes, they enter, with one another, into relations of quasi-causality. Together they enter into a relation with a quasi cause, which is, itself, incorporeal and assure them a very special independence, not exactly with respect to destiny, but rather with respect to necessity, which normally would have to follow destiny. The Stoic paradox is to arm destiny and to deny necessity” (Deleuze 1969, p. 194).

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 79 Delanda will esh out this point by using a terminology from the Dynamical systems theory and method of dramatization. “[On the] one hand, processes of individuation are de ned as sequences of causes (every eect will be the cause of another eect) while singularities become pure incorporeal eects of those series of causes” (Delanda 2002, p. 52). The upward causation that is the bottom up determination is roughly identi ed at this point. Delanda after Deleuze goes on by substituting the downward causation with quasi-causality. He will continue by stating: “on the other hand, these pure eects are viewed as having a quasi-causal capacity to aect causal processes” (2002, p. 52). This reworking of causality by making this split will give the capacity to Deleuze to separate the determinism which links causes to other causes, from strict necessity, from a nal cause. With the introduction of quasi-causality Protevi claims that Deleuze dispenses with the false problem of downward causation which would be thought “as an e- cient causation issuing from a rei ed totality” (Protevi 2006, p. 30) whether this is the mind, the organism or the society; in other words totalities that imply necessity. It is the distribution and formation of singularities and attractors that resolve the issue of downward causation. Therefore, it is quasi-causality that funnels the trajectories into a basin of attraction. In the method of dramatization the operation of quasi-causality was named dark precursor, the ontological entity that brings disparate series into communication. “The task which the quasi-causal operator must accomplish is to create among the in nite series springing from each singularity “resonances and echoes” that is the most ethereal or least corporeal of relations” (Delanda 2002, p. 84). What Delanda after Deleuze names resonances and echoes is no other that the resonances and forward movements that have been mentioned in the method of dramatization. To gain a more detailed view it would be appropriate to look more at the side of complexity theory. While Resonances can be understood as mutually stimulating couplings of divergent series, the notions of echoes or forward movements are more associated with the positive feedback that rami es the series emanating from the sin- gularities7. Those forward movements allow dierences of intensity “to ensure their armative divergence” (2002, p. 205) that is the positive feedback loops that keep the system open and able to ramify its dierences further. Therefore, while ensuring the bifurcations of the system that creates new singularities, in other words that learns new skills, resonances will induce convergence in the series capable to actualise a larval subject in extensions and qualities. It is the existence of those forward movements that are contained in every primitive communication among disparate series and are only possible due to the presence of ‘uctuations’ the behavior of materials in near phase transition (2002, p. 86). These uctuations may eect a correlation of the disparate series (rates of dierences). In every material system there are variables that are not xed but rather they uctuate around a singularity. When the system is poised in equilibrium state those uctuations are minimum and so the potential of their communication. In states where the system is heading towards the near phase transition the uctuations increase up to a critical point where the potential of transmitting information is maximized. At this point the system maximizes its potential to ‘evolve’ to change and to restructure its phase space by producing new singularities, new attractors. There are two issues that are important to be mentioned at this point. First it is this capacity of the systems to approach but not to actualize this transition and

80 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture second that this phenomenon is independent of physical mechanisms underlying these phenomena. In other words the singularity itself is “mechanism-independent” (Delanda, 2011). The dark precursor with its quasi-causal operation on the disparate series allows systems to break up from necessity and to open to change and novelty, which is described by the second type of emergence called diachronic8. At the level of Diachronic emergence systems evolve by learning new patterns of behavior or other systems acquire new skills. What Deleuze calls the event, which dramatises is this truly creative process that opens to novelty. As the series formed by dierential relations resonate with other series via the armative divergence by keeping the system open to variation and to the creation of new attractors and new singular points. It is the production of new patterns and thresholds of behavior that matters. It is for that reason that Deleuze’s ontology is the ontology of the virtual. A philosophy half plunged in the virtual and half in the actual realm. If the actual half is the part that has the capacities to aect the environment in which an entity is embedded then the virtual half is the capacity of the system to be aected and in turn to produce new extensions and qualities. At the virtual domain, at the intensive eld of individuation is where the intensities operate and their series resonate as it has been already highlighted in the method of dramatization. But the communication between intensities is not necessary to take place between components of the same strata9. An intensive eld of individuation is constructed with communications beyond the extensions of the system, which forms with other systems assemblages through “relations of exteriority”10. Deleuze nds an isomorphism and an interest in the biological organisms through the work on symbiogenesis by Lynn Margulis (1998). In her research on eukaryotic cells she considered them as organic assemblages formed across evolutionary processes. There is no need for this transversal communication between organisms or better just entities to be constrained at the biological strata. Those transversal movements cut diagonally the intensive elds of individuation of biological, social and technological entities. Meshing the virtual realms of entities belonging to dierent strata, therefore, forms a machinic assemblage. The enlargement of the virtual half that is of the dierential relations and distribution of singularities entails a restructuring of the phase space of the assemblage. Based on the conception of transversal movement and the presence of singularities in order to explain the mechanism of emergence Protevi comes up with a third type of emergence called Transversal. The idea of transversality that renders the concept of ‘machinic assemblages’, complicates the understanding of diachronic emergence be discussed before and eventually folds the hierarchy that has been presupposed by the synchronic emergence into a at meshwork.

Emergence and Organism Autopoiesis and Mach[i]nic Assemblages It is exactly those last two readings on the mechanism of Emergence; the Diachronic and Transversal that provides an insight into repositioning the organism in the environment. Synchronic Emergence has dominated the discusion through mainly the concept of autopoiesis. Autopoiesis has been de ned by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela in the famous dictum of “organizationally closed, – but structurally open” (Maturana and Varela 1980) organism. Although it is adequate to capture the

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 81 phenomenon of synchronic emergence, autopoiesis is not able to follow the tendency of the organism to change in a diachronic scale. Autopoiesis can be seen only as an instance of synchronic emergence dedicated to homeostatic processes. If the analysis will be stopped here then it is assumed that organization has a xed transcendental identity. Keith Alan Pearson will identify the problematic aspect of autopoiesis. He will state: “if there is to be autopoiesis then it has to be conceived as operating on the machinic level”(Pearson 1999, p.170). Pearson explores the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari and makes use of their conceptual armature to extend the concept of autopoiesis. By introducing the ‘machinic’ (Guattari, 1995) character of any organism there is an attempt to dislocate its system from the often too conservative homeostatic circularity and to open it in an ongoing testing and experimenting of the limits of the organization to see the virtual disribution of singularities or what Manuel De- landa will call “tendencies”. Deleuze and Guattari advances the theory of autopoiesis by opening it up to chance and change, by working with the half of the reality that is plunged to the virtual realm; in a realm that chaos becomes a constitutive element of any creative process. This is why the organism for Deleuze is an enemy. Any closed and strati ed system is an enemy but an enemy that is not to be denied and eliminated. What it has to be revealed, while remaining hidden, is its virtuality. The actual realm with entities in extension and with qualities formed should be approached cautiouslly, “staying strati ed - organized, signi ed, subjected - is not the worst that can happen”. (Deleuze and Guattari 1980, p.161 ) The actualised entities enter into relations excersing their capacities to aect and be aected and the drama reverbarates in a continuum of dynamisms11. The question therefore transformed from what an entity/organism is to what an entity/organism can do, when, where and how. The ‘Animal-stalks-at- ve-o’clock’ (De- leuze and Guattari 1980, p.263) is not Heidegger’s ‘Being-in-the-World’or Bateson’s ‘organism-in-its-environent’ 12 but it is Deleuze’s take on Spinoza, of a “body [that] af- fects or is aected by other bodies” (Deleuze 1970, p 123). This Spinozian image of thought can best be described in the symbiotic complexes, in the machinic assemblages of biological, social and technological components. For that matter Symbiosis has not the same charge as that of Brautigan’s or with the dream of ultra-control of cybernetics in past decades. The fact that cybernetic systems can be programmed and reprogrammed gave rise to the belief that technology and machines can extend and replace humans in peaceful and balanced environment. Any communication though at the intensive eld of individuation under the operation of dark precursor, any symbiotic complex is a “violent encounter”. It is not ‘where mammals and computers live together in mutually programming harmony’ and it is not about a ‘deer stroll peacefully past computers’, as well as it is not the case of ‘all watched over by machines of loving grace’. It is about aecting and being aected. The system or the body enters into a composition with other aects while being open to be aected. The body lives in its own domain and series of intensities propagate and enter or not into entrain- ment/resonances with other series. “We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, in other words, what its aects are, how they can or cannot enter into composition with other aects, with the aects of another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to join with it in composing a more powerful body” (Deleuze and Guattari 1980, p.257).

82 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Deleuze’s and Guattari’s advancement of autopoietic theory is an attempt to open the entity/organism to its aective realm. In doing so it constructs a ‘machine’ 13 that is pri- or to the distinction of the human and the technical device. Three dierent types of emergence have been presented so far, in an attempt to explain the mechanism of emergence through the framework of Dynamical Systems theory. Investing on Deleuze’s method of dramatization and his new ontological modality of the virtual the essay opens emergence through its diachronic and transversal reading to change and novelty by advancing the premises of autopoietic theory. That openness constitutes the theory of machinc heterogenesis and that of machinic assemblages. Approaching any entity as a machinic assemblage that meshes with multiple other assemblages what is revealed is its aective realm. The realm that is formed from the depths of dierential relations and the distibution of singularities of the assemblages or in other words from the depths of the vrtual of a symbiotic complex. What is now necessary to explore is the virtual realm that will be achieved by concre- tising the approach to symbiotic complexes of human and technological components in the eld of architecture.

Symb(i/o)sis and the Praxis of Hacking Code, programming and computational processes uncover a powerful domain providing architects with an opportunity to work, think and experiment at the level of the intensive elds of individuation prior to any extensities and qualities. The introduction of computation and programming into design methodologies has marked a paradigmatic shift from top down to bottom up processes; a shift that is no need to be plunged into a synchronic view of emergence that perpetuates a balanced homeostasis. Brautigan’s view has been partially realised proving that current technology has resolved many of the technical issues of his time. However, what is not realised, is this immanent optimism of the controlled, balanced and peaceful symbiosis that the cybernetic view was striving to establish through the communication of individuals. The issue in question here is, therefore, more philosophical than technical and largely engages with the ontological and epistemological changes that this techno-scienti c explosion in its turn brings to thinking, practicing and inhabiting architecture. Those changes have been roughly revealed earlier by presenting the method of dramatization and by reworking the autopoetic circularity of the cybernetic organisms. However what remains to be seen is how this reworked hypothesis is concretised in the symbiotic complexes in the eld of architecture populated with computational entities. The ubiquitous presence of computers and digital code is apparent in the contemporary research in architecture following the same pattern as in all the aspects of life. A computer should be seen neither as a facilitator nor as a partner but as a symbiont. A universal machine able to set up a stage for a drama of computations and data calculations where code develops its own ‘machine’. What it has become apparent through the method of dramatization and the presence of the incorporeal entity of dark precursor is that a certain kind of communication takes place at pre-individual level; at the level where Ideas in Deleuzian sense exist as distinct dierential relations through data manipulation. But what is preserved in the idea, within itself is a zone of dark and obscure undierentiation. The dierentiated Idea, the actualized, is clear but the undierentiated idea is distinct and obscure. It is in the presence of the dark

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 83 precursor that obfuscation is being created. Put it in other words code has a Dionysian drunkenness within its Apollonian performance. It doesn’t only operate as an agent and performer but it has an immanent patient side. Take the example of objects in the Object Oriented programming paradigm. They usually have been named as demons participating collectively in what can be described as a Pandemonium. Pandemoni- um becomes the common ground where the demons act and execute the formalised logic of the algorithm but at the same time while they are exercising their capacities with other demons they fall into ‘violent encounters’ they exchange actions and passions composing an emergent higher entity. The demon is an agent and a patient at the same time and it is this latter characteristic that plunges code into the virtual constituting in parallel a new machine. It is demon’s passion that allows for the conception of diachronic emergence and the transversal communications between heterogeneous elements. It is not therefore proposed to retain the distinction between the computer/code and human and to link them through communication in a phenomenological level. What it is proposed is that human and computers are already elements of a ‘machine’; a collective machine that includes human bodies and technological devices in transversal communications at the pre-individual domain of resonances and echoes. It can be argued therefore that the computer is not a facilitator to the extent that executes the architect’s intuitions. It cannot be merely thought as a partner that manages relations between dierent subjects. It appears more as a symbiont capable to set-up state of aairs for pre-subjective transformations. A machinc assemblage is being constructed where the emergence of another world takes place. This is what is proposed here with the idea of Symb(i/o)sis as a transversal emergent complex. Archi- tect’s preoccupation with generative coding mostly relies on the phenomenological level where human-subject perceives the production of new qualities and traits. But the aective aspect rethinks perception as micro-brains or micro-perceptions at the level of intensities and dynamism. Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s aect takes place in a pre-individual level where only the rough sketches of larval subjects exist to sustain aects before they become accountable; before they become accessible to the sensory awareness. The theme of the symbiotic relationships between biological organisms and technological machines is not something new. Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider wrote a paper on ‘Man Computer Symbiosis’ in 1960. Licklider (1960) saw computers as a potential. He was insisting though that in order to harvest these potential the master- slave relationship which characterize contemporary paradigms of interaction has to be replaced by the notion of a partnership or even better yet, with that of symbiosis in which evolutionary paths of humans and machines interact. In this symbiotic complex, the human acquires a new position. It is not any more the master that dictates his/her own thinking patterns on the machines neither he disappears from the loop as the Arti cial Intelligence program had planned and in many cases has succeeded. The aim of symbiosis, according to Licklider, is to let computers facilitate formula- tive thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems. It is a radical change of thinking patterns that for Computers Scientists like E.W. Dijkstra (1972) it is required if it is for a human to deserve a computer. Gordon Pask’s MusicColor project (Haque, 2007) liberates interaction and interactive installations from this master-slave relationship. The MusiColour Machine is a performance system constructed in 1953. Music produced by a band functions as input for a lighting system to illuminate the

84 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture stage of performance in concert with the audio. Pask’s MusicColor is programmed to respond to certain frequencies. The moment, however, at which the music falls into a repetitive pattern MusiColour, reacts by producing lighting patterns that are discord- ant with the music. It receives inputs from a dierent source and improvises. It is the turn of the band then to respond by renewing the conversation with the machine. It is Francois Roche with his project “Une architecture des humeurs” that takes Gor- don Pask a step further by liberating communication and interaction from a conversation between a subject and an object or better between subjects individuals that can refer to their subjective realm of the sensory awareness. Francois Roche researches the contingency of the humors of the inhabitant on the habitat itself. He moves in a pre-individual level at the stage of dynamisms that presupposes an intensive eld. “At last, a habitat that reacts to your impulses... More precisely... it is itself the vector... synchronized with your body, your arteries, your blood, your sexual organs, your pulsat- ing organism... and you become a thing, an element among the rest, an element in fusion, porous... which breathes and yearns to be its own environment... Here everything combines and intertwines. Everything is here, its happening now, a movement happening now... Let yourself go...” (Roche, 2010). The symb(i/o)sis among algorithms, humors, building and inhabitants forms a machinic assemblage. Meshed together at the virtual realm through resonances the assemblage is poised at the edge of chaos and it is open to variation and creation of new singularities. The new ontological scheme proposed to be formulated engages architects and inhabitants in encounters that are far from the subjectivist relativism of phenomenology. Symb(i/o)sis14 reveals the non-human in the human and all sorts of micro-brains that can be found everywhere. This is not to deny the human or to take a position against him/her. What it is denied is a formed and organised perceiving subject as the basic unit of architecture’s constitution. It is only produced by the existence of a larval subject capable to sustain the immanent dynamisms. Biological and technological multiplicities enter therefore into aective ‘violent encounters’. There is not a subject perceiving an object but only “unique, singular individuals diering in spatiotemporal scale but not in ontological status” (Delanda 2002, p. 58). Once the correlation of the perceiving subject and the object is dissolved in favor of multiplicities existing in a pre-individual level then architecture doesn’t acquire spatiotemporality via the presence of a perceiving subject. In at ontology architectural space is not the result from a human perceptual action (sensori-motor perception) on a programmed structure; it is the state of aairs of entities and their capacities to aect and be aected. It is at this Symb(i/o)tic eld that the architect and becomes a hacker. The introduction of Hacking here has an armative connotation and should be thought more as a constructive rather than a disruptive praxis; a praxis that brings new things together experimenting and creating new connections. Hacking, therefore, is introduced stripped from any connotation of criminality, on the contrary it becomes a highly critical act in the eld of architectural design. Hacking intervenes at the level of virtual, the level of the intensive eld of dierences before the operation of the dark precursor. For this reason hacking becomes highly experimental with no possibility to control and steer any system according to a prede ned necessity and therefore it aects only the destiny of the system. McKenzie Wark in the ‘Hackers Manifesto’ notes that hacking is “to produce or apply the abstract to information and express the possibility of new worlds, beyond necessity” (Wark 2004, para. 014). The practice of hacking therefore is

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 85 becoming relevant in the attempt to dismantle the autopoietic system and its conservative circularity by testing and experimenting with the limits of its organization creating the conditions for the emergence of new singularities. “Hackers create the possibility of new things to entering the world” (2004, para. 004). They open up the possibilities for new domains where new singularities will be incarnated into new extensities and therefore new capacities of the system might nd a way to be expressed. Every hack produces a common plane for dierent things to enter into relation and therefore dierentiates the normal functioning of their shared goal. The action of hacking pushes the system beyond a certain threshold where the echoes, that are the positive feedback, will trigger a diachronic emergence in the transversal domain of the assemblages. It is for this reason that hacking operates on the virtual in order to transform the actual. “The virtual is the true domain of the hacker. It is from the virtual that the hacker produces ever-new expressions of the actual. To the hacker, what is represented as being real is always partial, limited, perhaps even false. To the hacker there is always a surplus of possibility expressed in what is actual, the surplus of the virtual. This is the inex- haustible domain of what is real without being actual, what is not but which may be. To hack is to release the virtual into the actual, to express the dierence of the real.” (2004, para. 074). If architecture can be thought as transversally emerging through a symb(i/o)tic complex of dynamical systems then the architect/hacker as part of the ‘machine’ is able to aect the stage of dynamisms where potential capacities for the production of spatial arrangements emerge. It is, therefore, not a purpose or a transcendent idea that govern the production of space and form but the quasi-causality of the distribution of singularities in a system’s phase space, which the architect-hacker partially aects. It is about setting the stage of possible dierential relations of interacting computational entities to be produced. In other words it is about setting up the stage for a drama to happen in the symb(i/o)tic eld of architecture.

Closing Remarks The essay attempted to critically approach human individuation in a technologically driven architecture. The critical position of the essay doesn’t go against this reality in any dialectical manner. On the contrary it follows the same direction only to push it further to its limits. It is on this premise that the essay re-approaches emergence not through a perspective of synchronic homeostasis but moving forward to include in its conception diachronic emergence and transversal movements. As a consequence of this conceptual disposition Brautigan’s poem can revisit two of its main presuppo- sitions. First the very much-dreamed ‘loving grace’ of the machines that promises a homeostatic cybernetic symbiosis with technology and secondly its implied ontological position that rests on individual fully formed organisms like deers, computers and humans. The essay attempted therefore to explore the consequent dissolved distinction of the human and the machine in favor of a at ontology that forms machines everywhere. The machinic assemblages do not deny autopoiesis. They only move it towards a direction that opens it up to change and novelty. In order to understand the machinic character of elements that form assemblages the essay revisited Deleuze’s

86 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture method of dramatization and his construction of the virtual domain populated by dif- ferential relations and distributed singularities. The last two terms as loans from the dynamical systems theory were explained. A rough lay out of the main terminology helped to establish a position adequate enough to follow Deleuze’s constructive philosophical movements in the realm of virtual. It is through the virtual that parts and species emerge in a very singular way and therefore the general conception of an entity-in-its-environment is concertised as the ‘Animal-stalks-at- ve-o’clock’. Moreoever, it is through the conception of the virtual that Spinoza’s idea of aecting and be af- fected is entering Deleuze’s thought not as a organismic metaphor but “the very condition of any cosmology”. The essay aimed to explore an aective realm that distributes microbrains everywhere. A realm that reveals the non-human perception in the human, aords microperceptions of the algorithmic code and nally establishes machines between those indepents and heterogeneous terms. According, to this view thereofre the non- human of the human enters as agent and patient in a Pandemonium with other demons. Archtects, inhabitants and code form symb(i/o)tic complexes at dierent levels of that of a phenomenological approach. At this level the architect preoccupied with code works towards the distibution of microperception accross the machine and not by investing on the inhabitant’s macroperceptions of the nal product. Arhcitects therefore become hackers only to constructively set the stage for a drama to happen in the symb(i/o)tic eld of architecture.

Notes

1 Delanda’s “Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy” will be proved an extremely valuable material in order to uncover Deleuze’s links with dynamic systems theory and therefore to rethink the emergence of an entity and the role of its environment. See (Delanda 2002) Further conceptual developments can be found in his latest book “Philosophy and Simulation”. See (Delanda 2011) especially pp. 1-6. 2 Mainly through his work on “The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque” (Deleuze, 2002) and through his lectures at Vincennes (1980). 3 It is worth making the distinction that chaos in this case is not used as a lay term, as something that is completely random and arbitrary, as something that denies the production of behavior. A Chaotic attractor on the contrary is a product of a system that undergoes certain processes. The most famous Chaotic attractor was discovered by Lorenz during simulations of global weather patterns (Abraham and Shaw, 1985b p. 85). 4 It is not the aim of this paper to discuss the bene ts of dynamical systems theory in the prediction of patterns of behavior as it is happening in the elds of weather, stock market and economy. The inuence of Poincarée in Deleuze’s understanding of the world’s dynamism is apparent in latter’s schematization of the method of dramatization and for that matter Dynamical Systems Theory proves to be a system for Deleuze to form his ontology. 5 Virtual multiplicities are Ideas. “A multiplicity is a nested set of vector elds related to each other by symmetry-breaking bifurcations, together with the distributions of attractors which de ne each of its embedded levels. This de nition separates out the part of the model which carries information about the actual world (trajectories as series of possible states) from the part which is, in principle never actualised”(Delanda 2002, p. 30).

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 87 6 For further elaboration on the distinction between the virtual/actual and the possible/real see (Deleuze, 1968) especially pages 260-261. 7 Feedback mechanisms are ubiquitous in systems everywhere and the study of them falls in two ways to be conceptualised. “The positive and negative feedback concepts are easily generalized to networks of multiple causal relations. A causal link between two variables, A ☐ B, is positive if an increase (decrease) in A produces an increase (decrease) in B. It is negative, if an increase produces a decrease, and vice versa” (Heylighen, 2001). The negative feedback loops recuperates the system to its normal functioning. The system responds to a uctuation caused by either internal or external perturbations and if the threshold which controls the response is crossed, the system is able to quickly return to its normal pattern. The Stable functioning of the system is restored while the perturbations are just corrected. Negative feedback loops therefore sustain the organization of the system through what is known as homeostatic mechanisms. However, there are though cases where the uctuations overcome the threshold and push the system to another pattern in its repertoire. The system in this case is either unable to sustain the perturbation and therefore dies (brittle) or it overwhelms its stereotyped patterns and pushes the system beyond the thresholds of its normative zone where instead of death the system learns by creating new attractors which imply new behaviors.(resilient systems) “While negative feedback is the essential condition for stability, positive feedback are responsible for growth, self-organization, and the ampli cation of weak signals” (Heylighen 2001). 8 Steven Shaviro will pose the following question: “Can we imagine a form of self-organization that is not also self-preservation and self-reproduction?” The essay attempts to give an answer by restating the question at a diachronic level of emergence that is being accompanied by the appropriate reworkings of downward causality. See (Shaviro 2009, pp. 71-98). 9 The essay is being aligned here with Protevi’s terminology on homeostratic and heterostratic diachronic transversal emergence. (Protevi 2006, p. 30). 10 Deleuze takes a critical stance to Hegel’s ‘relations of interiority’ where parts are determined due to their relations to the whole that constitutes a uni ed totality. If a part is detached of this totality it ceases to be what it is. Deleuze therefore invests in ‘relations of exteriority’ where relations among parts are relevant to the capacities that can be excersised at any singular moment. See (Delanda 2006, p. 10). 11 Based on the capacities of the entity to aect and be aected Deleuze builds a critique of the organism that will expand eventually to the social and political realm. Ian Buchanan will summarise this by stating that Deleuze’s intention is to reveal “the desire for the subject to transcendent the given while still be constituted in the given”. See more in (Buchanan, 2000). 12 Brat Bunchanan has proceeded with an interesting commentary and comparison between Heidegger’s and Deleuze’s idea of an entity embedded in its environment. (Buchanan 2008, p.44.) Deleuze is coming considerably more close to Gregory Bateson’s ideas investing both on the concept of dierence. (Bateson 2000, p. 457) 13 Deleuze and Guattari develop there own term of machine in their volume on Anti-Oedipus. They move from a critique on Marx’s reading on machines in order to develop their own concept. In the appendix to Anti-Oedipus which is not available in the English translation they will state: “We proceed not from a metaphorical use of the word [machine], but rather from an (indistinct) hypothesis about its origin: the way that arbitrary elements are made to form machines through recursion and communication; the existence of a machinic phylum” (Deleuze and Guattari 1977, p. 442). The text has been translated from Greek by the author. 14 Symb(i/o)sis can be thought in terms of the ‘Superfold’. In the same manner that the fold involves relations of exteriority, the Superfold opens those to new strata that consider genetic code, third-generation machines like computers and a ‘non-language’ of a-signifying semiotics. “It would be neither the fold nor the unfold that would constitute the active mechanism, but

88 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture something like the Superfold, as borne out by the foldings proper to the chains of the genetic code, and the potential of silicon in third-generation machines, as well as by the contours of a sentence in modern literature...” (Deleuze 1986, p. 131).

Bibliography

Abraham, R. and Shaw, R. 1985a. Dynamics – The Geometry of Behavior. Part 1: Periodic Behavior. California: Aerial Press Abraham, R. and Shaw, R. 1985b. Dynamics – The Geometry of Behavior. Part 2: Chaotic Behavior. California: Aerial Press. Bateson, G., 2000. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. London: The University Chicago Press. Brautigan, 1967. All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. San Francisco, California: The Com- munication Company. Buchanan, B., 2008. Onto-Ethologies: The Animal Environments of Uexkull, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze. State University of New York Press, New York. Buchanan, I., 2000. Transcendental Empiricist Ethics. In Deleuzism: A Metacommentary. Edinburgh Univesrity Press, Edinburgh. Delanda, M. 2002. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum. Delanda, M. 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum. Delanda, M. 2011. Philosophy and Simulation. The Emergence of Synthetic Reason. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G., 1968. Dierence et Repetition. Paris: PUF. Translated as Dierence and Repetition by Paul Button, 1994. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G., 1969. Logique du Sens. Paris: Minuit. Translated as The Logic of Sense by Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, 1990. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G., 1970. Spinoza. Philosophie pratique. Paris: PUF. Translated as Spinoza. Practical Philoso- phy by Robert Hurley, 1988. San Francisco: City Light Book. Deleuze G., 1980. Final Year at Vincennes . Cours Vincennes (online). http://www.webdeleuze.com/ php/texte.php?cle=50&groupe=Leibniz&langue=2 [Accessed 17 May 2010]. Deleuze, G., 1986. Foucault. Paris: Minuit. Translated as Foucault by Sean Hand, 1988. London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, G., 1988. Le Pli: Leibniz et le Baroque. Paris: Minuit. Translated as The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque by Tom Conley, 1993. London: The Athlone Press. Deleuze, G., 2002. Desert Islands and other Texts 1953-1974. Translated by Michael Taormina. New York: Semiotext(e). Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1972. L’ Anti-Oedipe: Capitalisme et Schizophrenie. Paris: Minuit. Trans- lated as Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane , 1984. London: Continuum. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 1980. Milleux Plateaux: Capitalisme et Schizophrenie. Paris: Minuit. Trans- lated as A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Brian Massumi, 1988. London: The Athlone Press. Dijkstra E.W., 1972. The Humble Programmer. ACM Turing Lectures (online). 22 Mar 2007 , http:// userweb.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD03xx/EWD340.html [Accessed 26 Mar. 2009].

Emmanouil Zaroukas UK 89 Gauttari, F., 1992. Chaosmose. Paris: Eiditons Galilee. Translated as Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm by Paul Bains and Julian Pefanis. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Haque, U., 2007. The Architectural Relevance of Gordon Pask. Archit Design, 77. pp. 54–61. Hensel, M. and Menges, A., 2009. The heterogeneous Space of Morpho-Ecologies. In Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture, eds. Hensel et al. London: John Whiley & Sons Ltd. Humphreys, P., 2008. Synchronic and Diachronic Emergence. Minds and Machines, 18, no. 4, p. 431. Licklider, J.C.R., 1960. Man- Computer Symbiosis [Online] Available at: [Accessed 10 June 2011]. Margulis, L., 1998. Symbiotic Planet. A New Look at Evolution. Amherst, Massachusetts: Basic Books. Massumi, B., 2002. A Sock to Thought. Expression After Deleuze and Guattari. London: Routledge. Massumi, B., 2008. Of Microperception and Micropolitics. In Micropolitics: Exploring Ethico-Aesthetics. Inexions: A journal for research-Creation. October, 3. Maturana, H.R and Varela, F.J., 1980. Autopoiesis and Cognition. :London: D. Reidel Publishing Company. Pearson, K.A., 1999. Germinal Life: The dierence and Repetition of Deleuze. London: Routledge. Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I., 1984. Order out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books. Protevi, J., 2006. “Deleuze, Guattari, and Emergence. In Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, 29.2, Jul, pp. 19-39. Shaviro, S., 2009. Without Criteria: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Roche, F., 2010. An architecture “des humeurs”. [online] Available at: [Accessed 10 August 2011 ]. Simondon, G., 1989. The Position of the Problem of Ontogenesis. In Parreshia, 2009, 7. pp. 4-16. Wark, M., 2004. A Hacker Manifesto. London: Harvard University Press.

90 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Alessio Erioli

DAPT Faculty of Engineering University of Bolognia Italy The Fashion Robot The conception of the body in the post-digital age commonly accepts the idea that the body itself is no longer bound to its genetic set and a renaissance image. The idea of anthropometrics - man as measure of all things - that spanned the anthropic culture from Vitruvius to Le Corbusier, gave way to the idea of specie within an ecosystem. The body aesthetic, untied from classicism, integrates more and more the concepts of prosthetics, mutation, and progressive dissolution of the established boundaries of humanness ( gure 1). The same ideas of body purity and integrity are disrupted from the biological and techno-social perspectives (which are dierent aspects of the same interconnected plexus): human bodies change perpetually as its constituent cells are periodically replaced and are, as a matter of fact, the environment to the smallest living organisms on earth. We are symbiotic with our viral and bacterial pool; one example for all: E. Coli allows us to digest food in the intestine, but microbial communities in our body are so many that they are referred to as the microbiome and they have their own way to communicate and organize themselves to pursue certain goals (NextNature, 2009). So much symbiotic in fact that it’s almost doubtful whether our bodies are no more theirs than ours (Science Daily, 2008). Our genetic set, unlike those of other animals, does not include the development of speci c organs, skills or capacities that enable us to survive in speci c environments; humans do not belong to any particular one, according to our anatomy and physiology there is no such thing as a “natural” habitat for us. Yet we are inextricably connected with the environment on all levels of complexity; in each of these, information exchange is continuous (from the horizontal exchange – specie to specie - of genetic material up to the sophisticated transmission of values through language and cultural systems). We are entangled with a universe of information, which at once ampli es our sensory reach and further blurs the boundary of our bodies. We can as well say that our specie lives in an ecosystem of information, which lies at the bottom of physical things (Wheeler, 1990) and manifests and ows as embedded property (like the form of a chemical molecule or the color of a fruit’s skin) as well as through coded systems (such as language, a technology, or its evolved, second order eect: culture). Ever since our ancestors, we used technology (which pre-dates our humanness) as a mean of environmental interaction, we took advantage of it to engineer nature in order to enlarge our ecological niche; this implies also improving our capacity to manage a higher level of complexity and sophistication in the architecture of information, which changed our physical body (see for example how the development of cooking food triggered the development of a bigger brain - Weinstock, 2010 - p. 151 & 157) and mutually inuenced the way we inform our architectures, both in the morphological and spatial organization and in their use as a medium and storage for our cultural products (including social organization). Technology then isn’t an added feature that implicitly subjugates or undermines human condition, rather a symbiotic dimension that is inextricable from it: our environmental adaptation strategy is to build systems (NextNature, 2011), we are technological beings by nature. But when one becomes the use of a system, it becomes part of the system: the price for the advantage of technology is our dependance on it. Technology is co-evolving with humanity, or, in another fashion, humanity and technology are catalysts of their own co-evolution. An outdated yet popular idea (linked to industrial and mechanical age concepts) is that which sees the “pure” body belonging to the biological world attacked and deformed by the technological world of pros-

92 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Bart Hess - “A Hunt for High Tech” - seeks to harness both nature and technology and create armoured skin and fur for a new human ar- chetype incorporating animalistic and fetichistic instincts. thetics as additions. The more realistic idea of a web of relations symbiotically intertwined with its microbiome and the technium disrupts at once the ideas of “purity” and “arti cial” (which are complementary) as the notions of “growing” and “breeding” new products are gradually substituting the one of “making”, the typical mark of man up to the industrial age. The notion of machine in its philosophical meaning of an assemblage able of self-organization and self-reproduction processes provides a better description of the upcoming generation of systems we will interact with.

“In Mechanism and Biological Explanation [Maturana 1970], Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela argue that machines and biological forms are very closely related — so closely, in fact, that biologists can reasonably claim living systems are machines. This is not meant merely as a pedagogical metaphor, but rather as a rigorous analogy, which emphasizes important symmetries, and even better, expresses concisely speci c experimental and theoretical aims. In what sense, then, are living systems machines? A machine is de ned by a group of abstract operations, satisfying certain speci c conditions. An abstract machine is this system of inter-relations which is itself independent of the actual components which ‘realize’ the machine. A shing boat can be made from many kinds of wood, sailed on many bodies of water, used to store many species of sh; a game of tag can be played with an arbitrary number of arbitrary people in any suitable space. What matters is not the speci city of a given component but the speci city of its relationships.” (Fractal Ontology, 2011 citing Varela and Maturana, 1972)

Alessio Erioli Italy 93 Contemporary technology is establishing a pervasive and ubiquitous connection between an active space of information (whether physically embedded or coded) and our metabolic functions, moving from an idea of human as a body+mind whole to that of a system of relations: it is the set of those relations that engenders an ontology of human condition as a dynamically interconnected system with its environment at large, an interdependent part of it. Among those systems, the world of prosthetics and robotics has evolved to a point where the threshold between biology and mechanics has become heavily blurred: they are more and more similar to biological organs, in behavior and structure. The man-machine duality is overcome by the idea that every biological specie is a wet computer (BBC, 2010 and Wikipedia, 2010) and, on the other hand, computers as we know them today are just primitive forms of a new biological specie. Latest developments in medical research, such as 3D printing cellular tissues and organs (like the one developed in London medical Labs by professor Alexander Seifalian - see Medical Daily, 2011), envision new scenarios related to the possibility to choreograph growth processes through multi-agent systems and neural networks, where the threshold between categories (cause and eect in particular when thinking of self-organizing processes such as catalytic webs in the context of nature, considered as a Complex Adaptive System) is a blurred boundary. So is the one between living and non living: the building of synthetic life is a matter of scale within the system we are operating upon, the dierences between living systems and machines as we see it today have then more to do with the scale of complexity of the relational system.

All organisms are modular: life always consists of sub-organisms which are involved together in a biological network. The interrelations between organ and organism form a series of feedback loops, forming a cascading and complex surface. Each organ parasites o the next, but this segmentation is not spontaneous. Rath- er, it is development itself, the decoupling of non-communicating spaces for the organization of divergent series. Creative evolution, self-organization and modularity are the same idea. (Fractal Ontology, 2011)

A ‘machine’ is de ned by the boundary between itself and its environment; it is divided from an in nitely complex exterior. Communication within a machine-system operates by selecting only a limited amount of all information available outside (reduction of complexity), and the criterion according to which information is selected and processed is meaning (in other words, only relevant information is selected, and relevance is assessed by evolutionary drivers coupling emergent self-organization and environmental pressures). Machines process meaning, producing desire.

As biological machines our metabolic modularity shows a high hierarchical bias on our brain: despite it represents only 2% of the body weight, it receives 15% of the car- diac output, 20% of total body oxygen consumption, and 25% of total body glucose utilization (Magistretti, Pellerin and Martin, 2000); moreover, a gram of brain tissue uses 22 times the amount of metabolic energy as a gram of muscle tissue (Weinstock, 2010 citing Aiello, 1997). This primacy in human physiology suggests analog importance in biasing relevance (meaning) and desire in the developmental processes of metabolic modularity.

94 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The theory of the development of metabolic modularity is called morphogenesis. (Fractal Ontology, 2011)

Morphogenesis regards both the processes and the outcomes of the generation of form; the capacity of transmitting morphogenetic patterns through communication implies an experience of form. Given the metabolic importance of our brain, it plays a dominant role in such experience. Aesthetics is the dimension where such experience takes place, in which the outcomes of morphogenetic systems generate patterns which interact with cultural systems, informing or aecting their evolution as well as being aected by them at once. Aesthetic experience happens when all the sense operate at their climax “when you’re resonating with the excitement of this thing you’re experiencing” (Robinson, 2010), it is direct and intensely subjective psychological and sometimes psychophysical. The aesthetic object, according to Su- sanne Langer, has a virtual character: although it exists in reality as itself it has also a semblance of a palpable experience; semblance “liberates perception--and with it, the power of conception--from all practical purposes, and lets the mind dwell on the sheer appearance of things” (Langer, 1953, pp. 48-9). The fact that psychology, emotion, and phenomenal experience of the art object are inextricably bound suggests that highly individuated subjective experience is embedded into human consciousness. Aesthetic is then the moment of extreme sophistication in which a cultural production system is generated and then reaches the tipping point after which deploys itself acting on the same relationships that individuals establish with forms themselves (attraction or repulsion, two aspects of behavioral ecology). It is in this sense that fashion is intended: as a moment of fascination in which beauty (or repulsion) acquire the status of function, extending behavioral ecology beyond mere physiology, functional eciency and processes of environmental reaction: blushing, for instance, is the involuntary reddening of one’s face, a rush of blood into certain vessels started by a particular thought or emotion, which can also be self-induced. Such phenome- nons testify how our brain is involved emotionally and not only rationally when driving our choices and how aesthetic can aect physical behavior. The physical body is tied and tends to an image, a vision, which becomes an attractor. Recent research and newborn elds in cognitive neuroscience, such as neuroaesthetics which is “concerned with the neural underpinnings of aesthetic experience of beauty, particularly in visual art” (Cinzia, D.D. & Vittorio, G., 2009), are trying to disclose the relational patterns of aesthetic experiences.

Cultural evolution has produced an imaginary of bodies and machines far beyond their purely functional dimension, especially in the pop universes of cinema and comics: those examples, especially the ones which cross the threshold of sophistication so as to engender an aesthetic experience and a possible future become as viable as real examples insofar they become attractors of future developments and behaviors which can vehicle novelty in everyday life habits and sensibility. The Otaku world in particular has been so far the most fertile ground on which robotics, aesthetics, cultural pulses and social models have interwoven and proliferated. Takashi Murakami’s work is a signi cant example in the world of art, sublimating in his works the unsolved conict among sexual repression (where erotism and sexuality

Alessio Erioli Italy 95 represent the orbital of interaction among biology and cultural systems), obsession for perfection, neoteny in the manga graphics, the fear and the morbid attraction for cyborgs, tech and mecha (all that is a fusion or hybridization between esh and metal) in an uncompromised and vibrating tension. One signi cant example in this perspective is the sculpture tryptic “KO2 Second Mission” ( gure 2), that depicts the transformation of a robot girl into a spaceship with extremely re ned detail and elegant interconnection of metallic and organic parts. The obsession of losing humanness and the esh-machine clash have produced a great number of examples of progressively re ned metabolic modularity in that sense, from the purely mechanic (giant robots) to cybernetic (Casshern, where a boy renounces his humanity to ght the legacy of his father and search redemption for both) up to the biologic, genetic and parasitic body manipulation, each one with its own set of sophisticated morphogenetic expressions that resonated in the cultural domain. The Guyver, called “bio-booster armor”, carries the idea of parasitizing and symbiosis (the “armor” is really an alien specie) with a continuum between the technological and biological dimensions.

Reiser and Umemoto, in “Atlas of Novel Tectonics”, de ned architecture as a “mediator between matter and events” (Reiser+Umemoto, 2006). Armors, clothes, prosthetics are mediators between body and space (physical and event space); they embody spatial articulation and dierentiation among body parts and the functions they perform, aecting the deployment of capacities in the system in relation to the possible contingent situations facilitating, amplifying or inhibiting degrees of freedom and/ or external exchange. Moreover they respond to environmental instances, protection and communication (patterns used as language or information transmission, such as transparencies used to modulate degrees of privacy and/or seduction for mating). In the dimension of ornament elements and gures that declare their identity and belonging are used as instrument for the harmonization and articulation of the system itself beyond mere function: ornament, made of more or less gurative patterns, builds up an added layer of aesthetic sophistication; in some cultures this function is exerted directly on the skin, through tattoos. Any of these variables is inuencing the others in an intensive and turbulent eld which evolves in space-time and where these inuences engender emergent patterns & self-organization processes. Dresses, armors, prosthetics are metabolism mediators, expanders and enhancers. A beautiful evidence of this multiplicitous role is the case of XV century armors (some of which were carefully catalogued by Viollet-le-Duc in his “Dictionnaire rai- sonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne à la renaissance”, part 5 & 6, 1874) in the invention and evolution of speci c interconnecting parts (such as the elbow or knee plate or the horse-rider compound leg plate depicted in gure 3). These war out ts represent the peak expression of steel-plates armor evolution before the invention of rearms such as the arquebus, after which they were progressively abandoned because of their ineectiveness against such weapons (see Arquebus in Wikipedia, 2010): their primary protection function (which required stiness and body coverage against spears) had to be mediated with body anatomy (modulation of stiness and articulation for movement) and physiology (lightness, ventilation), thus engender- ing over time ornaments which strengthen the armor surface through corrugation (allowing for a lighter plate with equal or improved resistance) and the use of scaled

96 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Takashi Murakami - “KO2 - Second Mission”.

Fig. 3 horse-rider compound leg plate in Viollet-le-Duc “Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne a la renaissance”, part 6. image © Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, license type: Creative Commons (by author, non commercial, share alike). connected plates with increasingly sophisticated joints were movement was required (up to gauntlet’s ngers). Evolved control of re temperature stability and mastery of steelwork pushed by military needs produced a self-sustaining takeo in terms of ornament, dierentiation and articulation of parts, bringing the armor to the level of sophistication in which it became a performative and cultural metabolic extension: etch- es and corrugations in the armors, as well as speci c interconnection parts, became a layer of information embedding narratives of the knight’s personal history, family, legacy and successes in battles. Since relations are always mutual, many family badges were shields, which is an evidence of a tight relationship between war and daily life (defend and conquer); such identi cation in vessels and logos has commercial and military origins (which are, by the way, two dierent ways of negotiation). Among the contemporary versions of the plate-armored knight, Marvel Comics character Iron Man (in his recent blockbuster movie version, see gure 4) embodies the more faithful version of the XV century armor evolution: apex of an extensive concept of architecture made of discrete elements, perfectly forged and t according to the body proportions, an extension and ampli cation of human possibilities wrapped

Alessio Erioli Italy 97 in a luxurious, shiny chrome out t. An even more recent version of the armor as metabolic enhancer that also deals with concepts of complexity and biomi- metics is represented by the Nanosuit conceived for Crysis videogame ( gure 5), where nanomachines act as agents which interact directly with the body’s metabolic functions in order to empower or protect the body, going through self-organized swarm con- gurations where specialization of functions derives from local dierentiation of the agents themselves. Although ctional, these examples have reached (due to the increasing demand of realism by contemporary sci- stories) a level of detail and speci city of parts to provide an aesthetic product which is not only as valid as a real one, but potentially also envisions a possibility yet to happen (it would not be the rst, nor the last case of a ctional apparatus that gives research the visionary push and direction toward a forthcoming innovation), an aesthetic attractor. See for example the case of the Jetpack: their concept appeared in popular culture, particularly science ction long before the technology became practical (Wikipedia, 2010). Fig. 4 Analogue relations show up in the case of clothes, Iron Man prototype armor where technological evolution (from the rst knots - © MARVEL comics group. holding together animals skins to the increasingly

Fig. 5 Crysis U.S. Nanosuit - © Crytech.

98 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture sophisticated interweaving of threads to produce fabric and explore their aesthetic expressions) cohered with the response to metabolic functions and cultural transmission. The african dress in gure 6, coming from the museum of Gibellina in Sicily uses as ornament a pattern which is a diagram for eld irrigation: complex information is stored and transmitted through generations by means of garments, which themselves carry in their fabric, sewing and construction information about how to

Fig. 6 African dress from Gibellina museum - photo by Alessio Erioli.

Fig. 7 Fig. 8 Iris Van Herpen in collaboration with Daniel Wid- Iris van Herpen in collaboration with Dan- rig - escapism collection - © Iris Van Herpen. iel Widrig - escapism collection - © Iris Van Herpen.

Alessio Erioli Italy 99 second thermal regulation, respiration, movement, protection as well as social status, gender, religion, etc. Without forgetting or underestimating the innovative contributions of Issey Miyake, Hussein Chalayan and Alexander McQueen (especially his un- forgettable Spring-Summer 1999 collection show where 2 7-axis robotic arms and a model make an esquisite display of playful, innocent, erotic surrender to technology as art expression in fashion - Ebesp, 2006), a singular example in the contemporary fashion scene for its connections with architecture is the case of the Crystalization and Escapism collections by Iris Van Herpen in collaboration with Daniel Widrig ( gures 7 and 8 respectively): modularity, self-similarity, topological abstract machines and formation processes are conveyed through the exploration of the collection’s concept and materialized through a range of techniques that include traditional leatherwork side by side with rapid prototyping. Descending along the material scale down to the chemical molecules, the work of Manel Torres’ “fabrican” ( gure 9) represents another interesting evolution: a sprayable fabric which can be modulated, deployed and graduated not only according to the speci cs of each’s own, but again materializing an expanded aesthetic of the body which is enhanced by means of scaolds, artifacts, underlying structures; free from the constraints of plain woven fabric or discrete elements, this clothing technique brings up an aesthetic that entirely relies on intensities, modulating material computation through density and thickness and closely behaving through ber layering like human skin. In both cases aesthetic and signi cation rely on the interplay between body and artifact without the embodiment of more or less explicit messages. Sonja Bäumel’s “(IN)visible membrane” ( gure 10) goes even further, working on the threshold of consciousness of our body as symbiotic with our microbiome, envisioning a second living layer on our skin based on the interaction between individuals and the surrounding that confronted scienti c data and methods with fashion design: colonies of bacteria in our skin can sense the surroundings and produce growth patterns providing the right protection in various situations, a hidden membrane between body and environment with multiple actualizations. In her own words:

What happens if we make the micro world of the human body perceivable? I want to confront people with the fact that our body is a large host of bacteria and that a balanced perception of the body is closely linked with a balanced perception of the self. (Bäumel, 2011)

Prosthetics is generally intended as the branch of medicine dealing with the production and use of arti cial body parts that allow amputees to fair their capacities to the ones of a non-amputee: retro tting amputee soldiers after World War I (see gure 11) was a way of re-humanizing them by giving them a new purpose, a role to make them again part of the society. In a more general perspective (looking at the etymology of it: προσθετικός “adding; repletive; giving additional power” ) we can consider a prosthetic any kind of device able to augment human capacities with which we establish a symbiotic relation: smartphones, contact lenses, exoskeletons, vehicles. Again, the world of ction provides us a vision of a possible future through the viral campaign of the videogame “Deus-Ex: Human revolution”: SARIF industries does not exist, but ex-

100 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 9 Manel Torres - “fabrican” sprayable fabric - © Fabrican Ltd.

Fig. 10 Sonja Bäumel - “(IN)visible membrane” - © Sonja Bäumel.

Fig. 11 Amputee soldier retro tted to help in reconstruction service - © photo by American Red Cross, National Geographic Stock.

Alessio Erioli Italy 101 perts and scientists predict that the sophistication of their “augmentations” ( gure 12) could be reached in 2027 (the year in which the game is set), if not before (DeusExOf- cial, 2011). It’s not really necessary to reach the point when people spontaneously accept to have their sane limbs replaced by SARIF’s augmentations (one of the game scenarios) to understand that fairing for an amputee is about restoring a self-con -

Fig. 12 SARIF industries augmentations - © EIDOS/Square Enix.

Fig. 13 Bespoke innovations prosthetics - © Bespoke innovations.

102 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture dent body image as much as a lost performance (and, in both cases, we are not necessarily meaning the original ones): Bespoke innovations ( gure 13) work on this line of development for their prosthetic limbs, providing also the possibility to customize them with several material combinations as well as unique patterns. Latest developments on the front of performance and function are placing the new limbs ever closer to the threshold of a biological new organ. Again, borrowing from the world of science ction, the stunning set of organs that Robin Williams/Andrew Martin designs for himself to become human in “Bicentennial man” (the movie in itself is a curious case in which ideas about arti cial life are conveyed with unusual con dence through a hollywood family movie) represent a possible frontier for research as well as an eye-candy, rich, plethora of synthetic-organic complex systems morphologies (see for example the heart in gure 14).

In all cases (armors, clothes, prosthetics), at the peak of their sophistication the whole set of parts (no matter what their scale or linkage type) is harmonically assembled (meaning assemblage as set of relations) in order to form a coherent system in terms of functionality, aesthetics, communication as well as being the result of environmental selection pressures. When metabolism encompasses cultural processes in its complex information exchanges, the biological and cultural worlds interweave in taking part in morphogenetic and evolutionary processes (such as in the previously mentioned case of extended behavioral ecology and aesthetics). When a morphogenetic system (be it genetically grown or crafted) reaches the level of sophistication of aesthetic experience, it triggers a cascade of emergent feedback loops among biology, the technium (as Kevin

Fig. 14 Bicentennial man heart - © Sheep’s Cloth- ing production.

Alessio Erioli Italy 103 Kelly names the kingdom of technological evolution - Kelly, 2010) and the cultural dimension.

Architectures can be considered extensions of our collective metabolism, to which we outsourced part of our physiology (i.e. thermal regulation is partially performed through our buildings, widening our ecological niche and allowing us to spend more metabolic energy in other activities and colonize a wider range of environments), our protection (Manuel Delanda considers cities as our “mineralized exoskeleton” - De- landa, 2000), our memory of social organization (architecture is also a communication device itself, integrating and interacting with language and culture, storing and transmitting information about biological, social and spatial organization from one generation to the next: separations and organizations in cities responded to many pressures, included social classes, norms about hygiene and sorting for classi cation). Architecture tackles and organizes the same instances of environmental mediators on the scale of a community as emergent result of individual interaction: through spatial distribution pattern articulation it choreographs uxes of matter-energy-information as a result of the forces interacting with the milieu upon which it is based: environmental pressure, culture, patterns of social interaction, resources, etc. Steering away from the mere concept of a rigid protection and mitigation artifacts, it should become a more sensible mediator for interconnected relationships in a complex eld of environmental and cultural pressures, as well as a new dynamic subject itself, using form as agency for environmental adaptation and construction of relevant (meaningful) open sets of new relations. The relations that forge meaning in a reality aware of complexity aren’t tied anymore to a formal repertoire made of a nite set of entities, rather forms themselves dynamically, evolving together with the eect of their own interactions: aesthetic judgment relates to form as agency and how, depending on context, establishing relations with other interacting and exogenous forces that can be at work on it, meaning can change and dierentiate.

In the course of Architectural design 3 we searched where environmental negotiation, cultural pressures and body-space relations nd their developmental landscapes. The studio investigated, using environmental pressures as a breeding terrain, the aesthetics of environmental modulators with the means to promote the exert of students’ personal sensibility in front of the emergent potential within the complex relationships among form-process-performance; such sensibility was then applied to morphogenetic systems as models of integration for physiology, culture, social pattern, environment. The course investigated on speci c cases where the interconnected environmental conditions and cultural pressures are the culture medium for systems to thrive and grow onto. The ongoing processes and results are visible online on the course blog (http://a3-tfr.blogspot.com/). The case-study presented here ( gures 15 to 20) regards the design of a research center on aesthetic and nanotechnologies connecting together scienti c research and performative arts, providing strong interconnection and interaction environments, as well as exhibition and event spaces and a high porosity and connection among the various parts. The project is situated in a garden which works as connection tissue among 3 streets of dierent circulation relevance and activities such as: the actual museum of modern art of Bologna (MamBo), the historical Cinema and lm restoration center and a night club. Using the sport car

104 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 15-16 Winding Ridges - project developed in the Architectural Design 3 course, Faculty of Engineering - Università di Bologna - prof. Alessio Erioli - group: 5core (Matteo Cominetti, Marco Magnani, Luca Pedrielli, Gianluca Tabellini, Francesco Tizzani).

Alessio Erioli Italy 105 106 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 17-20 Winding Ridges - project developed in the Architectural Design 3 course, Faculty of Engineering - Università di Bologna - prof. Alessio Erioli - group: 5core (Matteo Cominetti, Marco Magnani, Luca Pedrielli, Gianluca Tabellini, Francesco Tizzani).

Alessio Erioli Italy 107 prototypes as environmental mediator upon which base the morphogenetic study a broad taxonomy of elements such as ridges, intakes, scoops provided the basic pool of morphology-performance-aesthetic relations to work onto in order to design the morphogenetic system that colonized the territory driven by environmental variables such as radiation, natural ventilation and terrain sloping. The project aims to go beyond pure performative reaction to environmental stimuli promoting itself as autonomous, proactive ordering principle in which environmental pressures fuel a complex morphogenesis that channels performance through its own aesthetic reasons.

References

BBC, 2010. Chemical computer that mimics neurons to be created. [online] available at [accessed 11 january 2010]. Baumel, S., 2010. (In)visible. [online] available at: http://www.sonjabaeumel.at/index. php?content=im> Cinzia, D.D. & Vittorio, G., 2009. Neuroaesthetics: a review. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 19(6), pp.682-687. De Landa, M., 1997. A thousand years of nonlinear history, Zone Books. DeusExOcial, 2011. Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary. [video online] available at [accessed 12 july 2011]. Ebesp. Alexander McQueen Spring Summer 1999 - Creating an art piece. [online] [accessed march 2010]. Fractal Ontology. Machinic Autopoiesis. [online] available at [accessed 5 february 2011]. Fractal Ontology. Abstract Machine. [online] available at < http://fractalontology.wordpress.com/ category/deleuze-and-guattari/abstract-machine/ > [accessed 5 february 2011]. Kelly, K., 2010. What Technology Wants, Viking Adult. Langer, S., 1953. Feeling and Form. Medical Daily. Human Body Parts Growing in Jar May Save Lives. [online] available at [accessed October 31, 2011]. Metapedia. Cultural Hibridity Discussion, Fall 2009: week 8. [online] available at [accessed march 2011]. NextNature, 2009. How do bacteria communicate. [online] available at [accessed 5 November 2010]. NextNature, 2011. System animals. [online] available at [accessed April 2011]. Reiser, J. and Umemoto, N., 2006. Atlas of Novel Tectonics 1st ed., Princeton Architectural Press. Robinson, K. Changing education paradigms, 5:50-6:10. [video online] available at [accessed 12 January 2011] Science Daily, 2008. Humans Have Ten Times More Bacteria Than Human Cells: How Do Micro- bial Communities Aect Human Health?. [online] available at [accessed February 2011].

108 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Varela, F., Maturana, H. Mechanism and Biological Explanation. Philosophy of Science, Vol. 39, No. 3. (Sep., 1972), pp. 378-382. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène-Emmanuel. Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque carlovingienne a la renaissance (Part 5 & 6), Paris, 1874. [online] available respectively at and [accessed February 2011]. Weinstock, M., 2010. The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation, John Wiley & Sons. Wheeler, John A., 1990. Information, physics, quantum: The search for links. Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information, Addison Wesley. Wikipedia, 2010. Arquebus. [online] available at [accessed February 2011]. Wikipedia, 2010. Jetpack. [online] available at [accessed September 2011]. Wikipedia, 2010. Wet Computer. [online] available at [accessed 10 November 2010].

Alessio Erioli Italy 109

Anastasios Tellios

School of Architecture Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece Human Parameters in Technology-Driven Design Research: Formal, Social and Environmental Narratives This paper will attempt to address issues referring to this once again de ned relation between architecture and technology. As this relation grows deeper and already irreversible, a certain degree of intellectual as well as physical osmosis occurs between the worlds of IT and architecture. Architecture absorbs the information technology tools and methodologies and gradually begins to digest and internalize them. The shift from humanities towards technology may be an evident outcome of this osmosis. Proof for this underlying procedure is given and documented inside the studies’ curricula of Schools of Architecture and relevant research institutes around the world. Architecture, though, has -and should- never resigned from being a space-investigating act. Its main task is the conception, designing and production of space. The de nition of space in this context is that of space being the vessel of human activity and social interaction. There may have been a distinct ‘feel-well’ character when it comes to values of architecture that have de ned and followed architecture so far, such as permanence, solidity, stability and clarity. These values have guided the architect’s practice almost forever, but now, they do not seem to be valid anymore. Furthermore, there is a light- hearted feeling among circles of criticism when completely renouncing them as at and narrow-minded. These values, though, have never been a at projection of a similarly at internal discussion. They have been theoretical platforms, proved and tested for centuries. Each time they were closely tied to the certain, existing technological niveau that prevailed and supported civilization each time. There is an evident theoretical frame of a general consensus and encouragement of the development and enrichment of new technologies and advanced digital design techniques. This is the current state of the art for the education and training of architects and this should be clearly stated here. The almost apologetic comment, therefore, projected in the previous paragraph, may sound like resonating a dierent family of opinions and reecting the way that architecture and the built space have been treated in previous times. It is just as fair, though, for this kind of theoretical opposition to be stated. Since technology constantly evolves and re-shapes the cultural construct, as we know it in an unprecedented way, architecture inevitably has to follow and re-adjust itself responsively. This kind of procedure has been happening forever and still is. What should be pointed out, though, is that when it comes to architecture, it is happening with a certain phase dierence, compared to the technological advances. This phase dierence has to do with architecture’s special features. These features are related to architecture’s apparent geometry, its mass and solidity, its very physicality as essential component of the built environment. Therefore, a certain amount of the criticism that this ‘old school’ approach is receiving is largely a projection of forces of intellectual inertia and not an internal or intrinsic intellectual stub- bornness of architecture. And de nitely it doesn’t imply any possible inadequacy of the architectural intellect per se. Architecture just needs time to understand any new status and adapt and comply with new rules set each time.

A new Understanding of Architecture: Complexity and Nature What stands before us, as architects, is a promising, yet only almost new understanding of the space-de ning procedure. This new understanding of the act of architec-

112 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture ture, allows the re-emerging of a typical array of issues. These issues belonged to architecture’s agenda since centuries. They address a repertoire of quasi-classical bipoles, such as old-new, natural-arti cial, etc. The validity of these bipoles presupposes also the validity of all the corresponding hybridization techniques between the poles each time.

According to a certain line of thinkers, the various parameters of architecture can still be successfully de ned by G. Broadbent’s (Broadbent, 1974) four ‘deep structures’ as an explanatory scheme for architecture. This set of factors consists of:

a. The functional factor (architecture as container of human activity) b. The aesthetic factor (architecture as a symbolic object) c. The ecological factor (architecture as the converter of natural resources) d. The physical factor (architecture as interacting within the built world)

Among others, someone can clearly underline the formal, the social and the environmental parameter. Previous de nitions of architecture have been considering these parameters as separate entities to be judged autonomously. The late and simultaneous evolutions of architecture and IT have urged that the architectural discussion addresses the architectural procedure as a whole. There is a strong unifying element acting as a catalyst today. This unifying element ultimately describes the way architecture is discussed, designed, scripted and fabricated today, not necessarily following this order. This element is of a bifold character. It incorporates two substantial, core issues, questions that once again emerge in the architectural discussion. The rst question is about how to handle complexity, and the second question has to do with what to do with nature. This is a direct cross-reference back to the space-investigating task of architecture, as stated in the beginning. Once again, architecture has to deal with complexity and its relation with nature. Complexity has been the object of the architectural thinking various times in the past. During the late years, following the structural waves of modernism, post-modern theorists as well as the avant-garde of the time have attempted to decipher complexity and then incorporate it in architecture in a coherent manner. This has not always been done eectively, even though at the time, it has received positive public welcome. Robert Venturi, during his mature, post-modern culminating has tried to address complexity when designing his ‘Vanna Venturi House’ (Venturi, 2002). He presented an obvious overlap of elements running throughout the design procedure, from the organization of space to the elaboration of the plans and the articulation of the elevations. Some decades later, Frank Gehry oers a more alternative version of complexity in his iconic Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. With an underlying theoretical discussion of de-construction of the time, Gehry presents an unprecedented spatial de nition of a complex architecture. Both approaches have had a deep inuence in architecture and they are already distinctive moments of modern architectural history. As interpretations of complexity, characteristic of speci c and de ned architectural genres, they are both educated, eloquent and strict. Still, though, they seem rather con ned in their strictness and oer only a faceted image of complexity and its dynamics.

Anastasios Tellios Greece 113 Compared to these examples, natural systems that possess and incorporate complexity in their entirety, act in a dierent way. The ancient city of Khara-Khoto, once a prosperous urban system, has been operating as a city for centuries. When the regional climate changed, the local ecology collapsed (Weinstock, 2010). Ecologies shifted and changed and a more exible natural system, more adaptive to complexity prevailed. Sand dunes now cover the ancient city, providing a natural topography of wav- ing sand structures. The mere naivety of this example of natural prevalence following an almost Darwinian procedure projects a non-educated, yet ecient spatial action.

Research Agenda: Spatial Investigations and the Limits of Design The intellectual frame placed above is one part of the agenda of a design studio at the School of Architecture of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh, Greece). The other arts are related to advanced design tools and methodologies. The design studio is called ‘2S1 62: Spatial investigations and the limits of design’. A further series of Diploma Projects and Diploma Theoretical Researches is being organized and implemented under this scheme. The object is the research being conducted is related to the procedure of architectural design and the investigation of its origins and its limits. As stated in the studio’s curriculum, it attempts to connect architectural design, as a deep, creative procedure with the broad elds of innovation, the study of structures (biological, technological, etc.), the scienti c observation (microscopic, molecular, macroscopic, etc.), as well as other scienti c and creative elds, using advanced technologies for digital design and spatial representation. The aim is to understand the dynamics of space and its qualities, the challenge of established building schemes, the experimental process of complex and sometimes unexpected alternative functional programs. The purpose is the nal proposal of innovative spatial situations, through comprehensive, synthetic architectural narratives. Particular emphasis is placed on encouraging the development of personal design vocabularies, portraying exibility and resourcefulness in responding to complex spatial requirements. The studio’s design direction can be coded in the following: the use of advanced design techniques, the employment of spatial narratives and a complete freedom of expressive means. The studio always tries to look at a ‘big picture’, with architecture being a part of a broader environment, physical and intellectual. Within the research frame of a design studio routine, various projects seem to be ‘talking’ about all these aspects of the design through new IT tools. The ‘human’ as a notion but also as a bodily incarnation of life is put under focus. The methodology as to design a ‘living’ piece of spatial arrangement, the social interaction of biologically- driven design elements and the adaptation of the human inside the physical environment are design approaches implemented within the frame of the design studio and additional diploma-level design research. Ultimately, the ‘human’ is related to a ‘living’ architecture. This living quality has a certain connection with the human as an entity, its scale, its needs, its ethics let’s say, its very human features. It is quite far, though, from metabolistic approaches as they have appeared in past decades and represented by important architects. What is really investigated here is a new relation with the physical environment. The architect’s work is considered as a procedure articulated with the physical environment

114 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and eventually being part of it. The physical environment does not stand outside the frame. It is not a sterilized entity besides architecture but an organic element inside the very core of architecture. Three dierent design approaches will be presented. They seem to address, respectively, to a formal, a social and an environmental parameter. All three projects do research by design the issues framed and described above. This is done through a speci c trend of ‘design speculation’ using advanced tools and the use of spatial narratives to support the presented schemes.

‘Birth ponds, in_vitro/arch’ Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Investigations and the limits of design, 2010-2011 Student: Giorgos Tsakiridis

The project investigates the possibility of designing the ‘body’ of architecture, thus the ability of a formal, spatial and structural language not just to imitate a physical (biological) body, but to generate a physical presence through the ‘reading’ of biology’s generative techniques. The designed spatial device is a not a smart skin or surface but an entire spatial organ. The project addresses the issue of geotropism, thus the ability of plants to respond to gravity and the circles of life involved.

Fig. 1 Giorgos Tsakiridis, ‘Birth ponds, in_vitro/arch’, Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Investigations and the limits of design, supervisor: A. Tellios, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011.

Anastasios Tellios Greece 115 Architecture is considered as a parasite to nature and not vice versa. What is investigated here is the possibility of a form to evolve, mutate and grow, each time adjusting itself to certain functional and spatial needs. Form-generating natural policies are replacing the sometimes infertile form- nding parametric techniques. The aim is to nd ways to incorporate biological techniques and mechanisms into architectural design procedures. The speci c project is about the design of ephemeral constructions. Placed in between the boundaries of science ction and reality, it attempts to introduce the ‘living’ factor in architectural design. The creation of form emerges from the controlled development, growth and eventually deterioration of plant mass, the -genetically mutated- cells of which are not able to follow the law of gravitism. By suggesting a continuously changeable process, instead of a nal outcome, it investigates the dynamics of space and its qualities, to the point where the signi cance of the ‘circle of life’ is not only connected to the users along with their activities, but also to the ‘containers’ of life. The designed product is not imitating a physical, biological body. Instead, the project focuses to attain and maybe rationalize a structural, morphological, formal genius found in nature. This genius is ultimately transcribed into architectural design.

‘Spatial Cochleas’ Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Investigations and the limits of design, 2010-2011 Student: Alexandros Charidis

This project attempts the potential of choreographing the behaviour of architecture, through the social interaction of a spatial, biologically-driven device with the everyday lives of humans. The project is using the given space and architecture. It is researching on the capacity to create an open-source system, able to absorb and physically respond to social stimuli and re-adjust itself. The designed mechanism is closely related to the behavior of people and elements of architecture. This is investigated through the social interaction of a spatial, biologically-driven device with the everyday lives and routines of humans. The scienti c search of the project is initiated by the ability of the human auditory system to distinguish speci c sound frequencies within a wide frequency range. This property is explained by industry psychophysics and theories of ‘Auditory Scene Analysis’ (Bregman, 1990). Using similar sets of theories, the protocol of a biotropic organism is being articulated. The Cochlea is a parasitic mechanism which represents the spatial mapping of frequencies inside the environment that it resides and ‘feeds’. By the use of certain hierarchical procedures the mechanism is evolving and allows for direct modi cation of functionality from its users through an ‘open-source’ language. The Cochlea interferes into the social habits of humans occupying space. It is present in their places of gathering and their passages. Moving and standing, are characterized by dierent architectural qualities. The Cochlea reads these human habits, and their distinct frequencies. It then responds and re-adjusts its very physical presence and the size and position of its elements.

116 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Alexandros Charidis, ‘Spatial Cochleas’, Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Investigations and the limits of design, supervisor: A. Tellios, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011.

‘Inhabiting fragile territories: a little story for a little house’ Diploma design project, 2010-2011 Student: Stylianos Psaltis

This diploma design research project is speculating about the generating of spatial hybrids, the ful lment of a functional program and their adaptation in a physical surrounding. Natural elements are suggested to inspire the generation of key architectural components that will, eventually lead to the composition of a new man-built environment and territory. The design scheme involves an essential symbiotic narrative. This is the basic architectural concept of the ‘inhabitation’ of nature. This procedure is supposed to enable and activate space so as to deliver and facilitate speci c human life and activity. Initially this project was worked using actual tactile techniques, molding clay and plaster using handcraft. A certain speculation was being conducted as to nd a way to frame human, visceral wisdom, delivered instinctively onto matter by the movement of the hand’s muscle while molding clay models, and interacting with nature using hand labor. Then the physical result was once again examined and re-articulated using digital tools. This allowed the speculation of a constantly evolving and expanding formal condition, where apart from measurable elements, other nonmaterial qualities were incorporated into the digital model. This all happens within the boundaries of a speculative, interactive and non-linear relationship. As the architectural product emerges and is being produced by the elements of the landscape, at the same time it is actively reproducing that very landscape and to a certain extent is giving physical ‘birth’ to it. An organic ‘ ght’ is taking

Anastasios Tellios Greece 117 Fig. 3 Stylianos Psaltis, ‘Inhabiting fragile territories: a little story for a little house’, Diploma design project, supervisor: A. Tellios, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011.

Fig. 4 Stylianos Psaltis, ‘Inhabiting fragile territories: a little story for a little house’, Diploma design project, supervisor: A. Tellios, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011. place between materials and human actions. The project speculates on ways of a direct domestication of nature, and a ‘gentle’ incorporation to the maximum possible extent. Human existence depends materially on the surrounding territory and at the same time natural elements depend essentially on human action, craft and labor. What is subconsciously investigated here is a series of notions, so far only super - cially touched by ‘digital architecture’s’ discussion: the insuperable, the imaginary, the mysterious, the emotional, even the illogical, the experiential or the subconscious and their possible projection within a virtual, digital space and world. Additionally, a fresh environmental agenda is hereby presented and supported, which is far from existing ‘green’ and sometimes insucient, commercial architectural solutions.

118 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Conclusion Technology-driven design research is already an established act and the use of its mostly digital tools can be considered as a given condition. Sometimes, though, the strict obeying to tools, features and capabilities creates often myopic and shortsight- ed design outcomes. This is the reason why there is already a formulated and popular digital Puritanism about these territories of architecture. The kind of projects produced under this trend, are sometimes too involved with an obviously controllable micro scale, a long way down the design procedure. It may appear as necessary, therefore, to take a step back, so as to be able to receive and comprehend a broader sight of the designing event. It may be resembled as a step backwards, but ultimately, this stepping back is a systematic stepping sideways, or a constant habit of always moving a bit sideways so as to get as many perspectives of the same subject as possible while keeping looking forwards. Despite the evident shift of focus from the eld of humanities to that of technology, design research within the design studios still seem to pursue a personal approach, closely related to spatial narratives. Inside these narratives, nature is not a decorative element of human inhabiting on earth, therefore an intelligent environmental approach is required (Tellios, 2011). The surrounding world is a complex set of elements and so are the lives of humans, therefore our social behavior inside the designed architectural space is closely depending on decisions made by the architect. In this frame, technology oers all tools to essentially drain wisdom out of nature and inspire a new formal presence for the built environment. There is, once more, a re-invented cultural role to be identi ed within young researchers’ approaches on architecture. Some of those projects constitute intelligent, almost bodily incarnations of cultural and social needs and values, encouraging new versions of social life and interaction and leaving ever less room for sceptical approaches. The suggested architecture has the capacity to self-regulate itself confronting the massive evolution of its substantial design tools, thus, constituting a concise, holistic spatial event.

References

Anestidis I., Siopidis I., Tellios A. (superv.), Deterministic Chaos: Emerging natural structures, Diploma theoretical research, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011. Bregman, A. S., Auditory Scene Analysis, The Perceptual Organization of Sound, Bradford Book, 1990. Broadbent G., ‘The deep structures of architecture’, in ‘Design in Architecture’, Wiley and Sons, Lon- don, 1974. Charidis A., Tellios, A. (superv.), ‘Spatial Cochleas’, Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Investigations and the limits of design, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011. Colletti M., AD: Exuberance: new virtuosity in contemporary architecture, Wiley, London, 2010. Cruz, M. and Pike S., AD: Neoplasmatic design, Wiley, London, 2008. Davies, C., Key houses of the twentieth century, WWNorton & Co Inc, New York, 2006. Hensel M., Menges A. and Weinstock M., AD: Techniques and Technologies in Morphogenetic Design, Wiley, London, 2006.

Anastasios Tellios Greece 119 Lynn G., Animate Form, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1999. Psaltis S., Tellios A. (superv.), ‘Inhabiting fragile territories: a little story for a little house’, Diploma design project, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011. Sheil B., AD: Protoarchitecture: Analogue and Digital Hybrids, Wiley, London, 2008. Tellios A., Synecdoches: architecture, image, spatial representation, Epikentro, Thessaloniki, 2011. Tsakiridis G., Tellios A. (supev.), ‘Birth ponds, in_vitro/arch’, Design studio: 2S1 62, Spatial Inves- tigations and the limits of design, School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2010-2011. Venturi, R., Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2002. Weinstock M., The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation, Wiley, London, 2010.

120 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Xin Xia Nimish Biloria

Faculty of Architecture Delf University of Technology The Netherlands A 4EA Cognitive Approach for Rethinking the Human in Interactive Spaces Introduction – From Interactive Space to Human Cognition and beyond This research is initiated by the research question: How is it possible to physically and mentally involve humans as an intrinsic part of interactive architectural spaces in order to formulate a mutual feedback based system, within which interactive spaces serve an extension of human cognition? The research paper exempli es the de nition and characteristics of interaction and attempts to connect the disciplines of interactive architecture and cognitive sciences, with a focus on the 4EA cognitive approach. Following the concepts of 4EA school, which, profess the mind, the body and the world as an integrated interactive cognitive system, the paper focuses on the theoretical support of the Shared Circuits Model (SCM), and its application. This paper aims to apply the SCM to an interactive architectural space design case study, which shares the key elements: dynamic information processing loops, non-linearity, bottom-up emergence and un-predictability.

True Interaction or Rich Interaction It has been more than 40 years since Myron Krueger developed “Glowow” in 1969, which oered visitors the possibility of modifying visual and sonic parameters by means of pressure-sensitive sensors (Giannetti, 2004). Since then, the rapidly developing technology (sensors, software, programs, actuators, manufacturing...) turned more and more ctions into reality and apart from developing complex geometry driven architectural and interior projects, has made it possible for a great number of so called “interactive architecture” projects to be realized (Fox & Kemp, 2009). However, on careful observation, most of these projects operate as “active” & “reactive” systems, instead of being truly “interactive”. Many such “active” works failed in challenging and extending people’s understanding of the nature of the space, stimulate meaning making, evoking emotions etc and therefore, deny involving the essence of human interaction, which, could have been a signi cant contribution to developing human cognition driven architectural works. The question, as regards the characteristics of interaction and interactivity, thus becomes important to investigate? Background research on the de nition of interaction reveals: Interaction to be a bidirectional or even multi-directional process: In- teraction is a terminology used to elaborate the action which occurs as two or more objects have an eect upon one another. The generation of a two-way eect/dialogue instead of a one-way causal eect/monologue is the basic underlying principle for interaction. Interactivity as a phenomenon is similar to the degree of responsiveness, and is examined as a communication process in which each message is related to the previous messages exchanged, and to the relation of those messages to the messages preceding them. What this implies is that in the case of interactive and reactive response, the roles of the sender and the receiver are interchangeable with each subsequent message. Thus, a basic condition for interactivity to prevail is a coherent response from each communicant. This understanding, in the eld of architecture, by architects such as Prof. Kas Oosterhuis imply that “Interactive Architecture can be de ned as the art of building relationships between built components and second, as building relations between people and built components” (Oosterhuis, 2006, p. 4). Also, in their seminal book Interactive Architecture, Michael Fox and Miles Kemp state that “A truly interactive system is a multiple-loop system in which one enters into a

122 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture conversation: a continual and constructive information exchange. As people interact with architecture, they should not be thought of as “users” but instead as “participants” (Fox & Kemp, 2009, p. 13). Therefore, interaction should be a conversation. One of the most interesting aspects of interaction however, is its ability to shape experience, as well as inuence lifestyles and behaviors. Fox and Kemp state that “Ar- chitectural space can take advantage of an audience locally, regionally, and globally by re-conceptualizing the role that the physical environment plays in shaping the viewer’s experience.” (2009, p.138). According to Fox and Kemp, interactive architecture can create an enhanced spatial experience, and can create a dialogue amongst the inhabitants based on either satisfying an interpretation of goal states or creating a new emergent state based on ambiguous assumptions of desires.” (Fox & Kemp, 2009, p. 138). Last but not the least, because of the bidirectional nature of interactivity, at a systems level, it involves a careful negotiation between top-down and bottom-up processes, which result in emergent, unpredictable yet organized communication as an inherent feature. This results in an innate human like communication rather than a mechanic input-output based feedback loop. In the contemporary, owing to the enhancements in technology, which enable people to develop real-time communication with spatial environments, the agenda for architecture and more so for identifying the intricacies of spatial adaptability and their understanding for meaning making and emotional response has escalated. Could an interactive space by its very nature be concerned with people’s experience and response, or in other words, human cognition? The research aim is thus geared towards using a cognitive approach to explore interactivity between architectural spaces and human beings, from the perspective of the participants within the space, instead of the designer. The central idea behind the research revolves around the connection of interaction design and human cognition for a meaningful integration of multisensory technology into interactive spaces.

4EA Cognitive Approach Before focusing on 4EA cognitive approach, let us rst briey review what a cognitive approach is. Cognitive science is revolutionizing our understanding of human mind by providing new accounts of human rationality and consciousness, perceptions, emotions, and desires (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science). Cognitive psychology investigates internal mental processes such as problem solving, memory, language, attention and planning, and is thus quintessential for providing a logical grounding for interaction design. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_psychol- ogy) Certain basic media of cognitive psychology could provide a logical grounding for interaction design. These include mental models, mapping, interface metaphors, and aordances. Among many dierent cognitive branches, there is a young branch which is different from other theories of cognition such as cognitivism, computationalism and Cartesian dualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enactivism_(psychology)), which is called 4EA cognitive school. It emphasizes the importance of the involvement of human body and human emotion, in the process of human interaction with their environment. Body, mind and environment; these three key components and their inter- relationship constitute interactive spaces as well as the 4EA cognitive approach.

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 123 Traditionally, philosophers and scientists of the mind have regarded perception as input from the world to the mind, action as output from the mind to the world, and cognition as a sandwiched piece in between. This is why Susan Hurley called it a “Clas- sical sandwich” (Hurley, 1998, p. 21). As a critique to this “classical sandwich” approach, the 4EA cognitive approach argues that cognition is Embodied, Embedded, Enactive, Extended and Aective. 4EA thinkers see the vast majority of cognition as real-time interaction of a distributed and dierential system composed of brain, body and world. 4EA school of thought sees cognition as the direction of organismic action via the integration/revolution of dierential elds immanent to extended/distributed/dierential neuro-somatic-environmental systems (Protevi, 2010, p. 170). Therefore, cognitive activity consists of an immediate rather on-line interaction with the environment. In- teractive architecture, owing to the real-time exchange of information between the user and the space is thus an appropriate eld to which the 4EA-based nature of cognitive activity can be applied. In order to do so, a concise understanding of the Em- bodied, Embedded, Extended and Aective modes of cognition comprising the 4EA approach were examined:

1. Embodied cognition Embodiment is required for multiple phenomena. In their book Handbook of Cog- nitive Science, An embodied Approach, Calvo and Gomila argue that any living being must be realized in some form that can maintain itself in its environment(s). Action and interaction are constrained and enabled not only by environment, but also by the speci c forms of embodiment that must engage in those interactions (2008, p. 38). Embodied cognition emphasizes the body as one of the key points for philosophical investigation of cognition. Experimental psychology and cognitive science have traditionally viewed the mind as an abstract information processor where the connections to the surrounding environment are of little importance. While an embodied cognition viewpoint commits to the idea that “the mind must be understood in the context of its relationship to a physical body that interacts with the world” (Wilson 2002, p. 625).

2. Embedded cognition Sometimes “embedded cognition” is replaced by the term “situated cognition”. It states that intelligent behavior emerges out of the interplay between brain, body and world. The world is not just the ‘play-ground’ on which the brain is acting. Rather, brain, body and world are equally important factors in the explanation of how particular intelligent behaviors come about in practice (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Embodied_embedded_cognition).

3. Enactive cognition Enactive cognition emphasizes the emergent self-organization of organisms and the human mind by interacting with their environment. It means emerging by action, and new resources are generated in the process of action.

4. Extended Cognition The extended mind begins with the question “where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begins?” It emphasizes the active role of the environment in driv-

124 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture ing cognitive processes. The inspiration of extended cognition to the designer of the interactive space is that, no matter how complex the space is, how much advanced techniques are applied, the space is only a part of the cognitive system.

5. Aective Cognition Recent aective neuroscience and psychology have reported that human aect and emotional experience play a signiﬁcant, and useful role in human learning and decision-making. In normal individuals, the covert biases related to previous emotional experience of comparable situations assist the reasoning process and facilitate the ecient processing of knowledge and logic necessary for conscious decisions (Ahn and Picard, 2005).

Aective cognition unfolds in a social context between embodied subjects formed by that context. But “context” is too static: there are multiple levels and time-scales involved. That is, in de-personalizing aective cognition, we see bodies in concrete situations act in real time with response capacities that have been generated over developmental time-scales as produced by multiple subjectivation practices in a distributed/dierential social eld. Thus a sense-making encounter, a de-personalizing case of aective cognition, is an emergent functional structure, a resolution of a dynamic dierential eld operating at multiple levels and dierent time-scales as those bodies navigate the potentials for the formation of new assemblages (Protevi, 2010, p. 183). The ve elements of 4EA cognitive theory are closely related to each other. And are often used in combinatorial fashions or are even extremely overlapped. The term “Em- bedded cognition” is often been replaced by the term “situated cognition”. Embod- ied and embedded cognition are often been mentioned together. Even there is a term “embodied embedded cognition”(EEC). Some scholars focus on “embodied cognition”, but they also emphasize the relation between “thinking” and “doing”, which actually incorporates the concept of “enactive” cognition. Some scholars work on the relation between action and emotion, which combines the domains of “enactive cognition” and “aective cognition”.

Our cognitive activity consists of immediate on-line interaction with the environment. “For the enactive approach, cognition is embodied action. In a concrete and practical sense, a cognitive system is embodied to the extent to which its activity depends non-trivially on the body. This is close to expressing a tautology: cognition cannot but be embodied.” (Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo) (Ideas of enactive cognition) link several themes centred around the role of life, self-organization, experience and the animate body in shaping cognition as an ongoing and situated activity (Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo).

Cognitive process refers to the interaction sequences within the micro and the macro scales of our cognitive system: a cognitive system was de ned by Nakashima as a system of interactions between a human (agent) who has thoughts in mind and the surrounding environment: “S/he perceives something from the environment, has thoughts in mind and does something to the environment” (Bilda and Candy, p. 2). This means that cognitive is embodied and enactive.

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 125 Shared Circuits Model (SCM) Disagreeing with the “classical sandwich” conception of the mind –regards perception as input from world to mind, action as output from mind to world, and cognition as sandwiched between. Susan Hurley, together with Rodney Brooks, argued that perception and action share dynamic information-processing resources as embodied agents interact with their environments. Cognitive resources and structure can emerge, layer by layer, from informational dynamics, enabling both perception and action. Susan Hurley developed a Shared Circuits Model (SCM), which is a ve layered heuristic model, which can be combined in ‘various ways to frame speci c hypotheses (Hurley, 2008, p. 1). SCM shows how information for important cognitive capacities of persons can have a foundation in the dynamic co-enabling of perception and action (Hurley, 2008). Speci cally, materials for active perception can generate cognitively signi cant resources: the action/perception, self/world, actual/possible, ... The SCM explains how imitation, deliberation, and mindreading can be enabled by sub-personal mechanisms of control, mirroring, and simulation. It connects shared informational dynamics for perception and action with shared informational dynamics for self and other, while also showing how the action/perception, self/other and actual/possible distinctions can be overlaid on these shared informational dynamics. The SCM is a exible and heuristical model, in ve layers that can be combined in various ways to frame speci c ontogenetic or phylogenetic hypotheses (Hurley, 2008, p. 1).

Fig. 1 SCM Layer 1 - Basic adaptive feedback control. SCM’s starting point is dynamic online motor control, whereby an organism is closely attuned to its embedding environment through sensorimotor feedback (Hurley, 2008, p.19).

Control depends on dynamic relations among inputs and outputs. Information about inputs is not segregated from information about outputs; this blending of information is Fig. 2 preserved and extended in the informational dynamics of further layers. Perception and Price, C. Generator 1979. Drawing (Price 1984). action arise from and share this fundamental informational dynamics (Hurley 1998; 2001).

126 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 SCM Layer 2: Simulative prediction of eects for improved control. Add online predictions of sen- dory feedback from ongoing motor output. Online predictive simylation improves instrumental contral and provides information distinguishing action by the agent from perception of the world (Hurley, 2008, p.19).

In layer two, the biggest dierence is that instead of having an external feedback loop, there is also an internal feedback loop, which is generating another input signal.

Fig. 3 Layer 3: Mirroring for priming, emulation, and imitation. Mirroring reverses layer 2’s predictive associations, so that observing movements generates motor signals in the observer that tend to cause similar movements. Various mirroring structures can enable various forms of copying, with various functions. If mirroring preserves novel means/ends structure of observed actions, it can enable imitative learning. But mirroring provides intersubjective information in a subpersonal “ rst-person plural,” without distinction or inference between own and others’ similar acts (Hurley, 2008, p.19).

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 127 In layer three, the target is not clear anymore, but there is richer exogenous input, which contains other’s similar acts or evoking objects. Susan Hurley views cognition as embodied and situated (2008, p. 2). The same view of criticizing on the “Classical sandwich” brings her closer to her philosophical ally Andy Clark, who is an embodied embedded cognition scholar. SCM was developed under the concepts of 4EA cognition. The bottom-up emergence and dynamic information processing loops however are deepened by Susan Hurley in the SCM to a position that falls in line with the 4EA cognitive theory.

Application of 4EA Approaches to Interactive Architecture What can 4EA cognitive approach contributes to interactive space studies and what is the signi cance of 4EA cognitive approach to this research undertaking? To answer these questions, three aspects are outlined:

Firstly, as mentioned earlier, a 4EA cognitive approach provides the designer a wider view of looking at the interactive spaces and a more tolerant attitude while designing an interactive space. “The environment is part of the cognitive system” (Wilson, 2002, p. 629). Mind, body and the world, altogether formulate an entire real-time emergent interactive system. When developing the “world”, how can we ignore the human body and human mind? When talking about making connections of things and people, how can we isolate ourselves from the perspective of people, and only deal with sensors, input-output information processing, programs etc. Interactive spaces designers therefore should be aware that they are actually designing a part of the cognitive system, and this part is playing a role in the entire interaction sequence as a self-evolving system, which is proactive.

Secondly, existing 4EA research results & conclusions could be applied as guidelines in the design process. Studies of embodied cognition and the embodied mind show that the form of the human body largely determines the nature of the human mind. Aspects of the body shape all aspects of cognition, such as ideas, thoughts, concepts and categories. These aspects include the perceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, activities and interactions with our environment and the native understanding of the world that is built into the body and the brain (http://www. sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/08/ajb/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Embodied_philosophy.html).

Thirdly, we could use the 4EA research model structure to de ne intricate information design models of interactive space. In this research article we shall emphasize this re-appropriation of the SCM model based idea for a chosen interactive architecture based case study.

Application of SCM to Interactive Architecture Most of the applications of cognitive science and cognitive psychology apply the common conceptions of perception and actions as separate and peripheral to central cognition, which is not sucient and powerful for a dynamic and unpredictable environment. Although there are many other existing cognitive models, they fall under

128 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the “Classical Sandwich” approach, in which, the information processing happens as a linear input-output loop. In the case of Interactive environments, which invariably have to deal with unpredictable situations and constant data exchange, an equally suitable methodology to develop a systemic understanding of cognition can be found in the Shared Circuits Model (SCM).

SCM is intensively relevant to the nature of interactive spaces, and inspiring, mainly due to these characteristics:

1. Dynamic information processing loops As mentioned earlier, true interaction contains dynamic multiple loops for information processing. According to Susan Hurly, in SCM, perception and action share dynamic information-processing resources as embodied agents interact with their environments (Hurley, 2008, p. 2). This quality and the possibility to create multi- loop scenarios for a dynamic space with constant information exchange requirements make it suitable to be considered.

2. Nonlinear In his book A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, Manuel De Landa states “Attrac- tors and bifurcations are features of any system in which the dynamics are not only far from equilibrium but also nonlinear, that is, in which there are strong mutual interactions (or feedback) between components (p. 14). The internal looped information exchange sequences with the SCM model itself replicate this non-linear mode of information communication in real-time not only amongst its system components but also with the context within which it is embedded. In interactive architecture as well componential interaction is the key to produce complex behaviors. The SCM and its looped system architecture could thus be a bene cial platform to use for such investigations.

3. Bottom-up emergence Gordon Pask argues that “Rather than an environment that strictly interprets our desires, an environment should allow users to take a bottom-up role in con guring their surroundings in a malleable way without speci c goals“ (interactive architecture, p. 14). Very much related to the idea of enactive cognition, Susan Hurly also argues that cognitive resources and structure can emerge bottom-up, layer by layer, from informational dynamics, enabling both perception and action (SCM, p. 2). One of the aims of SCM is to illustrate the philosophical view that embodied cognition can emerge from active perception, avoiding the “classical sandwich” architecture, which insulates central cognition from the world between twin buers of perceptual input and behavioural output (Hurley, 2008, p. 12). Interactive Architecture and its real-time information processing aspect also necessitate the generation of bottom- up emergent spatial behavior for developing a bi-directional communication between space and subject. The SCM model could thus be a suitable model to explore.

4. Un-predictability (possible, instead of actual) SCM addresses the “how possibly?” rather than the “how actually?” question. It provides a higher-order theoretical model. But it also provides generic heuristic

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 129 resources for framing speci c rst-order hypotheses and predictions about speci c ontogenetic or phylogenetic stages. Its ve layers, can be re-ordered in for- mulating speci c rst-order hypotheses (Hurley, 2008, p. 3). Interaction design, its associated pro-active nature and thus the unpredictability of spatial adaptations (physical as well as ambient), as a by-product of spatial attempts to develop bidirectional communication make the SCM model and its structuring intriguing.

In order to illustrate the above-mentioned characteristics and to re-appropriate the SCM structure to interactive spaces, a case study; analyzing the InteractiveWall, an interactive architecture project is conducted. Hyperbody, Delft University of Techonol- ogy, developed the InteractiveWall project in 2009. It was commissioned by a German pneumatics company Festo, for its presentation at the Hannover Messe 2009. For Hy- perbody the motivation for the development of interactive architecture is a response to the rise in demand of programmable, multi-mediated, and customisable environmental conditions in the digital age (Hosale and Kievid, 2010, p. 55).

Fig. 4 People interacting with the InteractiveWall. Copyright Festo AG & Co. KG, photos Walter Fogel.

The InteractiveWall, is a collection of seven vertical wall-like components which have the ability to dynamically transform their physical and ambient behaviour in real- time as a real-time interaction scenario. At its structural core, each wall component comprises a kinetic skeleton, connected together with two sensors, forty-eight channels of LED lights and embedded speakers. As soon as a person is detected (by the embedded sensors) approaching one of the wall panels, a real-time update in physically bending the panel in the opposite direction coupled together with a change in the lighting and sound pattern is triggered. This physical and ambient triggered within one panel is in real-time communicated to neighboring panels, which in turn results in a multi-modal feedback loop. The seven installation components thus interact constantly with its context and generate emergent behaviors as a negotiation amongst the context, amongst each other as well as the users who visit the installation. One of the designers of the InteractiveWall explained that, when the same participant approaches the same panel for the second time, the panel would react dierently, because the movement pattern of the neighboring panels at that point in time might be dierent than the last time. Internal data communication and its negotiation amongst the seven wall units are thus bound to vary. Apart from this the system also has a memory (case-base) and thus remembers which physical and ambient adaptations have been actuated previously. Just like two persons having conversation on the

130 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Fig. 6 One panel is bending due to the approaching LED light patterns on the panels. Copyright of a participant. Copyright Festo AG & Co. KG, Festo AG & Co. KG, photos Walter Fogel. photos Walter Fogel. same topic for the second time, they might speak about things dierently because they remember what had been mentioned and discussed last time. This learning ability and the connected adaptation based negotiations in order to maintain a sustained level of interest within the audience presents a key dierence between interactive projects and active projects. Taking the InteractiveWall project as an example, and extrapolating information structuring principles within layer 2 and layer 3 of the SCM, we further designed a restructured SCM “map” which displays information processing loops for the case of the InteractiveWall (Fig. 7). Only Layer 2 and 3 were of speci c interest for this research, since Layer 4 and layer 5 in the SCM are for the o-line situation, which implies that the output is inhibited and the interaction does not happen in real-time. The case of the InteractiveWall however presents a real-time interaction scenario and thus these layers were not applicable. Layer 1 is already an inclusive part of the layer 2, and thus the main emphasis was on the restructuring of layer 2 and layer 3. The restructured “map” has two main components; the upper circle, which is a combination of layer 2 and layer 3, representing the “self” of one participant of the Inter- activeWall installation and the bottom circle which, represents the living system of the InteractiveWall.

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 131 Fig. 7 Restructured Shared Circuits Model for the InteractiveWall project.

The elements constituting this restructured “map” are the following: 1. In the rst circle, there is no speci c target for the participant since in many interactive spaces, when the participants are confronted for the rst time with the space, he or she does not have a clear target of what he or she is going to do with this environment. 2. The exogenous input, namely the static or moving space generates input signal 1 to the participant. 3. This input signal goes to the comparator and generates an output. Part of the output goes through the internal loops, in the way of “mirroring, simulation enabling action understanding” or “Predictive simulation of eects for improved control”, to subsequently become input signal 2. The other part of the output goes through the external feedback loop, becoming his or her own action, which is providing a new input, input 3. 4. When there is more than one participant, then others’ similar acts (the other participants with similar actions) or evoking objects also become input 4. 5. Looking at the bottom circle, meanwhile, the output of the upper circle, which goes through the external feedback loop and becomes own action, is giving an input signal 1 of the living system of the InteractiveWall. 6. In the bottom circle, there is a target. In the case of InteractiveWall, the target is that it wants to attract people, wants to be surrounded by people. So the input signal 1 goes to the comparator, in order to compare if this target has been achieved, and provides this reading as an output.

132 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 7. The output also goes through two loops: the internal feedback loop and the external feedback loop. The one that goes through the internal feedback loop becomes a new input signal to the living system, as input signal 2. The output which goes through the external feedback loop, becomes the new input signal(s) to the “self” of the participant, in the form of activation of structural bending of the walls, changing light patterns as well as changing sound. 8. The other participants’ similar acts or evoking objects, are also sending input signals to the living system of the installation.

Conclusion This restructured “map” is a beginning to test the applicability of SCM based cognitive models onto interactive spaces. It is apparent that the inherent complexity of this model stems from the fact that the interactive installation has to deal with multiple participants as well as engulfs not only the user but also its own changing state as its immediate contextual interaction sources. The new model can be further enhanced by means of connecting each physical as well as ambient output to cognitive modes of perception and emotion generation and can thus become an intensive study for analyzing interactive spaces and their behavioral pro les. Other than analyzing existing projects, the SCM also can be developed as a precursor to design development stages. Such models can precisely outline the underlying DNA or in other words the cognitive basis and its connection with each interaction routine in a meaningful manner even before the actual prototyping phase begins. With such a “map”, designers can have a clear overview of how information is processed, generated and perceived through multiple dynamic loops, between the interactive space and its participants. Apart from instilling a mutually participatory nature of an interactive space, this idea of evolving a real-time learning and responding system, which, can trigger emergent interaction routines almost like a human being can help enhance how people as well as spaces connect to each other. The notion of subject-object relationship and the perception that architectural spaces in essence would serve as containers or shells for habitation can thus be challenged by incorporating cognitive modes of understanding and designing interactions. The attempts to understand the 4EA school of thought and to derive appropriate SCM based meta models for Interactive architecture presented in this paper are the beginnings of an intensive investigation to intricately connect the disciplines of Cognitive Sciences and Interactive Architecture. We strongly believe that the two disciplines, would more than bene t from each other as regards how the human mind can perceive architectural space as a living/caring entity and how architecture and interaction design as disciplines can bene t by intricately involving human cognition as the basis for generating real-time communicating spatial features as well as ambient characteristics. Further research within this research framework will thus involve designing new SCM based interaction models rst, in order to realize in a bottom-up manner the connectivity between how we think, imagine and experience space. This will be then preceded by physically building interactive spatial systems, both physical and digital in order to analyze user interaction within such dynamic environments.

Xin Xia, Nimish Biloria The Netherlands 133 References

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134 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Stavros Vergopoulos Dimitris Gourdoukis

School of Architecture Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece Network Protocols / Architectural Protocols: Encoded Design Processes in the Age of Control Protocol, is of course a word with a large history. It is a word of Greek origins and it literary means ‘the rst page’. It was initially used to describe a piece of paper attached in the beginning of a book, containing its summary. From that point on, the word took several dierent meanings, in many cases having to do with a set of rules regulating speci c or appropriate behaviors. However, for the scope of this article, we will focus on the meaning that the word has in the context of computer science. There, protocol, “refers speci cally to standards governing the implementation of speci c technologies [...] it is a language that regulates ow, directs netspace, codes relationships, and connects life-forms.” (Galloway, 2004). If we want to simplify things, a protocol is a description of a set of procedures to be used when communicating. Especially it refers to rules regulating the communication between computers. A protocol provides the necessary framework inside which dierent computers can exchange information.

The protocol “at large” Before looking at an example of a protocol in the context of computer science, it might be useful to ‘zoom out’, in order to see how the idea of the protocol, stemming from computer science, becomes an important component of the way that modern societies are organized. To achieve that we will rely on the periodization, proposed by Michel Foucault (1995, 1990) and extended by Gilles Deleuze (1997), of the human history from the 18th century onwards. Foucault names the societies up to the 18th century as sovereign societies. With the French revolution we are moving to the discipline societies and nally, according to Gilles Deleuze this time, we are now in what he calls ‘control societies’ or ‘societies of control’. Therefore according to Deleuze, control is one of the main essential concepts in modern societies. Following that idea, the present article revolves around the concept of control and the means to achieve it. Deleuze (1997), expanding on the above periodization associates each of the three societies with a speci c kind of machines: simple machines for the sovereign societies, thermodynamic machines for the discipline societies and computers for the control societies. Protocol, according to Alexander Galloway (2004), is coming to play the role of the management style of the control societies. In that sense protocol replaces, or has the same function with, hierarchy in the case of sovereign societies and bureauc- racy in the case of discipline societies. Taking this thinking forward, there is also a different type of network associated with each of the three: Centralized networks for the sovereign societies, decentralized networks for the discipline societies and distributed networks for the control societies.

So why is the protocol so important in that context, or how does it become the management style of our era? To answer that question, it is useful to keep in mind the three dierent kinds of networks mentioned above and their visual representation that can be seen in g. 1 (Baran, 1962): In the diagram, the dots represent nodes while the lines represent communication routes. In the centralized network, there is a central node to which all other nodes are connected. The center commands, the rest obey. Communication is achieved through sovereignty. In the decentralized network, we have multiple centers, but still a hierarchical organization. Discipline allows communication between the nodes but still there is a linear transmission of the message from top to bottom or from center to periphery through the existence of several more

136 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Baran, P. Illustrations of Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed Networks, 1962 (Baran 1962). localized centers. In distributed networks however, each node can be virtually connected to any other node. But in order for this to be possible, all nodes need to share a common language. This is where protocol enters the picture: It is the framework necessary for the distributed system to exist. Consequently the protocol needs to be accepted by every node that wants to be part of the network.

Internet Protocols Having the above theoretical outline in mind, we are going to ‘zoom in’ again, in order to see an example of one of the most important protocols that are in use today: The internet protocols, that are governing (in other words are giving control over) a large amount of our everyday activities. “The Internet Protocol is designed for use in interconnected systems of packet- switched computer communication networks. […]The internet protocol provides for transmitting blocks of data called datagrams from sources to destinations, where sources and destinations are hosts identi ed by xed length addresses.” (Postel, 1981). Every communication on the internet – where ‘communication’ is any data exchange, in eect any action that takes place online – is rendered possible through a bundle of several protocols that are operating at dierent levels and are facilitating the transfer of information on the internet. In brief: At the local level we have a web page containing text and images. Those are marked up in the HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) protocol. In turn HTTP (HyperText Transmission Protocol) encapsulates this HTML object and allows it to be served by an internet host. Then, both client and host must

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 137 abide the TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) protocol that divides the data in small packages to be sent and recomposed. The TCP is itself nested inside the IP (Internet Protocol) that is in charge of actually moving data packages from one machine to another. And nally the entire bundle is physically transmitted according to the rules of the physical media itself. This formation of protocols is behind the distributed character of the internet and the necessary condition for each machine to be able to connect with any other machine in the network. Therefore any node that wants to be part of the network needs to accept the above described protocols: “The model of operation is that an internet module resides in each host engaged in internet communication and in each gateway that interconnects networks. These modules share common rules for interpreting address elds and for fragmenting and assembling internet datagrams. In addition, these modules (especially in gateways) have procedures for making routing decisions and other functions.” (Postel, 1981). Any node that does not accept the protocols does not exist on the net, while any node that abides to the protocols becomes of equal value with any other node. Such an organization is working in contrast to more traditional, hierarchical modes of organization where the routes that data transmission can follow are speci cally de ned. On the internet, data can take any possible direction and therefore potentially reach any point in the system. This horizontal organization, especially in the rst years of the net, led to a certain kind of euphoria that was looking at the internet as a medium that provides an absolute freedom, as a totally demo- cratic medium able to transcend the limitations of our current societies, de ned themselves by the strict hierarchies that we encounter in their ‘physical version’. As Alexander Galloway (2004) also points out in his book, this is a misconception, and it is important to see the reason why: The TCP/IP protocol coexists with the Domain Name Space (DNS) protocol, which is a large decentralized database, that maps network addresses to network names. “The Domain Name Space and Resource Records,[...] are speci cations for a tree structured name space and data associated with the names. Conceptually, each node and leaf of the domain name space tree names a set of information, and query operations are attempts to extract speci c types of information from a particular set.” (Mockapetris, 1987). At the top of the tree structure are the so-called roots, which are speci c centralized servers: “There are over o dozen root servers located around the world in places like Japan and Europe, as well as in several U.S. locations.” (Galloway, 2004, p. 9). Those roots are then branching into the dierent domains, which are then branching again, in essence following the structure of the familiar web address, from right to left. TCP/IP is a result of the action of autonomous agents. The DNS is a result of a prede ned structure. Those two have to function together in order for the internet to work: “To grasp ‘protocol’ is to grasp the technical and the political dynamics of TCP/IP and DNS at the same time.” (Thacker 2004). It is through the hierarchical form of the DNS that one can gain access to the horizontal organization of the TCP/IP. Strict hierarchy has to coexist with the distributed nature of the web in order for the whole system to be able to function. Horizontal control is always subject to the vertical control applied by the DNS.

138 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Characteristics Alexander Galloway (2004, p. 82) points out seven basic characteristics of the protocol: It is a system of distributed management. It facilitates peer-to-peer relationships between autonomous entities. It is anti-hierarchy and anti-authority. It engenders localized decision making, not centralized. It is robust, exible and universal. It can accommodate massive contingency and it is the outcome (not the antecedent) of distributed behaviour. Those characteristics refer to the operating level of the protocol and are necessary in order to understand its nature. However, in order to be able to start thinking about protocols in the context of architecture, it might be useful to locate the characteristics of the protocol also in an ontological level. Therefore, in order for a set of procedures to be eligible to be characterized as a protocol, the following characteristics also need to be present:

1. Code. A protocol needs to be encoded. And it needs to be so in a speci c language that can be understood or translated if necessary. As mentioned before, the protocol is gaining its importance from the fact that it provides a common language for all nodes so that they can communicate with each other. That common language is achieved through code. 2. Automation. A protocol needs to be executed automatically, in order for the whole process to take place. There cannot be decisions, interpretations or doubts that take place ‘on the y’, when the protocol is executed. The protocol has to be made out of prede ned routines that get executed when speci c conditions are met. 3. Machines. As a result of (1) and (2), there is a need for a machine that would guarantee the correct reading of the code and its automatic execution. Machinic implementation of the protocol guarantees that it will always be executed in the same way, without any derogations or exceptions.

All the above characteristics, both operational and ontological, render the protocol as the outline that may give rise to bottom-up, self organized, processes. Since protocols allow communication between autonomous agents at will, they provide the framework for bottom-up processes and self-organization. And through self-organization we may arrive to the emergence of speci c behaviors, or patterns, but behaviors or patterns that were not predicted by the protocols or were not the intention of the protocol. An unlimited eld of possibilities arise that needs to be explored. Having all the above in mind, what might be an architectural protocol, or why should we try to understand what an architectural protocol could be to begin with? Trying to answer that question we are going to see three examples, the rst two being older architectural projects, the last one being a contemporary eld in architectural computation.

The Generator The Generator was a project designed by Cedric Price, in collaboration with John Frazer, from 1976 to 1979. The project, that was never built, was a design for a retreat center to the White Oak Plantation on the coastal Georgia-Florida border. It consists of 150 12x12’ cubes distributed on a grid system, along with bridges, catwalks, glaz-

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 139 Fig. 2 Price, C. Generator 1979. Drawing (Price 1984). ing and sliding glassdoors. The cubes and all the other elements of the composition were moveable. A crane was also in place that was able to move the cubes according to the requests of the residents (Price, 1984). But “what made Generator dierent was that it had some rudimentary self-awareness and knowledge. Its architecture was machine readable.” (Spiller 2008, p. 208). In other words, Price and his team designed a computer program that was controlling the way that the building would be functioning. In Frazer’s (1995, p. 9) words: “…we produced a computer program to organize the layout of the site in response to program requirements, and in addition suggested that a single-chip micro-processor should be embedded in every component of the building, to make it the controlling processor. This would have created an ‘intelligent’ building which controlled its own organization in response to use. If not changed, the building would have become ‘bored’ and proposed alternative arrangements for evaluation, learning how to improve its own organization on the basis of this experience”. Each of the microprocessors was communicating the position of its cube to the computer which in turn was using that information as the input for the program that it was running. The program had three main routines: (1) Keeping an archive of the already used con g- urations. (2) Helping the users with the design of the con gurations. (3) Proposing new con gurations by itself when the setting remained unchanged for a long period of time.

In the context described in this article we can see the software that Generator’s computer would have run (the code), augmented by the microprocessors and the crane (the machines) as a protocol regulating the relations between the users and the cubes, where the last of the above mentioned routines guarantees the automation of the process: even if the users will not change the con guration, the program will do it by itself making sure that the whole process keeps running. It is this protocol that pro-

140 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Price, C. Generator 1979. Model Photographs (Price 1984).

duces the building and it is doing so over time. A new ‘building’ is produced each time that the users or the computer decide to change the con guration of cube according to the behaviors that the protocol allows.

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 141 Fig. 4 Price, C. Generator 1979. Drawing (Price 1984).

The Flatwriter The Flatwriter is a project developed by Yona Friedman in 1970. It was “conceived but not executed for the world’s fair at Osaka [and it] allows the individual to select and print out his future housing preferences. He can locate his dwelling within a given infrastructure of services and be warned of the possible consequences of his decisions” (Friedman, 2006, p. 129). The Flatwriter was a machine, in the shape of a typewriter, that was intended to be an interface used by a prospective owner of a house in order to design - or better: decide - the exact con guration of that house. The rst part of the process was involving the perspective owner using the 53 keys of the ‘typewriter’ in order to decide the con guration of the spaces in his future house. For every plan only 9 keys had to be used, thus allowing through the 53 available keys millions of dierent con gurations. After that rst phase the atwriter was printing a plan of the con gured space, and the user was moving on to a second keyboard where “he had to indicate how often he is in the habit of going to his dierent rooms” (Friedman, 2006, p. 132). In other words, the user was providing the machine with input concerning the way that he or she was planning to use the house. At this point the Flatwriterwas giving information back to the user. The software that was installed on the machine was checking for the possible problems arising from the comparison of the created plan (in the rst keybord) and the user’s habits (entered in the second keyboard). The user was able to recon gure his space according to the feedback that he received. Then, on a TV screen the user was deciding where to place his house on the existing infrastructure grid. The Flatwriterwas again providing feedback concerning the problems that the placement might create. At this point the software was comparing the placement decided by the user

142 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Friedman, Y. Flatwriter 1970: keyboard layout (Friedman 1996, p.131).

against the general con guration of the settlement (the houses already placed by other users) and was providing feedback both to the new user and the ones already owned a house in the same area. The software also was making sure that evaluations of the new house against all the necessary parameters, like access, natural light, natural ventilation, orientation etc., were put forward. Through that process a solution accepted by both the software and the user was reached and the at could get constructed. Friedman suggests that the Flatwriter could also take care of all the necessary permits for the construction of the house, thus automating the whole design process, from design to construction.

Friedman in the Flatwriter project, even though most of it remained in paper, envisioned a machine that would create the necessary framework for all the possible relations needed in the design process for a house to be accommodated. Through the Flatwriter communication becomes possible between all the people involved (future residents, neighbors, authorities, constructors) while all the necessary considerations are taken into account. The software (code) makes sure that the house will be ful lling all the requirements that a house should ful ll, while the typewriter (machine) ensures that the process will be unobstructed by checking for all those requirements (automation). Therefore, we could also understand the way that the Flatwriter functions as a kind of an architectural protocol; accommodating and automating all the relationships present in the process leading the design of a house.

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 143 Fig. 6 Friedman, Y. Flatwriter 1970: organizational diagram (Friedman 1996, p.131).

Fig. 7 Friedman, Y. Flatwriter 1970: diagram (Friedman 1996, p.132).

Information Modeling While the two previous examples illustrate two - historical - cases that might give us some clues as to what an architectural protocol could be, contemporary architectural practice - as a practice that operates within a protocologically controlled society - already has its own protocols in place. When, during the ‘90s, architectural academia

144 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture started to experiment with animation techniques using software developed for the lm industry, at the same time software targeted speci c to the building industry, concerning construction management, was being developed. The above developments, in academia and in practice, were happening almost completely independently. Meanwhile, scripting (lower level computer programming) became more and more prominent in architectural experimentations while more and more experimental designs started to exit the virtual space of the computer in order to be constructed. That led to the convergence of the two dierent directions. Today, Building Information Modeling packages oer the ability to be employed in the design process from the very beginning and therefore assure a much greater integration between conceptual design and its execution. According to the US National Institute of Building Science “BIM refers to the use of the concepts and practices of open and interoperable information exchanges, emerging technologies, new business structures and inuencing the re-engineering of processes in ways that dramatically reduce multiple forms of waste in the building industry.” (Garber 2009, p. 9). In essence, BIM is a set of protocols that accommodates the communication between: (a) databases concerning all the dierent quantitative aspects of a design project - from environmental data and program requirements all the way to materials and cost estimations - and (b) between all the dierent people involved in the design process - from the architects and the engineers to the owners and the constructors -. Therefore BIM is a tool that oers control over the large network of the nodes that constitute the architectural process; starting from conceptual design and ending with the actual construction. It provides the necessary common language for all those nodes to communicate and exchange information in a streamlined and seamless way. If we think about the three dierent kinds of networks described in the rst part of this article, one might think that a distributed one would be a logical result of the interconnection of all the dierent nodes of the architectural practice. It seems reasonable that any of the parameters of the design process should be able to be connected to any other. One could argue that BIM oers this possibility. In that sense a look at gure 08 might turn out a little confusing. The image is taken from the latest Autodesk Revit promotional brochure. This diagram of course represents a clearly centralized system, with the software - BIM - being at the center. One could argue that the diagram is simpli ed for the sake of clarity, however at this point it might be useful to think of the dierent levels of control that might exist.

In a recent issue of the Architectural Design journal dedicated to BIM, Chuck Eastman (2009, p. 53) describes how preliminary designs for courthouses in the US can be reviewed through building information models and not traditional drawings anymore. He notes: “The concept design can be generated using any of the GSA-approved BIM design tools. Currently these include Revit, Bentley Architecture and ArchiCAD.” While such a process might be much more ecient than the traditional one, it also renders speci c software packages not as tools that are able to help, but as tools that are required in order to design. Similarly we read in the Revit’s promotional brochure: “Autodesk® 3ds Max® Design software can be used to conduct indoor lighting analysis in support of LEED® 8.1 certi cation.” (Autodesk 2011). Protocological thinking needs to go through standardization, the common language necessary for all the nodes to communicate. How-

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 145 Fig. 8 Autodesk Diagram explaining Autodesk Revit’s function (Autodesk 2011). ever through standardization, speci c software packages - and therefore speci c corporations - are gaining control over the design process. Therefore, the diagram from the Autodesk Revit brochure might be telling the truth: It is the software who is in the center, who is in control. It is true that BIM software is giving control to the architect over the local parameters that he has to work with. But at the same time the architect is giving part of the control over the overall design process away to the creators of the software. At this point things are becoming more serious, and it might be useful to think of the example of the internet protocols: the TCP/IP - a horizontal protocol - coexisting with the DNS - a vertical, hierarchical protocol. Any node might be able to communicate with any other node, but only through a speci c hierarchy prede ned by others. It might be illuminating to contrast the protocols we see in Cedric Price’s and Yona Friedman’s example with the BIM protocols. In the rst two cases the architect is the creator of the protocol in order to control the design process and its outcome. In the later case the architect is the user of protocols that have been created by others, therefore control is passing over to them. “The contradiction at the heart of the protocol is that it has to standardize in order to liberate. It has to be fascistic and unilateral in order to be utopian” (Galloway, 2004, p. 95). The BIM example is extremely useful in order to understand that: (a) architects are already using extensively protocols in their everyday practice; (b) protocological approaches do not necessarily result in horizontal processes and bottom-up modes of organization. As with the internet, what initially looks liberating might be hiding several drawbacks; (c) architectural protocols raise a number of important issues that are

146 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture in essence political. As is always the case with control there are questions of power and authority at place, which need to be considered and examined.

Four possible Directions Believing that protocols might provide the means to develop novice architectural processes, organized from the bottom-up, that will favor diversity and dierentiation over standardization, we propose four possible directions that architecture might take in its encounter with protocological logic and which need to be studied further. One would be the development of custom protocols. Much in the spirit of the Generator and the Flatwriter, protocols that are project speci c, created by the architect in order to accommodate the needs that he encounters each time. A second approach would be the introduction of ambiguity in the protocols: aesthetics, political agendas, historical information and any other kind of non-quantitative data might be another way to produce highly dierentiated results through protocols. A third direction would be the exploitation - or hacking - of the existing, corporate protocols. Since architects are not programmers, and they cannot create tools as ecient as large corporations can, they can use those tools in ways dierent from the ones for which they were designed to, thus exploiting them. A last option could be the use of collectively developed protocols. In other words, open source software, developed at large by the community that will use it, which will not follow a centralized direction but will instead follow a route that will emerge out of the interaction of its own users. Of course, those four directions need to be studied thoroughly in order to better understand their potentials and characteristics. However, they seem to be promising in several ways.

Rethinking the Human Closing this article we will try to consider the position of the human in a protocologicaly driven society, and consequently in a protocologicaly driven architecture. For that, it might be useful to go back to periodization described in the beginning of the article as developed by Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. Each one of the three societies had a central, conceptual gure around which they were organized. Sovereign societies revolved around the concept of God: A supreme power that was justifying the strict, top to bottom hierarchy of the organizational scheme. At some point, as Nietzsche has very eloquently shown, “God died” and was replaced by man. The concept of man, as supported by the humanistic principles that were developed after the French revolution, replaced that of God and became again the reason - or the alibi - behind the decentralized organization of the societies. So what could be the entity that replaces the human in our contemporary, ‘distributed’ societies? It might be adequate to just change the number of the subject in order to introduce the multiplicity that distributed networks impose. It is the humans - in plural and understood more as a multiple entity - that it is taking the place of man. Or better, what Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (2005) call the ‘multitude’; a concept taken from Spinoza that might be able to describe better an ‘organism’ where it is of equal importance each of its ‘cells’ and their accumulation that produces a new entity with characteristics emerging out of their collective behavior.

Stavros Vergopoulos, Dimitris Gourdoukis Greece 147 Bibliography

Autodesk, Revit Architecture Overview Brochure.pdf. Available at: http://www.cadac.com/nl/bro- chures/Documents/revit_architecture_overview_brochure_a4.pdf [Accessed November 1, 2011]. Baran, P., 1962. On Distributed Communications Networks. Available at: www.rand.org/pubs/ papers/2005/P2626.pdf [Accessed October 3, 2011]. Deleuze, G., 1997. Negotiations 1972-1990, New York: Columbia University Press. Eastman, C., 2009. Automated Assessment of Early Concept Designs. Architectural Design: Closing the Gap, 79(2). Foucault, M., 1995. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison 2nd ed., Vintage. Foucault, M., 1990. The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction, Vintage. Frazer, J., 1995. An Evolutionary Architecture, London: Architectural Association. Friedman, Y., 2006. Yona Friedman: Pro Domo, Actar. Galloway, A.R., 2004. Protocol: How Control Exists After Decentralization, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Garber, R., 2009. Optimisation Stories. The Impact of Building Information Modelling on Contem- porary Design Practice. Architectural Design: Closing the Gap, 79(2). Hardt, M. & Negri, A., 2005. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, New York: Penguin Books. Mockapetris, P.V., 1987. Domain names - concepts and facilities. Available at: http://tools.ietf.org/ html/rfc1034 [Accessed November 14, 2011]. Postel, J., 1981. Internet Protocol. Available at: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc791 [Accessed Novem- ber 8, 2011]. Price, C., 1984. Cedric Price, London: Architectural Association. Spiller, N., 2008. Visionary Architecture: Blueprints of the Modern Imagination, Thames & Hudson. Thacker, E., 2004. Foreword: Protocol Is as Protocol Does. In Protocol: How Control Exists After De- centralization. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

148 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Socratis Yiannoudes

Department of Architecture Technical University of Crete Greece From Μachines to Μachinic Αssemblages: a Conceptual Distinction between two kinds of Adaptive Computationally-driven Architecture Since the 1990s, research groups, courses and workshops in schools of architecture have been working on the design and potential implementation of adaptive computationally-driven architecture. This kind of architecture involves physical structures able, in theory, to adapt to constantly changing needs and environmental conditions, through the use of kinetic mechanisms and embedded computation (wireless networks, micro-processors and sensor-actuator eectors) (Fox, n.d.; Fox and Yeh, n.d.; Fox, 2010). The term “adaptive computationally-driven architecture”, however, would also refer to the so-called Intelligent Environments, the applications of the eld of Am- bient Intelligence (AmI), which has also been a developing research project since the 1990s, albeit outside the architecture discipline. Intelligent environments are spaces able to adapt autonomously and proactively to personalized needs, as well as changes of the habits of their occupants through the use of ubiquitous computing, i.e. environmental information feedback, activity recognition / detection and learning, memory and proactive anticipation mechanisms (Monekosso, Paolo and Yoshinori, 2008). The ideas behind the above developments and practices are not new, since they can be traced back to the visionary projects of the ‘50s and ‘60s architectural avant- garde; projects such as Cedric Price’s Fun Palace, Archigram’s Living 1990 [ g.1] and Control and Choice Dwelling as well as Constant’s New Babylon, characterized by an obsession with technology, systems, interfaces, responsiveness and indeterminacy, were imagined as paradigms of a exible, transformable, self-regulating and adaptive architecture. These projects were inspired by the emerging new science of cybernetics, the founder of which, Norbert Wiener, in his book The Human Use of Human Beings (1947), described how information feedback was central for the creation of environmentally responsive machines (Hughes, 2000, p. 98). Architecture as a cybernetic system could thus be theoretically changed at will by their inhabitants, in order to «adapt to the changing desires of the human communities that inhabit it» (Colquhoun, 2002, pp. 225-226). Yet, although the vision was for a really responsive and adaptive architecture, a close examination of current practices of adaptive architecture will inevitably lead to a confusion as to the degree of adaptation they are capable of. Looking at those kinetic

Fig. 1

150 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture structures discussed in William Zuk and Roger Clark’s book Kinetic Architecture (1970)1, as well as at recent computationally-driven structures, such as those constructed by the Hyperbody Research Group at TUDelft led by Kas Oosterhuis [ g.2], we sense that their adaptability is limited by the range of the transformational constraints of their structure and components. Furthermore, most applications of intelligent environments seem to be able to adapt to a prescribed range of human activities and needs. Bearing this problematic in mind, in this paper we would like to propose a conceptual distinction between two kinds of adaptive architecture. The rst can be conceptualized in terms of a “machine”, characterized by deterministic function and preprogrammed behavior. The second can be conceptualized in terms of a “machinic assemblage”, a concept coming from Deleuzean philosophy to describe a speci c functional arrangement of heterogeneous ows and interactions between technical and social entities, with indeterminate capacities. We have to bear in mind that the machine, as a technological artifact, has been an object of continuous philosophical debate historically and a model to explain and conceptualize cultural and physical phenomena.2 For instance, cybernetics and the adaptive, homeostatic and “conversational” machines that were produced during its early period by scientists such as William Walter Gray, Ross Ashby and Gordon Pask, challenged age old Cartesian epistemology and ontological boundaries in culture that had prevailed in philosophical thinking throughout modernity (Pickering, 2010). Therefore the subsequent architectural projects and practices which were inspired by cybernetics and cybernetic machines, such as Archigram’s and Price’s, as well as the more recent intelligent environments and interactive architecture applications, should be re-examined and discussed in the context of cybernetic machine models and other philosophical concepts (such as the assemblage) which take issue with the cybernetics agenda.

Fig. 2

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 151 Machines In his famous lecture of 1947 entitled “Machine and Organism” ( rst published in 1952), the French philosopher and historian of science Georges Canguilhem attempted to explain machine constructions in dierent terms than just being the result and application of scienti c activity and theorems. He proposed an understanding of machines by making reference to and studying the structure and functions of organisms, a research agenda put forth a year later by cybernetics. In this way, Canguilhem pointed to a reversal of the mechanistic philosophy and biology, which sought to explain organisms in terms of mechanistic principles. This reductionist model of machines comes from a traditional theory of mechanics, such as that in Franz Reuleaux’s Theo- retische Kinematik: Grundzüge einer Theorie des Maschinwesen (Braunschweig: Vieweg, 1875). In such theories machines are mechanical devices functioning within narrow- ly de ned limits and their every movement holds up to certain norms, measures or estimates: A machine can be de ned as a man-made, arti cial construction, which essentially functions by virtue of mechanical operations. A mechanism is made of a group of mobile solid parts that work together in such a way that their movement does not threaten the integrity of the unit as a whole. A mechanism therefore consists of movable parts that work together and periodically return to a set relation with respect to each other. It consists of interlinking parts, each of which has a determinable degree of freedom of movement... The fact that these varying degrees of freedom of movement can be quanti ed means that they can serve as tangible guides for measuring, for setting limits on the amount of movement that can be expected between any two interacting solid objects (Canguilhem, 1992, p. 46).

Thus, the machine operates uniformly and unidirectionally toward completing a particular activity presenting nality and purposiveness, an understanding of machines traced in Aristotle’s Politics (Canguilhem, 1992, p. 57). Kinetic structures t well within this paradigm and conceptualization of technological devices. Kinetic structures are physical constructions consisting of moveable interconnected parts which can rearrange their relative positions, according to demand, either manually or through feedback systems of control. The result is a signi - cant overall mechanical change of the physical con guration of the structures, which is determined by the set relations of their internal components and their inbuilt kinetic mechanisms. The latter may range from mechanisms of deployment, folding and extension to rolling, sliding and nesting techniques, and from scissor-type mechanisms and inatables, to tensile and transergetic systems. Thus, the determinable degree of freedom of movement that the structure is able to produce means that the range of possible functional changes that may occur is predictable; this is because the form can only “respond to a range of functional changes possible within the initial envelop limitations” (Zuk and Clark, 1970, p. 98). Therefore, exibility, although dependent on the multiple transformational states of the structure, is con ned within a narrow range of alternatives, prede ned by design. Flexibility was an emerging idea in architectural discourse during the post-war period to deal with the uncertainty and rapid development in the Western world brought forth by the constant social and economic changes. However, as Adrian Forty argues, the application of exibility in architectural design gave architects the illusion

152 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture that they can sustain and extend their control on buildings even after the period of their real responsibility, the design stage (Forty, 2004, p. 143). Thus, exibility in architecture is by de nition limited by design, i.e. it is predetermined. If this paradigm of exibility is a functionalist one, i.e. deterministic, avant-garde cybernetics-inspired architects and architecture groups of the same period, such as Archigram, envisaged a more radical approach to exibility. They postulated the concepts of ‘indeterminacy’ and ‘open-endedness’ in architecture, and thought that its inhabitants would have an active and participatory role in the determination of its con guration and functions (Sadler, 2005; Hughes, 2000). As we have argued elsewhere (Yiannoudes, in press), the Archigram project, as well as Cedric Price’s Fun Palace and Constant’s New Babylon, despite their dierent conceptual, material and visual aspects, constituted an alternative paradigm of exibility, one which Adrian Forty considers to be not a characteristic of buildings but of use (Forty, 2004). In such a case, exibility is not determined by design or technical means but by the participatory and constructive engagement of those who use space, namely ‘users’.3 This discrepancy, between the functionalist paradigm of exibility -which can be understood in terms of the machine described above- and its alternative, characterizes, as we will argue, two distinct branches of contemporary intelligent environments.

Intelligent environments (IEs) Ambient intelligence (AmI) is a vision of the eld of computer science aiming by de - nition at the creation of spaces, the so-called Intelligent Environments, able to respond to the presence and activities of people in an adaptive and proactive way by supporting and enhancing their life through smart devices (Streitz, 2006). Although automatic buildings have been around since the 1950s and 1960s,4 intelligent environments are dierent because they have developed complex and adaptive ways to enhance domestic habitation through the use of ubiquitous computing (neural nets and fuzzy logic supported by networks of intelligent agent-based systems) and user-friendly interfaces (Ahola, 2001). Without attempting to discuss the perpetual meaning of intelligence as analyzed in the elds of Arti cial Intelligence and Cognitive Science, it is suf- cient to say that, in the context of AmI, it refers to autonomously functioning systems able to provide automated services, assessing situations and human needs in order to optimize control and performance in architectural space. Such systems use environmental information -acquired through activity recognition / detection- as feedback to obtain knowledge and experience, through learning, memory and proactive anticipation mechanisms, in order to adapt to personalized needs as well as changes of user habits (Cook and Das, 2007). Such environments, a.k.a. autonomous intelligent environments, would include the iDorm, an experimental student apartment developed at Essex University, the PlaceLab, developed by House_n research program at MIT, the Adaptive Home, and the MavHome. The system of an intelligent environment models the activities and behavior of users,5 in order to produce rules to determine and optimize its performance. It is thus able to adapt to new behaviors and respond accordingly. However, although intelligent environments can adapt to changes of the habits and activities of their occupants, the system’s responses, its performing functions, are predetermined by design. In eect, these functions are limited by the range of human or environmental activi-

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 153 ties that the system is programmed to be able to recognize, supported by the intelligent agents’ capacities and the knowledge it obtains in time through learning. Fur- thermore, the high level of system autonomy in mainstream intelligent environments does not permit any modi cation of the system’s rules, thus restricting any appropriation of its functions, either by users or other agents. Therefore, the system’s capacity for adaptation is predetermined by design which means that it is located within a functionalist paradigm of exibility. A dierent set of Ambient Intelligence applications, the so-called end-user driven intelligent environments, constitute an alternative direction to the functionalist paradigm of exibility because their functionality is not dependent on the pre-programmed rules of the system. Such environments constitute “ecologies” of interacting technological and human entities -artifacts, human users, and software- demonstrat- ing open, indeterminate and multiple functionalities. Therefore, as we will argue, they can be conceptualized in dierent terms than that of the mechanical machine. Before describing their speci c characteristics, we will discuss the concept of the machinic assemblage, in order to attempt to conceptualize end-user driven IEs in this term.

Machinic Assemblages French philosopher Gilles Deleuze proposed the theory of the assemblage (agence- ment in French). According to Manuel DeLanda (2006, pp. 8-9) this theory is the main theoretical alternative to the age-old organismic metaphor in sociological theory which still exerts signi cant inuence in most schools of sociology. The assemblage, in Deleuzian thinking,6 is a cybernetic conception referring to a distributed arrangement/set up of functional relations, liaisons and aliations among and across heterogeneous concrete parts and processes. De ned only pragmatically, in terms of components and actions “it arises when converging forces enable a particular amalgalm of material and semiotic ows to self-assemble and work together” (Johnston, 2008, p. 117). The whole, in the assemblage, is characterized by relations of exteriority, implying that a component part of an assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a dierent assemblage, in which its interactions are dierent. These relations of exteriority imply a certain autonomy for the components, which are necessarily heterogeneous, either material, cognitive, aective, or social, while relations can change without the terms changing. Thus, the relations that constitute the whole can never be explained by the properties of the component parts (DeLanda, 2006, pp. 10-11). The term ‘machinic’ in the machinic assemblage, as Felix Guattari, Deleuze’s co-writer, has explained, points to a very dierent conception of the machine. The machine is hereby not necessarily a mechanical device but an ensemble of heterogeneous parts and processes whose connections work together to enable ows of matter, energy and signs. Thus, the term ‘machinic’ refers to this working together of the assemblage which includes humans and technologies (Johnston, 2008, p. 112). In this conception of the machine, the machine is opened out towards its machinic environment and maintains all sorts of relationships with social constituents and individual subjectivi- ties (Guattari, 1993). Thus the machinic assemblage contains particular technical devices inseparably embedded and operating within a continuum of related elements, networks of materials, processes, systems and infrastructure (both technical and sociopolitical) (Guattari, 1992).

154 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Within the machinic assemblage, ontological boundaries between beings and things, humans and machines, nature and technology, are subverted. Such fundamental dualities, which have preoccupied modernity and all philosophy up until Heidegger, and which were radically and seriously challenged by the early cybernetics discourses and practices,7 are no more valid within the assemblage. Deleuze and Guattari in particular, postulate the existence of a special realm in the assemblage, which they call the machinic phylum, a term which suggests “a conjunction or interface between the organic and the nonorganic, a form of ‘life’ that combines properties of both” and which “cuts across the opposition between history and nature, the human and the non-human” (Johnston, 2008, p. 107). In Guattari’s thinking, the machinic assemblage crosses ontological boundaries acquiring consistency through non-linear and autopoietic processes which run through its heterogeneous and diverse components, either social or technical (Guattari, 1992, p. 352). End-user driven intelligent environments can be conceptualized in terms of the machinic assemblage because they are constituted and actualized by the participatory engagement and synergetic interaction of heterogeneous components - artifacts, spaces, people, objects and software.

End-user driven Intelligent Environments End-user driven IEs provide the tools to construct personal AmI applications in domestic environments that are adaptable to users’ indeterminate needs and changing circumstances. In particular, they can empower users to appropriate the system and its operational rules in a creative and even improvisational way through user friendly interfaces. This approach can be traced in a conceptual path alternative to traditional HCI research, within which system designers are no longer in control of interaction; instead they focus on techniques to allow user appropriation and improvisational use of the artifacts, so that they will be able to act through those artifacts, i.e. to modify and deconstruct their interface, relocating their constituting elements (Dourish, 2001). Following this path, end-user driven environments such as PiP (pervasive interactive programming) and e-Gadgets, enable users to program and appropriate their environment by “building” their own virtual appliances according to their special desires. Such approaches deconstruct the system, allowing the users to choose and combine dierent device functions thus forming “virtual pseudo-devices” (Meta-Appliances – Applications) (Chin, Callaghan and Clarke, 2008). In the e-Gadgets case [ g. 3], users would choose the combinations connecting plugs of smart components graphi- cally, namely exible blocks with no predetermined capacities and an “open” function mechanism (eGadgets), creating synapses and rules of the “if…then” type (Kameas, Mavrommati and Markopoulos, 2004; e-Gadgets, n.d.). The actions of the users in such environments are not always successful in terms of their functional outcome, because this outcome depends on the dialectical relationship, the ‘conversational’ process, between user and environment (the technological artifacts that constitute it). This conceptualization of architecture as a cooperative partner in conversation with its users, rather than as a functionalist machine/tool, was postulated by cybernetics pioneer Gordon Pask back in 1969:

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 155 Fig. 3

The high point of functionalism is the concept of a house as a ‘machine for living in’. But the bias is towards a machine that acts as a tool serving the inhabitant. This notion will, I believe, be re ned into the concept of an environment with which the inhabitant cooperates and in which he can externalize his mental processes (Pask, 1969, p. 496.).

The functional capacities of an end-user driven intelligent environment derive from the interactions of heterogeneous components, things and people. The environment constitutes an ‘ecology’, where actors, either artifacts or subjects/users/designers, cooperate for the optimization of the behavior of the whole. Zaharakis and Kameas (2007) discussing the potential of end-user driven environments such as e-Gadgets have argued for a conceptualization based on biological paradigms thinking of them as symbiotic ecologies of heterogeneous actors, where intelligence is collective and an emergent outcome of their interactions.8 The subject -the user- is part of that en-

156 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture vironment and his/her embodied actions within it, are essential for the way he/she relates to it. The functionalities of the environment are underdetermined, its behaviors emergent and its functional potential is ‘open’. These observations lead us to the second concept that we would like to discuss and de nes another dimension of the assemblage; that is the concept of the virtual and the virtual machine.

Virtual Machines As John Johnston explains, Deleuze, following Bergson, developed the concept of the virtual to describe the workings of the assemblage’s most piloting function, the abstract machine, which points to the assemblage’s virtual dimension (Johnston, 2008, p. 119). The virtual, in Bergson, refers to the enabling of the creative aspect of time, involving a truly open-ended and indeterminate model of the future, and the creation of new lines of actualization contrary to linear views of causality and mechanical repetition of physical law. Unlike the possible, which de nes a process in which a structure acquires reality out of a set of prede ned forms, the virtual de nes a process in which an open problem of creation is solved in a variety of ways, with actual unanticipated forms emerging in the process. The virtual does not represent something real but is a real that is yet to come -not eectuated-, it is ideal but not abstract in any transcendent Platonic sense. Thus, in Deleuze’s words “The virtual is not opposed to the real but to the actual”, since the virtual and the actual are two dierent ways of being (Lister, et al., 2003, p. 364). This virtual dimension of the assemblage is “its power to actualize a virtual process, power or force, that while not physically present or actually expressed immanently draws and steers the assemblage’s ‘cutting edges of deterritorialization’ along a vector or gradient leading to the creation of a new reality” (Johnston, 2008, pp. 119-120). In the book Time Travels, discussing the Bergsonian and Deleuzean concept of the virtual, Elizabeth Grosz concludes:

Insofar as time, history, change, the future need to be reviewed in the light of this Bergsonian disordering of linear or predictable temporality, perhaps the open-endedness of the concept of the virtual may prove central in reinvigorating the concept of an open future by refusing to tie it to the realization of possibilities (the following of a plan) and linking it to the unpredictable, uncertain actualization of virtualities (Grosz, 2005, p. 110).

Bringing the concept of the virtual into architecture she further asks: “What does the idea of virtuality… oer to architecture?” and she answers: “The idea of an indeterminate, unspeci able future, open-endedness… the promise of endless openness” and “the usage of spaces outside their conventional function” (Grosz, 2001, p. 88). Indeterminacy and open-endedness; concepts that appear in Archigram’s rhetoric (Cook, 1999, p. 78) but have also been inuential in the development of projects of adaptive architecture of the same period such as Cedric Price’s Fun Palace [ g.4]. As Stanley Mathews argues, the assumed indeterminacy of both program and form in the Fun Palace turn it into what Alan Turing in 1936 termed “a Universal Machine” to predate the contemporary computer, that is, a machine capable of simulating the behavior and the function of many dierent devices. In contemporary terms, this is a

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 157 Fig. 4 virtual machine, namely a functionally underdetermined complex machine, never actualized as the totality of the virtual functions of which it is capable (Mathews 2006; Lister, 2003, pp. 360-64). Like the virtual machine, “Virtual architecture would be similarly exible and capable of emulating the behavior of dierent buildings” (Mathews, 2006, p. 42). Thus, the Fun Palace signi es a shift in the functionalist (deterministic) view of exibility -conceptualized through the mechanical machine-, towards an alternative view of the machine and its relation to architecture. This, concept, we argue can also be applied to contemporary adaptive architecture projects such as end-user driven IEs, as discussed.

Computational Assemblages Although the terms machinic assemblage and virtual machine seem at rst glance appropriate to conceptualize end-user driven intelligent environments, the assemblage being a model of the set-up whereas the virtual machine being its function, there is

158 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture a crucial point that has to be made. In Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy the assemblage works by conjoining two reciprocally interacting realms: the machinic assemblage on the one hand and a dierent type of assemblage on the other, the collective assemblage of enunciation. While the machinic assemblage involves bodies and physical things, the collective assemblage involves semiotic expressions, signs, gestures which hold the assemblage in a state of dynamic equilibrium. As Johnston states this is essentially a cybernetic conception and in a loose sense self-organising (though De- leuze and Guattari do not use the term). Agency is completely distributed - no centrally located seat of power control or intentionality allocates and guides functionality. Although within end-user driven IEs, the subject/user is the primary decision maker -in other words he/she takes creative, autonomous and intentional action according to his/her desires- the environment taken as a whole including human actors and technological artifacts, presents agency in a distributed manner. Both humans and artifacts can act on the environment, changing its rules and hence its overall functions and behavior according to human desires or the intelligent agents’ pre-programmed motives. This loosely self-organizing character of the assemblage leads us to question the conceptualization of adaptive architecture in terms of the machinic assemblage. We would rather use a dierent term proposed by John Johnston in his book The Allure of Machinic Life (2008) where he examines the role of software and computational processes in the assemblage. The computational assemblage links physical computational devices, bodies and artifacts with the coding and informational processes that they instantiate and execute. We come to think that the computational assemblage is a better term to conceptualize adaptive computational architecture and, in particular, set ups such as end-user driven intelligent environments where all the above components, either material or immaterial seem to co-exist and interact (Johnston, 2008, p. 123).

Conclusion and Discussion In this paper we attempted to explore the potential to conceptualize adaptive architecture in terms of the concepts of the machine and the machinic assemblage –in other words to propose a system of thought within which to discuss this kind of architecture. We also attempted to contextualize this exploration within avant-garde practices and cybernetics discourse to show that the debate and vision has a historical reference. We have to admit though that our attempt to conceptualize adaptive computational architecture in terms of machinic and computational assemblages or virtual machines was rather sketchy despite the fact that we described these terms as accurately as possible. Therefore the reliability of our argument can be easily criticized. However, since, as discussed in this paper, adaptive computationally driven architecture is not a tool, a modernist functionalist machine, but a functionally open-ended, indeterminate and “virtual” system, an active agent in cooperative interaction with its occupants, then novel concepts, systems of thought and even theories are urgently needed. Our hope, then, is that this paper will raise a fruitful debate around these theoretical issues which may lead to the exploration of speci c architectural con gurations, spatial systems and devices.

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 159 Notes

1 Although kinetic architectural elements and structures have existed since antiquity and in dierent cultures they were more widely recognized and developed throughout the second half of the 20th century due to the rapid changes in the western way of life. In particular, from the Second World War till recently, kinetic structures such as those transformable lightweight and deployable or portable environments, built by architects and rms such as Buckminster Fuller, Hoberman associates and FTL Happold, to name a few, have sought to resolve economical, practical or ecological problems of the construction industry, and respond to issues of survival and nomadic dwelling. For discussion, categories and overview see Kronenburg (1996); Oungrinis (2009); Robbin (1996). 2 For instance see Georges Canguilhem’s Machine and Organism. 3 The term “user” in this context would not only mean the person that has the potential to use space but also to appropriate it, inhabit it, determine its manner of use at will, creatively reinterpret it or even abuse it (Forty, 2004, σσ.312-315). 4 For instance the All Electric House built by General Electric Company in Kansas in 1953 involved remote controlled assistive services such as setting on/o the lights, watering the garden or coee making. 5 Of course there are drawbacks to this capacity including diculties in recognizing simultaneous activities or activities performed by more than one user. 6 DeLanda explains that in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, the pages dedicated to assemblage theory are relatively few and the de nitions of the related concepts are dispersed throughout their dierent texts and hardly interpreted in a straightforward manner. Therefore, DeLanda’s books A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity and Intensive Sci- ence and Virtual Philosophy attempted to reconstruct Deleuzian ontology and the theory of assemblages. 7 On how cybernetic practices in the 1940s and ‘50s proposed and staged a novel non-modern ontology challenging traditional human boundaries see Pickering (2010). 8 This discussion can be informed by post-cognitivist theories and the social studies of technology, such as Actor Network Theory, distributed cognition theory, activity theory and embodied cognition/interaction theories, which, despite their dierences, seem to conceive the word as a hybrid techno-social environment consisting of heterogeneous associations, liaisons and synergies between humans and non-humans (tools/machines/artifacts/technologies). For a thorough attempt to contextualize intelligent environments and adaptive architecture within these theories see Yiannoudes (in press).

Bibliography and references

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160 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Cook, D. and Das, S., 2007. How Smart are our Environments? An updated look at the state of the art. Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 3(3), pp. 53-73. DeLanda, M., 2006. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. New York: Continuum. Dourish, P., 2001. Where the Action is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. London/Cambridge MA: MIT Press. e-Gadgets, n.d. e-Gadgets. [online] Available at: [Ac- cessed 13 February 2009]. Forty, A., 2004. Words and Buildings: A Vocabulary of Modern Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson. Fox, M., n.d. Beyond Kinetic. [online] Kinetic Design Group. Available at: [Accessed 30 January 2006]. Fox, M. and Yeh, B., n.d. Intelligent Kinetic Systems. [online] Kinetic Design Group. Available at: [Accessed 30 January 2006]. Fox, M., 2010. Catching up with the Past: A Small Contribution to a Long History of Interactive Environments. Footprint: Delft School of Design Journal, Spring Issue: Digitally Driven Architecture, 6, pp. 5-18. Grosz, E., 2001. Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space. Cambridge MA/ London: The MIT Press. Grosz, E., 2005. Time Travels: Feminism, Nature, Power. Australia: Allen & Unwin Guattari, F., 1993. On Machines. In: A.E. Benjamin, ed. 1995. Complexity. Architecture, Art, Philosophy. JPVA No 6, pp. 8-12. Guattari, F., 1992. Machinic Heterogenesis. In: W.W. Braham and J.A. Hale, eds. 2007. Rethinking Technology: A Reader in Architectural Theory. Oxon/New York: Routledge, pp. 342-355. Hughes, J., 2000. The Indeterminate Building. In: J. Hughes and S. Sadler, eds. 2000. Non-Plan: Essays on Freedom Participation and Change in Modern Architecture and Urbanism. Oxford: Architectural Press, pp. 90-103. Hyperbody Research Group, n.d. TUDelft. [online] Available at: [Accessed 17 March 2005] ISTAG, n.d. Ambient Intelligence: from Vision to Reality. [online] European Commision CORDIS. Avail- able at: [Ac- cessed 8 March 2005]. Johnston, J., 2008. The Allure of Machinic Life: Cybernetics, Arti cal Life, and the New AI. Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press. Kameas, A., Mavrommati, I. and Markopoulos, P., 2004. Computing in Tangible: Using Artifacts as Components of Ambient Intelligence Environments. In: G. Riva, F. Vatalaro, F. Davide and M. Al- caniz, eds. 2004. Ambient Intelligence: The evolution of Technology, Communication and Cognition. Amsterdam/Oxford/Fairfax: IOS Press, pp. 121-142. Kronenburg, R., 1996. Portable Architecture. Oxford: The Architectural Press. Lister, M. et al., 2003. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London/New York: Routledge. Mathews, S., 2006. The Fun Palace as Virtual Architecture: Cedric Price and the Practices of Inde- terminacy. Journal of Architectural Education, 59(3), pp. 39-48. Monekosso, D., Paolo, R. and Yoshinori, K. eds., 2008. Intelligent Environments: Methods, Algorithms and Applications. London: Springer. Oungrinis, K., 2009. Structural Morphology and Kinetic Structures in Tranformable Spaces (in greek). Ph.D. Aristotelian University of Thessaliniki. Pask, G., 1969. The Architectural Relevance of Cybernetics. Architectural Design, 9, pp. 494-496.

Socratis Yiannoudes Greece 161 Pickering, Α., 2010.The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Sadler, S., 2005. Archigram: Architecture without Architecture. Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press. Saggio, A., 2002. How. In: F. De Luca and M. Nardini, eds. 2002. Behind the Scenes: Avant-Garde Techniques in Contemporary Design. Basel: Birkhauser, pp. 5-7. Streitz, N., 2006. Designing Interaction for Smart Environments: Ambient Intelligence and the Disappearing Computer. In: The Second International Conference on Intelligent Environments. 1, Athens, Greece, 5-6 July 2006. Athens: On Demand. Yiannoudes, S., (in press) Adaptive Architecture: capacities and design factors of tranformable and “intelligent” spaces (in greek). Athens: ION Press. Yiannoudes, S., 2011. The Archigram vision in the context of Intelligent Environments and its current potential. In: The Seventh International Conference on Intelligent Environments. Nottingham, United Kingdom, 25-28 July 2011. IOS Press. Zaharakis, I. and Kameas, A., 2007. Social Intelligence as the Means for achieving Emergent Interac- tive Behaviour in Ubiquitous Environments. In: J. Jacko, ed. Human- Computer Interaction, Part II. 4551, Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, pp. 1018-1029. Zuk, W. and Clark, R.H., 1970. Kinetic Architecture. New York: Nostrand Reinhold.

162 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Ava Fatah gen. Schieck

The Bartlett, UCL, London UK Embodied, Μediated and Performative: Exploring the Architectural Education in the Digital Age This paper looks at architecture and teaching architecture in the digital age. It aims to outline how rapid developments in information and communication technology and its applications in architecture have introduced new opportunities and challenges. It will also consider how the rise of pervasive media technologies has resulted in a hybrid structure of Mixed Reality Architecture (Schandlebach et al, 2007) and Augment- ed Environments (Aurigiand De Cindio, 2008) and how this will inuence the role of architectural education in order to prepare architects for new challenges in the eld. At the heart of the 21st century ‘interactive’ and increasingly ‘adaptive’ architecture will become part of our experience, forming an important shift in rethinking the built environment, the public space and its social importance. Digital media augments everyday interactions, creating visual and auditory interaction spaces that enable various types of embodied and performative experiences as we interact within a shared space. In parallel, architectural schools have witnessed a growing importance of information and media technologies in their curricula. Schoen has already identi ed some of the dilemmas posed by the expanding horizon of knowledge within the architectural eld (Schoen, 1985). He stressed the need for reecting on how this will impact the architectural education. More signi cantly he identi ed a dilemma facing architectural schools as they start to recognise the increasing importance of new elds of knowledge to the education they must provide: “architecture may try to incorporate them in a way that imitates the technical education in other elds, thereby turning its back on the tradition of the architectural studio. Or, out of a wish to remain true to a certain view of that tradition – and to the image of the architect….architecture may turn its back on the rising demands for technical education” (Schoen, 1985, p. 86). Building on this, I argue that as we nd ways to incorporate digital media and computation in architecture, we must rethink the position of architectural education and how best to prepare architects for the challenges in the eld. More signi cantly recent advancements in pervasive systems have made depth sensing and contactless gesture-based interaction available to anyone. It is likely that this will have an impact on current and future research in pervasive computing and mediated architecture (either by supporting or replacing many existing approaches) introducing a signi cant shift in the way we design and generate technologically mediated interactions within the architectural space. In this respect, I suggest that understanding the body; its movement and how it relates to its subjective space will open up the possibility to better understand and design augmented spaces in order to capture, respond to and regulate users’ experience mediated through digital technologies. In the following section I present in detail emergent developments in the eld followed by an outline of my teaching approach on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation at UCL.

Setting the Scene: the Embedded Advancements in architecture and computing have evolved together to a surprising degree since the 1990s: Virtual Reality ‘VR’ represents one of these developments, which remained mainly of academic interest for a number of reasons such as cost and

164 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the unfeasibility of working in a completely immersive environment. VR was followed by an emergent interest in combining real with virtual environments, allowing people to interact with digital information within the real architectural space, and bringing live digital imagery into the real world. It was argued that this type of Mixed Reality interaction oers people a better sense of ‘embodiment’, a state of being in the world, which ts more naturally with the way people act and interact with everyday objects compared to interacting with more abstract virtual representations (Dourish, 2001). At the turn of the millennium the focus has shifted again and attention has been drawn to the increasing signi cance of interactivity beyond the scale of the task at hand. Re- cently we have witnessed a shift in the focus of interest from ‘cyberspace’ to ‘ubiquitous computing’; digital technology is built into our environments, embedded in our devices, everywhere. Increasingly these technologies are networked.

Ubiquitous computing (also known as ‘ambient, physical, embedded, environmental or pervasive computing’) was rst introduced by technology visionary Mark Weiser. He envisioned a world of fully connected devices with cheap wireless networks where information is accessible everywhere. A world in which computers and information technologies become indistinguishable from everyday life: ‘any time, any where and always on’ (Weiser, 1991). Weiser proposed that in a pervasive computing environment, computers and information processing become ordinary, and penetrate into every object in our daily lives. In this respect as digital technology becomes invisibly embedded in everyday things, even more activities become mediated. Architecture acquired a digital layer, which involves the design of organisations, services and communications. Networks extend rather than replace architecture (McCullough, 2004). More signi cantly, now for the rst time in the short history of pervasive computing depth sensing is available for anyone using o-the-shelf technology (www.xbox.com/ en-gb/kinect) to support activity recognition and contactless user interaction. It is likely that Kinect will replace the traditional computer vision approaches and this will have a crucial impact on current research on adaptive and responsive environment. I believe that building pervasive systems into our built environment requires a new way of thinking about architectural design, digital information and how it inter- weaves with the built environment. I argue that as we nd ways to incorporate digital media and computation in architectural teaching we must rethink the role of architectural education. We need to develop new ways of teaching that extend beyond conventionally applied methods within the architectural education and Human Compu- ter Interaction (HCI). In this respect, both architecture and interaction design together can help compose the necessary framework for a better integration.

Building on this, and as the relationship between the human and her environment is signi cantly reshaped through digital information, and pervasive embedded computing, we need to gain a better understanding of the human body and human movement through space and in particular when mediated through the pervasive technologies. This is reected throughout my experimental approach on the ‘Body as Interface’ module, which explores methods ranging from capturing the human form and body movement to designing a performative and interactive experience using computer vision and depth sensing.

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK 165 In the following section I investigate the embodied and performative nature of mediated interactions and present my approach on the ‘Embodied and Embedded Tech- nologies’ unit, which covers both the body scale and the city scale. In this paper I will focus on the body scale.

Mediated Space: The Embodied and the Performative In her book ‘Architecture and Narrative’ Sophia Psarra examines the ways in which buildings are shaped, used and perceived. She outlines that buildings are de ned through a thinking mind that arranges, organizes and creates relationships between the parts and the whole and they are experienced through movement and use. Ac- cording to Psarra the conceptual ordering, spatial and social narrative are essential to the way we experience and design buildings (Psarra, 2009). Within a supportive physical built environment and temporal continuity, people perform a place ballet; a set of integrated gestures and movements that maintain a particular aim within a habitual space-time routine in everyday life (Seamon, D., 1979).

Fig. 1 Collective performative experience: situations of mediated urban interactions highlight aspects of social proximity and shared encounters among friends and strangers (image: Cloud Gates, Chicago 04).

However, with the advent of pervasive and mobile computing, the introduction of situated technologies in our space may motivate and modify social interactions or stimulate new performative behaviours. It may interrupt the habitual nature of everyday interactions, creating new stages on which people can play out their engagements mediated by the new media technologies. People are no longer limited to the role of the spectator but are rather participants who are active in de ning the emergent collective experience.

On the other hand, areas of architectural design and HCI (Human Computer Interac- tion) are merging. Areas of architectural research are continuously shifting as the new developments aect our physical environment in ways that extend digital media into the physical and temporal aspects of architecture. Accordingly, designers and educators attempt to embrace the ongoing developments and exploit every opportunity to rede ne our profession.

166 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Embodied interactions with Rock & Pop Museum’s displays using full body movement, Norway, 2010.

Architectural Education in the Digital Age A systematic approach to designing the physical and digital environments as an integral system calls for a coming together of Architecture and Interaction Design. Key to this interdisciplinary integration is the concept of space (with its social protocols, conventions and attached values). More signi cantly, I argue that the focus on the human at the core of adaptive buildings and understanding issues relating to the inhabitants (including mediated, embodied and performative interactions), and their impact on the quality of inhabitants’ experience, is essential to advancements in the eld. In his book Entangled, Chris Salter demonstrates that technologies from the mechanical to the computational— from a ‘ballet of objects and lights’ to contemporary technologically-enabled ’responsive environments’—have been entangled with performance across a wide range of disciplines. Whereas Marleau-Ponte stated that the lived foundation of this human-world is perception, which he relates to the human body. According to him it is a basic human experience where the embodiment is the condition for us to objectify reality. A body that expresses, acts in and is aware of a world that normally responds with patterns, meaning, and contextual presence (Mer- leau-Ponty, M., 1962). We have contributed elsewhere to the understanding of situated interactions and shared encounters using a digital artefact as a stage that mediates social interactions and performative play. We outlined that the nature of these mediated interactions and their appropriateness are tied to the nature of space as well as the aordances oered by the technology. More importantly, our ndings demonstrated the importance of

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK 167 taking into account full body movement and performative interactions as an essential factor of human experience (Fatah gen Schieck et al, 2008, 2010). I argue that understanding the body and how it relates to its subjective space i.e. looking at space-in-the-body (Laban, R. and Ullmann, L., 1974) in addition to the body in space, posture and gesture will open up the possibility to better understand and exploit body movement and users behaviour in order to capture, respond to and regulate users’ experience as it is mediated through digital and pervasive technologies. This is reected throughout my teaching on the MScAAC.

Introduction to Adaptive Architecture and Computation The MSc AAC is a one-year taught course in the eld of digital architectural design, which has been running since 2005. Teaching on the course draws on a multidisciplinary milieu of two established disciplines in the Bartlett: the Space group, which explores dierent ways of investigating spaces and forms of architecture and the VR centre which uses computing technology in the eld of architecture. It comprises 5 taught modules and two studio units (taught in parallel during the two teaching terms) followed by a thesis, which is supervised from May to September. The ve modules are: a) Design as a Knowledge-Based Process, b) Introduction to Program- ming, c) Computational Analysis, d) Computational Synthesis and e) Morphogenetic Programming. These taught modules aim to challenge the students to think about how computation can improve the design and use of architecture. The studio based

Fig. 3 Project MINIMAL COMPLEXITY by Vlad Tenu (MSc AAC alumnus 09) commission and assembly Tex-Fab.

168 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture units give the students a hands-on opportunity to create spatial approaches using computational sketches. My approach in particular explores how we can challenge the way we relate to the built environment as it is mediated through pervasive digital technologies. This is achieved through implementing a project-based learning that is carried out in the real world (in the actual site itself) within the public space (Fatah gen. Schieck, 2008).

In the remainder of the paper I will present my teaching approach on the unit ‘Embod- ied and Embedded Technologies’. The unit consists of two modules investigating the body scale ‘Body as Interface’, which focuses on the human body and how architectural space is generated through body movement and the city scale ‘City as Interface’, which focuses on the city as the space of potential interactions: person to person, person to digital, person to physical, digital to physical, and digital to digital). In this paper I will on focus on the module ’Body as Interface’.

The Body as Interface This module introduces students to digital space as part of the architectural space and as an interface between people and other people, i.e. as a facilitator. It investigates the complex relationship between the architectural space, the digital space and the human body, and the way that this is mediated by and mediates people’s relationship to each other. Bearing in mind that the majority of the MSc AAC students come predominantly from an architectural design background, it seems that the challenge is to incorporate these foundations in an understanding of architectural research that will help achieve a better understanding of dierent aspects and the complexity of social and technologically mediated interactions in relation to the spatial context in which it occurs. As a result, and building on the reective nature of architectural education, I have introduced a project based learning approach in an attempt to integrate digital media and computation combined with understanding the nature of the body and the subjective space it generates. This is primarily motivated by the design studio culture, a culture that represents a tradition of education by reection-in-action and on the spot experimenting reecting a generalised setting for learning-by-doing, which integrates the three environments of: teaching, discovery, and application. The premise is that adopting an approach based on the design studio culture will foster a creative and challenging environment that will in turn encourage critical thinking providing values of optimism, sharing, engagement and innovation. The proposed approach diers from traditional architectural education, however, in that the project is implemented in the real setting, which requires applying a range of methods from interpretative-ethnographic to experimental approaches. In this way the students themselves are active participants in the learning experience; they play an active role that helps in shaping and understanding the nal outcome.

In the following section, I present the module project. It was rst introduced during 2009 and implemented in a studio session in 2010 and 2011.

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK 169 The Project The project was carried out during the last 4 weeks in the module. It is supported by diverse teaching modes including workshops, lectures, and tutorials. The project is evaluated formally by giving an audio-visual presentation and a demo of the interactive installation in real-time. During the ‘Body as Interface’ workshop1 we apply a multidisciplinary approach where architectural space, body movement, performance, dance and interactive design come together. We start with the focus on practical physical exercises led by dance practitioners through which the students gain understanding of how we embody space and the practical aspects related to space orientation / gravity organization. The aim is to open the body and mind, break routines and rethink various aspects that we take for granted. We explore movement in terms of its spatial content (space-in-the-body) and aim to develop a dynamic moving body conscious of personal space and aware of spatial relationships between bodies.

Fig. 4 MScAAC students explore the relationship between space perception and body movement, how they relate to their own space and how they relate to other people and the environment around them (proxemics).

The physical exercises are followed by a talk exploring the complexity of the processes involved in building our perception in space with focus on the central role played by the body in this process. Finally, in order to reveal how the human body acts in space, the students go through testing an interactive sound installation2. The installation is experienced by a single person in total darkness, where her/his movements modulate

170 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the soundscapes. As soon as the person enters, sounds begin to circle around them in response to their movements. A real dialogue emerges between the body’s movement and the space through the sound, engaging the participant in space and revealing how the body acts in space. The outcome of this experience is captured and analysed and the collected data and material act as a starting point for the student project. Initial outcome indicated that dierent types of bodies (dierent people) generate dierent types of movements when moving without using visual cues.

Fig. 5 A richly physiological and perceptual system producing spatial and temporal trace form

Finally, the students start working on their own project. Building on the workshop outcome and based on the data collected during the experiment with the sound installation they are asked to nd ways to represent the personal kinesphere (ie the space surrounding the body or the movement space). The aim is to explore the relationship between space awareness, perception and body movement; how people relate to their own space and how they relate to other people (proxemics), to their subjective space and the environment around them (Hall, 1966). Body movement and spatial representation were explored through students studies using dierent methodologies. For instance, one of the projects created an installation in order to explore interactions with 2D planes (see gure below), another looked at how dierent types of the perceptual categorization of space would produce dierent ways to occupy and relate to the architectural space.

Fig. 6 Visual perception and bodily action operate interdependently on one another in our experience of space. This project aims to clarify their own relation to their own space (developed in an interactive project using computer vision and processing - MSc AAC 2010).

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK 171 Fig. 7 Photography and motion pictures in the last moments of the 19th C revealed the microuctuations of human movement. Here an attempt to drive movement capture through movement speed.

For the rst time it is now possible to draw in 3D space using depth sensing. A group of students studied dierent types of body movements mediated through interactive installations. This was demonstrated through works carried using depth sensing (Ki- nect) in order to generate 3D drawings in space using dierent body parts.

Fig. 8 Dierent body signatures through drawings in 3D space with hands and feet by 4 dierent people (developed through using Kinect and processing - MSc AAC 2011).

In summary, the students’ work demonstrated aspects of gaining understanding of the importance of the subjective body (and how it relates to its own space) and the relation to surroundings when designing interactive and mediated experiences. This has implications on designing people’s experience through mediated and adaptive environments, which could be explored further.

Conclusion New technologies and methodologies are constantly being incorporated into architectural practice and education. These provide tools that promote new modes of engagement with older questions. However, there are issues and risks inherent in such adoptions. Among these is the possibility that the potential of new technologies may not be fully developed.

In this paper I have presented my approach for the unit ’Embodied and Embedded Technologies’ as part of the MSc AAC course at The Bartlett, UCL. I focused in particular on my approach in teaching the module ‘Body as Interface’. This approach is in-

172 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture spired by the design studio culture and way of thinking, which integrates the three environments of: teaching, discovery (research), and application (practice).

I presented an attempt to develop new ways that extend beyond conventionally applied methods within the traditional architectural education. The aim is to draw attention to the possibilities oered by the integration of new technologies into the architectural teaching in a module that explores the relationship with the human body, the architectural space and performative interactions mediated through technology. I argued that the relationship between the human and her environment is signi cantly reshaped through digital information, and pervasive embedded computing and suggested that we need to gain a better understanding of the human body and human movement through space and in particular when mediated through the pervasive technologies.

More signi cantly I outlined that for the rst time in the short history of pervasive computing depth sensing is available for anyone and it is likely that this will have a crucial impact on current research on adaptive and responsive built environments. Our current teaching approach in interaction design to students from architectural backgrounds focuses on introducing body awareness using dance training methods. It takes the position that body awareness is key to the education of architects and designers in the digital age, in particular when designing the inhabitant’s experience mediated through technologically driven environments. Another aspect is the gaining of understanding of the importance of the subjective body (and how it relates to its own space) in the design of interactive and mediated experiences. Finally, to recognise the importance of body movement as a medium for the design of quality of experience, in particular in interacting and engaging through responsive and adaptive environments. This experience has oered a rewarding opportunity as well as challenges and dilemmas. Considerably more investigations and deeper reections are required in order to address the question raised through the module, which will ultimately help inform a truly engaging and inspiring learning environment that will better prepare designers and architects for an ever changing world within the digital age.

Acknowledgements We thank Prarthana Jaganath (Aedas), Armando Menicacci (Châlons sur Saone, France) and Chris- tian Delecluse (Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture, France) for their invaluable contribution. We would like to acknowledge the eorts of the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation of the 2010-11 and 2011-12 cohort.

Notes

1 The workshop is developed through a collaboration between the Ava Fatah (The Bartlett, London), Christian Delecluse (ESA, Paris) and Armando Menicacci (Châlons sur Saone). 2 The installation is designed by Christian Delecluse an architect and interaction designer from Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture (ESA), Paris.

Ava Fatah gen. Schieck UK 173 References

Aurigi, A., and De Cindio, F., 2008, Augmented urban spaces: articulating the physical and electronic city. Aldershot: Ashgate. Benford, S., and Giannachi, G., 2011, Performing Mixed Reality, The MIT Press. Bianchi-Berthouze, N., Cairns, P., Cox, A., Jennett, C., and Kim, W.W., 2006, On posture as a modality for expressing and recognizing emotions, Workshop on the role of emotion in HCI 2006. Body as Interface workshop on the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation (2008-2011) at UCL: http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/graduate/programmes/postgraduate/mscdiploma-adaptive -architecture-and- computation. Dourish, P., 2001, Where the Action Is: The foundations of embodied interaction, MIT Press. Seamon, D., 1979, A Geography of the lifeworld: Movement, rest and encounter. St. Martin’s Press, New York. Fatah gen. Schieck, A., O’Neill, E., and Kataras, P., 2010. Exploring Embodied Mediated Performative Interactions in Urban Space. In: Proc. UbiComp 2010, Copenhagen. Fatah gen. Schieck, A., 2008, Exploring Architectural Education in the Digital Age. In: eCAADe 08 Architecture ‘in comutro’: integrating methods & techniques, Antwerp. Fatah gen. Schieck, A., Briones, C., and Mottram, C., 2008, The Urban Screen as a Socialising Platform: Exploring the Role of Place within the Urban Space. In: Eckhardt, F., Geelhaar, J., Colini, L., Willis, K.S., Chorianopoulos, K., and Henning, R., (Eds.) MEDIACITY – Situations, Practices and Encounters, Frank & Timme. Hall, E.T., 1966, The Hidden Dimension, Anchor Books. Kinect: http://www.xbox.com/en-gb/kinect. Laban, R. and Ullmann, L. (Eds.), 1974, The Language of Movement: A Guidebook to Choreutics, (publisher unknown). McCullough, M., 2004, Digital Ground: Architecture, Pervasive Computing, and Environmental knowing. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Merleau-Ponty, M.,1962, The phenomenology of Perception trans. by Colin Smith, New York: Hu- manities Press. Psarra, S., 2009, Architecture and Narrative: The Formation of Space and Cultural Meaning, Routeledge. Salter, C., 2010, Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, The MIT Press. Schnädelbach, H., Penn, A., and Steadman, P., 2007, Mixed reality architecture: a dynamic architectural topology, in Space Syntax Symposium 07, Istanbul, Turkey. Schoen, D. A., 1985, The design studio: an exploration of its traditions and potentials, London: RIBA Publications for RIBA Building Industry Trust. Seamon, D., 1979, A Geography of the lifeworld: Movement, rest and encounter. St. Martin’s Press, New York. Weiser, M., 1991, The Computer for the 21st Century, Scienti c American, 265(3).

174 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis Marianthi Liapi

Department of Architecture Technical University of Crete Greece Rethinking the Human: An Educational Experiment on Sensponsive Architecture Workshop Theme Over the past 10 years, autonomy, adaptability, customization and communication have been the most common words used to describe the qualities of Information Technology devices that facilitate everyday activities. IT is now ubiquitous, integrated with a multitude of objects in the contemporary, fast-pacing lifestyle. It is not strange then that the spearhead of architectural research today engages with more elaborate and sophisticated issues aiming toward the integration of IT systems into the living space. The know-how to perform such a feature is available and the potential for architecture is signi cant. Already innovators in the eld from around the world have created a test bed for the integration of IT into the core of the production of space. These research eorts open up the way for architecture to extend its inquiry beyond the Vitruvian triptych and design spatial behaviors. Embedded interactivity in places that were long regarded inert exhibits new possibilities for the human experience. Intelligent control systems are able to enhance the functionality of space, create provocative aesthetics and instigate radical changes in everyday life as we know it. Moreover, contemporary social conditions seem to be addressed better through the acquired connectivity. The development of more powerful and intuitive software as well as the ability to experiment with ‘approachable’ electronic assemblies facilitated an ever-growing tendency for responsive environments. Virtual, actual or hybrid, they are the new exciting thing, becoming widespread and common globally through art installations and architectural applications. Particularly in architecture, the design tools aim to respond to users’ needs, fabrication methods are developed to respond to design idiosyncrasies and space is designed to respond to human behavior and environmental conditions. As we explore this ability and understand better how to control and how to apply IT systems, we inadvertently reach a threshold. The animatic eect within a (retinal) informational rich era may become a goal in its own. This fact marks a point where the dierence between recreation and architecture must be identi ed so that responsiveness can be applied and have a useful, aesthetically appealing and symbolically rich outcome. Moreover, responsiveness must be carefully planned through time in order to exhibit an intriguing multiplicity in its manifestation. The next logical step then is to put sense to this response and create a context for the way space performs and the way it learns from the past: a sensponsive architecture. Ever since the rise and the swarm-like diusion of personal media, space has been gradually dislocated in the human mind to become the background in people’s activities. Even haute architecture examples remain briey in the cognitive spotlight before they begin to lose their importance. Ongoing research in this eld has revealed that when a sensponsive approach is adopted, space acquires two new, human-centered features that elevate its importance. Firstly, it becomes a medium with embedded smart assemblies able to connect with all kinds of advanced mobile media, either in the architectural or in the urban scale, providing a continuous relationship between designer, owner and space. Secondly, it is equipped with tools to regulate the environment toward ad hoc conditions the users desire. While responsive systems react repeatedly with certain programmed actions, a sensponsive system chooses the location and the type of the response. The most crucial factors in advancing from simple responsiveness to a response with a sense is time

176 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and timing. It is also crucial to dierentiate reaction from behavior. In this sense, a simple set of rules in designing a sensponsive environment is the following:

- Avoid an immediate reaction. - Develop and exhibit a process of assessment. - De ne the context for action. - Describe the context for reaction by de ning intentions.

The most important aspect that justi es such an elaborate design approach is the increased level of communication that can be achieved between people and their surrounding space. People have always been communicating with their environment, either arti cial or natural, although through a passive process of attributing sentimen- tal or psychological values to objects and elements. Active communication was rst manifested by automatons but remained restricted to certain reactions that rendered them uninteresting (and thus with no communicational value) after a period of time. Active communication with a plethora of unanticipated yet helpful responses has the ability to augment the emotional connection people create with space. There should be limits though in order to avoid entering the “uncanny valley.” As long as people perceive a discrete presence in space they can relate easier with it through time, as- cribing to it character as well as intentions.

Scenarios and Workow The workshop theme was further specialized to direct the design outcome toward sensponsive environments for children and in particular the creation of intriguing spaces with responsive partitions that can help them acquire a better sense of the world through play. Why this particular user group? To begin with, there is a plethora of scienti c data to support detailed design explorations for children’s spaces. Moreo- ver, children are experts in exploring as well as composing, driven mainly by necessity and not by design, to better place themselves in a grown-up world. They ceaselessly imagine and create alternatives of things that already exist, pushing the boundaries of known concepts like creativity and simulation, imagination and knowledge. Last, there is a very distinctive behavior required (the frame for creating a meaningful response) for these spatial arrangements; the environment must act as a tutor, providing continuously new stimuli for the children to re-ignite the game-process and keep the educational value high. In this sense, the goal was to create sensponsive environments that could be integrated in educational and/or recreational spaces as playfully learning mediums, able to engage children in their programmed activities through fun. Each one of the three student teams was assigned a speci c working scenario related to how children perceive, experience and develop a meaningful understanding of the world around them. Those scenarios where described as following:

1. Life-cycles: Create sensponsive spatial con gurations to help children understand the notions of time and change through play. 2. Storytelling: Create sensponsive spatial con gurations to help children develop their narrative and memory skills through play.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 177 3. Traces: Create sensponsive spatial con gurations to help children understand their body by getting feedback from the movement of its parts through play.

The teams were encouraged to adopt a bottom-up approach with certain key-points that guaranteed a smooth process. During the initial conceptual phase they were all asked to gure out an intriguing way to play out the assigned scenario. This included the development of a design scheme with the appropriate functional, aesthetic and symbolic value that could creatively facilitate the activity and enhance the experience of the children involved. It was crucial from this point to agree upon the intensity of the activity as well as the basic design parameters. Drawings and small conceptual mock-ups were necessary for each team to communicate the prevailing ideas. After getting feedback on the conceptual phase, each team had to shift gears and begin to work on two distinct parallel explorations, one related to the actual form and the structural details of the sensponsive spatial con gurations and the other to the development of the code for their behavioral patterns. The proposed steps were:

- De ne the exact parameters for each activity (spatial and behavioral design) and evaluate the time frame in which the spatial elements can act discretely and bene cially. - Choose the appropriate type of sensors to capture the quantitative and qualitative features of the set parameters. - Set up a crude neural network to process this data. - Synchronize this information with the design environment. - Test the process of “identify activity (sensor input) - exhibit response (mechanism output) - get feedback and ne tune - loop”.

The nal phase involved the assembly of the basic electronic infrastructure and the fabrication of the necessary parts to create working prototypes, scaled or 1:1, with character and intentions. The physical models were made out of simple materials, like fabric, paper, plastic and wood using the Department’s fabrication laboratory which is equipped with 2 laser cutters, a CNC router and a 3D printer. The kinetic parts were controlled via Arduino assemblies. Moreover, all teams were asked to visualize their work on the aforementioned phases on an exhibition panel.

Scenario 01: Sensponsive Life-Cycles The rst scenario touched upon the concept of life-cycles. It is a very crucial notion that children ceaselessly explore in order to comprehend temporal events. They gradually adjust their inner clock to dierent time frames and as they grasp the sense of time, they identify and understand the dierence between short and long-term changes, the meaning of duration as well as the act of projecting oneself or other things in time. The students researched ways to spatialize time in a child’s world, as well as ways to materially support a child’s perception of speed and duration. They identi ed some basic dualities, such as the looped life-cycle vs. the spiral life-cycle, the notion of real time vs. relative time and the distinction between short and long periods of (real) time. Their design project is an autonomous unit equipped with a sentient system that

178 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture develops its personality according to the stimuli of its environment. By employing Ar- duino assemblies with proximity, movement, acoustic, touch/pressure and light sensors, the unit uses colors and motion to communicate with children. It is also designed to form a network with other similar units creating an urban entertainment installation, located within a large urban setting, allowing a variety of responses by letting the units act alone, in a cluster or as a whole. Children are introduced to a staged play- time watching the cumulative eects of their actions proportionally aect the network. In the long run, entertainment, urban landscaping and in-depth stimulation are the project’s aims and desires.

Fig. 1 The exterior surface of the unit has a long-term memory capacity while as the interior one has a short memory depending on the activity that takes place (haptic, somatic, acoustic). When multiple units form a local cluster or an urban scale network the communicate with each other exhibiting collective behavior.

Fig. 2 The overall form is designed to provide a variety of visual cues for children through time.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 179 The students relied on both analog and digital features in order to address creatively the multiplicity incorporated into their scenario. The notion of real time, for example, was passively addressed by the changes in the daily and the seasonal cycles. The form of the unit itself had the design characteristics of a sun clock which helped in accentuating the passage of time, throughout the day as well as during the year, with the occurring shadows being the visual results caused by the sun’s movement. The inability to aect this cycle also points out its looped character.

Fig. 3 The fabrication process.

Fig. 4 The unit attributes its sensponsive abilities to a variety of sensors controlled in an Arduino environment.

The notion of relative time, on the other hand, was planned to be unveiled by the type and the duration of the activity within the unit, evoking diverse experiences like curiosity, anticipation, surprise and fun. There were two layers of programmed interaction based on a series of digital assemblies. The rst layer could be aected immediately by the actions of the children, feeding them with short-term changes and

180 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture rewards. The second layer was designed to assess the actions taking place and react accordingly through time, helping this way children to develop the hardest skill which is to understand long term changes and eects. Having the ability to aect the actions of the unit, and consequently of the network, children were also able in this case to grasp the sense of the spiral cycle.

Fig. 5 A working prototype on a 1:5 scale.

Scenario 02: Sensponsive Storytelling Our second scenario involved the concept of storytelling. It constitutes an integral part in children’s activities as it facilitates role-playing and stage-setting. Moreover, it is an essential tool for children to practice and develop their narrative and memory skills. Storytelling can be enacted anywhere and it can only be limited by the imagination. Nature, spaces, objects and people, in a variety of combinations, form an inexhaust- ible pool of storytelling material.

Fig. 6 In this project children are introduced to open-ended stage con gurations that contribute to their immersion in the game. Anticipation, surprise, balance, creation, pleasure, knowledge, adaption and imagination are all phases a child will experience in a course of using these ‘storytelling’ cubes.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 181 After researching their options, the students soon realized that they needed a medium that would be able to trigger storytelling activities, to help the children play them out as well as to provide an unanticipated feature for the sake of open-endedness. Moreover, that medium needed to be regarded as a toy. They elaborated on dierent types of forms, scales, and assemblies before concluding to an archetypical form, the cube. Keeping in mind the simple analogy of one cube per child, they proceeded with their project based upon an interesting mixture of analog digitality that transcended the cube beyond the traditional notion of the ‘object’. As with the previous team, this one also employed two layers of design, the conventional one based on formal and tactile variations and the hi-tech one based on sensor-actuator assemblies. As a result, the cube could be regarded and used both as a passive toy, oering the traditional repertoire of such playthings, as well as an active toy, able to behave as a sensponsive playmate. Regarding the later, the students decided to introduce time in a wider sense, allowing also for processes of reection and understanding to take place, apart from the immediate responses. The possible combinations of the cube’s dierent attributes guaranteed the open-ended medium required.

Fig. 7 Fabricating actual-sized models.

The cubic form of the produced object oered a variety of advantages, ranging from the simplicity and the recognizability of the form to the potential visual and spatial complexity of having multiple such cubes connected, creating a whole larger than the sum of its parts. The materiality of the surfaces could be combined to produce homogenous or heterogeneous displays as well as playful patterns for the children to use for climbing, sitting, hiding and other actions. Moreover, each cube is penetrated on two of its sides, either opposite or adjacent, encouraging a type of ‘connect the dots’ type of play that can easily drive to the creation of three-dimensional complex structures. This structural connection is achieved with the use of magnets.

182 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Whenever a change in temperature takes place, the cube gives out a colored light, ranging between blue and red, and it may enhance this output with tones of green according to the surrounding soundscape. Moreover, each cube is programmed to express extreme emotions, such as boredom and over-stimulation, by emanating a clicking sound. A feeling of happiness can also be communicated when a lot of cubes assemble together through the blinking of their lights.

Regarding the intelligence embedded in the cubes, the students concentrated on the de nition of simple rules. Each cube is programmed to respond to light, sound, temperature and pressure, producing light, color and sound eects. A cube can react to a variety of stimuli coming from the children, other neighboring cubes as well as from changes in the environmental conditions, serving as a very potent medium for children to constantly reinvent their own physical and sensorial space, both on an individual and a collective level.

Fig. 9 Toddlers examining the working prototypes.In the long run, the Cubes are aiming toward a ‘play- in-progress’ situation of endless possibilities.

There are multiple possible recon gurations that create twists and unexpected events, urging children to adapt to the new conditions and evolve their story: the change of colors creates sudden points of interest, the matching of textures provides a purpose, cubes left unattended cry for attention while rearrangements incite new responses from the connected cubes. The continuous change and the urge to adapt is the main element of the sensponsiveness attributed to this project.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 183 Scenario 03: Sensponsive Traces The third scenario addressed the theme of traces. A variety of activities are connected to this theme, like creating and leaving traces over time, knowingly or by chance, following them, changing them or just observing their temporary existence. When it comes to children, most of the times traces trigger a playful activity. At this point it is very crucial to point out the fact that play is considered the main exploration mechanism for children in their quest to understand their own bodies as well as the world around them. Incorporating traces into play constitutes a principle means in their way of learning. The students researched ways to guide children into understanding that an activity they are involved with aects not only the surrounding environment with the traces it produces but also the play parameters and the decisions of another person. They designed an arti cial terrain where they could control the quality of the environment to ensure the inscribing eect of the activity in space. Their project had to rely heavily on technology and on mediums that would help them evade the barrier of a synchronized locality. In other words, technology was able to render the trace-producing activity visible for a longer period of time, in a dierent place from where it initially took

Fig. 10 Diagrams depicting the design intentions.

Fig. 11 A very inspiring visualization of the atmosphere created during play.

184 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture place. It could also provide children with additional feedback and opportunities for reection. These feedback elements can make elusive for the children concepts, like the sense of time, the type and the speed of movement and so on, easier to discern.

Design-wise, the students came up with a parti pris that allowed for an increased level of interaction between children, without getting obscured with added complexity. They created an intelligent surface with its two sides acting as oor and ceiling, separating two otherwise isolated levels. Both sides of the surface consist of sensor-actuator assemblies with piezo-electric tiles and exible fabrics. The part of the surface that comprises the oor of the upper level can be actuated by the activities of one or more children, initiating a series of chained reactions. Pressure forces on the oor turn on a moving laser spotlight that maps the traces of movement on the lower level oor. By chasing the light, children in the lower level not only play along the activity above them, without even knowing, but also aect the geometry of both their roof and the top level’s oor. The changed terrain aects in turn the movement of children on both levels, constantly changing the way they leave traces. The intensity of the movement is depicted through the degree of deformation of the surface. After a while the trace begins to diminish, and the surface is gradually restored mechanically to its original state.

Fig. 12 The upper layer of the intelligent surface provides a tactile landscape that changes its relative altitude through nodes. It is a foldable rigid surface, made of a stable yet elastic material. The lower layer of the surface is made from an elastic fabric, cut in patterns so as to simulate a natural cover, resembling tree leaves or spider nets.

Fig. 13 The working prototype as it was exhibited during the conference.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 185 The whole system urges children to experiment with this type of interactions. With time and through a ‘cause and eect’ narrative they will begin to understand the way those traces are made, the way their actions aect a wider system and they will eventually re ne their playing skills.

Conclusions The whole process allowed for the evaluation of two main issues, the pedagogic approach and the research framework. For the rst part, in the aftermath of the workshop one can clearly acknowledge the fact that a large team of tutors with distinctive specializations and skills worked complimentary in a very productive way. Through- out the duration of the workshop, the tutors would form and re-form smaller groups based on the specialization background the emerging problems required and dealt with them promptly. The high quality of the end-result would not have been achieved without this conglomeration. Regarding the evaluation of the chosen research framework, it is also evident that in order for architecture to overpass the established borders and achieve an augmented new state of being useful and collaborative it requires a multi-disciplinary approach along with an in-depth trial-and-error analysis of the optimum way to integrate IT in people’s living space. This feature can only be achieved by diverse groups of researchers and eager students. A very interesting observation came up at the exhibition of the workshop prototypes to the public during the conference. It has to do with the fact that people, regardless of their enthusiasm for things that react and move, they either regard an animated environment as an artistic installation, or in the best case scenario, as an environment with predetermined repetitive behavior, for which they loose interest in the long run. So, even though there is no immediate visible dierence in the integration of sensponsive logic into responsive systems (technically speaking), the dierence lies in the context that emerges from the use of such spaces through time. In this sense, the sensponsive approach requires time in order to be truly evaluated by its users, a fact that seems to be returning to a true architectural value where buildings are “felt” and “understood” through time and not just judged from their appearance. A media enhanced architecture, then, should not only lead to decisions that aect the design but also, more importantly perhaps, it should follow how people accept arti - cial environments into their everyday lives by providing continuous feedback on their eectiveness.

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our gratitude to our teaching collaborators in the workshop, presented here in alphabetical order: Edith Ackermann [MIT School of Architecture/University of Aix-Mar- seille], Panayiotis Chatzitsakyris [AUTh], Christian Friedrich [TU Delft], Dimitris Gourdoukis [AUTh], Peter Schmitt [MIT Media Lab], Susanne Seitinger [MIT Media Lab], Constantin Spiridonidis [AUTh], Kostas Terzidis [Harvard Graduate School of Design], Maria Voyatzaki [AUTh], Socratis Yiannoudes [TUC], Emmanouil Zaroukas [University of East London]. Additionally, we would like to express our appreciation for all the students who participated in this event, coming to Chania from various places around the world: (A-Z order) Alexiadou Sotiria, Anagnostopoulos Georgios, Andresakis Georgios, Apostolakeas Vasilis, Apostolopoulos Ioannis, Charvalakis Panagiotis, Chronopoulou

186 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Eleni, Gavra Xara, Gourdoukis Christos, Haratsis Danae, Himpe Caroline, Inglezakis Georgios, Kantar- zis Michalis, Koumpli Eleni, Kourounis Iraklis, Kowalczyk Paulina Anna, Letsiou Eleni, Mairopoulos Dimitris, Maistralis Vaggelis, Pankratov Tanya, Papalexopoulos Vasilis, Papavasileiou Nikos, Paschidi Mariana, Preari Zoi, Psaltis Stelios, Saylan Turker Naci, Svoronos Theodore, Tomara Avra, Tsesmetzis Vasilis, Zhou Junhua.

Notes

- A descriptive video presentation of the workshop can be found online at http://senserespon- sive.blogspot.com/ - Our research on Sensponsive Design is carried out at the TUC Research Laboratory for the Creation of Transformable Architecture, Kinetic Systems and Intelligent Environments in collaboration with the TUC Electronic and Computer Engineering Department. Our ongoing projects are titled Spirit and Ghost, conducted in collaboration with D. Mairopoulos, a nal-year student of Architecture.

References

Ackermann, E., 2010. Constructivism(s): Shared roots, crossed paths, multiple legacies. In: Pro- ceedings of the Constructionism 2010 conference. Paris, France 16-20 August 2010. Paris: American University of Paris. Ackermann, E., 2004. Time, and changes over time: A child’s view. In: H. H. Knoop, ed. 2004. Chil- dren, play, and time: Essays on the art of transforming stress to joyful challenges. Denmark: Danish University of Education Press, pp. 101-113. Lund, H. H., Klitboo, T., and Jessen, C., 2005. Playware technology for physically activating play. In: Arti cial life and robotics 9 (4), 165-174. Mori, M., 1970. The uncanny valley. Energy 7(4), pp.33-35. Translated by K. F. MacDorman and T. Minato. Oungrinis, K. A., 2006. Transformations: Paradigms for designing transformable spaces. Cambridge, MA: Harvard GSD Design and Technologies Report Series. Turkle, S., 2005. The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Konstantinos-Alketas Oungrinis, Marianthi Liapi Greece 187

Sophia Vyzoviti

Department of Architecture University of Thessaly Greece Pleat and Play The paper discusses ways to embed a critically responsive design methodology in architectural education and illustrates the argument with a case of a deployable prototype fabrication. While robotics and structural engineering are today considered the dominant constituents of a responsive architectural prototype, the paper focuses on the architectural layers of responsive form generation in terms of exibility and programmatic instability. In compliance with the conference theme the paper also poses a critical question on the overriding technological paradigm and suggests possibilities for low- tech adaptable and responsive prototypes actuated by human agents. Considering shape control in adaptable prototypes some kinetic, and polymorphic examples are discussed drawing from the bibliography on folded plate structures and origami based deployables as well as the author’s past research1 (Vyzoviti, 2011) in of form generation experiments which employ the continuous surface, its aggregates, and its subdivisions as a tool. In this framework the paper attempts to make a contribution towards a responsive design process agenda in architectural education focusing on three positions:

• Physical modeling as a complement and as a challenge to digital modeling, • Participatory form finding as a collective repository of form generation rules that can be shared between members of a creative community, • Behavioral research as data to be incorporated in form generation processes, describing systems of human activities as algorithms.

The argument is illustrated with the fabrication of a deployable shell prototype based on a geometric transformation of the ‘Miura-ori’ origami pattern. Form- nding is introduced as collective play between the pleated shell and small group of architecture students. Considered as material exploration and topological propedia to a technologically equipped one, this prototype draws knowledge from research on deployable structures developed from membrane folding and explores in its design the biaxial shortening of a plane into a developable double-corrugation surface. Further, considering creativity as the ultimate intrinsically human activity and exploring the architectural potential of the fabricated prototype improvisational group play is introduced as program evoking the paradox of rule following that determines all human activity. Activated by human agents the performance of the deployable prototype exceeds its expectations, manifesting spatial enclosures and containments that were not predicted in its original design, enriching and augmenting its architectural predicaments.

Responsive Surface According to Tristan d’Estrée Sterk (2003) what is commonly de ned as responsive architecture is “a type of architecture that has the ability to alter its form in response to changing conditions”2 and comprises a research eld that combines interdisciplinary knowledge from architecture, robotics, arti cial intelligence, and structural engineering. The term responsive is usually combined with the term adaptive, broadening the de nition for architecture as a system which changes its structure, behaviour or resources according to demand. A state of the art outlook in adaptive architecture reveals four thematic foci of research in progress3: dynamic façade systems, transformable structures, bio-inspired materials, and intelligent actuation technology. Excluding

190 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture intelligent eco-systems and actuation technology an integrated research entity can be established around the notion of surface with emphasis on the geometric and structural component. Since the early 1990’s the notion of surface has evolved into a formal trait among the avant-garde architectural discourses. Conceptualized within the Deleuzian ontology of the fold it has become associated with diagrammatic techniques and digital morphogenesis, proli cally materializing in the projected and the built by continuity, curvature, smooth layering and manipulations of the ground. Liberating architects from typology and the order of the box, the focus on surface processes diversi es architectural research in exploring and making explicit form de ning strategies that envision a rede nition of architectural performance. As a diagrammatic practice that appeals to morphogeneticists as well as urban conceptualists, the surface has acquired conceptual, operational and material depth. If we consider the current term structural façade (or structural skin) the modernist dichotomy between the ornamental - geometric character of the building envelope and its structural support appears to have merged. In the architectural production of the past decade the single surface has evolved into an omnipotent architectural tool combining landform, structure, ornament, aperture, and environmental comfort. Stan Allen (2009) attends to the innovative capacity of single surface implying that “green roofs, arti cial mountains and geological forms; buildings you walk on or over; networks of ramps and warped surfaces; buildings that carve into the ground or landscapes lifted high into the air” that may seem commonplace in architecture today have been exac- erbated by the single surface projects of the 1990’s and particularly that “the emergent eld landscape urbanism predicated on a series of formal experiments carried out in the early 1990s by architects working with strategies of folding, surface manipulation and the creation of arti cial terrains”.4 In this context I would argue that it would be valid to investigate the responsive or adaptive potential of surface as an integral architectural strategy with a radical programmatic function in terms of indeterminacy and exibility, beyond dynamic façade design. The responsive surface has a distinguished set of intrinsic properties. The responsive surface is able to change shape –in terms of its overall form or texture – and over dierent time-scales, and therefore it is dynamic. Its dynamics are embedded within the design and fabrication process and also manifest interactivity and/or kinetics in the completed work. Surface Kinematics is enhanced by surface geometry, trough patterning: tessellations of a single surface or assemblages of kinetic components. Surface geometry is becoming increasingly smarter. Surface kinetics is actuated through intelligent components comprising of systems of sensors, servo mechanisms, pistons, sliders, leds, or lower tech con gurations four-bar linkages, gliders, etc. According to Tristan d’Estrée Sterk (2006)5 structural systems used within responsive building envelopes and exoskeleton frameworks they must have controllable rigidity, must be lightweight and capable of undergoing asymmetrical deformations. These essential characteristics work together to provide the most robust and exible outcomes and form a core set of principles that can be applied in the development of all successful responsive architectures. Tensegrity structures comprise the prime research eld for adaptive structures – as exempli ed in the adaptive tensegrity of orambra6- with a large number of potential applications, due to their small transportation or storage volume, tunable stiness properties, active vibration damping and

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 191 deployment or con guration control. However I intend to focus and further invest a certain depth to another genre of potentially responsive or adaptive surfaces that integrate structural and formal characteristics and manifest kinetic performance while maintaining continuity and cohesion attending to according to the single surface principle: the origami based deployables.

Origami based Deployables Another genre of kinetic and potentially responsive surfaces, are the folded and tessellated surfaces whose geometry originates in Origami, the ancient Japanese art of paper folding. Folded surfaces most usually encountered in architecture are static structures, folded plate shells, with applications as roofs, load baring walls, or combinations of both. Martin Bechthold (2007) who investigates cementitious composite folded plate systems, de nes shells7, as material ecient structurally active surfaces that are extremely thin in proportion to their load baring capacity for large spans, and epitomizes their aesthetics in the early built works by Eduardo Torroja, Pier Luigi Nervi and Felix Candella. Folded plate structures that are kinetic are rarely realized in architecture despite their high performance for wide span and formal qualities. Mar- tin Trautz, and Arne Künstler (2009)8 investigate possibilities to combine the advantages of folded plate structures with the possibility of a reversible building element through folding and unfolding by considering the existing plate thickness and associated stiness that constrains the kinetic behaviour of origami originating patterns. The most relevant -in architectural terms - kinetic property of origami patterns and their derivatives is deployment. Origami based deployables transform from a two dimensional into a three dimensional kinetic surface and then into a at packaged one. In this sequence of transformations deployment occurs by translation and by rotation. When constructed of thin sheets of paper origami based deployables are extremely lightweight yet rigid, manifesting in overall zero Gaussian curvature. Further -as we will discover in the last part of the presentation they bare the potential for secondary asymmetrical deformations. Therefore origami based deployables bear the potential to constitute a research depository for adaptive – responsive surfaces. Origami based deployables of architectural relevance, are tessellated kinetic surfaces based on 4-fold mechanisms that manifest synchronous deployment. The most prominent pattern in this respect is Miura-ori. Devised by Prof. Koryo Miura of Tokyo University’s Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science in 1980, the Miura-ori folding technique allows the unfolding and refolding of a surface in one action9. Miura-ori pattern comprises a grid of creases arranged along zig-zag lines at angles of small deviation to the vertical. According to Pellegrino and Vincent (2001, pp. 64)10 who compare the behaviour of a sheet surface folded according to an orthogonal grid –as applied in road maps- and the Miura-ori pattern, the zig-zag geometry introduces a radical change in the unfolding behaviour of the surface compared to the orthogonal grid, that of synchronous –rather than sequential- deployment. The unfolding of a sheet folded according to Miura-ori manifests biaxial shortening of a plane into a at-foldable yet rigid double-corrugation surface. Complementary to the Miura-ori, there are two more origami patterns based on 4-fold mechanisms that appear in the bibliography of origami originating surface structures, the Yoshimura pattern and the Diagonal pattern. Buri and Weinand (2008)11

192 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture outline two fundamental geometric characteristics in the structure of these patterns with operational potential, their parallel corrugations, and the principle of the reverse fold. They proceed through geometric analysis and employ digital form- nding software to generate variations of complex folded patterns by two generative paths, the section pro le and the corrugation line. Buri and Weinand (2008) prove that numerical models of complex folded plate structures enable them to be milled by Computer Numerically Controlled machines, and fabricated by cross laminated timber panels. However, despite the innovative form generation contribution of their research in the domain, the prototypes produced are static structures. Pellegrino and Vincent (2001, pp: 60)12 deliver the proof of one fundamental constraint for all deployable membranes which are modelled as zero thickness surfaces. The ‘inextensionality constraint’ is necessary condition for at fold ability, also known as compact packaging. Accordingly the inextensional folding of a membrane requires that whenever dierent creases meet at a common point there should be at least four folds, of which three have one sign, and one fold has the opposite sign. The inextensionality constraint can be applied on origami based deployable surface patterns, enriching the basic origami rule that crease patterns are two colourable, that is, either concave creases (also known as mountains) or convex creases (also known as valleys). Therefore prototypical origami patterns such as the Miura-ori, the Yoshimura and the Diagonal as well as their geometric transformations intrinsically bare the potential to become deployable surfaces.

Digital Simulation vs Material Computing Origami based deployable surfaces have until recently resisted digital simulation accessible to architects, their production relying exclusively on relentlessly disciplined sequences of paper folding and their representations on mathematical models. Nev- ertheless in the past few years the possibility to simulate the biaxial shortening of a plane into a at –foldable and developable double-corrugation surface is available in a user friendly interface. Tomohiro Tachi (2009)13 has developed a system for computer based interactive simulation of origami, based on a rigid origami model that manifests the continuous process of folding a piece of paper into a folded shape by calculating the con guration from the crease pattern. Rigid Origami Simulator is a GUI program in windows that simulates kinematics of rigid origami from the origami crease pattern which helps users to understand the structure of the origami model and the way to fold the model from the crease pattern. It requires as input a minimum necessary representation of a folded surface, a two dimensional crease pattern which complies with the two colourable rule - the notation of convex and concave creases - upon a at state. Rigid Origami Simulator is open source and facilitates the formation of an online interest community. My contribution to the eld of research in origami based deployable surfaces comprises of form- nding experiments conducted primarily in analogue media incorporating the basic morphogenetic rules- parallel corrugations, the principle of the reverse fold and the inextensionality constraint in hands on paper folding experiments (Fig. 1). A state-of-the-art de nition of the research methodology conforms to the notion of material computing. Patrick Schumacher (2007) de nes material computing as “analogue form- nding processes that can complement the new digital design tools

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 193 Fig. 1 Origami based deployable surfaces and patterns (source: Vyzoviti 2011). and that might in fact be described as quasi-physical form- nding processes”.14 In this context the crease pattern of the deployable surface is not the starting point, or generator of the form nding procedure, but rather one of the ndings of the experiment. The derivative crease patterns, analyzed and recon gured in order to comply with the rule of the two colourable can become input for the Rigid Origami Simulator, enter a cycle of digital transformations of the folded form and become a numeric model within state of the art software. In the case of origami based deployable surfaces physical modelling is a complement as well as a challenge to digital modelling. The particular experiments with origami based deployable surfaces in analogue media confront the geometry of surface transformations with material eects, incorporating factors such as gravity, time, and human participation. A series of origami based deployable surface prototypes that have been produced under my supervision at the academic studio15 challenge materiality though an agnostic eclecticism of surface treatments. If the crease pattern comprises ‘intelligible matter’16, full of potentiality, the deployable surface investigates numerous possible actualities. Prototypes may be fabricated in rigid or soft sheets as well as in combinations of both (Fig. 2). Paper- board is the most commonly employed rigid surface material: opaline paper beyond 220g (2.1) combines rigidity with folding ability while scored corrugated paperboard (2.2) speci cally enforced with duct tape along its scores (2.3) is suitable for up scale prototypes. Some of the better composites in the current collection of deployable surface prototypes17 (Vyzoviti, 2011) combine soft and hard materials: nylon membrane enforced with plastic rods (2.4) or lycra tissue enforced with cardboard facets of considerable thickness (2.5).

194 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Origami based deployable prototypes (source: Vyzoviti 2011).

The performance of these origami based surface prototypes in terms of kinematics manifests translational and rotational deployment, at packaging, axial rotations and more rarely axial revolutions. Translational Deployment produces the spatial eect of oscillating tubular forms that contract and expand maintaining constant enclosure. Rotational Deployment produces the spatial eect of oscillating spherical forms that allow for variable boundary enclosure. Flat-packaging produces the spatial eect of a diminishing footprint. Revolutions and axial rotations produce the spatial eect of alternating concave and convex enclosures. Traditionally origami artefacts derive through disciplined in time sequences of folding actions that transform a at sheet of thin paper into a three dimensional object. Origami is art, science and craft. Origami instructive notations are delivered in practical terms, single surface transformations which can be easily conveyed in sets of simple rules. The hands-on production of the Miura-ori pattern for example incorporates geometric principles within distinct set of acts: pleat, crease, reverse, unfold, fold up or down. Such sets of embodied –or hands on- geometry which constitute its basic know-how can be considered as elementary form- nding knowledge components, which can be easily be disseminated, diagrammatically described, algorithmically prescribed or even narrated. Partaking into a collective repository of form generation rules or simple morphogenetic algorithms, they may be shared between members of a creative community, and become scaolds for collective creativity. Therefore origami based patterns can be considered as matter which is not physical, operating as participatory form- nding devices.

Deployable Shell Prototype The case that I use to illustrate the argument is a kinetic deployable shell fabricated together with students during an EASA summer workshop18. The prototype shell demonstrates the kinetic potential of a minimum thickness double-corrugation surface. Further, the prototype shell challenges the potential of non-architectural matter (corrugated paperboard) to acquire architectural properties through geometric patterning, pleated according to an origami based crease pattern. It also veri es the potential of hands-on paper folding experiments to generate patterns for deployable surfaces,

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 195 capable to become the intelligible matter of digital simulations. Finally the prototype shell investigates the performance of a deployable shell in the context of user interaction, in this case partaking of improvisational group play. The installation of the prototype in a low tech context poses a critique to the dominant norm that actuated shape change and control occurs exclusively in the eld of robotics and arti cial intelligence. It also poses a critical question to the desires and intentions of possible users of responsive architecture. The pattern selected for the prototype derived from a hands-on paper folding session with the EASA students. It was rst created in lightweight opaline paper. Its deployment ability is based on a four-fold mechanism, and its pattern comprises a geometric recombination of the ‘Miura-ori’ and Yoshimura origami patterns. The digital simulation of the pattern’s deployment process is a post production made only recently with Rigid Origami Simulator19 and demonstrates in discrete steps the transformation of the two-dimensional crease pattern to the three-dimensional folded form and further into to at packaging. Two formal states comprise minimum and maximum values the object achieves: at state (two dimensional pattern) and at package state (inextensional folding). In between the object acquires a variety of vault con gurations producing an oscillating tubular spatial eect. Synchronous translational deployment is evident in all steps of the transformation from vault to at package (Fig. 3). The fabrication of the prototype shell explored the potential of a physical double corrugation surface in terms of kinematics and formal eects. The architectural –or programmatic- objective in this case was a manipulable and deployable space enclosing object which was larger than a piece of furniture and smaller than a room. The selected pattern was scaled to t – in vault con guration – the height of a sitting adult or a standing child. The shell was fabricated in corrugated paperboard and duct tape. It was produced by assembling components of 100x70 sheets of double wall corrugated board. The sheets were scored according to the crease pattern on both surfaces of the board. There are three layers that compose double wall corrugated board, the external liners and the corrugated medium of utes. The external liners enable the board to receive scores along valley creases and cuts along mountain creases comply- ing with the two colourable origami rule. Component sheets were initially folded according to the pattern and then assembled in semi-at state (Fig. 4). Mountain creases were covered with duct tape ensuring that the shell remained cohesive and establishing continuity between independent pleated components. Two identical prototype shells were fabricated. Initially, the prototype shells were considered completed when folded into a vault con guration, smoothly performing translational and rotational deployment. They were carried at packaged to the installation location. Form- nding was further introduced as improvisational collective play within the small group of participants (Fig. 5). The group explored deployment ability of each shell in an indeterminate series of transformations alternating overall enfolding of the pleated shell in order to produce minimum inhabitable spaces. Considering creativity as the ultimate intrinsically human activity, improvisational group play was introduced as a form generation program, an activity that actuated the pleated surface challenging the limits of its deployment while exploring the kinetic behaviour of the fabricated prototype. Par- taking in a series of transformations the pleated shell became animated, constantly aected by the improvisational choreography informing and deforming it. Through-

196 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Pleated prototype deployment simulation with Rigid Origami Simulator © Tomohiro Tachi 2007- 2009 (source: Vyzoviti 2011).

Fig. 4 Pleated prototype component assembly (source: EASA007 archives).

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 197 Fig. 5 Stills from pleated prototype collective performance (source: Vyzoviti 2011).

Fig. 5 Pleated prototype folded into minimum inhabitable capsule (source: Vyzoviti 2011).

198 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture out the performance the prototype remained cohesive and self-supporting asserting the potential of corrugated paperboard to physically substantiate an origami based deployable pattern. Complementary to translational deployment which was predicted in the digital simulations counterintuitive or unexpected con gurations were also observed. Noteworthy con gurations of the shell were achieved in-between stages of translational and rotational deployment, such as asymmetrical deployment and tilt- ing of the deployment axis. Enfolding of the pleated shell produced spatial enclosures and containments that were later evaluated as minimum inhabitable capsules (Fig. 6) Activated by human agents the deployable surface surpassed the groups’ initial expectations, enriching and augmenting its architectural performance. Multiple shape con gurations that appeared during the performance were not considered in advance when designing the prototype shell. The digital simulation of the deployable pattern is not adequate to predict (beyond translational deployment) the full spectrum of shape change in the physical, animated through human activation prototype. The prototype shell’s multiple responses to improvisational group moves are not a case of ecient causality. Formal instability and plurality is triggered by human interaction within the group and between group and kinetic prototype. The pleated surface generated shape changes operating as a morphological automaton. This performance can be partly attributed to the intrinsic behaviour of the material pattern (synchronous deployment) and partly to material failure since thickness of sheet and surface fatigue may also inuence the transformations of the prototype. The physical deployable prototype and the group can be considered as one unity – pleat | play- and described as one complex functional structure. I would argue that in terms of kinematics and shape change the unity pleat | play processes an emergence property. The behaviour of the whole in terms of kinematics and polymorphics cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. As Manuel De Landa (2011, pp. 385) de nes “a whole is said to be emergent if it is produced by causal interactions among its component parts. Those interactions, in which the parts exercise their capacities to aect and be aected, constitute the mechanism of emergence behind the properties of the whole.”20 And this emergence property constitutes the pleat | play experiment extremely relevant in the debate for rethinking the human factor in technology driven architecture.

Concluding Remarks In conclusion, rather than strictly summarizing the preceding argument I would like to submit some propositions on the way digital technology may be embedded in architectural education today. In order to educate in the eld of architecture today we need to create. As new technologies facilitate us towards prototype production through digital fabrication apparatuses our role as educators has shifted towards inventing ways to sustain and promote a culture of making rather than emulating projects through drawings. Computer Aided Design interfaces has liberated architectural form nding from the tediousness of technical drawing, as in the traditional plan – section – elevation - model compositional sequence, providing utilities for immediate three dimensional form nding experiments with digital dynamic models. Paradoxically physical modelling as material computing or analogue rami cations of digital modes of representation21 (Davis, 2006, pp. 98) have become extremely relevant in current architectural form nding. And even more paradoxically analogue materiality has con-

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 199 tributed to digital morphogenesis some pre-digital techniques and modes of thinking such as bricolage and making do with collective repositories of form generation knowledge (scripts, rules, patterns, etc). Form nding in the digital era has become not only more immediate but also more collective and collaborative. In addition workshop teaching as an educational model, which is becoming increasingly popular today, also equips and facilitates the educators towards creating. Workshops accelerate and intensify standard design processes in the eld of architecture providing the frame for exhaustive investigation of one single topic, in brief and in depth. Workshops allow diversions from and enrichment of standard architectural content by forming interdisciplinary teams. Their experimental nature promotes risk taking. The capacity of problem solving or unveiling all parameters that structure a problem increases signi cantly through collaboration. Workshops function as social condensers providing platforms for community bonding. Collective creativity sessions are enjoyable and rewarding. Evaluating the deployable prototype fabrication and installation of the previous section in terms of educational bene ts I can conclude that these bene ts were not only knowledge based but also enhancing communication and collaboration skills. There are two necessary conditions to bind a group of architecture students into a creative community: working together in creative sessions towards a collective product and sharing a palette of comprehensible and achievable forms. These conditions ought to be considered towards a design methodology that critically embeds new technologies in the academic design studio.

Notes

1 Vyzoviti, S, 2011. Soft Shells: Porous and Deployable Architectural Screens. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers. 2 Sterk, TdE, 2003. Building Upon Negroponte: A Hybridized Model Of Control Suitable For Responsive Architecture available at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S0926580504000822 (accessed 28-1-2011). 3 Adaptive Architecture, 2011. International Conference. 3-5 March 2011. London: Building Center. available at http://www.buildingcentre.co.uk/adaptivearchitecture/adaptive.html (accessed 1-11-2011). 4 Landform Building -Architecture’s New Terrain. 2009. A working Conference at Princeton Uni- versity School of Architecture. 18 April 2009. available at http://soa.princeton.edu/landform/ (accessed 28-1-2011). 5 Sterk, TdE, 2006. Shape Control in Responsive Architectural Structures – Current Reasons and Challenges. In 4th World Conference on Structural Control and Monitoring (accessed 11-08-2011). 6 www.orambra.com (accessed 11-08-2011). 7 Bechthold, M,. 2007. Surface Structures in the Digital Age: Studies in Ferrocement. In Lloyd- Thomas , K. ed. 2007. Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice. London: Routledge, pp: 139-150. 8 Trautz, M, and Künstler, A. 2009. Deployable folded plate structures – Folding patterns based on 4-fold-mechanism using sti plates. In International Association for Shell and Spatial Struc- tures (IASS) Symposium. 28 September – 2 October 2009. Spain: Universidad Politecnica de Valencia. available at: http://trako.arch.rwth-aachen.de/publikationen/aufsaetze.php (accessed 11-10-2011).

200 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 9 Inspired by Origami, Koryo Miura and Masamori Sakamaki from, created the Muira-Ori folding technique to allow people to unfold a map in one action and refold it with minimal hassle. Available at http://www.designsojourn.com/the-miura-ori-map (accessed 11-10-2011). 10 Pellegrino, S, and Vincent, J. 2001. How to fold a membrane. In Pelligrino, S. 2001. ed. Deploy- able Structures. Wien –NewYork: Springer, pp: 59-75. 11 Buri, H, and Weinand, Y. 2008. Origami – Folded Plate Structures, Architecture. In 10th World Con- ference on Timber Engineering, 2-5 June 2008, Japan: Miyazaki. Available at http://infoscience. ep.ch/record/118687 (accessed 11-10-2011). 12 Ibid, Pellegrino and Vincent, 2001, p: 60. 13 Tachi, T, 2009.Rigid Origami Simulator Software. Available at http://www.tsg.ne.jp/TT/cg/ (accessed 1-8-2011). 14 Schumacher, P, 2007. Engineering Elegance. In Kara, H. ed, 2008. Design Engineering, London: AKT. Available at http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/Engineering%20Elegance.html (accessed 28-1-2011). 15 Supersurfaces Design Elective. 2007-2009. Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly Greece. Available at www.supersurfaces-supersurfaces.blogspot.com 16 Aristotle in Metaphysics argues that mathematical objects have matter, noetic or intelligible. Therefore geometric patterns can be matter without being physical. 17 Ibid, Vyzoviti, 2011, pp: 57-87. 18 Supersurfaces Workshop, 2007. In European Architecture Students Assembly EASA007_Final Report: City Index: Greece: Elefsina. 2010. Greece: School of Architecture National Technical. 19 Ibid, Tachi, 2009. 20 DeLanda, M. 2011. Emergence, Causality and Realism. In Bryant, L, Srnicek N and Harman, G. eds. The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism . Melbourne:re-press, pp: 381-392. 21 Davis, W, 2006. How to Make Analogies in a Digital Age. In October 117, October Magazine, Ltd. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, pp: 71–98.

Sophia Vyzoviti Greece 201

Contributions

(Re)searching a Critically Responsive Architecture

Herniette Bier

Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft The Netherlands Reconfigurable Architecture Technological and conceptual advances in elds such as arti cial intelligence, robotics, and material science have enabled responsive architectural environments to be implemented and tested in the last decade by means of virtual and physical prototypes; these are incorporating digital control, namely, sensing - actuating mechanisms enabling them to interact with their users and surroundings in real-time through physical or sensory change and variation1.

In this context, Hyperbody at TU Delft has been pushing forward interactive architecture by developing prototypes at building component scale. While these prototypes2 obviously point towards a paradigm shift from static towards dynamic, recon gurable architecture (Fig. 1 & 2) they do not operate at building but at building component scale (façade, wall, etc.) and do not address socio-economical or environmental aspects that aect the society at large.

Fig. 1 TUD students working on the development of the MuscleTower II’s recon gurable system.

The aim is, therefore, to develop recon gurable architecture at building scale that addresses with consideration to environmental impact issues such as inecient use of built space and overpopulation. In this context, application of robotics to architecture advances research in distributed autonomous mechatronic systems becoming test bed for development of new robotic building systems that aim to be energy eciently resizable and spatially expandable or contractible as well as kinetically moveable or moving3. They, furthermore, aim to generate and use energy gained from solar and wind power4, which implies that their ecological footprint is minimized and their economical eciency increases signi cantly due to the maximized 24/7 multiple use of built space as well as sustainable operability.

208 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 InteractiveWall developed by Hyperbody in collaboration with Festo employs sensor-actuator technologies.

In conclusion, societal problems such as overpopulation5 and current limited use (25%) of built space that can be successfully addressed by means of recon gurable architecture, whereas robotics applied to architecture not only enables advancement of distributed autonomous mechatronic systems but also becomes test bed for development of new building operation technologies. The aim is, therefore, to develop and test new approaches for the control and regulation of autonomous systems and apply them to architecture in order to oer solutions for ecient use of built space.

Recon gurable, robotic architecture is, as discussed in this paper, technology bearer as well as test bed for distributed, autonomous systems that are developed in disciplines such as automation and robotics, implying not only transfer of intelligent mechatronic strategies to architecture but also development of new concepts and ideas for architecture, where recon guration is accomplished collectively by smaller subsystems such as building components that are operating in cooperation.

Notes & References

1 H. Bier and T. Knight, ‘Digitally-driven Architecture’ in 6th Footprint issue edited by H. Bier and T. Knight (Delft: Stichting Footprint, 2010), pp. 1-4. 2 Relevant examples of prototypes for recon gurable architecture built at TUD are: - http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=PVz2LIxrdKc&feature=fvw - InteractiveWall TUD in collaboration with Festo, - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVz2LIxrdKc - and MuscleTower - TUD [accessed 3 January 2011]. 3 Archibots workshop at UBICOMP 2009, group #4 with inter al. H. Bier, J. Walker and J. Lipton - http://www.archibots.org/ - [accessed 3 January 2011].

Herniette Bier The Netherlands 209 4 H. Bier and R. Schmehl, ‘Archi- and Kite-bots’ paper on integrated sustainable energy generation for recon gurable architecture to be published in IA #5 on ‘Robotics in Architecture’ edited by H. Bier and K. Oosterhuis (Heijningen: Jap Sam Books, 2011). 5 The UN forecasts that today’s urban population of 3.2 billion will rise to nearly 5 billion by 2030 - http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpm/wpm2001.pdf - when 3 out of 5 people will live in cities [accessed 12 May 2011].

Acknoledgements

Projects presented in this paper have bene ted, inter alia, from the contribution of Protospace- and Hyperbody-team including on projects participating students. Detailed credits for individual projects can be found on the Hyperbody website (http://www.hyperbody.nl - accessed 25 March 2011).

210 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Ermis Chalvatzis Natassa Lianou

Zaha Hadid Architects UK Krama Proto-Tower Systemic Interactions Design Research KRAMA is the exploration of a Proto-Tower which, as its name implies (from the greek ΚΡΑΜΑ//krama = alloy), is a synthesis, a mixture which develops relationships between multi systems and sub systems1, to ultimately produce one interconnected soma, one organism able to perform as one unit with its inherent intelligence and rules, serving and adapting to the human needs. Similar to a living organism, our research proposes a total parametric creature which establishes feedback loops between human needs and spatial expression, producing various phenotypes. Thus, through probing relationships between each system and subsystem of the Proto-Tow- er we produce multiple variations, oering selection’ s plateaux. Our essay follows the meticulous juxtaposition of structural, aesthetical, environmental, spatial, and phycological systems, exploring each one the relationship with its neighboring subsystem.

Site Speci c Krama Proto-Tower is performs in extreme weather conditions and more speci cally at Tromso, in North Norway. Tromso, is located at the north Fjords of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle. It is the largest urban area in Northern Norway and it experiences a sub- arctic climate. The mean temperature is 3oC throughout the year. Due to its location, Tromso experiences the Midnight Sun for 6 months and the Polar night for the rest 6 months of the year. Thus during June and July, there is no darkness at all, while during December and January it is all the time dark. Focusing on the social data of our site, Tromso has a population of 67.000 people. Recent climate research clearly show that climate change is altering the fabric of the entire polar region. As the ice melts, the ecosystem of the Arctic is being transformed. At the same time, opportunities are expanding for economic activities and development of the Arctic region’s plentiful natural resources. In sum, the Arctic is in great transformation and therefore our tower can be part of this transformation.2 Simultaneously, according to the UNDP’s most recent Human Development Report, Norway has the highest standard of living in the world.3 Despite the high quality of life, Norway has also high suicide rate . The lack of daylight correlates with depression and suicide. Moreover Norway’s climate with long, dark winters is the main cause for this high suicide rates. People of Scandinavia in general suer from Seasonal Aective Disorders (SAD) and they experience depression in the absence of sunlight, which may lead to suicidal tendencies.4 The low urban densities of the cities and the isolated inhabitation, is also a parameter which aect the suicidal tendencies in addition with the high consumption of antidepressants and the alcoholism. Thus, although Norway scores very high on standards of leaving, Norwegians are more pessimistic than other poorer societies.Moreover, during winter people go to hospitals and get light treatment, in order to absorb some light, retain energy and avoid depression. Simultaneously due to the harsh climate people stay in their houses for days, thus they become isolated from their neighbors and from the hole society. The lack of sunlight and the harsh climate aect the phycological state and the relationships between people and that is why Norway has high suicide and depression rates.

212 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Local Phenomenon_ Aurora Borealis Tromso is the best place for someone to experience the great local phenomenon, the aurora borealis phenomenon also known as northern lights. These dancing lights are luminous glows of the upper atmosphere which are caused by energetic particles that enter the atmosphere from the Sun and hit molecules and atoms of the atmosphere. Tromso moves into the aurora zone around 5pm and moves out again around midnight while these luminous glows are obvious during winter where there is total dankness.5

Proto -Tower scenario Thus, based on the site, social and climate data of Tromso, KRAMA deals with the creation of Towers, which are proposing a new type of habitation in this area, a kind of social network which will be able to accommodate at least the half population of the city, and “protect” them from the harsh climate during winter. Through our research we aim to produce a satellite city into the city, based on social interaction and light. Our proto tower is a Krama which is also its name, which means that it is a synthesis, a mixture which develops relationships between multi systems producing one interconnected soma, able to perform as one unit with its inherent intelligence and rules. Krama is consisted from various systems and subsystems, with their inherent autonomous logic, that are coming together, adapt their bodies in relationship with their neighbors and create one articulated and interconnected global system able to perform as one living organism.6 Moreover the ground is a fundamental parameter which inuence and is inuenced from the tower topology, since it is performing as the topological surface which is giving birth to its own body. Thus, while spreading our seeds into the ground, the ground networks generate populations of bres with micro intelligence which recognize each other and with their inherent intelligence, they will perform as structural elements, as feet of the proto-tower and by communicating and exchanging data or matter, they dierentiate according to tness criteria of shape variations and based on the proto parameters, while nally the skeletal patterns and the whole eld of towers with the slabs, the navigation system and the skin is performing as one interconnected system made of luminous veins throughout their body, which according to their local behaviors they produce stronger and weaker areas and thus closed and open spaces. All the systems should develop relationships with the rest systems or subsystems, in order to be able to communication and adapt to every situation. Everything is a matter of relationships, from the social character of the building to the structural scenarios of the systems and the subsystems. Thus as Karl Chu argues that “ “information is the currency of life”7 we should implant the communication data inside the seeds, in ordrer to let our creature evolve and mutate, based on their inherent intelligence. Focusing on the function of our proto Tower, it is a mixed uses tower, where residential apartments, hotel rooms, retail outlets and oces are distributed into the skeleton, while at the ground level there are extra public facilities. Simultaneously, we are proposing a seasonal occupation of the residential zone, where during winter people can live together inside the tower while during summer they could spread out back to the city and make it again vivid. At the same time, the

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 213 Fig. 1-2 Proto -Tower scenario.

214 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture rest of the functions will continue their use while, they will adapt and transform their program according to the seasonal needs. On the other hand, our design goals, deal with an ecological perspective of this building in relationship with its environment, adapting to the extreme weather conditions of the area. We aim to achieve a structural performance which from an engineering point of view, it will engage in this extreme weather conditions environment, introducing relationships between our main parameters ( bers pro le, foot condition, bers distribution etc.) and the environmental constrains (wind, rain, local phenomenon etc.).

Proto Relationships Our journey, begins by observing a natural vertical growth of a plant and the process that it follows in order to create one strong body, able to hold and control itself during its vertical growth. Thus, starting with the skeleton which is triggered from the properties of the natural growing system, we continue with the rest subsystems, such as the connection systems, the slabs, the navigation and the skin of the proto tower. While all the systems and subsystems, follow their own inherent logic, when they meet each other, they communicate, they exchange data and eventually they adapt to the various situations globally as well as locally. Therefore, we de ne the proto relationships, after experimenting and exploring various paths into each system, that determine the local and global behavior of each organ when it meets another one, according to the situation, the location and the function. Finally, all the autonomous organs eventually become one interconnected organism, referring to the initial natural process of the vine growth, as a controlled method of producing structural stability with extra living qualities. Thus, our creature, can exist as an autonomous structure but also as a member of a cluster, able to adapt to the external stimuli as a whole not only globally, but locally too. Our journey to the proto tower is triggered at its initial state from the growth of the vine. The vine has the characteristic to develop into vertical axis when it meets a stable vertical element, until it creates a stable and strong body and start growing on itself. It has the ability to create structural cores and evolve on them through time. Moreover the ground and its roots are fundamental for its vertical anaptyxis. Therefore we conceived as fundamental parameters the helical geometry while we focus on the concentration of the bers in parts where the plant needs more support and that gives us the bundling technique as our main structural system. Our goal is to create a new “topos”, where the ground condition will trigger the vertical anaptyxis and vice versa. This new topos is like a gradient vector eld, were the esoteric forces cultivate the growth of the seed, which will produce the new emerging cores. At the next stage, the vine will expand and evolve at the new terrain, while it should grow at the vertical axis, where the cores-skeletons dictate it.

The new Topos Based on the above parameters we produce a new topos, where the ground networks are producing populations of bres, which can perform as structural elements, as feet

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 215 of the prototower and by communicating and exchanging data or matter, they can dierentiate according to the tness criteria of shape variations.We aim to introduce building structures which will work as one unit, based on the growth of bres which according to their bundle degree they will produce stronger and weaker areas and thus closed and open spaces. So, we aim to produce internal networks which will be adaptive to their neighbors and that means that they would be able to connect and communicate into a population, whereas the ow and the networks of the city, will live around or even inside the proposed towers. Since the spiral growth of the vine could not be a static structural system our task is to change or enrich its geometry in order to work. Thus, the concentration of bres into places where the plant needs more support is the fundamental parameter for our vertical anaptyxis. The bundles of our bres occur, in order to support the structure while they produce transparent and opaque areas throughout the skeleton. Moreover, their thickness is playing a major role, since when we will apply the double or triple layer technique, the bres of each layer adapt, according to their structural role. So we produce hierarchies not only between the - bres but also between the layers.

Fitness criteria We are developing a skeletal system which is able to adapt to volume shape transformations, while the whole system could readjust in input scenarios. Thus, here we are projecting potential shape deformations where they start breaking the symmetry while they respond to given tness criteria.

Code based bres Our main system is the skeleton. Since our main idea deals with the ber growth, the helix and the bundles we focus on the study of bundle degrees meaning the frequency of touching, and thus we produce catalogues of skeletal phenotypes. Our goal is to develop one structural language between the main skeleton and its structural connections and densities. Thus, we re-explore possible con gurations and dynamic hierarchies between the bers that emerge. We produce codes which based on our rules trigger the concentration of bers. The curves are generated together at the same time, and as they grow based on helical geometries, they are always checking their distances. Finally, we produce curves based on scripted helical geometries which are connected through bundling and based on the exchange of material between the internal-external layers. Simultaneously, we introduce slabs which emerge accroding to the distances of the bres. Therefore, the skeletal systems begin to be controllable and emerge based on the given rules, while they start to communicate the whole skeleton with its internal layer as two initial agents of the creature. Thus, by de ning the proto skeletal set up, we determine the initial rules, the code of the seed. We implant it the ‘information of life”,8 in order to evolve and mutate based on it.

216 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Our code has the intelligence to adapt into dierentiation of shapes by checking distances and adding more bers while it bundles and connects them with the existing ones. So we have produced the minimum proto system which according to the structural needs it adds more bers and thus more support. Next we introduce a population of connection systems, which will grow in between the layers and will convert the skeletal system into one interconnected structural building able to accommodate, the rest sub-systems of slabs, navigation and skin. Thus, we explore various types of connections, which could consist dierent versions of our connection systems. While exploring the connection systems, we produced various methods and geometries which could consist this “communication layer” in between the two main layers, where nally we combine two distinct systems which could coexist into the structure according to the local and global situation, the function and the quality of the space. Therefore, the connections, are the rst subsystem which is working based on its inherent logic,while it is able to adapt and follow the various situations of the skeleton.

Fig. 3-5 Code based bres.

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 217 Fig. 6 Code based bres.

218 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 7 Code based bres.

Secondary Connections System Simultaneously, we need one more sub system which will accommodate the slabs distribution and which will develop where the programatic functions dictate. So our secondary subsystem is a simple pin connection system which increases the entasis of its

Fig. 8 Secondary Connections System.

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 219 depth at the middle area, while as it moves towards the edges, it tapers out, in section as well as in plan.Simultaneously, through the various designs of this rib connection, we explore also neo design techniques and details which will convert this structural element into a light beam into the space, able to produce atmospheric qualities and senses, not only to the visitors but also to the residents as well.

Fig. 9-10 Secondary Connections System.

220 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Internal geography Focusing on the slabs, we produce a geometry which touches the skeleton but also allows to our skin to exist not only as a surface but also a facade in depth. Thus, the slabs are also one sub-system able to adapt according to the bers of the skeleton, consisting the imprinted micro geography of the brous skeleton, the spatial trace of the choreography of the performative skeletal veins, which through their valleys they produce atriums, while they allow the sun to insert and illume the interior of our creature. Finally, when we combine the two subsystems of slabs and ribs, we decide that the slabs should produce a visible reactive spatial behavior.Thus, this wrinkle quality effect, highlights the enosis the connection of these two systems.

Fig. 11-12 Internal geography.

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 221 Performative Veins The local unique eect of Aurora Borealis, inuenced us to conceive the skin as an atmosphere of the tower similar to the earth’ s atmosphere.So our proposal for the skin, is to enclose this atmosphere into cases, so having pneumatic membranes, ETFE cushions which evolve in between the existing bers of the skeleton and thus this living organism is able to insulate, protect, breath, and harvest energy. Indeed this inated layer can produce energy through piezoelectric technology, which means that in places were the wind hits the skin, it can convert this energy into electricity through its oscillation, while in the same logic applies during rainfall. Moreover, in areas where we need closed spaces, the pro le based on its micro intelligence aggregates its elements and produces opaque qualities, while in areas where two bres detach, the ETFE cushion pops out in between them.

Fig. 13 Performative Veins.

Navigation The skeletal bers and thus their pro les, perform as the main navigation system, where a cluster of bers accommodates the elevators. Since our bers taper out as they grow upwards while they change angle, we develop a proto set-up of how the bers will adapt to the elevator ‘s plug in. We produce a population of bres which cluster and produce the elevator’s shaft, while they decrease their size only at the external area of the shaft, keeping in that way the space steady and able to accom-

222 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture modate one or more capsules. This proto navigations system, provides a panoramic journey to the residents and the visitors, since it moves onto magnetic belts and thus there is no need for extra mechanical closed volumes. Moreover, the bers, can perform as environmental elements. Firstly, by deforming the pro le at the internal area, the skeleton could perform as passive heating system in south, where during the day they can collect the heat from sun, while during night they can give it back to the apartment. By deforming their faces externally, in areas where the wind speeds up, we can produce buering zones which protect the building’s surface, while in areas where there is sun and wind at the same time, we deform the pro le in both sides and produce coinstantaneously this double eect. Moreover, some of the bers can perform as water collectors and thus produce drainage networks, water collection networks and water ow network, which transfers the water to the apartments and the other functions.

Light Operator Finally, we produce a network of luminous veins which transfer the light from outside to inside and from the top to the bottom of the tower. Simultaneously, while the ETFE cushions harvest energy, the skeleton converts this energy into electricity and triggers the luminous network, while the light is reacting with the insulation material of aerogel and produce emergent light and color eects at the facade.

Fig. 14 Light Operator.

KRAMA vers. 1.0 Finally, based on these proto relationships that we have developed, we combine all the systems and subsystems of the tower in order to produce our mixture, our synthesis, our rst version of the Krama Proto-Tower. Thus, in this proto apparatus of a cluster of oors we combine all the above relationships into one interconnected system, where all the systems and subsystems of skeleton, connections, ribs, slabs, navigation, skin qualities and luminous materialities are articulated and interconnected under their proto set up relationships and produce tectonic spaces able to trigger social interactions and personal interconnections. Entering into the occupiable spaces, we enter into the body of our creature where, all

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 223 Fig. 15 KRAMA vers. 1.0. of its organs are visible and where the systems project their transformations in relationship with their neighbors, through their global or local mutated topologies.

Fibrous Organism The tower is depended on its ground, since together they produce the neo-Topos where the ground’s fabric generates our creature. Finally, these two levels, the horizontal and the vertical, are performing as one interconnected organism, which is generated, evolves, mutates and adapts, as a whole and based on its inherent systems of growth and communication.

Krama Variations Finally, through the proto relationships that we have developed we produce variations of the proto tower. While dierent outcome editions of this organism are being produced, there is a critical parameter that dierentiates one from the other. This deals with the parameter of mutation. Mutation is triggered by adaptational behaviors, while all together trigger the evolutionary process. Architecture bene ts from the dierentiation of the phenotypes, simply because there is a population of versions of solutions for a single problem. The process of evaluation and selection is based on the tness criteria that the we set into our generative code. Finally, it is a game of analogous models between actual, digital and physical.9

224 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 16-17 Fibrous Organism.

Though, what is the role of the aesthetics in the evolutionary process? Could it be an additional rule into our code? Maybe. But as Karl Chu states: “...the beauty is in the code...”10. Similarly, the aesthetics of the vine, is not dealing with its beauty, merely as a form, but in the degree that it responds to the reasons that it is created for. Thus, we argue that the beauty of the encapsulated data of our seed, could be the key to the t- test and most adaptable architectural outcomes.

Notes

1 Schumacher Patrik, The Autopoiesis of Architecture, John Wiley & Sons Ltd., London 2010. 2 Huebert Rob. “A new sea”, The need for a regional agreement on management and conservation of the arctic marine environment, WWF, January 2008. October 2010 < http://assets.panda.org/downloads/a_new_sea_jan08_%nal_11jan08.pdf>. 3 “Top quality of life in Norway”, News of Norway, issue 3, 2001. November 2010. . 4 Sore Stephen. “Suicide”, emedicine, November 2010. 5 Pettit Don. “Auroras, Dancing in the night”, Earth Observatory, Nasa, 2 January 2004. . 6 Krama Proto-tower scenario is based on Patrik Schumacher’s Parametricism agenda. 7 Chu Karl, “The Unconscious Density of Capital” (Architecture in Vitro/ Machinic in Vivo), in Neil Leach(ed), Designing for a Digital World (Chichester, 2002), pp. 127-133.

Ermis Chalvatzis, Natassa Lianou UK 225 8 Frazer John, “A natural model for architecture”, An Evolutionary Architecture, (Architectural Association, London, 1995). 9 Frazer John, “A natural model for architecture”, An Evolutionary Architecture, (Architectural Association, London, 1995). 10 Chu Karl, “The Unconscious Density of Capital” (Architecture in Vitro/ Machinic in Vivo), in Neil Leach (ed), Designing for a Digital World (Chichester, 2002), pp. 127-133.

226 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Rita Pinto de Freitas

School of Architecture of Barcelona Polytechnic University of Catalonia Spain Hybrid Architecture Hybrid Tools The analysis of hybrid architecture and its commitment with the built world puts in value hybrid design tools that include among others the digital design tools. Hybrid tools widen the range of possibilities in anticipating the qualities of the physical space, without subordinating the de nition of the qualities of space to the tools.

On the Concept of Hybrid The biological and mathematical foundations of the hybridisation process were laid down in the 18th and 19th centuries by Kölreuter and Mendel, in parallel to the observation and description of hybrid vigour, or heterosis, which is the ”phenomenon by which hybrids dispose of more vigour, fertility etc. than their progenitors.”1 It is this phenomenon -heterosis- which gives meaning to the act of hybridising. The goal of the process of hybridisation is to attain new qualities -or new levels of intensity- by means of the crossbreeding of diverse elements.

In hybridisation, unlike what happens in the ‘collage,’ the original parts are no longer recognisable in the new being. The original components disappear as autonomous elements in the formation of a new entity. Unlike addition, hybridisation generates a new totality2 with its own identity and characteristics. The hybrid object “ascends to a richer and more elemental totality, invigorated by a poetic union of its minor parts.” 3

Fig. 1 Bull Head. Pablo Picasso, 1942.

On Hybrid Architecture

De nition The use of the term ‘hybrid’ in architecture has continuously expanded and multiplied, and this overuse has given it multiple meanings based on more or less rigorous interpretations. Few bibliographical references to hybrid architecture exist, but the most widely documented meaning understands hybrid as “inherently multifunctional buildings”4, where most cases are examples of addition rather than hybridisation.

Transferring the original concept of hybridisation to the eld of architecture de nes architectural hybridisation as a process that, through the act of crossbreeding (or unifying) diverse architectural natures or elements, makes the attainment of a new reality

228 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Hybridisation vs. Addition. possible – a reality with its own identity and new architectural qualities that do not exist if the hybridised elements are considered individually and separately.

The hybrid architecture is then the result of the hybridisation of three diverse natures in one intervention: object-related nature, landscape-related nature and infrastructure-related nature. Consequently, all architectural intervention is de ned as hybrid that is at once object, landscape and infrastructure, an architectural intervention that simultaneously meets three conditions: • It is a physical intervention that, as a result of a project, proposes an architectural space generated on the basis of human intervention. • It is an architectural intervention, which is at the same time a landscape, beyond simply being an object placed within the landscape: using a variety of possible mechanisms (fusion, transformation, recon guration...), the architectural intervention integrates inseparably into the landscape. • It is at once an architectural intervention and an infrastructure, beyond its connection to infrastructure: in transforming into a section of infrastructure itself, the architectural object becomes a part of the infrastructure and incorporates its laws and mechanisms of functioning.

In the process of architectural hybridisation, the borders between architecture, landscape and infrastructure disappear in order to achieve a common architectural reality that simultaneously possesses this triple nature.

In their diagram, “Habitat in Landscape / Habitat is Landscape”, Alison and Pe- ter Smithson depict a rst step towards diluting the borders between object and landscape.5

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 229 Fig. 3 Ideograms a. Alison and Peter Diagram: “Habitat in Landscape, Habitat is Landscape” b. Rosalind Kraus Diagram: Hybrid Morphologies c. Rita Pinto de Freitas Diagram: Hybrid Architecture

In the late 90s, taking it one step further, Marc Angèlil and Anna Klingmann describe ‘hybrid morphology’ as a reality in which “the borders between architecture, infrastructure and landscape dissolve, while the notion of the architectural object as a closed entity”6 spreads, and they illustrate this with a diagram by Rosalind Krauss. They add the infrastructural dimension and assert the dissolution of the three dimensions -architecture, landscape and infrastructure- whereby each of the realities takes on qualities of the others in order to de ne itself. In this description, architecture is associated with the architectural object, and its three dimensions interact, without losing either their autonomy or their speci city. The concept of hybrid architecture takes a third step by which the direct association of architecture with the architectural object disappears, and in which the elements that make up the triple reality of object, landscape and infrastructure lose their autonomy when they are hybridised in architecture. Elements of landscape, sections of infrastructures and the architectural object together make up the architecture, i.e. hybrid architecture.

230 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Hybrid architecture, pushed by the fact that it concentrates in a single architectural intervention a triple object-, landscape- and infrastructure-related nature, generates architectural answers with very speci c features. Its analysis outlines architectural hybridisation’s ability to widen the conceptual frame of architectonic concepts, consubstantial to all the times, while at the same time transforming the qualities of hybrid architecture into project tools serving architecture in general, concerning the de nition of the qualities of space, concerning the genesis of the architectonic project.

Regarding the dierent concepts that the conception of hybrid has got an impact upon this presentation will focus on the concept of context and on the concept of space. Both will be exempli ed in the same example two examples of hybrid architecture: the port in Sta. Cruz de Tenerife from FOA and the Museum of Anthropology and Hu- man Evolution in Murcia from Federico Soriano.

Hybrid architecture and CONTEXT

Fig. 4 Hybrid architecture and CONTEXT.

Considering that landscape and infrastructure are elements that belong simultaneously to both architecture and context, the inseparable relationship between architectural intervention and context emerges as a core issue with respect to the hybrid’s identity, and the description of that relationship becomes indispensable for its outline. In hybrid architecture, the context-intervention relationship works in two ways: the hybrid incorporates the environment by abstracting and extracting certain of its qualities into the genesis of the project; while at the same time it exerts a -transforma-

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 231 tive- impact on the same environment by means of its subsequent incorporation into its physical reality. “In this impossible duality of integrating and highlighting, of reecting what exists and of denoting something new, lies its complex birth.”7 The double and simultaneous relationship of incorporation and transformation converts the hybrid into a ‘revealing’ element of selected qualities of the context. These three issues -the replication, transformation and revelation of the context- structure this subchapter on the relationship of interdependence existing between hybrid and context.

Fig. 5 Port, Sta. Cruz de Tenerife_ Foreign Oce for Architec- ture, 2000.

The intervention takes on the structure and the width of the streets that descend from the mountain towards the sea -parallel to one other and perpendicular to the coast- line- and generates a system of land strips that make up the structure of the proposed space. While ‘replicating’ the structure of the streets, this spatial structure generates new spatial solutions and joins the proposed space with the existing streets and becomes its extension. The new ensemble of space -with renewed unity and identity- incorporates, moreover, two other qualities extracted from the environment: ‘Plaza de España’ as a site of conuence of the transversal streets, and the continuation of a marginal street course -Av. Marítima i Cinturón perimetral- which runs parallel for almost the entire perimeter of the island of Tenerife.

232 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 6 Museum of Antropolgy and Human Evolution,Torre Pacheco, Murcia_Federico Soriano, 2006.

“The colour (of Mount Cabezo Gordo) is special, those who might call it reddish, upon a second look at photographs, see that it has changed to a golden colour. Against its volume, the empty voids of the abandoned mines emerge like black shadows. [...] The project means to refer to these reections. It does not want to lean on the mountain, pierce or violate it. It has looked for an intermediate position, neither far away from the access road and thus separated, meaning that there would be no intimacy between the two, nor on top the Cabezo, endangering its history and what is still hidden in its interior. [...] But the project also wants to gain some attention. It has to be a singular piece on a singular mountain. [...] Cabezo Gordo itself wants to be seen from far away.” 8 The facade is conceived as a new surface of Mount Cabezo Gordo. The de nition of its surface takes on the colour, the folds, the density, the irregularity of the black openings in reference to holes of the mines... Seen from the road, the two surfaces are superimposed, recreating a visual reference to Mount Cabezo Gordo in the landscape. The borders of Mount Cabezo Gordo shift and are situated along the new borders of the proposed construction; while at the same time, the borders of the proposed construcion are situated along the borders of the mountain.

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 233 Hybrid architecture and SPACE

Fig. 7 Hybrid architecture and SPACE.

Mobility and the demand for physical continuity as decisive elements in the spatial con guration of a hybrid require an investigation of spatial solutions capable of resolving changes in level without abandoning continuity and favouring the implementation of spatial order as suggested by Paul Virilio in the 60s: oblique order.9 The oblique order and the topological dimension are the main topics of this quality: the conception of space as an intrinsically three-dimensional reality and the abandonment of the superiority of some spatial ‘directions’ over others.

In 1965, Paul Virilio introduces a third spatialorder, the oblique order. “After the horizontal order of the rural habitat, of the agricultural era and the vertical order of the urban habitat of the industrial era, consequentially and logically -‘topologically’ one could say- the third, oblique order of the post-industrial meta-city ar- rived.” 10

Oblique order is not the sum of the other orders, but the creation of a third order, of a new order. An order that goes beyond the articulation of horizontal surfaces with vertical surfaces by ”the introduction of the inclined surface as a space that simultaneously accommodates space for circulation and space for habitation.” 11

With the introduction of the oblique order -associated with the introduction of the inclined surface as fundamental element of the project- it is possible to overcome the polarisation and the confrontation of vertical order and horizontal order, while at the same time oering new spatial possibilities.

234 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Habitable circulation, Paul Virilio.

Oblique order allows the linking of spaces to a more static use and the integration of spaces of circulation in a hierarchical equality, without some of them prevailing over others. As to the use of space, oblique order multiplies the surface available for incorporating diverse uses and allows the interchangeable inclusion of programmes of a predominantly dynamic or predominantly static character.

Contemporary architectural discourse witnesses a progressive increase in the use of the term typology to describe certain arti cial landscapes; at the same time, this term is gradually displacing the -until recently more often used - term topography. Taking the simpli cation of comparing these two terms to an extreme, in the eld of architecture one could associate topography to the qualities that describe the deformation of a surface, and topology to the qualities that describe the deformation of a space.

Physical continuity as the decisive quality of the space required by the hybrid introduces -as has been described previously- the search for spatial solutions capable of resolving the change in conditions of the space in general and the change in level in particular. The three-dimensional deformation of surface (and of mass) -topological deformation- is one of the mechanisms that allows the achievement of this continuity with the ability to confront any direction of the space whatsoever.” Topologically ‘deformed’ space stops being subjected to the dominance of vertical- ity and horizontality, so as to take on diagonalisation, “presenting a diagonal structure instead of a structure determined by gravity.” 12

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 235 In deforming a spatial system made up of two-dimensional surfaces -with the objective of maximising the continuity of surfaces- ‘three-dimensional surfaces’ can be created. The three-dimensional surfaces are ‘topological surfaces’ with the ability to articulate diverse surfaces, levels and directionality in a single physical reality without its continuity being interrupted.

Fig. 9 Port, Sta. Cruz de Tenerife_FOA, 2000.

Fig. 10 Port, Sta. Cruz de Tenerife_FOA, 2000.

236 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture With the proposal for the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife as a ‘three-dimensional surface,’ the space does not allow its graphical representation in independent horizontal ‘oor plans.’ However, the two-dimensional representation of the entirety of the surfaces that compose the three-dimensional surface, has enabled the marking of the areas reserved for circulation and the detection of where they superimpose on one other (knowing that beyond their superposition they are also connected with each other). The two-dimensional representation transforms into a map of densities with regard to the ows of circulation

Fig. 11 Museum of Antropology and Human Evolution,Torre Pacheco, Murcia_Federico Soriano, 2006.

The primary programme, occupying almost the entire available surface of the ‘Museu de Antropología y de la Evolución Humana’ is a route: descending from the upper level, where visitors begin their visit, replicating the structure of access to the abandoned mines existing in Mount Cabezo Gordo. “Its interior spatial form brings to mind the perceptive conditions of ‘Sima de las Palomas’ and the descending array of the exhibition rooms represents a journey into the depths of the origins of mankind.” 13 The entire surface is simultaneously at once a space of circulation, a space of exhibition, a space of contemplation... The habitable space becomes at once static and mobile, contemplative and active.

Value achieved through hybridisation The main value achieved through hybridisation is its responsibility and ability of hybrid architecture to con gure the common space beyond the physical area of intervention: • Implicit in the value of the hybrid is the value of an architectural practice that assumes all its responsibility in the con guration of the qualities of the common space, as well as all its potential for urban transformation and recon guration of the landscape. • Implicit in the value of the hybrid as well is the value of an architectural practice that is conscious of its inevitable impact on physical reality -beyond the limit of its area of intervention- and that maximises its compromise with that reality. • Implicit in the value of the hybrid is the value of an architectural practice that wants to shorten the distance between the disciplines of the architectural project, urbanism and landscape design.

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 237 On Hybrid Tools

Conceptual tools Once formulated, the qualities of hybrids turn into main conceptual tools concerning architectural design in general and the genesis of the project in particular. Independent from the graphic tools these conceptual tools are responsible for signi cant initial project decisions: attitudes towards ineludibly questions of architecture like relation with the context, limits, relation with the ground, scale, mobility...; decisions on the spatial structures adopted, on the strategies of order followed,... These decisions linked to the genesis of the project should be materialised in a coherent way through the formal de nition of space.

Graphic tools – Digital tools The graphic tools in general -that include digital and non digital tools- serve this formal de nition, the formal control of the space of hybrid architecture, of architecture in general. Subordinated to the conceptual tools that have a particularly strong presence in the genesis of the project, the graphic tools allow the proposal to “receive” a form. In this process, the use of digital tools allows an anticipation, control and visualisation of spaces that wouldn’t be possible with the single use of traditional graphic tools. They widen the spatial possibilities to be proposed by architects, what means that they widen spatial possibilities to be conceived by architects. It’s important, however, to give these tools the role that belongs to them in the design process: The role of a tool. A tool is an instrument, that serves a goal, but should never be confused with the goal itself.

Hybrid tools Talking about design tools, about graphic tools, a confrontation of digital vs. non-digital could emerge. But this is would be a false polarity: Digital tools are just “new” tools that have been added to the set tools that already existed in architectural design, and should not placed in opposition to it. But, with the level of automatism that the digital tools can have, and in front of tools with a very high potential that goes further beyond what we know or are able to use, a real and important polarity emerges: Conceptualization of the design process vs. digitalization of the design process.

And it is in the dissolution of this polarity that hybrid tools emerge: The design tool that uses all the potential of the digital tools -and of all other graphic or material tools- without getting detached from the conceptual tools, is the one that can assure criteria, coherence, intention…during all the process to the space being generated. The formal de nition of space reformulates the conceptual tools, the conceptual tools ‘guide’ the digital tools, in a continuous and interdependent process.

238 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The conceptual and the complete set of graphic tools and material tools form the hybrid tools and as was said at the beginning about the hybrid architecture, we can now say that the hybrid tool “ascends to a richer and more elemental totality”14.

Notes

1 Diccionari de la Enciclopèdia catalana, 1997. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, S.A. [ from fr. hybride, and this, from the latin hýbrida, íd.]. 2 von Mende , J. and Ruby, A. , 2000. Hybrid Hybris. Daidalos, núm.74, p. 80-85. 3 Kenneth I. ,K., 1985. Heterotic Architecture. In: Hybrid Buildings. Pamphlet Architecture, LTD, núm.11. New York, San Francisco: William Stout. Architectural Books. 4 dos Passos, J. Hybrid Buildings, 1985. In: Hybrid Buildings. Pamphlet Architecture, LTD, núm.11. New York, San Francisco: William Stout. Architectural Books, 1985. 5 Smithson, A. 1968. Team 10 primer. Londres: Studio Vista. 6 Angélil, M. and Klingmann, A. 1999. Hybrid Morphologies - Infrastructure, Architecture, Land- scape. Daidalos, núm. 73, pp. 16-25. 7 Soriano, F. 2007. Museu de Antropología y de la Evolució Humana, Torrepacheco, Murcia. El Croqui, núm.137: pp. 252-359. 8 Soriano, F. 2007. Museu de Antropología y de la Evolució Humana, Torrepacheco, Murcia. El Croqui, núm.137: pp. 252-359. 9 Virilio, P. 1995. 1995. La Función Oblicua. BAU. n. 13 (2nd sem.). 10 Virilio, P. 1995. 1995. La Función Oblicua. BAU. n. 13 (2nd sem.). 11 Virilio, Paul & Parent, Claude. Architecture. Principe 1966 und 1996. Paris: Les Editions de l’Imprimier. 2000. 12 Zaera, A. and Moussavi, F. 1998. La reformulació del sol. Quaderns d’Arquitectura i Urbanisme, n. 220, pp. 36-41. 13 Soriano, Federico. 2007. Museu de Antropología y de la Evolució Humana, Torrepacheco, Mur- cia.El Croquis, n. 137: pp.252-260. 14 Kenneth I. ,K., 1985. Heterotic Architecture. In: Hybrid Buildings. Pamphlet Architecture, LTD, núm.11. New York, San Francisco: William Stout. Architectural Books.

Rita Pinto de Freitas Spain 239

Dimitris Psychogyios

Department of Architecture, NTUA Greece Collective Design for Hybrid Museum Environments Terminology (Hybrid) The study aims to examine at the same time the physical and the digital museum space within a common context. It is trying to map the intermediate space. (Museum) In particular this research focuses on designing environments with cultural content, such as museums, archaeological sites, exhibition areas etc. (Environments) The paper proposes the term “Environment” instead of the term “Space”, aiming to support that the deployment of information technology in the existing physical space shifts the concept of space and the way of design. For example, in the City Museum, the outdoor area (city) can be transformed into a Museum “space” and vice versa urban experience can be transferred to the Museum.

Description of the Research Problem (The museum in transition) In recent years, changes in the organization and direction of the Museum are swift and extreme. The identity of the museum is changing and is constantly exploring. If one refers to history, nds repeated changes in the role and the way they work. (The continuum, Design-Construction-Use) The penetra- tion of information technologies in museums, seem to have strong role both in its identity and in its design. Papalexopoulos1 (2006, pp.95-102) states there is a shift in manufacturing and construction of the “digital”, which has abandoned the search for virtual spaces and is now asking for the unbroken connection with the materiality of things. The “digital” does not make sections, but falls within the existing and gradually changes it. The new eld is formed by interfering with the materiality of the construction process on the one hand and the materiality of the construction on the other .These observations raise questions such as: How we design a museum which is in transition? How we deal with the continuum Design – Construction – Use in the case of museums? And nally how the museums are designed and function in the new living conditions?

Explanation of the importance and relevance of the problem The changes brought about by information technologies in the museum are located in two combined areas. The rst relates to the very purpose of the museum. The second refers to “digital” design tools of the museum. (The potentiality of Museum) The introduction of digital technology has brought the architects confronted with two new data. The operation that museum is called to “accommodate”, is almost always hub networks, while its main characteristic is the change in time (The Potentiality of Museum Design) As far as multi - disciplinarity is concerned, it is gradually observed that design platforms which ensure common access of multiple disciplines for the production of the nal result, are developing, which does not lead to a static solution but to a parametric dynamic solution that is open to continuous change. Regarding the interaction, a continuous circular process of planning is apparent, which is the movement when we “cross” rstly from the design information, then the production information, the construction information and nally the use information and the process begins again from its start.

242 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture In his blog2 about the knowledge communities Linardos Rylmon states (translation by me): “...The post-Fordism period (methods of production of the Ford company named, especially from Marxists scholars, Fordism) is marked by the de- nitive doubt of this segregation between manual, fragmented and non- specialized work of the great majority of workers and by mental work in the eld of production management and organization, which was only fed by the educational system and the scienti c research system. Several parallel developments have contributed to this break. The continuing rise of the educational level of the working population, and therefore the ability to question the Taylors’ (Frederick Winslow Taylor, 1856-1915) organization and its pace, led to renewed forms of work organization with the workers involvement in management processes and organization (like the Japanese model) and then the wider involvement of production employees in innovation processes related to technology, organization, or quality of goods or services. The engagement with the administration, organization and innovation, overowed the entrenched organizational and social management space, to become the object of activity of extensive layers of employees, leading to the overthrow of the type of working relationship of Fordism period (methods of production of the Ford company named, especially from Marxists scholars, Fordism): new employees should, however, either acquire the appropriate incentives for stronger bonds with authorities, or be transferred to an area of uncertainty and insecurity, to be persuaded in this way that their cognitive abilities do not in any way imply that they have changed in their advantage the balance of power. The spread of education and in particular the higher education in large sections of young people, and the expansion of research activities within or outside the universities, fueled procedures of obtaining and producing knowledge, that no longer concern the social space of employers and management, neither they respond strictly to the reproductive needs of capitalist societies. In the large movements that marked the postwar pe-

Dimitris Psychogyios Greece 243 riod, such as the anti-colonial, the anti-imperialist, the movement for human rights and the movement for the environment, not only the student world participated, but also a calculable part of the scienti c potential of educational and research institutions, in conjunction with initiatives of educated citizens who could now massively exploit knowledge arising from the scienti c world. This period marked the strong tendency for liberation of the movements from the political parties’ hierarchy and their autono- misation with the use of cognitive capital coming from the institutions of knowledge production. It also marked the development of autonomous social initiatives, in the forms of social economy enterprises, NGOs, or independent “knowledge communities”. And [it marked] the extension of the importance of individual paths in acquiring knowledge and experience within education and production systems, a development that appears to be inherent to the functioning of the market mechanisms, but is actually a new possibility of individual contributions to social initiatives and innovations...”

The museums form ocial organizations of knowledge production and therefore could not be untouched by the developments, as described above. Museums are involved in initiatives of citizens who can now massively take advantage of knowledge. Also within the same organization of museums, sometimes less and sometimes more autonomous social initiatives grow, in the form of social economy enterprises, NGOs or even autonomous “knowledge communities”. As well through their own museums institution, individual paths to obtain knowledge and experience are being developed. The arising question from the above is which are the design tools used by the architect to respond to this uid situation.

Analysis of Existing Solutions or the Methods (Linear vs Non Linear Design Process) With the entry of information technology in architectural design there has been a shift in the design process. Since the linear process (design - construction – use) where the main feature was the distinction between activities in time and “mechanical” assembly, now we pass to non-linear, generally continuous processes, where several stages are being dicult distinguished. The information of design is now information of construction and use (Architectural creativity vs Participatory Design ) A second shift occurs in the design as a participatory process and not as a result of the “concept” of an architect or of an “architectural creativity”. The participatory design can be distinguished in two levels. The rst concerns the relationship of the architect with other disciplines of the project (employees / civil engineers / engineering consultants /etc). In this case, digital technologies are integrated into the design and provide a common eld of work. Also they are entering the building construction and allow constant communication between design and construction. The second level of the participatory design concerns the relationship between the architect and the user. Once more in this case the role of information technology is catalytic. The basic assumption is that the user, who does not have the mood in advance to determine his needs, nds him in the centre of the design problem.

244 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Presentation of some Signs of new Proposals and Methodologies Some signs of new methodologies that can used for the design of Hybrid Museum En- vironments are Collective Design as an education process of social learning arising from public’s participation in decision making. The participation, is not a goal in itself but is an ‘education process’ (social learning) arising from public participation in decision making, that is the progressive properties development of a complex system consisting of people belonging to dierent social groups – sometimes being in conict- to complete work on a common domain. Therefore the public education (social learning) is both a process and a result (Bouzit and Loubier, 2004). The nature of the participatory design process depends on what is designed and on the aim of the initiative. In some cases, the public needs only to be informed about speci c initiatives or some aspects of these initiatives, while in other (cases), public’s opinion is necessary in order to improve decisions and to ensure the sustainability of the initiative (Van Jaarsveld Romy, 2001).

Knowledge and Innovation communities, as an opportunity of individual contribution to social initiatives and innovations. A KIC as mentioned in the web site of European Institution of Innovation and Technology is a highly integrated, creative and excellence-driven partnership which brings together the elds of education, technology, research, business and entrepreneurship, in order to produce new innovations and new innovation models that inspire others to emulate it. They are to become key drivers of sustainable economic growth and competitiveness across Europe through world-leading innovation. The KICs will be driving eective “translation” between partners in ideas, technology, culture, and business models, and will create new business for existing industry and for new endeavours.

Living Labs4 as User centred research methods. A living lab is a research concept. A living lab is a user-centred, open-innovation ecosystem, often operating in a territorial context (e.g. city, agglomeration, region), integrating concurrent research and innovation processes within a public-private people partnership. The concept is based on a systematic user co-creation approach integrating research and innovation processes. These are integrated through the co-creation, exploration, experimentation and evaluation of innovative ideas, scenarios, concepts and related technological artefacts in real life use cases. Such use cases involve user communities, not only as observed subjects but also as a source of creation. This approach, allows, all involved stakeholders to concurrently consider both the global performance of a product or service and its potential adoption by users.

Signs of new proposals We will look at 4 digital platforms with cultural content, mainly on the possibility they oer of public participation in design, production and dissemination of digital cultural content.

Google Art Project as mentioned in the wikipedia5 Google Art Project is an online compilation of high-resolution images of artworks from galleries worldwide, as well as a virtual tour of the galleries in which they are housed. The project was launched on 1 February 2011 by Google, and includes works in the Tate Gallery, London; the Met-

Dimitris Psychogyios Greece 245 ropolitan Museum of Art, New York City and the Uzi, Florence. The “walk-through” feature of the project uses Google’s Street View technology. The project includes 16 images over one gigapixel in size (over 1 billion pixels); the largest, Ivanov’s The Ap- partition of Christ to the People, is over 12 gigapixels. By comparison, a typical digital camera takes pictures at 10 megapixels, or about 1000 times smaller in area. The platform is completely closed, both for the curators and the audience. The audience has the ability to navigate through prede ned options and study at a really great resolution only some of the museums’ artifacts. The audience is a spectator.

Empedia as mentioned in the ocial web site6 Empedia oers in cultural organizations an eective way to develop guides. Cuttle sh Multimedia are working with museums across the East Midlands to help create guides for Empedia. This activity is helping them to develop the necessary authoring tools and features for the public release

246 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture later this year. Ultimately, museums will be able to upload content and manage their own guides. Empedia can be used to deliver interactive content for venues, attractions and exhibitions. Empedia supports text, images, audio and video and provides simple mapping tools for creating location and trail content, what they term ‘locative content’. Empedia is suitable for cultural trails in towns, cities or remote rural locations and for exhibition guides indoors or out. Empedia really comes into its own when using the free Empedia iPhone App. The website and iPhone App are fully integrated so that Guides created on Empedia are automatically published to the iPhone App. Essentially this means that museums and organisations can publish to iPhones in just one click! Empedia works on PC, Mac and is optimised for iPad displays. Mobile content can be viewed on iPhone or iPod Touch and there are plans for Android support later this year. In this case the audience is a spectator. The platform is a tool for exhibition curators. The aim is to allow the curator to organize the content which will be accessible via the internet, on any personal mobile devices.

Museum of the city as mentioned in the ocial web site7 is a digital platform where everyone is a curator. Museum of the City It is a virtual museum about the world’s cities – past, present and future. It is about the design of cities and the people who live in them. It will be a forum for the exchange of knowledge, ideas, and informed opinion between specialists and civilians. It is a collaborative project of Portland State Univer- sity and the Museum of the City, Inc., an Oregon 501(c)(3) nonpro t corporation. As mentioned in the web site is: “A PLACE TO VISIT As” you learn new things, make notes about the type of exhibit you might wish to create and share with others, here in our virtual museum. “A PLACE TO SHARE your City with Others” Unlike most museums, the Museum of the City is a virtual space, a digital museum with electronic galleries in which citizens, students, scholars, curators, and professionals in the study, planning & design of cities are invited to submit their own exhibits. The Exhibit Information Page explains how to share your knowledge & discoveries with all of us. In this case the platform enable the co-curation. One can download an exhibit tutorial8 and create a personal narration for the city museum. Its important to report that the audience As Contributor to the Museum, agree to the following terms9:

Dimitris Psychogyios Greece 247 • You state you have the right and authority to share and contribute images and text that you are providing to the Museum of the City. You have obtained the necessary authorizations and copyright clearances if you did not create the image or text yourself. • You agree the Museum of the City may use, for as long or as briefly as it wants, the images and text in your exhibit. The Museum of the City may display the images and text on its website or use the images and text in any way it chooses. • You agree the Museum of the City may edit your text for length, syntax, spelling or English to make it understandable to global users. • You agree that the Museum of the City may use your name as the Exhibit Creator or as a Contributor. • You agree the Museum of the City has the right to remove any image or text it deems oensive or in violation of copyright law. • You agree the Museum of the City may accept contributions to the exhibit if the Museum of the City believes the contribution will make the exhibit more interesting or meaningful to its visitors.

A meipi as mentioned in the web site10 is a collaborative space where users can upload information and content around a map. Each meipi has a particular context, which can be local (when the entries are related to a speci c area), or thematic (when the content is associated with a particular idea). How can a meipi be useful? A meipi allows a group of users to share information around a place or a topic. It can be very useful for collaborative dynamics, workshops, associations, enterprises, groups of friends, artistic actions... In meipi.org they already have several meipis created by different users. They cover dierent areas and topics, showing what a meipi can oer. Registration is not necessary in order to navigate through the dierent public meipis and access the information contained in them. Registration is needed to upload entries, and to rank and comment on them, and also to create meipis. Registration process is very quick and easy, and it has to be done only once for all the meipis where you want to participate; it is not necessary to register each time. One can open a new meipi in Meipi.org or install a meipi on his own server. In this case the platform is free.

248 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture There is not dierentiation between the curator and the audience. One can upload content, nobody else can modify the content.

Conclusion We note, throw these four examples, that there is a wide range in the possibility of public participation in the design, production and dissemination of digital cultural content. Using the classi cation of the audience as stated in the Brown A. Novak-Le- onard J.11 study we observe that these digital platforms provide equivalent levels of freedom to the public. Thus we have the following categories of public involvement in the production of cultural content: spectating, enhanced engagement, crowdsourc- ing, co-curation, the audience as curator and of course a wide range of intermediate and combinatorial categories. • Spectating is fundamentally an act of receiving a finished cultural product. It is therefore outside the realm of participatory arts practice. • Enhanced engagement. Educational or “enrichment” programs may activate the creative mind, but for the most part do not involve creative expression on the part of the audience member. • Crowd sourcing. Audience becomes activated in choosing or contributing towards a cultural product. • Co-curation. Audience members contribute something to a curator experience curated by a professional curator • Audience as curator. Audience members substantially take control of the curator experience; focus shifts from the product to the process of creation.

Notes

1 Papalexopoulos, D., 2006. The representation of the continuum: Design-Construction-Use. In: V. Trova, K. Manolidis, G. Papakostantinou, ed. 2006. The representation as a vehicle to architectural thinking. Athens: Futura, pp. 95-102.

Dimitris Psychogyios Greece 249 2 Λινάρδος - Ρυλμόν Π., 2010. Γνώση, εργασία και συλλογική δράση. Μέσα από το πλήθος, [blog] 18 April 2011. Available at: < http://withinthemultitude.blogspot.com/p/blog-page_4815. html > [Accessed 21 November 2011]. (translation by me) 3 Knowledge and Innovation Communities: overview, 2011. NEuropean institute ofInnovation and Technology. [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 4 Wikipedia, 2011. Living Lab [online] Available at: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_lab> [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 5 Wikipedia, 2011. Google Art Project [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 6 Empedia, 2011. Empedia info [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 7 Museum of the city, 2011. About the museum [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 8 Museum of the City, 2011. Building an exhibit for the museum of the city. [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 9 Museum of the city, 2011. User account [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 10 Meipi. Collaborative spaces production over a map, 2011. What is mepi [online] Available at: [Accessed 21 November 2011]. 11 Brown A. Novak-Leonard J. in partnership with Gilbride S., 2011. C Getting In On the Act How arts groups are creating opportunities for active participation. [online] James Irvin foundation. Available at: < http://irvine.org/images/stories/pdf/grantmaking/Getting-in-on-the-act- 2011OCT19.pdf> [Accessed 21 November 2011].

250 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Georgia Voradaki Despoina Linaraki

Technical University of Crete School of Architecture Greece Responsive Architecture as a Tool to Suppress the Psychological Disorders of an Individual and Replace Medicines This research follows a multidisciplinary approach through the elds of architecture, psychology and pharmacy science in order to investigate how the immediate or the broader spatial environment could suppress the human psychological disorders and eliminate the use of medicines to some extent, based on the principles of transformable architecture. It aims at helping individuals overcome diculties that contemporary lifestyle imposes on them and stressful conditions which they experience. These diculties may lead them to overuse of drugs (e.g., antidepressants, antipsychotics and others) and addiction. Today, the statistics indicate that humans suer from a variety of psychological disorders. The National Institute of Mental Health in the U.S.A. has studied the percentages of American population and the outcome of the research has shown that 26.2% of the adults in the U.S. (that is 57.7 million people) suer from a diagnosable psychological disease during a year (Nimh, 2010). Moreover, one in ve families has a member suering from that kind of diseases. Those disorders, like depression, pho- bias, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are caused by everyday situations that all humans may experience: stress due to hard work, an argument with a beloved person, or a separation could be possible reasons. Professor George Piperoloupos points out that one in four persons in Greece may experience some kind of neurosis or psychosomatic disorder due to contemporary social and economical conditions. Furthermore, “Internet addiction can cause serious psychological diseases, mostly in young ages” (Pip- eropoulos, 2010). According to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights International approximately, 100,000,000 people use drugs daily in order to feel better (CCHRGR, 2011) and a great number of them are addicted to the overuse of medicines (Kastellakis, 2007). The consecutive use of drugs aects the human organism in a negative way, and a withdrawal syndrome can appear after the therapy period, as well. In the beginning, the consumption of this kind of chemical substances creates a sense of pleasure and satisfaction, but, after a short time period, the human body and the brain get used to them and the individual needs more and more doses (Nestoros, 2007) (Fig. 1).

The research evaluates all the above facts and the importance of psychological health and pursues an innovative solution to the problem. Concisely, it is suggested that the appropriate management of the spatial qualities could help the human overcome everyday stressful situations and eliminate the use of medicines to a feasible extent. Initially, it was examined the human sensory systems, the endocrine system and the human feelings, as well as their interrelation and the role of the brain in this process, in order to be clear and understandable the function of the human organism. Therefore, it was analyzed the whole procedure from the moment of the perception of a stimulant to the nal production of behavior and feelings as a response to that stimulant. To achieve that, knowledge from the elds of Biology, Pharmacy and Psy- chology has been combined. In addition, Biological Psychology studies the relation between the nervous system and human behavior, and the endocrine system, as well (Kalat, 2001). The research has shown that the human body has a plethora of dierent kinds of receptors, and each kind of them is specialized in recognizing speci c stimulants. When the individual perceives a stimulant from his environment through his senses, the information is transferred through the nerves from the Peripheral Nervous System

252 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Fig. 2 to the Central Nervous System and then to the brain. The brain processes the information and commands the Central Nervous System and then the Peripheral Nervous System to produce speci c hormones and behavior. While the brain causes the reaction, the endocrine system and the nervous system are responsible for carrying out the reaction. Hence, the process that takes place is as following:

Stimulant > Peripheral Nervous System > Central Nervous System > Brain > > Central Nervous System > Peripheral Nervous System > > Reaction (hormones and behavior) (Fig. 2)

The hormones are the link between the human senses and the feelings, the mechanism that converts the message of the stimulant to emotions. Therefore, it was further studied how the senses of vision, smell, touch and hearing work and the role of speci c hormones in changing individual’s mood (Fig. 3). The choice of the hormones examined in this research is based on the feelings which each one of them causes when released in the blood and these are melatonin, dopamine, endorphins, oxytocin, serotonin, cortisol and adrenaline (Fig. 4). Melatonin is released in the blood and controls the transition from sleep to vigi- lance and vice versa in a safe way (Cardinali, 1998: 9-15). The dark contributes to the production of melatonin while the light prevents it. When the human is exposed to bright light during the nighttime or to dim light during the day, the production of melatonin is aected and as a result, the human organism does not function properly. According to researches, possible disorder of its levels is related to seasonal aective depression and other important symptoms, such as insomnia and fatigue (Vander, Sherman, Luciano, and Tsakopoulos, 2001: 398). Dopamine is responsible for several functions in the brain. It inuences the behavior, the motion, the sleep, the mood, the motivation and the learning. Insucient

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 253 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 quantity of it can cause Parkinson’s disease which makes the individual unable to move normally (Fahn, 2006). Dopamine is also connected with the motivation of the human to have certain activities and the feeling of pleasure. Endorphins are produced during exercising or when the human feels excitement, pain or love. They resemble to opium substances and have the ability to cause analge- sia and euphoria and to suppress the feelings of stress and aggressive behavior. Oxytocin is the hormone of love and trust. It can be produced by caress and an experiment conducted at the Medical School of the Miami University proved that after a thirty-minute massage on the neck, the oxytocin levels are increased and the feelings of depression and stress are reduced (Medical School of Miami ). Serotonin controls the human’s mood, sleep and appetite. It calms the body and causes euphoria. Researches show that serotonin’s low levels are related to depression and the psychologist Molly Crockett (2009) of the University of Cambridge proved that there is a connection between serotonin’ s abnormal levels and the aggressive behavior of the individual (Crockett, 2009: 76-86). The hormone cortisol is being released when the human experiences stressful conditions (Κοld and Whishaw, 2009: 310-2). It is the response of the organism to stress and it activates the human metabolism (Neave, 2008: 201-4). However, the continual excretion of it due to stress, can have undesirable consequences.

Regarding the feelings examined in this research, these are aggressive behavior, anger, stress, depression and fear, and they all are negative feelings with social roots, which the human often feels unable to deal with and starts using drugs (Fig. 5). Now- adays, studies indicate that hormones can aect the human feelings to the extent that senses do (Neave, 2008: 53-5). The results led to the conclusion that the human senses receive stimulants from the surrounding space which are transferred to the brain through the nervous system. Then, the brain orders the excretion of the corre-

254 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Fig. 6 sponding hormones as a response to the stimulants. Ultimately, the range in the levels of the hormones in the blood causes changes in the human’s feelings. According to the above procedure occurring in the body, it is an indisputable fact that architecture could suppress the psychological disorders, since the spatial stimulants oering to the human can be controlled. The spatial qualities, for example the red color or the smooth texture of a surface, have a great impact on the user’s emotions. Thus, it was tried to investigate how certain qualities are related to certain feelings, based on scienti c experiments already conducted (Sommer, 2008). The spatial qualities examined are the textures and the temperature in a room, the music or the noise levels in it, the smells eused, the lighting and the colors prevailing on the surfaces (Fig. 6). More speci cally, the bibliographic research has shown that smooth and at textures, like glass or plastic materials, raise a pleasant and calm feeling. They imply clear- ness and serenity and make the individual feel relaxed. Additionally, they suppress stress and anger by increasing the serotonin levels (http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/ texture-perception-tf/, 2010). Rough textures, for example stone textures, correspond to violent and hard attributes and they intensify the contrast between light and shadow. When the user touches such kind of surfaces in his surroundings, he is urged to action and feels energetic, and the hormone dopamine is being produced. However, high levels of it in the blood can cause anger. Hence, rough textures could be useful in some cases, for instance in a gym, but they should be avoided when it concerns education rooms. Lastly, soft, uy and unshaped textures enhance a sense of warmth, safety and privacy. They cause an increase in the levels of oxytocin and the human feels protected and he can easily trust someone, as well. Soft textures are pleasant and appealing to the human senses. When they are touched by the individual, they could be curative and reduce fear (Fig. 7). Regarding the temperature of a room, the suitable temperature for the human when he rests is 18-20 oC and when he works it is 15-18 oC. In cases of completely im-

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 255 Fig. 7 Fig. 8 proper temperature, the human is not able to cope with his activities and the brain commands for adrenaline excretion. As a result, he might feel nervous and have aggressive behavior, or even stress (Bell, Green, Fisher and Baum, 2005: 169-72) (Fig. 8). It has been scienti cally proved that music has positive impact in cases of stress, insomnia, depression, psychosomatic disorders, educational diculties, pregnancy and social rehabilitation (Dritsas, 2007). Harmonic sounds activate brain areas that are related to pleasure and satisfaction and they reduce cortisol levels and thus stress. They impel the production of endorphins, as well (Fig. 9). Furthermore, high noise levels are the reason for many psychological and body disorders in contemporary cities. The trac noise, the noise of building construction or the noise due to housework aect the nervous system and cause an increase in adrenaline and cortisol levels, resulting in stress, aggressive behavior and symptoms like headaches, seasickness, fatigue, insomnia and nervous shock. According to calculations, one in three Greeks suers from psychological problems because of environmental issues. Also a research conducted in the Lund University Hospital on a sample of 28,000 people, showed that exposure to noises over 60db increases the danger of hypertension by 25%, while noises over 64db increase by 90% (http://ixoripansi.gr, 2011) (Fig. 10). Regarding the sense of smell, aromatotherapy has a great impact on the brain and the body because it awakes memories and emotions. It contributes to the reduction of stress, which may lead to numerous pathologic problems, such as depression, apathy and melancholy. Although there are hundreds of dierent essential oils, not all of them have been studied about their bene cial attributes. However, a research that was held in Ohio University in 2008 among 56 healthy people has shown that the smell of lemon can improve the mood notably and helps the human relax, since it increases the serotonin levels in the blood (http://neuroscienti callychallenged. blogspot.com, 2008). Several studies have proved that lavender has a soothing eect

256 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 9 Fig. 10 on stress and insomnia and it promotes the reduction of endorphins. Furthermore, during an experiment on people working in a room aromatized with rosemary scent in 2003, they were more vigilant and had better performance than those working in odorless spaces (Moss, Cook, Wesnes, and Duckett, 2003). In addition to the previous experiment, another research occurred in 2007 concluded that after breathing rosemary for ve minutes, the levels of cortisol in the human organism reduce and thus the feeling of stress is suppressed (Moss, Cook, Wesnes, and Duckett, 2003) (Fig. 11).

The quality and the quantity of the lighting which the individual is exposed to daily, controls several biological functions, like the biorhythms and the production of hormones, as well as the mood and the emotional state of the human. This happens because two hormones aected by light, melatonin and serotonin, are crucial to psychological health, even for people with vision problems or for the blinds. More speci cally, low light levels or lack of light cause excretion of melatonin and prevent the production of serotonin and thus the human is getting prepared to sleep. In contrast, vivid light suppresses the production of melatonin and increases the serotonin levels, urging the human to action. Imbalance of the normal hormonal levels in the body, that is the continuous exposure to light during nighttime or the lack of adequate light during daytime, can cause symptoms such as insomnia, fatigue, stomachache, headache, and psychological disorders such as depression and seasonal aective disorder (SAD) (Vander, Sherman, Luciano, and Tsakopoulos, 2001). The usual treatment for these cases is phototherapy with natural or arti cial light and the prescription of medicines that change the serotonin levels (Fig. 12). Colors have been proved to change the brain activity, as well as the production of the hormones related to the mood and the energy levels. It is considered that every color interacts with the endocrine system in a dierent way, in order to support or to prevent the production of certain hormones. Dr. Willard R. Daggett και Steven J. Ger-

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 257 Fig. 11 Fig. 12

tel investigated how the colors aect the human and resulted in that speci c colors and shapes have impact on students’ health, feelings, behavior and performance, depending on their culture, age, sex and the subject they work on (Daggett, Cobble, and Gertel, 2008). In researches about the behavior of prisoners, it was found out raised violence as a response to red and yel- low color, since they increase the levels of dopamine and adrenaline. In contrast, blue and green increase serotonin’s levels and relax the human and pink has a soothing action, since it was found to help the production of oxytocin – the hormone responsible for serenity and not stress- and to suppress Fig. 13 the aggressive behavior of the prisoners (Daggett, Cobble, and Gertel, 2008). Relevant studies have shown that red light increases the strength of the athletes and improves their performance, supplying them with fast energy, while blue light oers stable energy to them. Finally, orange contributes to the production of endorphins and help the individual relax and eliminate feelings of anger (Fig. 13). Based on the studies that have been described above and other similar cases of research, it has been conducted a table named Neurobiological Network (Fig. 14) containing certain spatial qualities and their consequence on the human organism and

258 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 14 feelings. This table can constitute a useful tool in the hands of architects and designers, by helping them create human spaces. The architectural qualities that have been included, aect the individual and any change on them has an impact on the human’s hormonal levels and emotional balance. Textures, temperature, music, noise, smells, light and colors are only some indicative spatial qualities and the table can be enriched trough further research.

Neurospase System This research suggests the creation of the Neurospace System between the human and the space in order to face and suppress negative feelings. This system will allow the space to change as the user’s feelings alter through time. This is possible, if sensors installed in a room and programmed to sense the user’s hormonal levels and thus his emotional state, could response by ordering the space to change his qualities according to the table and help the individual overcome negative situations. By changing the spatial qualities, the human senses are activated and send messages to the brain for the production of certain hormones. Therefore, the human can avoid the use or at least the overuse of medicines when encountering with aggressive behavior, anger, stress, depression and fear (Fig. 15). Technology is developing continually oering new ways of realizing the Neuros- pase System. For the moment, it has reached to some extent. Speci cally, the estima- tion of the hormonal levels of a user in a room is possible though the analysis of saliva, urine or blood. Additionally, the Bayer Company has constructed the CONTOUR® USB, a glucose gauge for those suering from diabetes, which consists of the gauge strips CONTOUR and the puncture device MICROLET™2. Its use is simple and fast and similar devices can be used easily for the hormones. Researchers at the University of Cali- fornia UCLA in collaboration with Aneeve Nanotechnologies LLC have already been trying to create special sensors for progesterone and estrogens, based on the idea of Bayer. The sensors will be portable, easy to use and low-cost. Researchers aim at the controlled dosing of medicines (http:// www.medicalnewstoday.com, 2010). Regarding the materials available for the construction of a space that could support such functions, microprocessors programmed according to the table can be put in the room and control their attributes. Some examples of materials follow.

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 259 Fig. 15

Fig. 16 Fig. 17

260 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 18 Fig. 19

Textures: There are materials that can change nature by storing heat and alter from smooth to rough or soft (Oungrinis, 2010). Temperature: The room temperature can be controlled by air-conditioning systems, but also there are thermoelec- tric materials that can cause variation in temperature due to changes in the electric eld (Oungrinis, 2010). Music/Noise: The quality of the music in a room is aected by the materials in the surroundings. For instance, a concrete wall has dierent acoustics than a wood one, due to their dierent ab- sorbance ability. A room with several tough surfaces, like stone and concrete, has worse acoustics than a room which Fig. 20 has wallpaper and carpets on the oor. The same factors aect the noise levels, as well (Oungrinis, 2010). Smells: The Japanese Shimizu Company which works on aromatized space has embodied odor in the air-conditioning system and it is diused in space. Murayama Noboru, Yamauchi Satoshi and Suzuki Koichi created a control system for olfactory stimulants, which can be installed in the room and remove undesirable smells or emit satisfactory scents. Other Chinese companies have manufactured materials suitable for the oor

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 261 that are infused with dierent smells and when someone walks on them, odors are diused in the air (Oungrinis, 2010). Light: There are numerous materials regarded to light. The luminescent materials have the ability to convert energy to light in low temperatures, the phosphorescent convert energy to light but not immediately, the electroluminescent materials convert electricity to optical light and the uorescents that absorb radiation of dierent wave- length and then radiate light. Therefore, when more light is needed, these materials on dierent surfaces can oer it (Oungrinis, 2010). Color: The color of a room can change by using thermochromic materials which alter according to the temperature, either photochromic materials which alter according to the lighting or electrochromic materials that change color when exposed to voltage. Electrochromic materials consist of a tissue of thin metal wires that are connected to a battery. Additionally, optical bers can be put within other materials, like a concrete wall, and emit light in various colors (Oungrinis, 2010).

Figures 16-20 constitute indicative examples of spaces that transform their qualities in order to face aggressive behavior, anger, stress, depression and fear respectively. The energy needed for the above spatial changes is produced by the human himself. The body motion produces kinetic energy, the body temperature produces thermal energy and the chemical procedures produce chemical energy. Researchers in the U.S.A. created nano bers that are embodied in clothes and produce electric energy when the human moves. The nano bers take part in piezoelectric phenomena that help the alteration of mechanical energy to electrical energy. As mentioned in Nature magazine, the scientists claim that these materials could be used in tends or other constructions in order to exploit the wind power. These are only a few ways in which the results of the research can be utilized and technology is raising new ones continually, by inventing innovative smart materials and systems. Responsive architecture can contribute to an improved environment for individuals. Human beings could feel weak sometimes and architecture can help them improve their psychological health and prevent them from irrational use of medicines, at least in cases of everyday life.

References

Bell, P., Green, T., Fisher, J., & Baum, A. (2005). Environmental psychology. Orlando: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cardinali, D.P. (1998). The human body circadian: How the biologic clock inuences sleep and emotion. Neuroendocrinology Letters, 21, 9–15. CCHRGR, Available: http://cchrgr.blogspot.com (11 November 2011) Crockett, M.J. (2009, June). The Neurochemistry of Fairness Clarifying the Link between Serotonin and Prosocial Behavior. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 76-86. Daggett, W.R., Cobble, J.E., & Gertel, S.J. (2008). Color in an Optimum Learning Environment. New York: International Center for Leadership in Education. Dritsas, (2007, March). Lecture with title «Medicine and Music», Hospital Evagelismos, Greek As- sociation of Professional Music-Therapists, 3.

262 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fahn, S. (2006). The History of Levodopa as it Pertains to Parkinson’s disease. Movement Disorder Society’s 10th International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders on November 1, 2006, in Kyoto, Japan. Kalat, J.W. (2001). Biological Psychology. book A&B. Translation Kastelakis, & Christidis. Athens: Ellin publications. Kastelakis, A. (2007). Physiology of Bahavior. University of Crete, School of Social Sciences, Depart- ment of Psychology. Κοld, B., & Whishaw Q.I. (2009). Brain and Behavior. Translation Kastelakis A.A., Panagis G. Athens: Medical Publications Pasxalidis. Moss, M., Cook, J., Wesnes, K., & Duckett, P. (2003). Aromas of rosemary and lavender essential oils dierentially aect cognition and mood in healthy adults. The International Journal of Neuroscience. Neave, N. (2008). Hormones and Behavior, A Psychological Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press. Nestoros, N., I. (2007). Notes on Neuropharmacy. University of Crete, School of Social Sciences, Department of Psychology. Oungrinis, K., (2010). Lecture with title «Smart Materials» in the course «Contemporary Materials amd Construction Methods», Technical University of Crete, School of Architecture. Piperopoulos, G., (October 2010). Lecture with title «Neurosis – Psychosomatic disorders», open Uni- versity, Chania. Sommer, R. (2008). Personal Space. The Behavioral Basis of Design. Bristol: Bosko Books. Vander, M.D., Sherman, J., Luciano, D., & Tsakopoulos M., (2001). Physiology of the Human. book A&B. Athens: Medical Publications Pasxalidis. http://ixoripansi.gr/ (ανάκτηση: 07.02.2011). http://neuroscienti callychallenged.blogspot.com (March 2008). http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/texture-perception-tf/ (03 November 2010). http:// www.medicalnewstoday.com (11 January 2010). http://www.nimh.nih.gov (04 August 2010). Medical School of Miami, Institute of Research of Touching, Available: http://www6.miami.edu

Georgia Voradaki, Despoina Linaraki Greece 263

Anna Klara Veltsista Nadia Charalambous

University of Cyprus, School of Engineering Department of Architecture Nicosia Cyprus Architectural Design Studio: Reconsidering the Digital through Embedded Technologies The design studio has undoubtedly been at the core of architectural design education since its inception in the nineteenth century. The overriding primacy given to the studio as the main forum for creative exploration, interaction and assimilation remains a common characteristic of schools of architecture. During the past decades the traditional design studio has come under considerable criticism enforced by social, cultural, epistemological and economical factors, knowledge, research and technological developments and increased use of information technology and computer aided design. However, we believe that it can still be rightfully considered as the foundation of architectural education albeit in a possibly dierent form. To understand why this is, we attempt in this paper a sober reection upon the possible role of digital technologies in design, through a diploma project, developed in a studio environment “dominated” in many aspects by the use of information technology. Underlying the nature of the design process today, is the question of the relationship between the digital and the analogue worlds which forms a central issue for architectural research. It is acknowledged that digital technology has brought a radical change in the contextual frameworks in which architecture and architectural production are normally placed. Examining such issues, recent research work suggested an interesting nding, that advances in digital technologies are paving the way to achieve “integrated design” -a type of practice in which various disciplines involved in building design work together to achieve eciency and other bene ts. These technologies enable the designers to collaborate, visualize, research and modify building performance with relatively high accuracy. If such an approach gradually becomes widespread, architectural education and studio in particular, needs to take it into consideration. Per Olaf Fjerd1 recently pointed out that architecture is evolving into far more of an infrastructure capable of taking on a variety of spatial and functional programs, than the actual physical edi ce. Critical thinking becomes thus, an essential instrument in a research-based architectural education which needs to actively navigate towards strengthening reective and inventive capacity. This approach requires the integration of technology and allied disciplines at the outset of the design process. The application of such an integrated approach to the studio, building on individual and research-based knowledge throughout the design process, was explored through a diploma proposal addressing the future of domestic space in the light of contemporary digital developments. The architectural design was pursued within an interdisciplinary context of development, where the building morphology, construction and materials were considered as equally important design parameters, and were investigated interactively from the initial design stages. These parameters were explored through both digital and analogue forms of representation, through the dierent scales of design. The diploma project presented, used a multiple iterative conversion between analogue and digital media to investigate the design concept through material, texture, structure and shape in a detailed and intuitive way. The proposal sought to examine and at the same time question the use of digital technologies as a facilitator and catalyst for the promotion of the underlying pedagogical objective of integrated design and research-produced knowledge, at every stage of the design process. A design methodology, enhancing an explorative design process and employing representation as research, was also explored, as suggested by Reinhardt (2008). An integrative approach was used, in which design

266 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture elements and partial solutions in dierent media (analogue and digital design techniques) were cross-referenced and re-informed each other. An important goal which preoccupied the student throughout the process was to explore the eects of such a digital approach to the design process itself and the nal building proposed as well as to her own role as an architect. The whole process and nal proposal suggests that there is a way to create a softer, more human interface both to the process of design and the nal building outcome which adopts a digital approach. The designer’s individualism, an integrated design methodology and research - based design which takes into consideration the complexity of the human senses and behavior, are possibly three of the most important issues central to the approach towards architectural education in general and the architectural studio in particular, in relation to digital technologies. The paper thus attempts to explore the interrelation between a) the architects’ individualism, b) research- based ndings during the design process through experimentation and c) an integrated design approach, where information technology is integrated from an early design stage with morphology, construction and other design parameters, underpinned by human values and needs. Through a presentation of the diploma thesis proposal, we discuss a number of important ndings in relation to the present and possibly future form of the design studio. We suggest that the designer’s individual knowledge and intuition, the presence of the human being that is, may not only be the basis for creative action, but also the basis for understanding and interpretation. By taking into account design constraints, architects rely on individual knowledge brought together with research-based knowledge, through a cyclical process of experimentation, evaluation, self reection and rede nition. Design informed and enriched at every stage by a research-based process, might well be the transmission and transformation of the designer’s individual knowledge, a process of elaboration and discovery which facilitates and enhances design creativity and possibly allows for a multiplicity of approaches through a range of possibilities.

Domestic Architecture and the Digital World The contemporary dweller is faced with many dramatic perhaps, changes - economic, social, and technological; changes which also have spatial consequences. The concept of contemporary living in general and domestic space in particular, seems to remain quite static, based on ideas of domestic space organization suggested in the early parts of the 20th c.2 We seem to continue to produce dwelling models which do not correspond to the contemporary user. Domestic space organization always responded – or should respond- to its time, but this is not the case for today. This problem creates the need for a new house model which will respond to the new conditions and demands of a digital era. The architect today should understand that his role has changed; he should design for the new needs and according to them. The new program cannot be determined in detail not even conceived clearly. It arises by the new conditions and has aspects that prove the complexity of social relations, space and time. In short, the change should be a deliberating move that will reject any attempt for standardization of needs and spaces. We should recognize that the dwelling has

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus 267 dierent meaning for every one of us; it refers to dierent qualities and dierent relations; a digital approach needs to respond to this “subjectivity”. For some, the real house can be everywhere as long as its user can have the sense of intimacy. Nevertheless we cannot actually dwell this sense of intimacy. The reword of dwelling relies on two basic points: the rede nition of the idea of house, and the multiple and complex components of everyday needs. In a world that never stops evolving, architecture’s new nature is rather hard not to be commented. The architectural space seems to be changing to something new, something resultant from the constantly changing reality. The present is undeniably a period of radical transition. This new era has a hybrid form, something between the analogue world and the digital culture that dominates our everyday life. In this hybrid form of life, we still have the same needs, the same choices to make, but dierent spaces to experience and a new kind of architecture to deal with. What comes to hand when talking about architectural experience is the balance between the analogue and the digital world. Today, the texture of both the city and the building, is becoming more digital, introducing dimensions such as networks, information, time, and forgets all about limits and xed spaces. Time becomes a variable of its own, not a general notion that nobody dares to ‘touch’. We have the media to control it, to change it and to choose the right moment for everything. Spaces, public or private, can connect with each other through the new technologies, overcoming physical distance. All these media are around us every day, in our houses. As William J. Mitchell3 is proposing in his book e-topia, ‘the online world which once consisted of ephemeral and disconnected fragments has become increasingly persistent, interconnected, and uni ed’. A global network of spaces, buildings and users can be created at any time, changing the dynamics of architecture and the role of the architect. Everyone can be connected to these networks while being at home. New relations emerge and the user, who is surrounded by all these networks, is in constant pursuit of the sense of intimacy in his private world. The activation of these networks becomes possible with information and the building which is programmed to accept this information, transforms them and changes its shape in real time. This kind of design can evoke new experiences for the user, experiences that are made possible by information, and the interaction of the user with all these networks from his home. As mentioned, networks can now be considered as the “new limits”4. The right “node” can make a building successful or not. The rst step is to make sure that we connect the house with the right networks. The sense of intimacy can only be created when our house becomes a node in a network or more. It is then when people can satisfy everyday needs dierent than those we traditionally knew’ needs that relate to the digital era. We then need to explore what happens with the sense of privacy when all these networks intrude one’s house. Most of today’s social networks that include interaction have several lters that can be controlled by the user so as to still feel safe and private in his house. His own choice transforms his house to more or less private. What concerns this project does not rely on what makes users reveal their privacy in their domestic environment. What concerns us as architects is who exactly this “contemporary” user might be and how could his needs be met through the incorporation of digital technologies which do not ignore the human factor. So, the dweller under consideration might be anyone who lives in the so called megalopolis, where nothing works according to a strict program or rhythm; people who are away from

268 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture their family, friends; people who work at home or even people who due to a disability are obliged to stay at home. These people have still the need to communicate with the exterior in a way that provides full experience of their physical environment.

THE ubiHOME PROJECT An Interactive Installation for the Virtual Connection of Domestic Spaces The project sets out to explore the ways in which contemporary domestic space is af- fected by the “presence” of digital technologies? In what ways does the dwelling respond to this new kind of technology and how does the dweller-user under study, possibly rede ne spatial and social behavior. The objective of this diploma research has therefore been to create a new scenario of today’s experience of the user in his house, in a digital era where architectural design seems to undergo dramatic changes. The proposal suggested that there is need for a new dwelling model, in an era fully digitalized and characterized by both the analogue and digital worlds. It suggested the introduction of the digital technology in the domestic world, in a way that can be naturally experienced and manipulated by the user, through an experimental virtual connection of two houses in order to achieve a dierent way of communication facilitated and possibly demanded by recent technological advances. Following an initial, thorough investigation in relation to the aforementioned questions, the project set out to explore which could possibly be the most suitable way to incorporate digital technology in the design of domestic space in such a way that the user could interact through it with exterior space in a natural, three dimensional way. In other words, how could digital technologies facilitating social interaction and communication with the external environment, be incorporated in the domestic space in a natural, “silent” way which takes into consideration users’ needs and patterns of everyday living.

Embedded Technologies Digital networks such as Facebook or Twitter, allow the social networkingnetting and interaction from the interior of the house. People inform others about what they do or where they are in a speci c moment. In some cases, such as Skype, three dimensional images of the surrounding physical environment are introduced through the communication of users. Instead of just using at screens, keyboards and mice, people should be able to interact with their computers and other devices by moving around and through real physical objects. In short by “acting” naturally. The Mixed Reality Architecture5 project for example, dynamically links and overlays physical and virtual spaces. By constructing and controlling co-presence, architecture creates the potential for social interaction on which the reproduction of social forms, such as organizational or community structures, and the generation of new forms ultimately depends. The importance of MRA relies on the potential it provides, in order to enable remote communication and interaction between people and groups, in ways that are directly analogous to those oered by physical architecture. These new architectural forms aord near instant access to non-adjacent parts and, as Virilio points out, the distinction between near and far becomes irrelevant here: the spaces trav- elled across are lost and become invisible. The spatiality into communication across

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus 269 Fig. 1 Mixed Reality Architecture. physical and virtual environments will support every social interaction and can convert the digital communication media to a more generative form, familiar from physical spaces.

In a similar line of thinking, The Urban Carpet6, aimed to create a physical scenario where people can interact by means of technology with the urban and social environment. The urban carpet is a new kind of technological interactive platform, a LED’s urban carpet in a public space that could enhance social awareness and interaction between people nearby. A prototype carpet was set in three dierent locations of the city of Bath, investigating how people move, congregate and socialize round the interactive installation. In the MIT Media Lab, a project called Sixth Sense is currently exploring ways to make technology tangible. A non architectural project which has a very intelligent approach on how they see the nature of technology from now on. Sixth Sense frees information by seamlessly integrating it with reality, and thus making the entire world your computer. Hiroshy Ishy, from the MIT Media Lab, wants people to interact with their computers and other devices by moving around and by handling real physical objects. In short, by doing what comes naturally. For Ishy, the importance is not just about making something that works; in his careful attention to make material and design, he makes it clear that he believes the experience of interacting should be pleasing not just functional. On the other hand, the user himself demands that technology around him can be tangible. From his early years, he is being in touch with every form of information and technology and as a result he can be adaptive to any evolution. The apple technology which introduced touch screens in our everyday life has not been accidentally popular.

A social reading of the potential application of such technologies in the 21st century would inevitably raise issues about the perception of the users in such spaces. Priva- cy is an issue that could drive such an application to failure. Good knowledge of how technology functions will lead to the best control of it. We need to give the users the choice to control it at any time. Architecture means nothing if the user is not comfortable in it. In the case of ubiquitous computing, we need to ensure that it can be manipulated by people in the best possible way facilitating contemporary forms of social interaction in an integrated way.

270 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Six Sense at the MIT lab.

Ubiquitous Computing According to Mark Weiser, the world is the next interface and computers live out in the world with people, as a part of challenging integration of human factors, computer science, engineering and social sciences. Weiser describes this technology as op- timally ‘calm’ when it resides to the background of our lives. It transcends traditional user interfaces by being part of small devices and appliances, but also large-scale walls, buildings, and furniture. Computers allow us to capture the movement of matter and to manipulate and redeploy physical traits, qualities, and behaviors into novel composites. We should redirect research from the screen-based simulations that have predominated in the last fteen years, towards the considerably greater intelligence that is already impressed into matter, including the investigation of new scienti c and industrial processes and the new materials in which these processes are embedded. Tobi Scheidler designs the REMOTEHOME, a communication system extending the idea of home as a private and situated space, to one that connects home in two different cities. While communication and media technologies, including mobile phones and instant messaging, are already creating new scenarios of sharing friendship and intimacy over long distances, what would happen if real-time mediated communication were to become part of our everyday environment, the spaces we inhabit, the furniture we use and the items we cherish? In this case, a model apartment was set up at the Science Museum in London and the Raumlabor in Berlin. Remote audiences could participate and interact with each other in real time via sensory furniture which detect and distribute impressions rather than information about the inhabitants. Those cues of occupation are then transmitted via the internet to the other side, where they surface through kinetic, tangible features and light installations. This way, the home stretches beyond borders, and helps friends to stay in touch, literally, though tangible and sensual communication, an emotional and intuitive form of presence.

Interaction Design in Contemporary Domestic Space How could interactive design be incorporated in contemporary domestic environments in ways such as those described above? In ways which will seem as natural as breathing? The two main aspects one needs to consider are the social relations the resident has with the exterior of his home, and the ways in which information l- ters into the domestic space through several means. Concerning the social relations,

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus 271 it is easy to imagine a resident who chats in facebook or skype from his house, or a resident who is trying to synchronize his activities with those of others. On the other hand, the information has also a signi cant power towards the resident. The real world phenomena of both the interior and the exterior can be coded by the appropriate technology and “give out” to the house the information as well as ways to manipulate it. The need for such ways of communication through the embedded technologies were then explored. As the house is the basic space that hosts these activities, one can foresee the new possibilities that arise. The experience of space during those activities and the communication between distant dwellers are the focus of this proposal. The question now turns to the most appropriate ways through which digital communication with the external world can be naturally embedded in the spaces we dwell, taking into consideration basic domestic concepts such as intimacy, privacy, safety. Embedding digital technology into the building is suggested to be a way worth exploring. It is suggested that information and communication technology become an integrated part of the domestic environment, potentially available for anyone at all times. Traditional user interfaces will be transcended by being part of small devices and appliances, but also large-scale walls, buildings, and furniture.

The Virtuality of the Domestic World Interaction design in the house The basic idea is that every dwelling can be synchronized with others in terms of certain domestic activities. Furthermore, when we choose to connect with another house and synchronize a particular activity, the distance is no longer an obstacle. The connection can be virtual, proposing a global network of shared actions which can act regardless of time or distance.

Fig. 3 The two houses under study.

272 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Creating a shared space Creating a shared space premises at least one common activity and two dierent physical spaces. After the choice of the activity, every dweller will have a dierent sense of his space. The users meet their houses with dierent limits this time, with virtual extensions that allow the communication he needs along with the spatial sense of this communication.

Fig. 4 Creating a shared space.

What do we share? For every house that our house is connected to, a dierent layer of nodes/activities is created. The shared activities are de ned by the dwellers. Those may be the same or dierent. All the layers are added together and appear in the house as nodes of a bigger network o virtually connected houses. All the layers of shared activities appear, forming a unique mass of connections, including the nodes one can use in his house.

Fig. 5 The “carpet” of shared nodes.

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus 273 Shared activities Every dwelling can be synchronized with others in terms of certain domestic activities. Furthermore, when we choose to connect with another house and synchronize a particular activity, the distance is no longer an obstacle. The connection can be virtual, proposing a global network of shared actions which can act regardless the time or the distance between the physical domestic spaces and the dwellers.

Fig. 6 Choice of activities.

Who do we share with? Each house contains certain shared activities which are determined by the network we choose to interact with. Online and oine activities create a unique carpet of nodes from several layers of activities, dierent for each house. The traditional relation between private and public is thus rede ned and explored. This relation is ltered with digital mediums, so that the user may choose if and in what degree he will reveal his house to the public, or in our case to other private spaces.

Fig.7 Choice of action is either online or oine, securing the sense of privacy.

274 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Conclusion Design can no longer be considered as simply “building”; it is more associated with the production of ideas, routines, contexts, entire social and cultural environments and processes. Architects are now inventors of those intervening lms that seem to coat everything these days and that one used to call interfaces. Electronics, computation and network connectivity, are increasingly embedded into the objects of our everyday life. Unless we know how they are designed we won’t have control of what they do, or what they can do to us. This is why digital technologies need to be treated by architects as a way to improve design and its nal outcome incorporating in the process humane values. Human senses and behavior need to be decisive factors in any proposal which adopts digital technologies, even more in the case of domestic space. Architects as well as potential users can then have a more inuential and decisive presence. The designer’s individual knowledge and intuition, the presence of the human being that is, will then not only be the basis for creative action, but also the basis for understanding and interpretation of a digital era.

References

Monographs Lawson, B. (2003) How Designers Think, Architectural Press. Lawson, B. (2004) What Designers Know, Architectural Press. Mitchell, W. (1999) e-topia “Urban Life, Jim--But Not As We Know It, MIT Press. Schön, D. (1985) The Design Studio: an exploration of its traditions and potentials, RIBA Building Industry Trust, London. Vitruvius (1960) The Ten Books on Architecture, translated by Morgan M.H. Harvard University Press. Vrichea, A. (2003) Living and Dwelling, Ellinika Grammata, Greece.

Papers Briones, C. (2006) LEDs urban carpet: a portable interactive installation for urban environments. Mas- ters thesis, UCL. Charalambous N. and Hadjisoteriou M. (2007) “Introductory Architectural Design Studio: (Re)Search- ing for a New Approach” proceedings of the European Network of Heads of Schools of Architecture (ENHSA) and the European Association for Architectural Education (EAEE) conference: “Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy”, pp. Darke, J. (1984) “The Primary Generator and the Design Process”, Developments in Design Methodol- ogy, Nigel Cross, Open University, John Wiley & Sons, pp. 175-188. Moggrridge, B. (2007) “People and Prototypes: Elements of the Design Process” in Moggridge, ed. Designing Interactions, Cambridge, MIT Press, pp. 729-735. Per Olaf Fjerd (2008) “Changes of paradigms in the basic understanding of architectural research”, in the ARCC/EAAE conference Architecture and the Digital World, Copenhagen. Rendell J. (2004) “Architectural Research and Disciplinarity” in Architectural Research Quarterly, vol.8, no.2, pp. 141-147. Reinhardt, D. (2008) “Representation as research: Design Model and Media Rotation”, The Journal of Architecture, 13:2, 185-201.

Anna Klara Veltsista, Nadia Charalambous Cyprus 275 Sanvido, V.E., Norton, K.J. (1994). Integrated Design-Process Model, Management in Engineering, 10(5), pp. 55-62. Schndelbach, H. and Penn, A. and Steadman, P. (2007) Mixed Reality Architecture: a dynamic architectural topology. Presented at: 6th International Space Syntax Symposium 2007, Istanbul, Turkey.

Notes

1 Per Olaf Fjerd (2008) 2 Vrichea, A. (2003) 3 Mitchell, W. (1999) 4 Ibid. 5 Mixed Reality Architecture (2007) 6 Urban Carpet (2006)

276 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Mihaela Hărmănescu

Faculty of Urbanism University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu” Bucureşti, România Responsive Architecture through Urban Planning, Landscape Architecture and Urban Design Theoretical Framework The social and cultural forces associated with globalization have overwritten local social and cultural practices and globalization has generated a world of restless landscapes in which the more places change the more they seem to look alike and the less they are able to retain a distinctive sense of place. The connection between rapid industrialization, the acceleration of everyday life, and the decline in the quality of collective life that were rst noted by Walter Benjamin (1936, p. 217-252) have been intensi ed as post-industrial society has become fragmented and reorganized by the acceleration powers of information technology and transmission. These pressures are closely connected with the materialism of post-industrial society and as a result, a work spend cycle has become fundamental to the economic and social dynamics of contemporary society. Speed has become a hallmark of many aspects of planning and strategy, as reected – and indeed, prompted – by advertising. In advertisements, the pace of people’s consumption is often linked to the pleasure they appear to be experiencing, speed and busy-ness of schedules are transformed from negative into symptoms of laudable, well-adjusted and ful lling lifestyles. Starting from the nineties, in many European cities urban projects have been a primary tool to establish exceptional measures in planning and policy procedures and also to establish a Neo-liberal urban policy. Great Urban Projects (GUP) were the policy tools to exploit parts of the city, starting from alliances between real estate lobby groups and politics, favouring a repositioning of economic powers and relationships between public and private sector. In this context the alignment of political and technical equipment necessary for the achievement of these GUP has provided an important role both to the traditional city experts (urban planners, economists, architects, mobility experts, engineers) and to the new professional gures (Development Manager in particular). Almost all medium size European cities are involved in these processes, sharing a similar development perspective: equipping cities against new international scenarios that lie ahead in terms of competition The traditional city of clean duality ( gure/ ground) has disappeared, to be overtaken by a meshwork of interactions, “Big Events” (particularly sports, events, leisure) were a natural medium for these new forms of urban development. The most evident eects of this approach have been related to brown eld regeneration and rebuilt within the city, development of wide areas outside the city in relation with new demand of culture, tradition, social, infrastructure, transport and logis- tics, particularly in harbours and waterfronts, historical areas, interest points because

Fig. 1 Urban evolution and complexity.

278 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the model pattern and basic unit of urban complexity is based on hierarchical levels of complexity of the territory from micro- scale to macro-scale. The continuum transformations of the city behavior, sequence of past events that relate to practical reality are activating a highly urban development, headquarters of the functions and abstract phenomena.

Romanian Background Since the three decades in Europe are ongoing a changing in the processes of transformation of our cities: from urban planning (based on regulatory way) to urban governance (based on a strategic approach and on operational tools) and the intention of the paper is to have a reection on how would be possible to attribute a more out- standing and ecient role to the Urban Planning, both on the educational side and in the planning practice.

Fig. 2 Romanian Planning Frame- work - General Context.

There are dierences between urban plan which is guidance role, regulatory role (General UP, Zonal UP, Detailed UP) and urban project, just an architecture project, but related to neighborhoods (form composition, structure, context…) and based on regulations xed by Zonal UP and Detail UP. The last one can be also an Zonal UP or Detail UP and because an urban tissue that could exibly respond to all local input factors as well as accommodate desired (planned) goals and is verifying the validation of the reality to be exible, functional and permeable.

Fig. 3 Validation of the reality.

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 279 The argument of this approach is the contemporary city (Thom Mayne, 2011): city is like an evolving process (Leach,2009) which does not oppose nature, but is inherently part of it. It is not a sum of its elements, is an interaction of complex systems like a results of such extreme richness and fragility of striking nature, and the nature here is not as chaotic and random as it seems at a rst look.

Never static, the contemporary city is dynamic, unstable, and increasingly dicult to trace as a linear process.While cities have traditionally provided stable and hierarchical spatial organizations appropriate to the once relativity uniform nature of social composition and concentrated political power, the contemporary city has lique ed into a dispersed urbanity – poly- nucleated attractors, or downtowns, in which architecture is one more network with infrastructure as its vector of mobility. The urban space is changing dramatically and looses more and more its coherence. Constantly urban fabric is erased and replaced with new structures.

Educational – Planning Practice Relationship Dynamic Components and Land Use Cities are performing themselves operations of strati cation, destrati cation and res- trati cation on the ows that transverse them. Henri Lefebvre (2004) describes this organic aesthetic of the ows of life in a city and its continuous restlessness and unpredictability as rhythms with as having a “maritime” quality: ”There on the square, there is something maritime about the rhythms. Currents traverse the masses. Streams break o, which bring or take away new participants. Some of them go towards the jaws of the monster, which gobbles them down in order quite quickly to throw them back up. The tide invades the immense square, then withdraws: ux and reux.” (Lefe- bvre, 2004).

Fig. 4 Collective form - complex behavior.

280 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture While we confortably allow environmental models to inuence our perception of urban structure, eventually we must translate patterns of human behavior into urban system and space. The practice of urban planning, wich has traditionally been aligned with permanence and stability, must change to accomodate and take advantage of the rapid changes and increased complexities of contemporary reality. The spaces are no longer seen as ats and linear but as a ow of matter-energy animated from within by self-organization processes said De Landa (2000). Furthermore, it is necessary to introduce the notion of self-organization, which became a crucial tool of comprehension for today’s complex world (de ned by gradients or intensities of values, with no “deterministic” boundaries). Focusing on environmental evolution, which produces increasingly complex life forms over time, the city is a eld of permanent genesis, the constant ux of its systems is the means by which its social structure evolves with ever-greater complexity. Systems never get simpler. Our time suers from an inability to organize, the possibilities that it has itself produced. While we have relied principally on the quantitative and controlled frameworks of physical and geometry to de ne and manage the seemingly incompressible the qualitative and approximate world of biology is now emerging as a more useful model of both scienti c and metaphysical explanation. Development in life sciences, ecology, mathematics, systems theory and computation has aected a paradigm shift in how we conceive of organizational processes.

Fig. 5 Complex spatial urban body.

“The contemporary urban environment in composed and recomposed by each individual every day around literal and virtual itineraries, and not in relation to a xed arrangement of places” (Pope, 1996, p32). Urban system is an imperfect system, territorial distribution, spatial, functional, etc.. Its imperfections become principles generating urban form, which by self-organization evolves, being found at dierent levels, layers, subsystems, urban systems, in

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 281 constantly networking and subject to the same general conditioning and local-global constraints. The actual urban material is a concept that considers the exchange of substance in urban body as information expression, but is important to have a interior/ exterior and exterior/ interior permeability for his evolution. Landscape planning, urban planning and architecture confer shape to information, in the sense of information emission, reception, exchange and generation.

Integration, Development and Conservation Next to all the exchanges,in the last decade, new digital technologies have evolved from being simply representational tools invested in the depiction of existing models of urban space to becoming signi cant per formative machines that have transformed the ways in which we both conceive and con gure space and material. These tools for design, simulation, and fabrication, have enabled the emergence of new digital diagrams and parametric landscapes—often emulating genetic and iterative dynamic evolutionary processes—that are not only radically changing the ways in which we integrate disparate types of information into the design process, but are also signi cantly altering the methodological strategies that we use for design, fabrication and planning. This technology oers an alternative method of urban production that design exible framework of relation system within which activities, events and programs can organically play themselves out and engages the premise of continuous process over static, in doing so, presents ways to activate the city. In the Faculty of Urbanism (Urban Planning and Landscape Design), University Of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, Bucureşti, the current models of space produced by our students are far more continuous, variant and complex, is speci cally a result of the tools we are using to produce them, an inevitable by product of the ever- expanding capacities of digital computation and related fabrication technologies as these intersect with theoretical trajectories that long ago dismantled the social, functional and technological truths of the early part of this century. The notion of architectural responsiveness through urban planning, landscape architecture and urban design relate to occupants and their activities, to the city, and to change, as well as to the outside climate. It reects an organization of society in terms of a complex division of labor, high levels of technology, high mobility, interdependence of its members in ful lling economic functions and social relations. The Department of Urbanism and Country Planning coordinates an important part in this eld, both the theoretical and design educational process at all academic levels/degrees (Faculties, School of Advanced Studies). The courses, urban and landscape studios adapted to the particular aims of the curriculum of each unit are generally articulated following the increasing complexity of education throw synthetic knowledge of planning and landscape architecture, urban renewal, town administration and management. The main lecture topics are: Urban structures, Urban composition, Urban project; Sociology/ Sociology of dwelling, Landscape architecture; Town administration Recy- cling of the built stock; Territory planning; IT in Urbanism; Town Trac.

282 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 6 Educational research method.

For our teaching program this process could start by looking at three key issues: - the knowledge that informs design and decision making - the environmental performance targets to be achieved - the environmental attributes of the urban context.

Education should take a driving role in this evolution. We need to move beyond the technical xes perpetrated by current practice and start extending the architectural vocabulary towards expressing the temporality of natural and operational cycles in more diverse and creative ways. Permanently enriched by laying emphasis on socio- human, aesthetical, and economic components of all these aspects, the aim is to develop the comprehensive perspective of the architect-planner to be. We are concerned to introduce elements of the Parametric Urbanism who take the paradigm and tools of parametric design into the domain of urban planning. If the power of parametric is usually confront with the succession of design changes for its ability to produce variations of a single building, or to generate versions of building components for a complex building geometry that does not allow for the repetition of element, what we are considering Parametric Urbanism suggests that these techniques of versioning can be applied to an array of buildings, so that a new version does not replace an older version but instead comes to join and extend the eld of simultaneous versions in building up a complex urban eld (Schumacher, 2006). The students in their projects, explored possible parametrically future con gurations for the study area (the urban plan) and tried to push for a solution that would maximize performance (density, height, shading, access to natural elements and connectivity) of the whole region concerning also the architecture of the buildings, while leaving ample potential that allows for unplanned emergent evolution. Trough this educational exercises, our interest is to envision an urban tissue that could exibly respond to all local input factors as well as accommodate desired (planned) goals: to dierentiate and create a unique lattice that allows for surprise and yet is easily mapped due to its inner space-partitioning algorithm, to cycle trough the analysis and continuously changed the main axial map of the area to maximize integration of the buildings. The students exercises are concentrated to making the plan both functional and exible, making it more permeable and responsive to the given input, creating also an organic urban tissue (the proposed grid can have an almost in nite number of combinations, quite the “ilot ouvert” kind of concept), to de ne and integrate the architectural object (the building itself or the buildings them self) through the urban planning.

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 283 Students Exercices Project 1: Urban-development-proposal Academic year: IVth, 2010, Architecture Students : Dimitrie Stefanescu, Dragos Mila Project Teachers : prof. phd. arch. Tiberiu Florescu, assist. urb. Sebastian Guta

Description: Research on the proposal project (Dimitrie, 2010) shows that the students approach left from Chaos Theory. They explored possible future con gurations for the concern study area (450ha large, at the intersection of two main planned road-infrastructure extensions) and tried to push for a solution that would maximize performance (density, height, shading, access to natural elements and connectivity) of the whole region while leaving ample potential that allows for unplanned emergent evolution. Their goal was to envision an urban tissue that could exibly respond to all local input factors as well as accommodate desired (planned) goals creating the neighborhood typology which are based on local factors. An universal 130m by 130m grid was proposed and then deformed to dierentiate and create a unique lattice that allows for surprise and yet is easily mapped due to its inner space-partitioning algorithm. They iteratively cycled through several circulation analysis (using Depthmap) and continuously changed the main axial map of the area to maximize integration usin- gRhino and its parametric plugin Grasshopper for the main work and Depthmap for the integration analysis. “Our task on the project was to create several “islands” that we will connect on multiple layers (peripheral roads, axial roads and pedestrian walkways). After the “islands” were established we proposed central public spaces for each one, spaces that thanks to Dimitrie’s excellent programing skills (Grasshoper and Rhino) are distorting the initial urban grid of 130 m by 130 m making it more permeable and responsive to the given input, creating an organic urban tissue.We concentrated on making the plan both functional (easy to walk and easy to drive from one part to another) and exible (the proposed grid can have an almost in nit number of combinations, quite the ilot ouvert kind of concept).”

284 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Project 1 Table 1

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 285 Project 1 Table 2

286 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Project 2: REA Competion Baku, Azerbaidjan, Urban- development- proposal Academic year: 1st year Master Degree - Urban Project, 2009 Students: Gavrila Silviu, Ioana Ichim Project Teachers: prof. phd. arch. Tiberiu Florescu, assist. urb. Sebastian Guta

Project 2 Table 1

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 287 Project 2 Table 2

288 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Project 3: REA Competion, University Campus, Bucharest, Romania Academic year: 2nd year Master Degree- Urban Project, 2010 Students: Nasui Laura, Damian Alexandru Project Teachers: prof. phd. arch. Tiberiu Florescu, assist. urb. Sebastian Guta

The project is one example of the exponential complexity of system of the iconic computer circuit. The concept is a link between the idea of a university campus and computer circuit: urban structure is the inputs/ outputs of the circuits, transformation into a network, now identi able only through graphics.

Project 3 Table 1

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 289 Project 4: REA Competion, University Campus, Bucharest, Romania Academic year: 2nd year Master Degree- Landscape and Territory, 2010 Students: Irina Pata, Petrisor Project Teachers: prof. phd. arch. Tiberiu Florescu, assist. arh. Mihaela Hărmănescu

The project is an approach of a “paradigm shift”: a territory across by university research: concepts, values, perceptions and practicesare shared by the campus community, “which forms a particular vision of reality that is the basic of the way the community organizes itself” ( Capra, Kuhn, 1996) In keeping with these new conceptual framework, urban formation is now understood as an accumulation of spontaneous, non sequential elements that overlap and fragment into integrated networks along with nance, migration, communication and resources, all of which evolve and mutated at precarious whim.

Conclusion The true territory for innovation in urban planning, than is not a result of platonic solids, but rather in the design of operational strategies that deals with the multiply and overlapping forces of a highly complex and entirely uncertain “collective form” (Fumi- hiko, 1964). Ben Van Berkel (1992) considered that “structures are changing today; they are losing their speci c separate properties and are de ned more by how they relate to the organization of the whole and how you relate to them; you zoom in to solids, you uctuate along evanescent distances, space opens up around you; any variety of mutations are possible, all unquanti able, orderless, dimensionless, happening in a uid- ium” .

References

Benjamin, Walter. (1996) The World of Art in the Age o Mechanical Reproduction, 1936, 217-252. Ben Van Berkel (1992) monographs. Capra, Kuhn.( 1997) The Web of Life: A New Scienti c Understanding of Living Systems, Anchor Books, New York. Cerasella Craciun. (2008) Metabolismul urban. O abordare neconventionala a organismului urban. Tze Tsung Leong, (2001)cap. Gruen Urbanism, Project on the city 2, Curs Harvard Design School, Edited by Chuihua Judy Chung, Jerey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tdung Leong, Taschen. De Landa, Manuel. ( 2000) Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, London: Zone Books. Fumihiko Maki, (1964), Investigations in Collective Forms, St. Louis School of Architecture, Wash- ington University. Leach, Nel. Swarm Urbanism. AD: Digital Cities, 2009, July/August. Lefebvre, Henry. (2004) Rhythm analysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, London: Continuum. Pope, Albert. (1996) Ladders, Houston, Rice University for Architecture, New York: Princeton architectural Press, p. 32. Thom Mayne, Stan Allen. (2011) Combinatory urbanism: the complex behavior of collective form Culver City, CA : Stray Dog Café.

290 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Project 4 Table 1

Mihaela Hărmănescu Romania 291 Schumacher, Patrik. (2006) Swarm Urbanism, July/August. Marcuse P. and Van Kempen R. (eds) (2000) Globalising Cities: A New Spatial Order? Oxford: Blackwell . Project 1: Urban-development-proposal: http://improved.ro/blog/2010/01/urban-developement -proposal/ Project 2: REA Competion Baku, Azerbaidjan, Urban- development- proposal: http://tibiorescu. ro/showproject.php?proj=1263035539&cat=proiecte

292 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Sally Stewart

Mackintosh School of Architecture Glasgow School of Art UK Mapping the City: the possibility of developing a rich picture place through experiments with conventional, digital and stolen techniques of mapping “One’s destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things.” ( Miller)

Mapping the City is a short elective course on oer to postgraduate students across Glasgow School of Art. We work together over a period of 15 weeks, normally through eight two-hour sessions. Students come from a range of disciplines, and the course itself could be considered to sit outside any particular discipline – it is constructed and hosted by the Mackintosh School of Architecture but is not exclusive to architects. A key factor in the design of the elective course was to identify an area of common ground, relevant and attractive to range of disciplines, in this case the city, as a departure point from which to examine how the city gures on our individual and collaborative practice. The course oers the opportunity to consider ways of seeing, documenting and understanding place, a reasonable point of shared interest, and understand how we are inuenced by place, and can in turn inuence it. This is achieved through a series of weekly tasks or activities generating a portfolio of work. Recent cohorts have included architectural students, environmental artists, graphic designers, painters, a graphic novelist, a sound designer and a sculptor giving a wide ranging group of participants, from very varied academic, professional, cultural and social backgrounds. Originally designed to be a series of activities that could oer a point of common interest and discussion, now in its second year it is moving to something dierent and I believe more interesting, producing a rich picture of the City we encounter daily. As Katherine Harmon notes “To orientate is to hop back and forth between landscape and time, geography and emotion, knowledge and behavior.”

Structure A series of activities and tasks are set, which initially were speci cally designed to nd out what individual interests are, the types of and variety of practices apparent in the student group, range of techniques they are familiar with and use regularly and the boundaries of their practice if known. The structure for the course is simple with each session following a similar format. An introduction or brief lecture leads to a task can be done there or then or one set as homework for the following session. Each subsequent session then begins with a show and tell of the previous session’s task and a discussion of emerging points. Students are asked to consider that the work they show each session is in its nal form. All that is required is to undertake the work as it comes up and then gather it in a folio for a nal submission. The following is oered as guidelines from the outset:

• Think of each piece as a final piece. • Do it well once, don’t hedge your bets or rely on going back to it to refine it. • Focus on the task in hand and put your whole energy in doing the task at the time. • Become aware of what you can produce in the given time and take control of the time given. • The work need not be revisited – you set the goals. • The discussion of work is just that – it is not an assessment – we all play an equal part on the discussion. Value what your colleagues say.

294 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Having identi ed what student are interested in, their skill set and level of curiosity, the focus now shifts to one of providing space to explore emerging issues and shared practices – or practices that can be shared or appropriated but have not been up to that point. Students become familiar with the pace of the tasks, the fact that they are varied and stretch them in dierent directions. As each task has its own focus and context there is no hierarchy to them. Together they build to give the potential of a rich picture. It is up to the student where they take them to as single task or how they conceive of them as a set. In all students undertook ten tasks, some short and sharp as if warm ups in the sessions themselves, others requiring preparation, contemplation and more sustained engagement. It is clear through feedback that the mix in pace and types of tasks allowed everyone to nd the reassurance of some form of practice that was familiar as well as task that they had never encountered before. The mix and the open nature of the discussion – not a critique where ever possible, helped students to embrace the less familiar or unknown. The lack of pressure to revisit and constantly correct work in actual fact encouraged students to be more self -critical. It also appears to allow student to take more risks and be experimental rather than to be reliant of tried and tested methods and solutions. Some of the activities are individual and others require small group working or as pairs. In either situation, each student must make his or her own record of the outcome for the portfolio. As many of the tasks were new to the students, either in form of in the way they were to be undertaken their previous experience or performance was no guarantee of current success. This session the course ended with a nal presentation of each portfolio to the peer group. Students were asked to take control of publishing their portfolio on the wall, to consider if there was an emerging theme within their work, reecting on what had interested them – not what they had got right or wrong. To do this some students revisited aspects of their work, reordered the sequence, down played some aspects and highlighted others. If eect they took control of how they wished it to be received.

The Engaging with the Digital The course does not presuppose the types of media students use in making work, the choice is open depending on techniques present in their existing practice or indeed those they may wish to begin to use. The form of activities undertaken have scope to be interpreted and realized in many dierent ways, and indeed some student use the opportunity to test new ways of making, documenting and capturing the activities and experiences the course provokes. Being situated in an art school programmes are predominantly studio based if not studio led. The digital now forms part of most students working method, whether to research ideas or background information, generate the work itself or to document, publish and disseminate work. It is rare however for student to have no ability to sketch or draw or make by hand as an integral part of their practice. It is interesting therefore to see through an elective course such as Mapping the City, and one drawing students from across the range of postgraduate programmes, how students use digital media and techniques and to what end.

Sally Stewart UK 295 Early on it became apparent that the rst point of departure for many students on projects or tasks is the Internet search. Information is readily available but the problem becomes how to sift and evaluate it, how to become conscious of the sifting that has already gone on on your behalf by the algorithm (many students were unaware of this). The source of information and therefore the provenance of that information becomes a key issue. Questioning and interrogating information, opinions and facts became a concern for students particularly where it was data they were coming across for the rst time or in the case of Glasgow, a context which they were largely unfamiliar with. Fact checking, seeking corroboration, researching more systematically more perhaps with some skepticism have become more common and visible as the course goes on. . If the information exists on a Google map it must be correct, mustn’t it? As the students realise that it is not the tutor’s role to correct their work they have taken more responsibility for this themselves and even developed a lack of tolerance for their peers how do not and who compromise in this. The issue is not one of getting something wrong, but rather how to ensure you have con dence on the evidence you build your arguments on. So information becomes triangulated, anomalies are exposed rather than being suppressed, robust methods of working are shared. Another aspect of digital work, its nish or gloss, was also a cause of discussion. While our eye becomes more accustomed to the clarity and qualities of digitally generated images and drawings we take this quality as an indication of authority and authenticity. As our use of, and reliance on computers and the internet increases, it is easy to forget these are just tools and lters of reality, rather than reality itself. Rather than with the digital, the issue lies with us, and our expectations. In the case of work generated through the elective course, as students became more comfortable with the lack of an single prescribed type of output and aware that dierent media were used in quite dierent ways dependant on the authors core discipline, there was more evidence of trying dierent forms of output depending on the nature of the task, or as a way of diversifying from their habitual media. This worked in both directions - while one student who has little con dence in his own drawing skills and had been wholly reliant on manipulating images through Photoshop began to enjoy the freedom and the rough but ready nature of his own drawing, while others posted (and therefore published) video and images on the internet for the rst time, buoyed by the feedback form complete strangers – a new form and experience of peer review. An awareness of these issues, and the desire to respond to them emerged through time.

Tasks and Provocations Any attempt to map the city cannot be reliant on one approach alone. The task at hand it too complex, too subtle and too varied. As Roland Barthes notes “This city can be known only by an activity of an ethnographic kind: you must orientate yourself in it not by book, by address, but by walking, by sight, by habit, by experience...” (Barthes, p. 36). The task for the tutor is to imaginatively construct a sequence of activities that in their execution them might bring the student closer to generating their own image of the city. The sequence oered through Mapping the City is not exhaustive, but subject to change, being added to and altered along the way depending on the success or otherwise of each proceeding task. Success being measured in this case by the lev-

296 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture el of interested generated in the students and the work it provokes. In many instances, students through thoughtful deployment of the digital, produced highly engaging and innovative solutions to the problem set. The following are a selection of the activities undertaken and the responding work.

Route through the city The rst session involves the group undertaking a guided city walk, the starting at the School of Art itself and weaving through the grid iron Blythswood area to the downtown ending at the Lighthouse, centre for architecture and design, both starting point and nish being buildings by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. As the walk progresses we rewind Glasgow’s history traced through our surrounding building and public realm, the pavement, the facades and the skyline. Students were asked to make a map of the route or a similar one of their own devising. One student through tracking Google street view discovered it was possible to undertake the route in its entirety purely using this the still images this provided, and by combining them as a stop animation producing a lm of the walk. The result became the rst of a series of Vimeo posts (Haddad, J). Another when retracing the walk became aware of the level of scrutiny by CCTV cameras apparently everywhere. At their response was to produce a map of the cameras to highlight their extent and the level of surveillance going on. However the map itself suggested producing a new route between the starting and end point where the walker disappeared from view, using lanes and alleys to achieve the same result, albeit below the radar.

Derive/ drift Students were required to undertake a form of drift or derive the sense of which is prompted by a text by Guy Debord, beginning from a given but unfamiliar point in the city. In this form the drift has few but important rules. It is a collaboration where the movement not of the pair of drifters is not arbitrary but based on discussion and agreement. The resulting journey is documented with a single use camera, with each change of direction being logged with one shot, and where no editing is possible. No other devices, digital cameras, phones etc are allowed thus reducing the potential of constant editing, way nding and revising of image, direction degree of disorientation. In eect a challenge to encounter the city by letting yourself get lost. One couple discovered that they were unable to follow the route suggested by their surroundings form a starting point south of the river by Ibrox, an area of the city inux and awaiting regeneration. The visible became the unobtainable as landmarks with their power of suggestion and visual cueing became cut adrift from the original street pattern and grain. Having mapped their journey on a contemporary map they then layered earlier versions revealing the extent of change in the sense of the place and well as the physical fabric.

Sequences and sequencing Explorations were made into the nature of sequences of drawings, where activities dependant on a strict or de ned order could be replicated by illustrating the key ac-

Sally Stewart UK 297 tions or points of transition. Working from the graphic cook strips of Len Deighton, initial sequences tested every activities as varied as dancing a salsa to making hot sauce or walking through a well know place. Animation allowed the drawings or photos to come to life, given a pace and timeframe and the potential for looping, re-sequencing and reanimation. This oers one technique to revisit the city to a fragment of it and to revise its scenograph and reshape the experience of moving through it.

Series The potential for a series of images to provide a description of place was prompted by the wood block Ukiyo-e prints of Hiroshige with One hundred Famous Views of Edo made between 1797-1858 and the Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji by Hokusai in the seven years form 1826. More than just a succession of images, the two series structured round a single rule or conceit – the former recording and celebrating the diversity of life and activity in a city through images selected for their opportunity to display such characteristics, a type of loose survey, or the later anchored by a single visual constant with an ever changing foreground. Just as Hiroshige has used this opportunity to play with composition and graphic quality, which provoked Van Gogh to repaint one view to better understand its structure (Plum Blossom in Kameido Park, no.30, Spring sequence, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1957, (copied by Vincent Van Gogh as Japonaiserie: Flowering Plum Tree, 1887), so student within a series of twenty ve images were asked to de ne a series which had a particular resonance with them, and compose images in any medium that captured the qualities they were inuenced by. The results ranged from a distinctly non digital series of rubbings exploring the surface quality of Glasgow stonework by someone better acquainted with a brick built city, to a series of images of the Newbery tower, a part of the GSA campus and Glasgow skyline about to disappear, a record of something whose loss is imminent- as a test of where can be seen from, what opportunities this framing device or rule allows the series author to explore. The task allowed an extended or sustained engagement with the subject, the possibility of narrative or suspense and surprise, cutting and editing, a cycle, capable of shuing or a redux. In presenting and discussing the work, the opportunity arose to consider whether or not recon gure or re order the series, to re-hang in response to comment and any emerging hierarchy with it. Although one of the most straightforward tasks, the multiple proved one with potential for varied interpretation and purpose.

Narrative vs non Narrative The narrative task involved the plotting of mapping of a city or city fragment described at second hand in a text, fact or ction. Having warmed up though the proceeding challenges students provided many highly imaginative approaches to both the choice of text and the means of mapping. Some borrowed the banal to map the extraordinary such a swat analysis to map Paris as described in Hemmingway’s “A Moveable Feast”, or a paper sculpture capable of being endlessly recon gured to follow the waxing and waning of the Macando as described in” One Hundred Years of Solitude“ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One recurring theme the student came up

298 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture against is that narratives are seldom completely linear, and indeed many of the plots lent themselves to non linear narrative systems commonly found n game play and web design.

Conclusions & Observations Having originally designed the elective and with it in its third cycle I freely admit that it oers the chance for me to learn as much from the students as they learn from me or each other. If we had to produce a common reection of the work a coda might be added to the title, hybridizing techniques and ideas. As the discussion as evolved so has the process with the result that our research cycle had evolved form the original one: Task /show & tell, to include three iterations: Task /show & tell / reect /represent/ reect use for own personal folio and practice. As for the digital, we are limited in its use only to the extent that we imagine how to apply it intelligently and innovatively. If we can remember this then the human and digital need not be in opposition.

Postscript While in Chania this summer I heard an anecdote that seems an appropriate way to end. I hope Gunnar Parelius doesn’t mind me sharing it.

“At a meeting of the Nordic Group in Lund Peter Kjær told me how he nds his way when in Lund (he is an external examiner in Lund). He tries to go in a (slightly) dierent direction each time and when suciently confused he looks up to nd the cathedral (visible from most places) and then can head straight to the hotel.”

It seems to sum up our ambiguous relationship between allowing we to get lost and need to orient ourselves again.

References

Bathes, R., Empire of Signs, 1983, Hill & Wang. Debord, G, “ Theorie de la derive” Internationale Situationniste no.2. K. Knabb. (1981). Situationist International Anthology. Ed. K. Knabb. Berkeley: Bureau of Public Se- crets. http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/index.htm Deighton, Len, Basic French Cookery Course, London, 1979, Jonathan Cape. Harmon, K. , You are here; Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, 2003, Princeton Architectural Press. Miller, H. (1957). Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, New York: New Directions, 1957. Haddad, Jerrick, Mapping the City Project 1, http://vimeo.com/20057458, last accessed November 2011.

Sally Stewart UK 299 Fig. 1 Still from Glasgow City walk as retraced through Google Street View. Jerrick Haddad, January 2011. http://vimeo.com/20057458

Fig. 2 Drift prompted by “Theory of the Derive”, starting point Govan Underground station recorded on single use camera. Sam Kollmeyer and Sunwang Myuang, February 2011.

Fig. 3 Sequence for making Hot Sauce, stills from stop animation. Jerrick Haddad and Daniele Sambo. Posted on Vimeo. http://vimeo.com/20610163

Fig. 4 Plum Blossom in Kameido Park, no.30, Spring sequence, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1957 (copied by Vincent Van Gogh as Japonaiserie: Flowering Plum Tree, 1887). Hiroshige.

300 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Fig. 6 View of Fudo Falls in Oji, no.49, Summer se- Kinryuzan Temple, Asakusa, no 99, Winter sequence, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, quence, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1957-59. 1856-57. Hiroshige. Hiroshige.

Fig. 7 Mishima Pass in Kai Province, No.33, Thirty Six View of Mount Fuji. Hokusai.

Fig. 8 Honjo Tatekawa, the timber yard at Honjo, no.37, Thirty Six View of Mount Fuji. Hokusai.

Sally Stewart UK 301 Fig. 9 A sketch of the Mitsui shop in Suruga, Edo, no. 11, Thirty Six View of Mount Fuji. Hokusai.

Fig. 10 One Hundred views of New Tokyo, Takujoshha - the ‘On the Table Group’ 1928-32 Kabuki at night, Fujimon Shizuo.

Fig. 11 Red Gate of Tokyo University in Early Summer, 1929, One Hun- dred Views of New Tokyo. Fujimori Shizuo.

302 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 12 Ginza, 1929, One Hundred Views of New Tokyo. Kawakami Sumio.

Fig. 13 Subway, 1931, One Hundred Views of New Tokyo. Maekawa Senpan.

Fig. 14 Studies of the Newbery Tower, Glasgow School of Art, from a limited Series of twenty images. Daniele Sambo, March 2011.

Sally Stewart UK 303

Luigi Foglia Renata Valente

Dipartimento di IDEAS Industrial Design, Ambiente e Storia, Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli Italy Rethinking the Public Space for Urban Intensive Performance Places The Disciplinary Approach The interest of Technology of Architecture in the world of Information Technology has traditionally been developed by studying the control of the entire building process in programming, design, construction and management, following the changes that occurred with the development of dedicated tools, both hardware and software, favor- ing reection on the outcomes of performance induced from time to time, rather than about the formal impacts on architectural products. Another aspect characterizing this particular architecture scienti c branch has always been the consideration of complex issues competing to inform the design process and therefore of the contemporary presence of objective aspects, such as the terms of the context in which the project goes to inuence, along with the whole of aspects related to subjective perception. Therefore, on the basis of this tradition, the interpretation proposed in our research for a good use of IT is the study of a computerized decision-making process through which the human element is taken in great consideration from the point of view of fruition and perception. We have chosen some time the scope of the redevelopment of urban open spaces, wanting to nd directions to the sustainable design of equipment dedicated to users of such sites. We believe it is possible to have an adaptive architecture in which the human being’s presence is more decisive and inuential, as in our research the eects of components on the man habitat determine the appropriate design decisions. Our contribution starts from considering how the evolution of the urban environment, characterized by constant and increasing disorder, make gradually lose the speci c role of open spaces, which have historically been the focus of aggregating public and social life and now incur marked abandonment processes. We believe that, in widespread as in settled cities, it is necessary to reinterpret these places - both in semantic and environmental terms- so they can set up and drive new assets for evolution of urban public life, thanks to the opportunities oered by Information Technology. To- day it is up to new agoras to trace and materialize, the strati cation of the complex system of networks and connections (energy, environmental, social, economic) that constitute the epicenters of the main hubs of a renewed urban environment attitude. In this context the re-appropriation of open public spaces oers the chance of a performance reinterpretation, based on the study of new human needs. For this objective, the contribution of Information Technology is essential to systematize and to successfully relate the dierent aspects of phases, both of analysis or design and in general of the entire building process.

Proposal for an Applied Research Method Opportunity to develop these considerations is the research entitled “The systemic integration of renewable technologies in the built environment”, inside which the local unit of the Second University of Naples studies experiments in urban voids, applying by inductive methods interpretations of public space framework proposed by Envi- ronmental Design and working to use computer systems. Because the social and technological changes aect the way of current attend- ance of public open space, determining consequences of usage requirements become more complex, the group is studying a place of Aversa (Caserta, Italy), where, in consonance with the international scienti c literature, the urban space is read by the

306 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture superimposition of layers, expressing reading physical data, material and uses, as well as mapping of physical and meteorological conditions. Actually we believe that the contemporary technological means may assure a value-based responsive architecture as it is demonstrated from using the computer application of GIS type, which later we would like could give even value based selection criteria on design speci cations.

Fig. 1 Example of diuse solar radiation mapping for Piazza Diana in Aversa (CE, Italy) made with software Townscope by R. De Martino (from A. Bosco, R. De Martino, “Percezione e riconoscibilita’ degli spazi aperti urbani. Approccio metodologico e strumenti”, in Proceedings of International Conference S.A.V.E. Heritage IX International Forum Le Vie dei Mercanti, edited by C. Gambardella, La Scuola di Pitagora editrice, Naples, 2011).

To nd vocations and priorities, we are working on creating a computer graphic map, that would report through the GIS the contextual conditions, along with the current needs of the users of the open space, on the basis of any analysis carried out according to a survey protocol we are implementing. The needs are checked under the light of contemporary social conditions and technological uses, referring to experiences already carried out on a national scale. For this purpose, we study the transformative dynamics of places, developing the analysis of kinetic assets related to the times of day and seasons, to identify streams and pro les and to imagine architectural design solutions that can continuously transform through the management of information systems, as environmental conditions vary. In this sense, the possibility of an intelligent and responsive architecture revolutionizes also construction systems, that from static become dynamic and changing, thanks to proposals of convertible solutions of micro-architectures. These discuss even the rmitas through new approaches that would not prepare ready-made solutions, only apparently free to be modi ed. In addition, the transition from the conception of open spaces as passive energy systems - terminal elements of the energy network – towards active and highly com-

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 307 plex systems - nodes with ows into and out - leads to rethink relationships that develop between space and energy in the direction of a “dematerialization” of components, also through the use of Information Technologies. We actually believe we have to create self-sucient hubs, inter-connected or o grid, which meet the system requirements found in favor of integrability criteria of use and function. By respecting the needs classes identi ed, the user is considered as the heart of the design and management processes and we propose to him the experience of a hybrid space (hyper-fruition) through IT support, that crosses the traditional building process (programming, design, construction, use), allowing to manage data related to the uses, the permanences, the use of space, once interventions are implemented. IT makes possible to provide as well as information processes also the automation of the architectural spaces, in which the user’s physical and emotional interactions with place aren’t denied, not compromising perception and emotion, but oering support for them. The outcome of our research will be the development of a cognitive tool (GIS), which collects data from both existing software programs as well as two new tools built by the research group: a smart protocol to analyze urban open spaces and a database format, that is being tested for the identi cation of appropriate project requirements. The research team suggests, nally, an additional tool to support design decisions, where, through the Preliminary Design Document of Sustainable Urban Open Spaces, a new format for design brief raises the single professional from costly investigations. In this sense, the contribution of information technology is intended to aid and address the design decisions, rather than through architectural artifacts modeling software. This is a chance to develop a new language, from the perspective of maximum energy eciency, to enhance integrability of languages and uses, con guring interactive areas, highly inclusive, real augmented spaces, rich in perceptual stimuli and interactive capabilities suit to become core elements of the new urban contemporary, creating new social identi cations.

Intensive Autonomous Performance Spaces These strategic choices allow the creation of spaces that we have de ned intensive autonomous performance spaces, with new emerging qualities and extensible potentials, closely related to the alternative/innovative way of use, characterized by four main aspects:

- Fullest possible integration of existing equipment in volumes and surfaces, enhanced by assimilating capabilities and raising the performing possibilities, using the opportunities oered by IT, - Convertibility of the same physical equipment, designed and tested through the application of IT models, - Dynamics of these spatial con gurations powered by the integration of technologies for the production of energy from renewable sources, - Performativity, providing a direct bene t, even of information, and through this, causing new participatory relationship between users and location, giving value to the relational outcomes in terms of induced actions.

308 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture We are studying the possibility of an architectural production receptive to sensations of the human being which will inhabit it with the project for micro-architectures in urban open space, aimed at creating conditions of cultural, social and emotional aggregation, real sensitive spaces, as we are convinced of the need of the political role of project for public spaces in the city. This belief was reected, for example, in the recent contribution of Pedro Gadanho (2011), which reminds

“Long before the public monuments of art were subsumed from emerging of street art, performance art was in many ways, the rst edge to investigate the political dimension of the road. And its teachings-by Wodiczko homeless vehicles to structures illegally invaded by Matta-Clarke, the cabins body of Lucy Orta to urban occupations by Trisha Brown-are sources of inspiration for a generation that believes in transitional urban actions aimed at the communities rather than enduring monuments to corporate powers.” “The real architects must become not only versatile producers of culture and everyday programmers […] of the city. They must also become true experts of the road.”

And still on the performative dimension (Gadanho, 2007):

“Thus, the notion of performance must also retain a cultural dimension. Accepting architecture as cultural production, its performative dimension must also contribute to a critical role, that is, to architecture’s capacity to produce commentary regarding the ongoing transformations of culture and society.”

Our proposal for urban open spaces with intensive autonomous performance is based precisely on the premise of using advanced information technology to protect architecture from becoming a consumable, self-complacent object, but rather by exploiting information technologies for the diagnosis of needs and to develop their system and project requirements, as well as inclusion in the bene ts oered to users. The idea is based on performative spaces, where special conditions of exchange and social inclusion take place, generating meetings and discussions, highlighting aspirations, cultural attitudes and values emerging from social life. Our aim is to scienti cally de ne what are the requirements characterizing these intensive autonomous performance spaces, to fed the results into the complex studio tool for Sustainable Urban Open Spaces. This reection has led us to study how to prepare a data base with the criteria that will allow continue implementation and sharing, for information relating to contiguous urban places, also to facilitate the redesign of the connective tissue of the city, meant as a network of eco-technological corridors (Ca- tani and Valente, 2008).

The De nition of Requirements This new way of considering open urban space implies a complex framework of requirements, reported to both management and fruition needs classes identi ed for open spaces in publications already consulted (Dessì, 2008; Valente 2010) and also new parameters on the research of which we are interested in investigating. In fact, there isn’t a case study typology identi ed as appropriate to describe such spaces in today’s scenario reported to design and construction practices. Therefore we have de-

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 309 cided to refer to “features” or “peculiarities” of paradigmatic examples that have been helpful to construct the concept of intensive autonomous performance spaces. Here we present a part of the research, section in which we make the eort to extract concepts for the topic of interest, to point out new incentives for the project. In search of both descriptive and prescriptive de nitions we have prepared an informatics sheet, useful to carry out screening of the projects that have been chosen each time for some of the aspects related to our goal and thus to be able to extrapolate useful features to build a sort of identikit. This last is composed of a broad framework descriptive of complex and hybrids requirements we are seeking. We worked, therefore, on the study of the outcomes induced by the presented projects, trying to gure out what and how many levels of consequences they could determine. The iteration of these operations, made choosing projects based on traditional or innovative and computing technologies, delivers an intelligent tool that can be implemented in time, where topics researches are possible to help both in the identi cation of directions of project for similar conditions, and in the control of the sustainability requirements of other already built solutions. The mosaic of features identi ed, properly arranged for families, is already suitable to some considerations: we can reect on the recurrence of certain features or on the frequent absence of some other, combining these observations to the environmental conditions determining such evidences, reasoning to deduce the right consequences in terms of need or inappropriateness. The contribution of IT to architectural design in this case is to aid the construction of the concept, in outlining the needs resulting from similar sites, their uses and users, suggesting helpful appropriate meta-design strategies. Moreover, the study of the requirements of this particular type of urban scenario starts from some intuitions, by at- tachment to cultural beliefs on performance architecture, to the need for new sensory scenarios, also inuenced by the theories of Andrea Branzi (2006). So the experiment to use information technology goes towards the wish of being able to get new types of requirements through the application of fuzzy logic to the GIS system, that may suggest unpredictable strategies for the project and provide families of unexpected requirements, by processing all types of data received on the site in question. Our interpretation against the disappearing of human being importance is therefore represented by the proposal of intensive autonomous performance spaces, which induce positive social and cultural processes through performativity, to rethink architecture critically responsive to user needs. In this sense, the metaphorical image that we advance as a reference is the aid that arti cial intelligence can give to stimulate and catalyze the natural urban intelligence (M. Pogoreutz, 2006) and the spontaneous creativity existing in the contemporary city.

Study for an Identikit This section proposes a study in progress aimed at nding the distinctive qualities able to identify the independent intensive performing spaces. The identikit structure is based on compilation of a reading card of case studies speci cally selected. The purpose is the identi cation of the output elements (features) that de ne the distinctive qualities able to describe the functioning of the developmental aspects and the potentials for a new concept of urban open spaces, providing the designer with an eec-

310 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture tive supporting tool. This study will adopt a reading method primarily focused on the outcomes induced by performed interventions. This is obtained by considering, in a synergistic way, architecture, place and modality of use. Then the resulting processes are analyzed and related to each other by a feedback reading method, focused on the eects that architecture produces in the use of public spaces. The case studies analyzed by the use of the Reading Cards are carefully selected according to parameters speci cally identi ed and listed below:

- Carried out works; - Components of the urban open space; - Variable set-up.

It is important that the selected case studies relate to carried out works. In this way the real outcomes induced on places and on diversi ed ways of use can be monitored, by referring not to predictions based on projects but to real data. It is also necessary that case studies are selected from the components of urban open space (Valente, 2010) and based on the interaction level with environmental systems and subsystems in the public space (RUE Regione Emilia Romagna, 2006). The basic research target is the development of a model for innovative urban open spaces, characterized by multi- functionality and adaptability to the variability of the anthropic and environmental context, as well as by exibility in the use. For this reason it is appropriate that the analyzed works are also selected according to their adaptability and exibility qualities highlighted by a variable set-up. A variable set-up frequently involves the choice of the small scale, including an experimental research on space. The small scale interventions, according to the founder of Micro Architecture Group Munich Richard Horden, offer suggestions for the de nition of space/architecture identi ed by an “experimental and technologically advanced quality, variable, shaped and open, adaptable and recycla- ble for uses and materials” (2008).

Analysis Card Structure This section illustrates the reading card structure for a synthetic organization of knowledge and data come from the analysis. The reading card here proposed represents a model for expeditious investigation, but not reductive, which is still being tested. The reading card structure (Fig. 2) embraces a exible and open nature, implementable and easily modi able on the basis of future detail levels. To ensure an ecient reading, the card is organized on a graphical base that can be immediately interpreted. Data and knowledge are organized in a hierarchical model in which are considered the speci c aspects grouped by classes and categories. The rst phase of research is de ned by the Passport, in which we aim at providing a tool for immediate recognition and location of the intervention. Here we present the elements able to describe a synthetic-descriptive picture of intervention and the useful elements for a quick overview. The parameters taken into consideration are:

- Identifying code, name, icon; - Image-logo; - Designers, place, year.

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 311 Fig. 2 Reading Card structure, composition and operability.

In a second level of analysis, Typology, we refer to the characteristics that rule the types of intervention. Here we aim to analyze the speci c function of the analyzed project, related with the environmental system in which it is placed. We refer to the classi - cation applied in the Urban Building Regulations (RUE Emilia Romagna, 2006) of the municipalities in the Italian Region Emilia Romagna, following attached (Table 1). We also aims to identify the categories of the elements and components of environmental micro-landscape design (Valente, 2010). The parameters here considered are:

- Intended use; - Subsystem link; - Type of components.

Then, in section Schedule, are analyzed and related to the temporal aspects of intervention program and the diversi ed uses. They are therefore considered the permanence times (Valente, 2010) and the use period. In brief, the parameters here considered are:

- Permanence; - Time use.

In the Outcomes section is presented a reection carried on an innovative interpretation that doesn’t derive from the analysis of the object itself but from the system analysis and from the relationships that develop between architecture, site, users. At

312 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Table 1 Environmental subsystems of public space list, RUE Emilia Romagna 2006.

Table 2 Table of the needs, requirements and performance indicators for urban open space. (1) in Dessì, 2007; (2) in ITACA Protocol, 2004; (3) in Valente, 2010; (4) by the author.

this scale are considered the types of public space users following the intervention as a rst indicator of levels of use. Then are analyzed the performed needs based on the model oered by UNI 8289, conjugated to urban open spaces. Among the seven needs classes proposed by normative, it was opted to focus a speci c attention on classes: Aspect, Usability, Comfort and Integrability (Table 2). In a next step the uses of space are analyzed and related before and after intervention. This reading mode,

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 313 based on the list of principal uses detected in the public space (RUE Emilia Romagna, 2006), aims at highlighting the inuence of intervention on use modality of a selected area. The parameters here considered are:

- Principal users; - Performed needs; - Previous principal uses of space; - Following principal uses of space.

Table 3 Taxonomy of the features found in the analyzed projects.

314 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture In conclusion, the reading card presents in its lower part the Features section. Features represent the synthetic pro le of the speci c qualities detected in the case studies analyzed. Each identi ed feature de nes a speci c potentiality or an evolution chance of the structure of urban open spaces for the development of an innovative model, characterized by multi-functionality and adaptability to the variability of the anthropic and environmental context, as well as by exibility in the use. The combination of features detected in each case study nally composes the mosaic, organized in a exible and implementable logic, which describes the identikit for independent intensive performing spaces. In this incremental layout, resulting features are organized into diversi ed theme groups. The result is therefore a mosaic able to describe the speci c evolutive characteristics, able to monitor frequency and recurrence of data. Just the frequency and recurrence of features in diversi ed examples related to the design practice can identify the highlights, or constants that are repeated several times. A double interpretation of the phenomenon can follow the repetition of these constants. On one side we can highlight the relative quality status achieved in the current design practice, on the other side, a low frequency of data in certain areas may indicate aspects (probably because innovative or problematic) to be further developed in the current design practice.

Projects and Developmental Perspectives In this section we report the analysis worked out through the reading cards which are applied to two speci c case studies: the Storefront fort Art and Architecture and the GreenPix Mediawall (Fig. 3). Working with the artist and designer Vito Acconci, Steven Holl designs for Store- front for Art and Architecture, a nonpro t gallery on Kenmare Street in Lower Manhat- tan, a concrete board facade with pivoting panels used as doors, windows, seating and shelves in endless combinations. In this project Steven Holl has explored an approach to design in which walls, oors and ceilings function as permeable membranes. GreenPix (Zero Energy Media Wall) is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital media technology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympics. Featuring a color LED display and a photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall, the building performs as a self-sucient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle.

Although both analyzed projects show shared characteristics and belong to the same category of urban open space components, the outcomes reading of case studies shows aspects of a dierent nature. The architecture of the Storefront Gallery, in his representation of an analogical process, implies a direct involvement of users in the shape modi ability. The mechanical modi ability direct by the users, in satisfaction of their needs, involves a physical and emotional real involvement. The user, in fact, starts a deep sensory relationship with the building that involves all the senses. The not independent sensitivity of the building is manifested in the adaptation of its mechanical structure by the users. It is basically the user to decide the shape change and the building will its support.

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 315 Fig. 3 Analysis of two selected projects using the Reading Cards.

In GreenPix Mediawall interaction occurs primarily through a visual ow of light and colours. The intelligent facade captures solar energy during the day and then reuses to change constantly its layout. The modi ability level shows itself in the two dimensions of the front plane that emotionally interacts with users through a continuous unidirectional ow of graphic information. The user does not interact directly with the building. The facade excites, communicates, tells about events, casts images

316 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and describes its use level. The exchange occurs with the external environment and indirectly with the users inside the building. In this project, whose functioning is set on information technology, the involvement of the user is not kinaesthetic but visual. Consequently, the level of interaction can be partial. The resulting read shows in this case that the interactivity levels are not directly related to the increase of technology in design processes and management. The key to understanding the phenomenon is given mainly by the mode of integration between architectural space and electronic content. To make space intelligent it is necessary to give to the machine a body, or provide spatial intelligence. It is important that the new concept of computerization replaces a classical-analytical logic with logic of senses; a concept of physic space, or a space able to feel its changes, able to show a contextual sensitivity and to react using appropriate behaviours. What we are describing now is the current progress level of an analytic and inclusive model which, though it is still being tested, shows a strongly developmental feature. Considered the organizational structure, the reading card here proposed can be used as a support to the elaboration of a computerized system for a hierarchical research, which can be an useful interface tool between the production world and the project one. According to the analysed characteristics, this model describes an export- able process for a computerized reading of data through the modality of the Informa- tion Technology. We believe that it should be important to draw a process based on complex models which however can take into consideration developmental logics linked to the unforeseen (fuzzy logics). This is the reason why we think that it should be crucial to support the human component within the process described here, so that it can intervene and settle the organization of the computerized logics for the reading/project of intensive performing urban open spaces.

Acknowledgments

This paper refers to the Research Work PRIN08 entitled “The systemic integration of renewable technologies in the built environment”, Research Program of National Main Interest, National Coordina- tor G. Scudo. The Local Team Unit of Second University of Naples consists of Mariarosaria Arena, Antonio Bosco, Raaela De Martino, Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente and is led by Sergio Rinaldi. Renata Valente has edited paragraphs from 1 to 4, Luigi Foglia has edited paragraphs from 5 to 7.

References

Bauman, Z., 2008. Modernità liquida. Bari: Laterza. Branzi, A., 2006. Modernità debole e diusa. Il mondo del progetto all’inizio del XXI secolo. Milano: Skira. Catani, M., and Valente, R., 2008. Intorno alle autostrade urbane. Around Urban Highways. Firenze: Alinea. Dessì, V., 2007. Progettare il comfort urbano. Napoli: Sistemi Editoriali Gadanho, P., 2011. Ritorno nelle strade ovvero l’ascesa della Performance architecture, Domus, 950, pp. III. Gadanho, P., 2007. Architecture as Performance, Dédalo, 02.

Luigi Foglia, Renata Valente Italy 317 Holl, S., 2000. Parallax, New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Horden R., 2008. Micro Architecture: Lightweight, Mobile and Ecological Buildings for the Future. London: Thames & Hudson. Iacovoni, A. and Rapp, D., 2009. Playscape. Mel : Libria. Palumbo, M. L., 2001. Nuovi ventri. corpi elettronici e disordini architettonici. Roma: Testo&Immagine. Pogoreutz, M., 2006. Urban Intelligence, in: Haydn, F., and Temel, R., ed. 2006. Temporary Urban Spaces Concepts for the Use of City Spaces. Basel: Birkäuser, pp. 75-80. Regione Emilia Romagna, 2010. Regolamento Urbanistico Edilizio (RUE). Sennet, R., 1992. The conscience of the eye. The design and social life of cities. New York: Norton. Valente, R., 2010. Environmental Design. Napoli: Liguori.

318 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture (Re)thinking a Critically Responsive Architecture

Christian Drevet

Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’ Architecture de St Etienne France Form and Information Contemporary architecture undertook a production of projects and realizations re- questioning the traditional values of the discipline about the question of the form in relation with the space, the time, the material, the scale, the place, the arti cial, the language, the geometry, the composition, with new preoccupations as the complexity, the plurality, the movement, the instability, the fragmentation, the peculiarity, the immediacy, the ubiquity...

Indeed, times have changed:

- Classic times were circular and turned to a sacred past. Architecture, led by the metaphysical “humanities”, obeyed motionless orders and predetermined gures. Form was then frozen for ever. - Modern times were oriented towards an ideal future. The architecture, seeking for perfection, change, progress, and ful llment obeyed to dogmas of purity and universality. Form was then crystallized. - Contemporary times appear in a continuous way in the present in a short-lived immediacy. The architecture, without the symbols of past neither the utopias of future, deforms, decomposes, deconstructs, transforms, surpasses and creates permanently without nalizing, nor even capitalizing. Form remains open and suspended.

The deep change in this new “Gestalt” is doubtless the end of the “Great Histories”, the gures and the dogmas and the passage, from a transcending work plan for architecture, to an immanence one. The end of the sacred past and the ideal future, which is very similar, for the merging present: a kind of existential pragmatism.

Informative Society The loss of references and models, that they are past or future, learned or popular, conceptual or traditional, opens the passage to “the inde nite”. It opens to the knowledge of “what arrives” as says Paul Virilio, as it were the current events of the present to feed the action and the creation. So, it opens to the indispensable information. This radical but progressive evolution of the behavior of the individuals to the world does not coincide, as we can believe it, with the development of the digital technology but appears in a very previous way. The informative society indeed appears in a concomitant and interdependent way with the second industrial revolution. It is the density and the complexity generated by the spectacular increase of the volumes of production of goods, the acceleration of the material and immaterial exchanges and nally the beginning of the economic globalization, on the American model, which produced the necessity of a new mode of management of the enormous quantities of data and information generated by the industrial and commercial society.

The social models inherited from the sacred past or idealized future oering a vision simpli ed and pure seem exceeded and no more in phase with the reality and every-

322 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture day life. It is this coincidence of the hard and the soft, of the economic and the existential which make irreversible the advent of a society based on the information. Then, it is the informative society which made possible and generated the digital era and not the opposite. However the digital revolution associated de nitively the communication with the information by becoming one of its major vectors because it is only through its circulation that the information acquires a real social impact.

Moreover, in French «computing» is called «informatique».

In the contemporary world, the couple information / communication with its signs and its codes are going to become a new human condition as important as gravity.

We may arm today that classical space and modern space had been surpassed by informational time space.

Information became an essential component in space discipline as architecture an urban environment. Information has many forms: knowledge, data, education, entertainment, advertising, gossip, blog and so one... Information is in the same time genetic code, context and circumstances of space production. Information is so important that it is in itself an esthetic challenge.

The abandonment of the certainties and the previous orders makes the information indispensable for the vision of the world and the action.

The information and its rst consequence, supra information, simultaneously temporal and plural, produces:

- On the one hand, new complexity, instability and indecision. - On the other hand, a big interaction of impulse and stimuli promoting a sort of existential reactivity which associated with the loss of inhibition and the disobedi- ence to previous orders could generate creativity.

It is important to notice that the apparition of the “informative society” coincides with its dis sedentarization under the inuence of the mobility acceleration. The informative society is thus, somewhere, nomad like and con rms the Deleuzien sliding from the “striated space” (espace strié), as urban grid, to the “smooth space” (espace lisse), as the ocean. On “striated space” navigation is coordinated, on “smooth space”, navigation is sur ng.

The information and the information exchange, according to Norbert Wiener, seem to be an alternative in the entropy of social order and upsetting the ontological status of the human being quite as, according to Paul Virilio, the information constitutes the only links between fragments.

Christian Drevet France 323 The Form in Informative Society In this new deal and in the architecture realm, the relation between form and information appears very simple: “The form is determined by the information, the data coming from the environment where they are” as says Greg Lynn. The space of the conception is imagined as a eld of forces and not as a neutral space receptacle of architectural objects. Form is determined by information like in alive world all the genetic codes as DNA one. May be, that explains the undeniable analogy between new architectural form and the biologic one.

The form arises then from the materialization of the eld of forces which are nothing else than the information and the data. It is, thus, this eld which “in-forms” the architectural design and gives it its form. Moreover, etymologically, inform means to give a form.

The attention of the designer shifted from the architectural object to the information and his interest remained dominant on the process of the morphing rather than on the purely formal or spatial qualities which so remains opened and increases their capacity to produce new experiments for the users.

The new deal is: morphogenesis rather than morphology.

Anyway the outcomes are the same: use informational tools as morphogenesis devices without having to do with form directly, without the “skill hand” without style, without gures, without typology, without aesthetic orders, without symbols. That is surely, in a way, the immanence of the form.

The awareness of the uncertainty, the loss of totality and the fact that information is momentary, in perpetual becoming, nally leads to what we call “no form” or “formless” or informal. Informal must be understood as a form which has lost the “purity”, the simplicity, the symbolism, the sense and signi cation, a form which is not completed and becoming, a form one cannot recognize.

Thus, in a certain way, “Informational times” leads to “informal spaces”.

In fact, things are more complex and not always so direct, contemporary architecture presents a multiplicity of alternative interpreting this relation between information and form. Synthesis is impossible, let us proceed by stakes and values or “plateaus”.

Writing and Dier(a)nce The question of the preliminary information of the form and its nally consequent production, automatic or “machinique” from a driven code lead many designers to resort to an kind of preliminary “writing” of the project determining in advance its morphing in a almost natural way. They use for the philosophic reversal operated by Jacques Derrida with the concept of “ dier (a) nce “ between the writing and the saying establishing that the rst one precedes the second contrary to all the classic metaphysical thoughts.

324 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture On the question of “writing”, we can quote, for example:

- The “textual” matrix preceding the form for Zaha Hadid. Matrix is an organizing fabric. The textual thought establishes new relations between the forms and their environment which constitute a kind of landscape and geography. This approach comes along with an overlapping of the elds of ows and with signs. The Tram- way terminal station in Strasbourg is a clear illustration.

- The “morphing vectors” which generate the “spacing” in analogy with Derrida’s “writing” before the design for Peter Einsenman. The architectural form is envisaged as a moment in a ow and considered as a cutting or a freeze frame congealing the unstable geometry. Answering in a way to the neo-nomadism, the form is inseparable from the eld of forces which generates the geometrical mobility. For lack of being really mobile, the form is said “animated” as Geg Lynn calls it. These co-present cuttings can constitute as a “track” of the trajectory and the successive geometrical transformations of the shape. The track plays then with the question of the writing and constitutes an abstract transparency or a «phenomenal transparency “in which the meaning lies in the generation or the «structure of the shape “. The research work of new architectural dialectics on his houses illustrates perfectly this question, in particular houses 2 and 3.

Fig. 1 Honheim Nord, Zaha Hadid.

Christian Drevet France 325 - The pattern of the “lines” of the places and the construction of “micromegas” with these lines constitute the “writing” of the formal design for Daniel Libeskind. Lines of the motion, lines of views, lines of intention, lines of forces, line of desires. The lines of micromegas restore force of the invisible on the visible. For example, in the Jewish Museum in Berlin, there is a straight line and a zigzag line. The straight line represents what was lost and zig zag line the chaotic course of the Jewish people. In the same way that Egyptian hieroglyphs are made by the intersection of lines between them as the “key of life “, Daniel Libeskind’s architecture establishes almost directly a writing.

- We could speak in the same way about lines of movement which give the form in Enric Miralles design whose action «to comb ows” constitutes an essential component of his work.

Fig. 2 House III, Peter Eisenman.

326 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Micromegas, Daniel Libeskind.

Diagramisation The diagrams are instruments invented by the sciences and used for the compression of the information and meet thus quite naturally in the manufacturing of the «informative form “. The statistical boards or schematic images contain more information than pages of words. They allow, besides, seizing at the same time the detail and the general on the same document of information and, so, enabling to forget the hierarchy which is at the origin of any spirit of composition. Diagrams thus became an approach of the design. The diagram is not a metaphor or a paradigm but an abstract machine which is at the same time content and expression. The diagram avoids the return to typologies, slows down the apparition of the signs and delays the xation of the image. The diagram puts in relation speci cities and organizational systems, connects the micro and the macro.

In the register of “diagramming”, we can quote for example:

- The whole work of UN studio and specially their project “Rubber Mat” in Rotterdam which presents a diagramization associating: value of the ground, situation, built density, density of activity, increase of business, view quality, and crossing with 4 axes of programming: living room, work, fun, landscape. This diagram allows a mobile organization of the future district without trying to make architecture in an academic sense.

Christian Drevet France 327 Fig. 4 Rubber Mat, Un Studio.

- The informative data of Dutch Ranstadt which produce the new urban horizons of the data town and its “datascape” of MVRDV in a pragmatic sublimation connecting “moral” and “normal”. It is here impossible to not speak of Silodam building in which the dwelling modes distribution diagram and the architectural façade are quite one and the same thing.

- The architecture of «relative neutrality” for OMA who questions the programmatic information and transforms it into strategy more than de nitive design or signature in, for example the Central Library of Seattle.

Surface The support of the information is the surface, the sheet, the picture, the matrix, the panel, the screen, the image, the tablet. So, as declares it Jean Nouvel “The spatiality is not crucial any more, the tension between spaces and objects is recorded in the surfaces, in the interfaces”. The thickness and the depth of the Beaux Arts are replaced by the surface, by the multiple surfaces. That is the post modern super ciality. The “hyper surface” account for the convergence between the cyberspace and the architecture, transformed in surface of projection. Surfaces do not de ne any more the space by enclosing it. They generate it as a series of layers which follow their inections. The space is determined by the undula- tions of various plans that compose the project.

To illustrate the notion of surface, we can evoke for example:

- The Cartier foundation in Paris with Jean Nouvel who oscillates between a three- dimensional body and the decomposition surfaces / interface re-questioning the

328 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Silodam, MVRDV.

Christian Drevet France 329 Fig. 6 Fondation Cartier, Jean Nouvel.

Fig. 7 Yokohama Terminal, FOA.

330 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture relationship inside / outside and producing a blurring evanescence between the sky, the building, the garden, the trees and the boulevard Raspail. The bi-dimensionality pulls the “hyper perspective” which is the opposite of the classic perspective with a single base line, a single point of view, a motionless mono vision. It gives the absolute perspective, the “airport eect”.

- The Terminal of Yokohama of Foreign Oce Architects establishes a real interface between the port and the city, between the inhabitants of Yokohama and the foreign visitors, between the local and the global. Interface allowing to pass from a system of codes and information to another and constituting a mechanism of soft integration, a tool of “déterritorialisation / reterritorialisation”, a continued form in a passing milfoil. The surface of the ground folds on itself to produce and contain the progresses of everyone through a public place, from the inhabitant to abroad, from the stroller to the businessman, from the Peeping Tom to the exhibitionist, from the actor to the spectator.

Ubiquity Under the push of information technologies and communication, architecture becomes interface between reality and unreality, between potential and actuation, between physical and virtual con rming the Deleuzian ubiquity between the couples Body / Nature and Brain / Information. As well Toyo Ito thinks that there is a virtual body and its consciousness which coexist with a real body and its sensibility. “The architecture of the wind “, as he names it, consists of the meeting of two bodies and allows passing from a 3D existence to an image.

The media library of Sendaï is one of these points of relation between the body of the primitive man connected to the nature and the consciousness of the modern man who takes part to the electronic world. Between “tubes” where are crossing all the ows as structure, light, ventilation, circulation, information, and settle down new supports of the human ubiquity: the “ elds” which are interfaces between natural and arti cial, material and immaterial. This ubiquity is not stable because our experience of the world is evolving under the eects of the virtuality. Doubtless the immateriality of pixels is going to modify our perception of the materialism of atoms and why not the sensations of Gravity. We can notice, for example, how disturbing is the use of a travelator followed by return in the normal walking.

The Fall of Tectonic and Scale The tectonic and the structure do not any more appear in measure to drive the project and to produce the form. The structure is eectively much related to the former typologies and appears nally as a closed system of composition predetermined and hierarchical.

Christian Drevet France 331 Fig. 8 Sendai Library, Toyo Ito.

The apparition of the form on the screen, resulting in a more or less direct way of the treatment of a coded information, does not need, by no means, technical pre-sizing or structural “recipes”. Namely the same screen is capable with the technical evolutions of the construction to realize about anything afterward. The constructive truth and the high tech belong henceforth to the past. Being given that the tectonic and the structure contributed for many to the de nition of the sizes and the dimensions of the edi ce, it also produces a loss of scale.

As well we can ask:

- What become scale in the “smooth” Deleuzian world of mobility which is, a priori, the instrument of “striated” world? - What does scale mean in a surpassed geometry of ux and movement as for example “draperie”, “blobs” or “entrelac”? - Is there a particular hope for scale in blurring limits and losing totality? A scale could be “becoming”? - Doe Formlessness and morphogenesis posture use any scale?

We can also observe dierent postures in contemporary works as:

- Steven Holl or Zaha Hadid using fractal device in place of human scale in a sort of “multi scale production”. - Enric Miralles using “rhythmic repetitions” of analogical forms as sh, octopus or hairs. - Herzog and De Meuron using “auto similarities” instead of scale in order to singu- larize objects. - Peter Eisenman exhibiting the idea of scale in itself in each architectural experience.

332 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 9 Amsterdam Oces, Steven Holl.

Architectural Patterns Reality can be interpreted in terms of information and “cybernetic” which, according to its theorists as Norbert Wiener, regulate the relationship between the object and the subject. The informative processes as the systems, the introduction, the feedback, the entropy, the circulation, conceptualize itself by visual schemas or organizational

Christian Drevet France 333 Fig. 10 Informational Patterns.

Fig. 11 Natural Patterns.

334 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and phenomenal “patterns”. This patterns which are considered as the direct visual translation of the ows of information nds curiously their formal echoes in terms of in the nature and the alive world, as well in nano, micro or macro dimensions. In a world having lost its gures, these “patterns” become often design patterns for architecture. These patterns are used more as motives or themes than as abstract models. In analogy, we can think at the use of the “arabesque” at the Mongols. The arabesque which served at the same time as expression of their tortuous mentality, as battle plan with false escape and counterattack, as ornament on their carpets or as “patron for their famous bow with double curvature. These design patterns can be used as well as mental structure for the project, as ornament on the surfaces, or as texture for the envelope. These patterns create another relationship with the informative and digital architecture.

We can quite mention here as example the Mercedes Benz Museum designed by UN studio where the organization inside plan clover like evoke an information pattern.

We can also mention the Deutsch bank in Berlin by Franck Ghery using the baroque “dra- peries” as formal showing a particular state of mind between object and subject.

We can also mention the Djeddah Airport by OMA using patterns as motive and ornament.

Fig. 12 Mercedes Benz Museum, Un Studio.

Christian Drevet France 335 Fig. 13 DZ Bank Berlin, Frank Ghery.

Fig. 14 Djeddah Airport, OMA.

336 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Complexity The informative society appeared, like we have seen it, to manage complexity and its digital vectors of treatment and communication have stressed this capacity to allow and produce very complex formal answers that man cannot even imagine himself nor conceive. He can just watch the forms being made. The more information is unexpected and unpredictable the more it is eective, the informative form is in wild quest of the unexpected and the unpredictable. As Zaha Hadid said, there are numerous possible geometries, why to limit itself to only one? Beyond, several major concepts appear with information complexity and help designers to exceed the Euclidian “right” geometry:

- The philosophic concept of the “fold” which supplied an alternative in the fragmentation and in the chaos. - The algorithmic and parametric calculation, which allows producing «inconceivable» forms, creates by experiences and successive modi cations. - The recourse to the “ topological peculiarities “ on the borders of the geometry as, among others, the Moebius strip, the bottle of Klein, the surfaces of Seifert, or the curves of Bezier.

Under these eects conjugated, the form can appear then as a natural “merging” such as one de ned it in nano technology. The possible illustrations are very numerous here:

- Park of relaxation in Torrevieja with Toyo Ito with Bezier curves. - The faculty of music in Graz with UN studio with Klein bottle. - The Littoral Park in Barcelona of FOA with eld parametric production.

Performance Informative tools accompany the process of socialization of the information toward an open system organizing the world on the basis of open knowledge and its activation in the physical world. They accompany the management of the complexity of the real. It is the “performative design process” seeking a sort of meta-optimization as responsive as natural world, using parameters, codes and algorithms. This “intelligent architecture design” explores specially the realm of the use and the material. It comes from new engineering fabrication. One of the most famous examples of performative design process is, may be, in engineering, the F117 stealth ghter American plane working specially during night. The only question we can ask on it is: Why it looks as much like a bat without any prior intention from the engineers.

Nevertheless, we must note that the right use of scienti c tools has however abandoned the pre-determined approaches to turn to inductive and experimental aptitudes. We mention here the trend for morphogenetic process, auto-organization, participation, adaptation for constructing a more natural world. Technology appears to be a sort of second nature.

Christian Drevet France 337 After that, performative architecture can become, without joke a real performance, as it were, a real event for the town as Situationists and Bernard Tschumi claim it. At this moment, architecture will become information itself.

Post Modern Creativity Simultaneously to performative use, informational tools are diverted by the architects from their scienti c determinate spirit and used beyond their limits, “by accident” and as games according to deconstructivist principles. In this way, technology and especially digital tool develop that we call “serendipity”, creative intelligence which is precisely the fact of discovering by chance new answers in the contemporary space time without looking for it. Serendipity appears more and more to be a human intellectual reaction in front of complexity and imposed structure.

Informational tools are a language, so, they can be used as a game, a “game of language”, game of words or more, a game of grammar. These games constitute, in a way, the art of good writing or speaking of the information as it were a rhetoric corpus with NEW gures, as, for example, accumulation, hybridation, assemblage, montage, collage, anamorphosis, disjunction, inversion, repetition, trope, randomization…

In this direction, we can quote for example:

- The hybridization and the morphing of UN studio which open to new creativities in answer to the ows of information and give birth for example to “Manimal” a “photoshoped” crossbreeding between a lion, a snake and a human being. The hybridation of two common things don’t necessarily give a common thing but can creates an exceptional one.

- The random use of the magic square in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion by Toyo Ito.

- The dis-contextualization of objects of daily use, the alteration of scale, largely helped by the machine constitutes a great part of the desire produced by Frank Ghery’s works.

- Informative tools have certainly been a great help to continue the work between “repetition and dierence” for Peter Eisenman especially in Berlin Memorial.

New Materialities In the same way as the post modern world has abandoned the typologies and the models by trying to create “other” forms, it has abandoned traditional and identi ed materials for innovative and not recognizable ones, made on the composite and intelligent mode. The informative society and its Trojan horse, the computer, have anyway changed considerably our experience of the materialism.

338 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 15 Serpentine Gallery, Toyo Ito.

Fig. 16 Memorial, Peter Eisenman.

Christian Drevet France 339 The zoom eect both on the visual and sensorial plan has widely modi ed our perception and the practice of the mouse brought new sensibilities to the material which can become what we desire and when we want.

The supremacy of the surface has often transformed the material into a new sort of ornament with new questions about authenticity. The new materialism is situated at the intersection between, on one hand, the abstract appealing to signs or codes of information and, on the other hand, the “ultra concrete” based on a sharp physical phenomenon perception and its properties.

Architecture has still a very small access to the advanced materials and, most of the time, try only to re-order the materials of the modernity, steel, glass and concrete used in panels.

Fig. 17 Forum 2004, Herzog et De Meuron.

340 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Don’t forget that the main material of “Junk space” of Rem Koolhaas is “placoplâtre”, plaster panel.

On the question of material, it is doubtlessly necessary to quote Herzog and De Meu- ron’s works who confuse form and material. The Suva Bank In Fribourg or the Ware- house Ricola in Mulhouse shows the research for “ambiguity” but at the same time oers the potential for new experiences of reading. The association of the visual and the conceptual, in the thought of Remy Zaugg, tries to reconcile the sensitive and the understandable.

Informative Ambivalences The Informational tools reveal one of the deepest ambivalences of the digital culture which is the universality of the object and the peculiarity of the subject. Indeed, while insuring the mastering and the control of the complexity, it opens to the freedom and to the individual choices. The informative tools insure the dialectic connections between the predictable and the unexpected, the standardization and the peculiarity, the organic and the inorganic, the performative and the sensitive. Informative tools have, by way, big capacity to associate opposite values of post modern age.

Architectural design is the act of creation which has always been driven by dierent thought backstage as, for example, humanities, engineering, romanticism. Each time, it has, of course, dierent consequences on the conception manners. This one, the informational driven architecture, has considerable consequences on the cognitive strategy of the architectural design elaboration.

References

Lynn, G (1999), Animate form, Princeton architectural press. Saggio, A (2008). The revolution in architecture: Thoughts on a paradigm shift. Rome: Carocci. Speaks, M (2005). After Theory. In Architectural Record June Issue. New York: Mac Graw-Hill. Rahim, A (2006). Catalytic formation: architecture and digital design. London: Taylor § Francis. Lynn, G (1999). Animate form. Princeton architectural press, New York. Lynn, G (1998, 2004). Folds, bodies and blobs; collected essays, la lettre volée, Bruxelles. Zellner, P (1999). Hybrid space, Thames and Hudson, London. Berkel, BB, Bos, C (1999). Move, UN Studio and Goose press, Amsterdam. AA.VV.(2004). Emergence: morphogenetic design strategies, AD Pro le 169. Kolaveric, B (2003, 2005) Architecture in digital age: design and manufacturing, Taylor and Francis, New York London. Gibson, JJ (1963). The useful dimensions of sensitivity. American Psychologist, 18, 1-5. Picon, A (2010). Culture numérique et architecture, Birkhauser. Virilio P (2002), Ce qui arrive, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Viener, N (1956), The new landscape in Art and Science.

Christian Drevet France 341

Konstantinos Grivas

Department of Architecture Polytechnic School, University of Patras Greece Constellation Pattern: A Spatial Concept for Describing the ‘Extended Home’ Ubiquitous Technologies “at home” Since 1991, when Mark Weiser introduced the term ubiquitous computing1 there has been extended research, experimentation and innovation on the interaction patterns as well as the material manifestation of pervasive technologies2. Nevertheless, there is a considerable lack of research and reection on the spatial qualities of such technologies, which should be a major area for reection and research for architects. This is an especially critical issue when it comes to integrating pervasive technologies into the domestic realm. The attempt to integrate ubiquitous technologies inside such a psychological- ly and emotionally signi cant place as home should be based on sophisticated, yet natural to man, schemes for the spatial orchestration and the physical manifestation of digital aspects of home-life. We tend to consider domesticated technologies those who have managed to weave seamlessly into daily routine of homely life by acquiring a level of spiritual/emotional signi cance and intimacy. The physicality and spatiality of domestic technologies plays a key role in the process of domestication, which means that architecture needs to respond to this call and develop ways to represent and produce domestic spaces which facilitate “natural” and intimate interactions mediated by ubiquitous technologies. The research, whose basic outline is presented in this paper, is based on the assumption that the traditional concept of the domestic (a physically de ned territory of immediate personal control) is gradually giving way to the emerging concept of the ‘extended home’ (a conglomeration of home-fragments, coded spaces and locations, mediated by technologies), and referring to contemporary domestic spaces as ‘interfaces of intimacy’ aims to highlight this conceptual shift further. In the ‘extended home’, ubiquitous technologies may enhance our intimate relationships with our fragmented domestic places by addressing the three main aspects that de ne all domestic places: a) habits and domestic rituals (a means to reect and express personal identity, a form of bodily memory of spaces), b) intimate communication (use of space as a communication device, emotional “investment” of home), and c) domestic history (manifestation of traces, history and development of identity, autobiographical memories). All of these depend on physical places and space and the meanings humans invest them with. The phenomenological approach to home and especially the work of G. Bachelard3 is a key reference. On the other side the works of M. McCullough4, D. Norman5 and others provide the basic references on the human-centred approach on technologies. The research hypothesis argues that if we spatialize technologies in ways that are analogous to the natural ways by which people –almost eortlessly- produce meaning when using, reading and creating their personal spaces, this may eventually enhance the spiritual side of home, rather than its technological eciency. Finally, the context of the research becomes more complete by drawing references from social sciences (anthropology, psychology, studies on human behaviour and cognition) and creative practices like architecture, design and art.

Technologisation of the Domestic and the “extended home” Concept The debate over the ‘technologisation’ of the domestic realm intensi es as the dissipa- tion of technological mediation in all aspects of homely life is rapidly spreading. Each

344 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 “Domestic” vs “intimate” diagram (K. Grivas, 2007). day a plethora of new domestic technological inventions, ranging from tiny devices to worldwide services, promise to eect major or minor improvements on our domestic lives. Usually, any introduction of new technology into the domestic realm is faced with scepticism, as generally, the act of ‘dwelling’ or ‘residing’ and the notion of technological progress are contradictory to each-other. Actually, most of the technologies that we use today in our domestic life were initially developed for completely dierent purposes. The domestication of technologies6 is a slow process which involves mutual adaptations between technologies, users and their environment. First, technologies become integral part of everyday life and are adapted to meet habitual practices. Secondly, the user and its environment change and adapt accordingly. Thirdly, these adaptations inform the production of the next generation of technologies and services. The domestication of ubiquitous technologies is still in its initial phase, but we may use the feedback from research laboratories that work on this area to contemplate on the consequent stages. William J. Mitchell, in his book ‘City of Bits’7 provides one possible vision of tomorrow’s inhabitation: “So ‘inhabitation’ will take on a new meaning - one that has less to do with parking your bones in architecturally de ned space and more with connecting your nervous system to nearby electronic organs. Your room and your home will become part of you, and you will become part of them.” Psychology has established, long ago, that home is considered as an extension and reection of our own body and spirit8, but recent technological developments make it possible to envision home as a sensorial organ literally connected to our bodies. It is no coincidence that concepts of technological bodies, such as “post-humans” and “cybernetic organisms” hold a privileged position in contemporary culture.9 What characterises both concepts of body is the ideal of interminable connections to everywhere, and the dis-

Konstantinos Grivas Greece 345 posing of any boundaries between our bodies and their environment. Our culture’s vision of the body is directly reecting on our vision for what we call home too, and the opposite. Accordingly, the environment that these technological bodies merge into becomes an ecosystem ruled by laws of connections, coding, and appropriate interfacing.10 The architectural concepts of privacy, thus of boundaries, that reigned the domestic world for centuries is giving way to the idea of domestic space as interface. Domes- tic space, suddenly, becomes dissipated in all other places, and bodies. Architectural exploration that embraces this situation focuses on loose topologies, ephemerallity, and virtuality, as a response to an increasing need for free association and expan- sion11, but with that comes, also, the weakening of existing spatial models, behaviours, and places. Today’s technologically saturated world is characterized by the vast complication of man’s places. All traditional boundaries between here/there, interior/ exterior, body/machine, etc. seem to dissolve and everything extends. The importance is transferred to the in nite connections and interactions between all parts, and all human places -domestic included- may be thought of as interfaces to anywhere, anyone or anything else. Yet, as biological human beings, our territorial (and not only) behaviour still depends on physical space. Physical space and matter are sovereign to our senses. Philosophers12 and scientists have argued, since antiquity, that human reasoning is based on our perception of the physical space and its objects. We have an inherent ability to understand space and spatial models more quickly and more easily than anything else. We navigate through space more naturally than through information and text. We are capable of internalising space, producing a kind of spatial memory that enables us to recall spaces and events quickly with a lot of contextual detail13. We also communicate through spatial behaviours and customs14. The way we position our bodies in space in relation to others is a means of communication by itself. This great variety of intimate forms of spatial communication, with delicate and ne details, some of them we only perceive sub-consciously is valuable and extremely re ned, and our extended homes should bene t from it. Since the traditional hierarchical order of containing, contingent, and homogenous physical boundaries is inadequate to de ne the complexity and multiplicity of space of the ‘extended home’, architecture needs to devise an alternative spatial model that describes it appropriately. The space of the extended home would be better described as a delicate, perplex, and highly individual structuring of ‘coded spaces’ equipped with physical ‘signals’, ‘markers’ or ‘representative objects’, ‘dual or triple’ spaces and ‘constellations’ of those, superimposed or weaved in existing domestic spaces that aord varied interpretations and connections, multiple levels of awareness, of interaction and revealing, and, therefore, various kinds and layers of intimacy. In this context, it seems reasonable to suggest that “successful” domestic technologies should shape themselves in ways that relate to the inherently human ability to read, remember and spiritually connect with architectural space, creating a delicate web of situated intimacies. The production of domestic spaces that integrate ubiquitous technologies naturally and give form to the notion of the extended home-place, described above, may emerge from a systematic study and exploration of the topologies of everyday intimate interactions, physical or digital. Designers may build on the concept of giving presence to remote parts/periods of home by the coded reading of local/present

346 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Two-dimensional subjective mapping of one bedroom at (K. Grivas, 2000).

Fig. 3 Vision of augmented bedroom with rotating bed (K. Grivas, 2001).

Konstantinos Grivas Greece 347 domestic spaces and their activities. This may be eected by simply augmenting the latter with a new family of objects or space- xtures that facilitate this coded reading of other spaces/times, or it may involve the alteration of existing domestic spaces in the level of internal organization, even the deformation of their spatial geometry as a means to multiply the topological codes that the extended home should aord. In all that, it is essential to stress the importance of placing the inhabitant himself as the main creative force in the environment of home. Creativity and intimacy are inextricably linked. Technologists, designers and architects may begin to explore more the openness of their proposals, products, and designs. It appears that one meaningful strategy for creating intimate habitable environments supported by ubiquitous electronic technologies might be the outcome of cross-fertilization between: a) a study of spatial languages – by default an object of architectural & design inquiry – and systems for locating and manifesting digitally mediated events in domestic spaces based on the inherent human abilities of internalizing space through habits and memories, b) a post-optimal15 approach that values the performative –poetic at times– attributes of electronic media, as opposed to their utilitar- ian and eciency related properties, and, c) an ecological16 vision which accepts that planning, form and aesthetics of domestic spaces are emergent, neither preconceived nor marketed, and constantly re-con gurable – sometimes in a playful manner too – by those for whom they cater for.

Intimate Interactions and Spatial Orchestration of ubi-com Technologies Intimacy is usually connected with physical togetherness and contingency. Today’s technologies provide ways to overcome physical and geographical distance, at least when information is considered. The need to share one’s personal space and daily life with disparate people and places is neither a new nor a ctional scenario. For an increasing number of people, including myself, domestic space is a conglomeration of several disparate locations of equal personal signi cance. Moreover, as family structure and everyday lifestyles change, with the increase of singles households, and the increase of mobility and nomadic life, the notion of the family home, a place which is owned and lived by several generations is drawing to extinction, so is our ability to develop a long term intimate relationship with one particular place. The introduction of ubiquitous computing technologies in our home environments presents an array of possibilities that may provide counter-eects on these phenomena, providing again some kind of duration and continuity in the act of inhabiting. With the use of ambient communication we may inhabit more than one home simultaneously, so that we can merge our disparate and fragmented home-places creating a third hybrid space. We may, also, use sensors and recording devices scattered around the space to keep track of our domestic behaviour and history. If we use these recordings to trigger interactive media in our homes we may superimpose homely experiences of the past into our present habitation, and even more. When it comes to sharing our personal space, plain verbal or even visual communication cannot substitute the rich experience of physical togetherness for they generally lack spatiality, sensitivity, and demand attention. In a physical house-share, communication between the inhabitants is multi-dimensional and quite varied depending on the intimacy between them. Sharing one’s personal space can range from a simple

348 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture feeling of presence in the house to the ultimate sharing of one’s body (lovers.) Some- times the sense of togetherness created by the mere presence of persons in the same house, without any other form of interaction between them, is very signi cant indeed. This fact led to the development of technologies that provide synchronous exchange of information between two remotely linked spaces that relate to changes eected on their ambience. This form of technologically mediated communication has been termed ‘ambient communication’, or ‘pervasive awareness.’ In general, such a communication operates in the background of the inhabitants’ activities and transfers contextual information, usually related to changes in people’s environment. The potential bene ts and usages, as well as the operational qualities and technical particularities of ‘ambient communication’ for domestic places have been research and design-wise explored so far through several research projects and living laboratories.17 Nevertheless, what has not been equally researched is the spatial aspect of activities that are shared, or else, the spatial/geographical relations between, physical home-places, ubiquitous devices, and digitally mediated events that are imported in the rst. In simple words, in most cases, there is no apparent spatial co-relation between the home-space where an event originally takes place, and the new location

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Home constellations - graphic representation Bed – constellation of sensors (K. Grivas, 2005). (K. Grivas, 2004).

Konstantinos Grivas Greece 349 Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Flat01_Notes of locations and devices, pencil Flat01_Map of locations and devices (K. Grivas, sketch (K. Grivas, 2007). 2007). where the same event is digitally transported, translated and physically introduced. In order for the extended home to ful l its basic requirements, inhabitants should be able to perceive such technology mediated processes in a broader topological and geographical system where each component has a speci c location on some kind of mental map. In this vision, the locations where the digital aspects of home become manifested, acquire high signi cance, and so do the interrelations between those locations. The inhabitants’ memory, imagination, and consciousness of theirs or others’ living patterns, aided by the various combinations of location/signalled activity/ physical objects, are the keys to an intimate map of an extended home that may occupy more than one physical places and periods of time simultaneously. To do so, the inhabitants, and the designers of home-spaces need to devise models and means of representation, of mapping of these complex spatial relations. Finally, these tools for representing the extended home may allow digital events to be exchanged and integrated into the domestic space in a way which is spatially coherent – which makes sense in everyday life – so as to allow intimate interactions.

The “constellation pattern” One approach to mapping the extended home would focus on the community of small-scale digital devices, sensors, actuators and processors of all kinds that may be incorporated into everyday objects and pieces of furniture, as well as parts of the

350 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Fig. 9 Flat01_Map of constellation (K. Grivas, 2007). Flat01_Abstracted constellation map (K. Grivas, 2007). building envelope itself. Each of these devices has a speci c location in relation to all the others, and can be classi ed by the inhabitant according to signi cance or an- ity, using an ontological system. If viewed in a graphic representation these locations form a kind of constellation pattern. This constellation pattern organises home- space at every level and scale giving emphasis to speci c locations and their connections, and forms a canvas where multiple layers of information may be attached onto. Moreover, the constellation pattern allows a dierentiated representation of the home-space which is on the one hand exible, on the other hand in accordance with the ways we perceive places as conglomerations of points and links between them. Thirdly, the constellation pattern, because of its abstracted nature aords several layers of personal coding. Any such constellation has to correspond to a meaningful and graspable schema by the inhabitant. For example the constellation “windows” may organise in a common schematic representation all the digital cameras attached to the windows of my city home as well these of my country cottage that monitor views to the exterior. Another constellation may be the exact positions of pressure sensors that are tagged under the dining chairs. In the same manner, one may construct any number of such constellations, in his unique way, reecting his own image of the place/es. Ideally, if one is familiar enough with a home-space, every constellation should be mentally and bodily recalled (e.g. one should be able to recall, in three-dimensional space where all other “windows” are placed if he is given the position of one of them.)

Konstantinos Grivas Greece 351 Once we start elaborating on the constellation pattern, we may see that depending on what each constellation represents, its properties may vary signi cantly. For instance some constellations may have an almost permanent layout (devices embedded on walls), while others may be highly exible and mobile (devices tagged on objects and furniture). Others may vary their layout in a regular and prede ned way, while other constellations may show randomness. It is, also, expected that most of the constellations will change the number of locations attached to them during their lifespan, and some constellations may remain idle, or eventually “die” when they make no more sense to the people living with them. An appropriate model of representation of the various constellations of one’s home should be able to illustrate all the dierences and particularities of each constellation in relation to the others. More than that, as the structure of constellations becomes increasingly complex and we start using hierarchical structures to classify them, it becomes clear that a meaningful representation, a map, should indicate points of reference at any class level, be it the speci c and local constellation “my bed”, or the general constellation “grandmother’s house”. Finally, although our spatial memory helps us to recognise or recall in real space any familiar location-sets with certain accuracy (eg. where the light switch is located in respect to the door-handle and where we usually leave our slippers at night), it is important to examine what is the range of the discrepancies between real distances among them and the perceived or imagined ones, and when these discrepancies increase or decrease. Accordingly, we may imagine that the means of representation may have suitable aordances. In the end, the constellation patterns of a home produce a new unique space connected with the extended home, the space of the representation itself, which is inextricably linked to the real spaces the extended home consists of, and constantly feeds back to them. This representation is a code, unique for each home-place, and each inhabitant. This code is, on the one hand a tool that helps us to superimpose and weave multiple levels of awareness and information into existing spaces, while at the same time it is capable of aording multiple kinds and levels of intimacy since it can be revealed and shared at will.

References

1 “The Computer for the 21st Century” - Scienti c American Special Issue on Communications, Computers, and Networks, September, 1991. 2 Other relevant terms are: ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous/pervasive technologies, ambient technologies, ambient intelligence and the like. 3 Bachelard Gaston, (1969), The Poetics of Space, Beacon Press, 1969, N.Y. 4 McCullough Malcolm, (1996), Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, The MIT Press, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts. 5 Norman A. Donald, (1993), Things That Makes Us Smart: Defending Human Attributed in the Age of the Machine, Perseus Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts. 6 Silverstone et al. (1992). 7 Mitchell, William, J., (1996), City of Bits, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, p. 30. 8 Cooper Marcus Clare, (1997), House as a Mirror of Self, Conari Press, Berkeley California.

352 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 9 Haraway Donna, (1991), Cyborg Manifesto, included in Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Re- invention of Nature, Free Association Books, London. 10 ibid 11 Lynn Greg, (1998), Folds, blobs and bodies, La Lettre Volleé, Belgium. 12 Bergson Henri, (1991), Matter and Memory, Zone Books, New York. 13 Mccullough Malcolm, (1996), Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand, The MIT Press, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts. 14 Hall T. Edward, (1966), The Hidden Dimension, Anchor Books, New York. 15 Dunne Anthony & Raby Fiona, (2001), Design Noir: The Secret Lives of Objects, Birkhaüser, London. 16 ‘Ecological’ as dynamically or collectively balanced, sustained and regulated. 17 Some examples are: a) Remote Home (T. Schneidler, M. Jonsson), and b) comHOME, both developed within the Interactive Institute, Stockholm, c) Adaptive House (M. C. Mozer, Georgia-Tech, d) bed communication, (C. Dodge), and e) House_n, developed in MIT Medialab, Massachusetts, USA.

Konstantinos Grivas Greece 353

Anastasia Karandinou

School of Architecture University of Portsmouth UK Beyond the Binary In this paper we will look into the traditional binary opposition of the material versus the formal. We will look into how this binary opposition can be reversed and ultimately – following Derrida’s model – opened up by the introduction of a third element. As the third element we will consider the performative, which describes the temporal, dynamic and hybrid nature of contemporary structures and processes. These notions oer a new understanding and context for the binary opposition and also a new meaning for the terms form and matter. In this context, the formal and the material are no longer considered like they used to. New, uid or transformable materials, such as interactive surfaces, materials changing colour and transparency, or foggy clouds, change the way in which we perceive the notion of form and matter.

New Materials – New Forms For buildings such as Toyo Ito’s Tower of Winds, it is not easy to make a clear distinction between what is the form of the building and what is the matter Yukio Futagawa, ed. GA Architect: Toyo Ito, 1970-2001 (Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita, 2001). The form is created by the uctuating colours and lights, which change in response to the level of ambient sound in that part of the city. The materiality of the building could be considered as this very same element. Hence, what matters, and in some way dissolves the binary opposition between form and matter is the responsiveness, the temporality, and ultimately the performance of the building. Ned Kahn’s designs1 open up the binary opposition in a slightly dierent way. The material elements swing with the wind, creating uctuating patterns. The surface of the building, and the shapes and patterns it creates, is formed by the wind currents that make the steel elements swing. Similarly, Diller and Sco dio’s Blur project is of a performative nature. The main element that constitutes both the form and the matter of the building is the fog – the evaporat- ing water of changing density and opacity. The form is a fog-cloud and the matter is a fog-cloud too (Diller and Sco dio, 2002). Therefore, on one hand, form becomes something dierent to the form of the past, since it is no longer static and easily de nable. Similarly the notion of matter changes too; the density, uidity and movement of matter de nes the form – or else the form describes the nature and dynamics of the matter. With the emergence of new materials, new digital media, complex methods of construction and the equivalent design techniques, the focus has shifted from the stable, solid, de ned, to the dynamic, the process, the hybrid, and the performative.

Performative and Performance The notion of performance is often used in architecture in order to describe the speci- cations and behaviour of the materials and structures. As architect and theorist Ali Rahim notices, “[t]he performance of a technology […] often refers to its technical ef- fectiveness in a speci c evaluation or in a set of applications” (Rahim, 2005). The architect and academic Ali M. Malkawi, refers to the notion of performance in order to describe qualities of a building such as “thermal ows, lighting, acoustics, structures, etc” (Malkawi, 2005). However, for many architects and theorists, performance is a notion that has a broader and more complex meaning. Within these discussions, the term

356 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture performative is often used instead of the term performance, so as to make clear the distinction between the technical speci cations and the other kinds of performing. Ali Rahim, for example, when referring to the architectural design process, describes performativity as “[t]he material, organizational and cultural change that occurs as a result of this perpetual feedback and two-way transfer of information”2 (Rahim, 2005). So, the terms performance and performative in some cases are used in a similar way, whereas in other cases their meaning is dierent. This depends also on the context of the discourse. For example, in the context of theatre or music, the term performance has a very speci c meaning and refers to acting or playing a musical piece. In architecture, the term performance can refer to the technical speci cations of a building (as noted above), but it can also refer to the visual and aesthetic eect of a building; a building, for example, may perform by the way it reects and emits light at dierent times of the day, as if making a performance (Kolarevic and Malkawi, 2005). The notion of performative is often used in architecture instead of the term ‘performance’ in order to describe a process, a gesture, an act, a tendency, other than only a function or visual eect.

Reversing the Balance - Performative and Potential The notion of the performative has a long history in cultural studies and has been extensively appearing within architectural discussions in the last few decades. In architecture, the notion of the performative involves issues of process, changeability, signi cation, event, function, program – in other words it can be interpreted as what the building does. The attention of many theoretical discussions is not focused on the form or material of the building as something static, but rather in the dynamic way in which it functions. This may involve the literal changing of the form over time, such as the change of its shape, luminosity and colour, along the day, for aesthetic, functional, climatological reasons, or for reasons that have to do with its conceptual performing. Changes in technology, materials, construction networks, as well as the theoretical and philosophical discourses that those have raised, have displaced the interest from permanences to the performative. For some contemporary theorists such as Katie Lloyd Thomas, Therese Tierney, and, Deleuze’s commentator, Brian Massumi, the current building processes, materials, and techniques dissolve the binary opposition of form versus matter; and it could be argued, hence, that the interest is thus shifted from the formal and material to the performative (Lloyd Thomas, 2006, Massumi, 1992). In contemporary discourses, as Thomas argues, the nature of the division between form and matter has changed (Lloyd Thomas, 2006). The binary – following decon- struction’s typical model – is often reversed, and materiality tends to take the primary role3 (Derrida, 1976). In contemporary discourses, the sensuous, the tactile, the materiality, the experiential is prioritized over the formal. As Thomas argues, there is a distinction between the way materials were being perceived through Derrida’s linguistic model and the way they are perceived by many architects and theorists today. For Derrida the medium (the language, or the material in the case of a building) remained invisible. However, as Thomas claims, this is no longer the case; materials are not perceived as ‘invisible’, like they were when “architectural discipline considered the building as a representational system”,4 but as active and generative (Lloyd Thomas, 2006, Kennedy and Grunenberg, 2001).

Anastasia Karandinou UK 357 She uses the example of language as a medium – referring to Derrida’s analysis of this – in order to present this speci c way in which materials are in certain occasions considered. Hence, if material is considered as only a medium for the expression of form, it remains invisible. However, as Thomas claims, in several contemporary examples of architecture materials are not used only as mediums for expressing a form, but as fundamental elements that drive the design. Hence, the binary opposition of form and matter changes, due to new technologies, media and new types and use of materials. Materials no longer merely support the desired form, but often constitute form by themselves.5 Here, I do not only refer to the parametric design, but to all types of design that involve notions of performativity and responsiveness. So, we could argue that digital technologies are not the only medium through which a design becomes responsive, performative and generative. However, digital media and methods have evidently opened up and inuenced our way of thinking about these notions, processes and design methods.

Performative, Temporality and the ‘Chora’ Another way in which the binary opposition of form versus matter can be opened up is through the consideration of the notion of time. Henri Bergson opens up this discourse by introducing the notion of time and of potential change (Bergson, 2007). As he argues, time and change are parameters neglected within Plato’s and Renaissance’s reection on form and matter. According to contemporary architect and theorist, Stephen Walker: Bergson took time seriously, exploring the possibility that matter might dier from itself over time, and developing an understanding that exceeded the intellect: in order to get at what eludes scienti c thought, he argued that ‘we must do violence to the mind, go counter to the natural bent of the intellect. But that is just the function of philosophy’ (Walker, 2007).

As Bergson argues: An intelligence which aims at fabricating is an intelligence which never stops at the actual form of things nor regards it as nal, but, on the contrary, looks upon all matter as if it were carvable at will […] In short, it makes us regard its matter as indif- ferent to its form6 (Bergson, 2007, Walker, 2007).

The potential change, therefore, breaks down the distinction between form and matter. Andrew Benjamin, within a similar eld of thought, claims that the “concern with the history of any practice has to recognize that the status of the object, and thus its presence within diering elds of activity, is always negotiable” (Benjamin, 2007). Ob- jects are not xed and stable; “rather, they are always in a state of construction” (Ben- jamin, 2007). Bergson’s account of time and potential change seems very relevant to Plato’s ‘chora’. Chora, translated from ancient Greek as space, place, territory, location, capital town of a region, or country, is introduced by Plato as a third entity that allows for the existence of the other two realms: the one of the ideal reality and that of the everyday sensible reality (Coyne, 2010, Plato, 2008). For Brisson and Meierstein, philosophers of science, chora is considered as a ‘spatial medium’ (Brisson and Meyerstein, 1995). As

358 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Coyne mentions, Brisson and Meierstein, de ne chora “not as space, […] but as ‘that in which’ and ‘that from which’ the sensible world is made. So chora is not simply space, but something that is chronologically and logically prior to it”7 (Coyne, 2010). Derrida, based upon Plato’s writings on chora, describes it as “the spacing that is the condition for everything to take place, for everything to be inscribed” (Kipnis and Leeser, 1997) and at the same time, as something beyond our perception, as what “cannot be represented” (Kipnis and Leeser, 1997). Chora is a kind of medium that allows things to take forms through it, but eventually remains unchanged itself; it “gives nothing” (Kipnis and Leeser, 1997). Hence, we could consider Bergson’s introduction of time and duration as a possible interpretation, or rather as a reection on Plato’s chora; of the un-intelligible, and of what exists beyond the ideal and physical worlds. In this context chora, similarly to Bergson’s time, is what allows for the potential, and what exists prior and beyond the opposition of form and matter. According to Thomas, within contemporary philosophical approaches, the distinction between form and matter has been extensively negotiated and altered; the world has been considered “in terms of force, setting up equivalence between persons, objects, words, […] which all act on each other. In such a view the real and the virtual, or the material and the idea, are part of a continuum of potentiality and actualization” (Lloyd Thomas, 2006). Whether or not form and matter are dealt with as two separate aspects, Thomas considers the world as a system of substances which go through changes and which are transformed by physical or cultural forces. Nevertheless, even if we remain within the opposition of formal – material, we have to mention that both come as a result of multiple social, political and economic networks; the issue of process and dynamic evolution of things is present also within the consideration of these two (seeming dierentiated) issues: architectural schools, the training in speci c institutions and practices, competitions, personal and communal cultural aspects, determine the form of the built space too. Multiple networks and practices are involved in a direct or indirect way, not only in the materiality of the built space, but also in the form and concepts it carries. Although this may seem to be a new way of looking at things, and dierent to Descartes’ or Newton’s consideration of things as stable entities,8 we could argue that this eld of thought sources upon Leibniz’s philosophy of space, time and things. For Leibniz, space is not an absolute preexisting entity, but, as Coyne presents) “emerges in a consideration of the relationship between things”9 (Coyne, 1999). For Leibniz, processes and events preexist the notion of time and objects and the relations between them preexist space. Space, thus, is something perceived through and after objects, processes and the changing relationships between them (Russell, 1951). Within a contemporary Deleuzian eld of thought, the ‘substance’, the ‘piece of wood’, which Brian Massumi uses as an example, is a result of a chain of cultural and natural events, and has the potential for further transformations; so does its maker. Massumi considers every matter or form (without making a distinction) as a result of forces applied to it. The raw wood, the formed wood, the craftsman, the tools, all are considered as active substances, results of physical or cultural powers – of natural procedures, institutions, technical schools, etc. – which ‘overpower’ each other. Mas- sumi points out that it is rather “this power dierential that determines that we understand the wood as merely ‘content’ and the craftsman as ‘agent of expression” (Lloyd

Anastasia Karandinou UK 359 Thomas, 2006) (Massumi, 1992)10. In these terms, the form is not separable from the substance; it is the actions, forces and changes that the substance has gone through that leads to what we experience. The object is the substance, which has undergone transformations and has been aected by forces of physical or cultural nature.11

As Massumi argues: The encounter is between two substance/form complexes, one of which over- powers the other. The forces of one are captured by the forces of the other and are subsumed by them, contained by them. ‘The value of something is the hierarchy of forces which are expressed in it as a complex phenomenon’. One side of the encounter has the value of a content, the other of an expression. But content and expression are distinguished only functionally, as the overpowered and the overpowering. Content is not a sign, and it is not a referent or signi ed. It is what the sign envelops, a whole world of forces. Content is formed substance considered as a dominated force- eld12 (Massumi, 1992).

Massumi does not use the term performative in this context. However, he reects on a similar eld of thought: the process and potential that something entails. What Mas- sumi considers as the substance of a thing is not its form or matter, but what makes it what it is and what potentially makes it transform into something else. What characterizes something and what reveals or best describes its substance is not merely its form and matter, but its potential.

Media Forming Concepts Philosophical theories, like those presented above, are often inter-related to the scienti c, technological and political conditions of their time. The relationship between substance and forces is possibly, thus, related to discoveries and inventions of the last few decades. For example, the electromagnetic waves turn abstract, ‘empty’ space, or air, into something lled in with forces, waves and elds, carrying potentially readable and visible content and meaning. Hence the de nition and content of notions such as matter, mass, volume, density is challenged. The eld of forces creates a dierent perception of what is substance and what is not, what is perceived as potentially performative and what as possibly not. Similarly, contemporary digital media introduce a closer link between architectural design and the notion of temporality and time. Digital media, allow us to record and represent duration, and, therefore, events and situations occurring over time can be documented and studied. Moreover, animation and programming allow designers to think not only statically about space, but also dynamically through time, movement and interaction. Hence, we could argue that digital media do not only change the methods and processes involved in designing and building, but also the theoretical and philosophical discourse around some fundamental notions of architecture such as matter and form.

360 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Notes

1 Here I refer to Ned Kahn’s projects such as the Children’s museum in Pittsburgh, or the Kinetic façade at the Brisbane Airport parking. 2 As Rahim claims: “Performativity always has the potential to produce an eect at any moment in time. The mechanisms of performativity are nomadic and exible instead of sedentary and rigid. […] The performative subject is fragmented rather than uni ed, decentralised rather than centered, virtual as well as actual.” p. 179. 3 As Derrida claims, the rst stage for opening up a binary is to reverse it. The secondary notion – out of the two – becomes the primary one, and this new discourse leads to the opening up of the binary. 4 As examples, she mentions Lars Spuybroek arguments in relation to the contemporary approach to materials’ behaviour p. 7 (in: Spuybroek, L. 2004. Nox : machining architecture, London, Thames & Hudson.and Sheila Kennedy’s “Material Presence: The return of the real” (in the book: 5 e.g. the ‘Blur’ project. 6 In what follows, Bergson refers to the relation between his consideration of form and matter and the ‘homogeneous’ space, that we earlier on referred to: “But when we think of our power over this matter, that is to say, of our faculty of decomposing and recomposing it as we please, we project the whole of these possible decompositions and recompositions behind real extension in the form of a homogeneous space, empty and indierent, which is supposed to underlie it. This space is therefore, pre-eminently, the plan of our possible action on things, although, indeed, things have a natural tendency, as we shall explain further on, to enter into a frame of this kind.” Bergson, H. 2007. Creative Evolution, New York, Random House. p. 173. 7 with reference to: Brisson, L. & Meyerstein, F. W. 1995. Inventing the universe: Plato’s Timaeus, the big bang, and the problem of scienti c knowledge, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press. 8 See also: Broad, D. C. 1975. Leibniz: an introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p.56 Broad presents here Newton’s belief that space is ‘prior to objects’, time is prior to events and processes, ideas to which Leibniz is opposed. 9 with reference also to: LEIBNIZ, G. 1964. The relational theory of space and time. In: J.J.C.SMART (ed.) Problems of space and time. New York: Macmillan. pp. 89-98. 10 As Massumi claims, “Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between ‘substance of content’ and ‘matter of content’. A ‘substance’ is a formed matter (the thing understood as an object with determinate qualities), and a ‘matter’ is a substance abstracted from its form, in other words isolated from any particular encounter between content and expression (the thing as all the forces it could embody in all the encounters it could have, either as content or expression).” Massumi, B. 1992. A user’s guide to capitalism and schizophrenia, Cambridge, Mass.; London, The MIT Press. (p.25) As Deleuze and Guattari argue: “Substance is formed matter, and matter is a substance that is unformed either physically or semiotically.” Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 2004. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, London, Continuum. p. 156. 11 “Massumi provides us with an (Deleuzian materialist) alternative to the hylomorphic account of the architectural material, which suggests that material is itself active and does not distinguish between the physical forces (plane smoothing it) and immaterial forces (the building standard that determined its re treatment in a certain way) that produce it. Within this account the line that is a string of code in a computer or an idea is no less material than a piece of wood or a spoken sentence; each acts”. Lloyd Thomas, K. 2006. Material matters: architecture and material practice, London, Routledge. p. 6. 12 with reference to: Deleuze, G. 1986. Nietzsche and Philosophy, London, Continuum. p. 7.

Anastasia Karandinou UK 361 Bibliography

Benjamin, A. 2007. Plans to Matter. In: Thomas, K. L. (ed.) Material Matters. London: Routledge. Bergson, H. 2007. Creative Evolution, New York, Random House. Brisson, L. & Meyerstein, F. W. 1995. Inventing the universe: Plato’s Timaeus, the big bang, and the problem of scienti c knowledge, Albany, NY, State University of New York Press. Broad, D. C. 1975. Leibniz: an introduction, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Coyne, R. 1999. Technoromanticism, Cambridge, Mass.; London, The MIT Press. Coyne, R. 2010. Other Spaces. Manuscript. Deleuze, G. 1986. Nietzsche and Philosophy, London, Continuum. Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 2004. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, London, Continuum. Derrida, J. 1976. Of Grammatology, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press. Diller, E. & Sco dio, R. 2002. Blur: The Making of Nothing, New York, Harry N. Abrams. Kennedy, S. & Grunenberg, C. 2001. KVA: Material Misuse, London, AA Publications. Kipnis, J. & Leeser, T. 1997. Chora L. Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, New York, The Monacelli Press. Kolarevic, B. & Malkawi, A. (eds.) 2005. Performative architecture: beyond instrumentality, London; New York: Spon Press. Leibniz, G. 1964. The relational theory of space and time. In: J.J.C.Smart (ed.) Problems of space and time. New York: Macmillan. Lloyd Thomas, K. 2006. Material matters: architecture and material practice, London, Routledge. Malkawi, A. M. 2005. Performance Simulation: Research and Tools. In: Malkawi, B. K. A. A. M. (ed.) Performance Architecture: Beyond Instrumentality. New York and London: Spon Press. Massumi, B. 1992. A user’s guide to capitalism and schizophrenia, Cambridge, Mass.; London, The MIT Press. Plato 2008. Timaeus, Fair eld, IA, 1st World Library. Rahim, A. 2005. Performativity: Beyond Eciency and Optimization in Architecture. In: Malkawi, B. K. A. A. M. (ed.) Performative Architecture: Beyond instrumentality. New York; London: Spon Press. Russell, B. 1951. Philosophy of Leibniz, London, George Allen & Unwin Ltd. Spuybroek, L. 2004. Nox : machining architecture, London, Thames & Hudson. Walker, S. 2007. Gordon Matta-Clark: Matter, Materiality, Entropy, Alchemy. In: Thomas, K. L. (ed.) Material Matters. London: Routledge.

362 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Ada Kwiatkowska

Faculty of Architecture Wroclaw University of Technology Poland Architectural Interfaces of Hybrid Humans Digital architecture announces the seemingly unlimited possibilities of expressions of every imaginable form in its multidimensional complexity. Informative technologies are the origins of new generations of architectural interactive forms. Thanks to electronic devices, the perception of a man are extended. It could determine the future direction of mankind’s evolution from homo sapiens to hybrid sapiens. At the same time, there is another process of strengthening arti cial intelligence of spatial structures, which could cause the development of architectural objects from archs to bits. The architectural visions correspond to some artists’ concepts, which focus on the interactive relations between the mutable human body and transformable spatial settings on dierent levels of architectural objects’ complexity. These visions are based on the active power of information and on the extension of the awareness of architectural structures (from info-media to interactive forms, metamorphic to illusory etc.) (Kwiatkowska, 2007). According to Stelarc diagnosis, “evolution ends when technology invades the body” (1995, p.93), one can say, that evolution of architectural forms ends when technology invades architecture. Digital architectural forms can be viewed as the dynamic psycho-objects interacting with human psycho-bodies. Space becomes a medium transmitting bits of information and communicating with the people. Concept of hybrid humans is expressed in sci- literature, lms and video games; it seems, that it is not the future but the reality of scienti c laboratories of genetic engineering. In popular culture, such hybrid humans as Prometheus, Daedalus, Faust, Frankenstein or Androids (Tur- ney, 2001) allow people to face consciously their evolutionary fear from one side, and from the other side – to look at the future of human race with hope against hope (Fig. 1). In artistic and architectural visions, it is possible to distinguish three main concepts of human being’s body and its spatial extensions: bio-body with sensual kinetic spatial extensions, hybrid body with mutable altered spatial extensions and I- body with sensory interactive spatial extensions. The idea of autonomy and mobility of the human bio-body is connected with the concept of liberated architecture. The vision of mutable and hybrid human body leads architectural forms into coding experiments and simulation of the structural metamorphoses in topological space, in eect, evolving architecture comes into existence. The process of structuralizing of space in relation to I-body with electronic peripherals causes that architecture has to be interactive and intelligent to answer the users’ expectations (Brayer and Migay- rou, 2001; Liu, 2007; Spiller, 2002; Teyssot, 2005; Zellner, 1990). Architectural patterns of digital age are based on the higher order, higher complexity of systems and active power of information forcing the A.I. of spatial structures. The questions are, whether liberating the architectural forms and forcing the intellectual power of structures to interact with evolving human body will extend the human perception or will be a trap for human mind; whether strengthening the A.I. of spatial structures will be accompanied with the development of intellectual man’s abilities to understand the meaning of a man-space dialogue or a man could be caught in a trap of a being-driven by the arti cial settings, which would be too intelligent and too complicated for a human perception?

364 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 A human being in the built-environment (drawing by author).

Bio-body with Sensual and Kinetic Spatial Extensions Liberated architectural forms express potential and possibilities of the dynamic movement and ow of the spatial structures following the sensual and kinetic skills of human bio-body (Fig. 2). Architectural forms are treated as bubbles or wrapped-forms covering the human bodies, which can generate the movements of architectural structures simultaneously with the changing positions of bodies or just the opposite – forms can inuence human bodies’ motion, like in the art of Ernesto Neto (2005). Lib- erated forms result from the fascination of architects with the ideas of spatial mobility and exibility, which oppose the static character of traditional architecture. They are liberated from the necessity of foundations and the limits of rigid geometry expressing only the fundamental forces of gravitation. They are inspired by the ways of bodies’ movements, which are translated into the spatial language of architectural structures in kinaesthetic space. Liberated forms can regenerate and adapt themselves to the changing needs and preferences of the users, and to the challenges of the spatial settings of human activities. Forms are characterized by the lack of scale and a new kind of geometry, which are the expression of dynamic variable inner-outer forces coming from the human body or its spatial surroundings. Liberated forms are becoming the alternative skins in ergonomic and aesthetical meaning (e.g. Basic house, arch. M.R. de Azúa; Loading skin, NUC: Nomad Use Camaleonics, arch. S’A Arquitectos) (Smith and Topham, 2002; Brayer and Simonot, 2002).

Ada Kwiatkowska Poland 365 Fig. 2 Bio-body with sensual extensions in kinaesthetic space (drawing by author).

Bio-body and its sensual kinetic spatial extensions are the origins of dynamic forces, which are engraved in materials (e.g. Mute Room SF, arch. Thom Faulders; Ether, arch. dECOi) and in concepts of structures (e.g. Portable House, arch. Philippe Gre- goire, Claire Petetin; Xurret System, arch. ReD) (Spiller, 2008; Zellner, 1999; Brayer and Migayrou, 2001; Koralevic and Klinger, 2008). Liberated forms are forces-driven shapes meeting with the matter resistance. Their uniqueness and sensuality are determined by the physical features and hidden phenomena of matter.

Hybrid Body with Mutable and Altered Spatial Extensions Evolving forms express the process of structuralizing of space in relation to the hybrid human being’s body with mutable and altered spatial extensions, like in the art of Matthew Barney (2005). This process is based on the metamorphic transformations and transmutations of the architectural shapes, substances and structures in topological space (Kwiatkowska, 2003) (Fig. 3). To materialize the evolving forms it is necessary to introduce the nanotopian materials of genetic engineering to architecture. Evolving forms are information-driven shapes, it means, they are founded on the algorithms of proceedings, which play similar role to DNA – genetic codes of organic matter. Evolving structures modeled on the bases of the algorithms of proceeding consist of the originator - an initial form, generator - a set of copies and mutations of an initial form, and the rules of forms’ ordering in the space (e.g. fractals’ geometry of L-System, Logo, Turtle graphics).

366 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Hybrid body with mutable extensions in evolving space (drawing by author).

Evolving forms are liberated from functional, structural and materials’ standardization, because of the potential of the algorithms to adapt and transform shapes to the challenges of the surroundings (e.g. Forms of Energy, La Biennale di Venezia, arch. AMID; transPORTs2001, arch. Kas Oosterhuis) (Spiller, 2008; Oosterhuis, 1999). Hybrid architectural structures can change their appearance and volumes according to the users’ needs (e.g. reducing or growing of the architectural volume in relation to the number of users in the certain time - Loop.Space, arch. BASE 4 or users’ preferences - Variomatic house, arch. Kas Oosterhuis) (Liu, 2007; Smith and Topham, 2002). Data-ow causes transformation of architectural structures in accordance to direction of info-energy transmission (e.g. Saltwater Pavilion, arch. K. Oosterhuis) (Zellner, 1999). Hybrid body and its mutable spatial extensions are the bases of the metamorphic alterations of the architectural structures, becoming the organic forms that can grow and mutate like biological ones (e.g. Digitally Grown Botanic Tower, arch. Dennis Dol- lens; Orgone Reef, arch. Philip Besley) (Dollens, 2005; Spiller, 2008). It means that contradiction between the natural and architectural structures will disappear in near future, because both of them are characterized by the possibilities of evolution through activating the internal algorithm of transformation and by the lack of control of the growing processes.

Ada Kwiatkowska Poland 367 Fig. 4 I-body with sensory extensions in interactive space (drawing by author).

I-body with Sensory and Interactive Spatial Extensions Interactive architectural forms express the potential of the communication between a man and spatial surroundings based on electronic devices built-in human bodies and e-environment (Fig. 4). I-body becomes the biotechnological organism that interacts with intelligent spatial settings thanks to electronic sensors, like in the artistic performances of Stelarc (1995). Space is de ned as digital peripheries of the human body. Basic patterns of the interactive forms are founded on the gaming strategies, which make possible the mutual communication between the users as senders and architectural structures as receivers in the info-mechanistic language. Interactive architecture is characterized by the strategy of the selection, codi cation, personalized exchanges of information and pluralism of forms. Interactive communication is wide open to fortuity, combination, permutation and variation of the information messages contained in the architectural structures, and it breaks the space-time continuity. Intelligent architecture mediates between the users’ activities and their spatial settings. Fusions of architectural forms with digital technologies allow the users to control all parameters of the structures. I-body with sensory and interactive spatial extensions introduces the multiple points of view in architecture. It means that the object can be viewed by the user from many points of view at the same time and the user can interact simultaneously with many levels of the spatial structure. Interactive forms connected with digital technologies announce that virtual reality will be the supplementary component of the

368 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture architecture (e.g. Enteractive, Electroland; Virtual New York Stock Exchange, arch. As- ymptote) (Electroland, 2007; Brayer and Migayrou, 2001) according to Marcos Novak diagnosis, “form follows the functions of ction” (1995, p. 47).

Design Strategies of Technology-driven Architecture In the process of creation, technology-driven architecture is more controlled by the architects than imagine-driven one because of the most complex view into the space- time and possibility of the simulation of seemingly in nite structural and formal variables. However the question of a human being’s perception caught in a trap of too intelligent and too complicated spatial settings of life is still open. New digital technologies initiated at the end of XX. Century have great inuence on the design strategies. The most important advantages of the architectural computer programs reveal in the control and optimization of parameters of the structural eectiveness, fusion of the architectural, technological and environmental systems, coding and decoding of the architectural language, or in generating the variety of innovative design strategies. There are some misassumptions, taken from the beginning of this process, that one can point out the uncritical undergoing of the dictate of digital technologies and lack of discussion about all consequences of their uses for human being and built-environment. In a sense, 3D-CAD software uni es architectural forms and intensi es a diusions of international style all around the world with no respect to architectural heritage of dierent cultures. The procedures contained in architectural programs, especially related to structural and energy optimization of architectural forms, are treated as objective but architects, as a matter of fact, cannot prove their correctness. Concepts of the architectural structures are dependent on the software reliability. Generally, fascination of digital technologies causes domination of the rational and logical over irrational and inexplicable thinking. A critical attitude to the advantages of digital revolution is becoming a challenge in architecture today. It is important to develop the ideas which are more open to intuitive, subjective, metaphysical or fuzzy ways of imagining and thinking, to simulate the life processes, to oppose the structural and formal uni cation, to apply dierent cultural codes and architectural patterns, and to express the human being’s dreams in architectural design. Or maybe forcing the intellectual power of the architectural structures will really extend the human perception and architecture of the future will express the hybrid humans’ dreams.

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Ada Kwiatkowska Poland 369 Dollens, D., 2005. Digital-Botanic Architecture: D-B-A. Santa Fe, New York, Barcelona: Lumen Books. Electroland, Enteractive, available at [Accessed 21 May 2007]. Kolarevic, B., Klinger, K. eds., 2008. Manufacturing Material Eects: Rethinking Design and Making in Architecture. New York, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. Kwiatkowska, A., 2003. Trans-formation in the age of virtuality. In: R. Kronenburg, ed. Transportable Environments 2. London, Spon Press, pp. 32-41. Kwiatkowska, A., 2007. Simulation games with the architectural forms. In: Y.T. Leong, G.E.Lasker, eds. Architecture, Engineering and Construction of Built Environments. Proceedings of the 19th Inter- national Conference on Systems Research, Informatics and Cybernetics, Baden-Baden. Tecumseh, Ont.: The International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics, vol.2, pp. 4-9. Liu, Y.T. ed., 2007. Distinguishing Digital Architecture: 6th Far Eastern International Digital Architectural Design Award. Basel, Boston, Berlin: Birkhäuser. Neto, E., 2005. Art now: Ernesto Neto. In: U. Grosenick, B. Riemschneider, eds. Art Now – Artists of the Rise of the New Millennium. London, Taschen, pp. 216-219. Novak, M., 1995. Transmitting architecture: transTerraFirma/TidsvagNoll v2.0. Architects in Cyber- space, Architectural Design, no. 118, pp. 43-47. Oosterhuis, K., 1999. Trans_Ports 2001. Hypersurface Architecture II, Architectural Design, no. 9-10, pp. 87-89. Smith, C., Topham, S., 2002. Xtreme Houses. Munich, London, New York: Prestel Verlag. Spiller, N. ed., Cyber_Reader. London: Phaidon. Spiller, N., 2008. Digital Architecture Now: A Global Survey of Emerging Talent. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. Stelarc, 1995. Towards the post-human. Architects in Cyberspace, Architectural Design, no.118, pp. 91-96. Teyssot, G., 2005. Hybrid architecture: An environment for the prosthetic body. Convergence, vol.11, no.4, pp. 72-84. Turney, J., 2001. Slady Frankensteina: Nauka, genetyka i kultura masowa (oryg. Frankenstein’s Foot- steps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture). Translated from English by M.Wisniewska. Warszawa: PIW. Zellner, P., 1999. Hybrid Space: New Forms in Digital Architecture. London: Thames & Hudson.

370 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Pau Pedragosa

Department of Theory and History of Architecture Escola Tècnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB) Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) Spain Immaterial Culture in the Age of Information Technology “One has to become cybernetic in order to continue being a humanist.” (P. Sloterdijk)

Reactionary positions that limit themselves to protest and that forgo any further attempt at intellectual discourse are commonplace nowadays. The reason for this attitude is the awareness that classic humanism seems to have become more and more exhausted; the humanist is humiliated and on the defensive. Nevertheless, the necessary and urgent vindication of humanism can only be achieved through technological modernity. In this paper I propose a philosophical reection, on the fundamental shift that took place from a culture and an architecture founded on the values of humanism, a culture based on the craft technique, which materialises the eternal ideas of the human being held since Antiquity, to another directed by the radically new values of the information society of machines, a society based on the post-industrial or cybernetic technology of automatic production, diusion and archiving of information. The shift from one culture to the other—from one epoch to another—was made possible through the transitional modern culture that was based on industrial technology. This article is based on information theory and its cultural interpretation as developed by Vilém Flusser, and on phenomenology and authors related to it like Hans Blumenberg. I draw upon some of the key aspects of Vilém Flusser’s work to establish the chron- ological periods —craft-based, industrial and post-industrial periods— according to the dierent historical techniques interpreted in relation to the corresponding concepts of matter and form —“form” being the root of the word “information”. We will see how history is the process of increasing prioritisation of form over matter that leads to the current culture of in-formation, characterised as an immaterial culture. Immateriality refers to the apparition of a surprising type of object, without historical precedent, characterised by being an indierent material support of highly relevant information. This situation can be characterised as the dematerialisation of the previous material culture, coherently de ned by Heidegger as a culture of homelessness. In this sense, we can legitimately talk of immaterial or homeless architecture (or culture in general). This type of pure in-formation culture brings raise to the struggle between the human freedom that projects a form and the automatic program that only produces redundancy, between artistic creation and techni cation, between freedom and necessity. From phenomenological criticism and the concept of the life-world we can see that the most important problem that technological architecture presents is that it rejects the questions that relate to its meaning, to its physical and historical place, to the justi cation of its existence, because its ultimate justi cation is that it works. Techno- logical architecture presents itself as something obvious in its automatism and redundancy; it does not provoke any questions, it silences all questions relative to its better optimisation, such as whether it is or not necessary, whether it is meaningful, whether it is worthy, etc. It is necessary, therefore, to create spaces where such questions can be made. It is necessary to reect on the classic questions of mankind but translated and transposed to the new technological context that we now inhabit and in which architecture is produced and built.

372 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Theoretical Background Matter and form Aristotle de ned the ability of human beings to mould their environment by virtue of their strength and skill with the concept of téchne. The term “téchne”, translated into Latin as “ars”, designated much more than that which is nowadays understood by “technique”: it comprised all human skills employed in the creation of works or in the shaping of reality, and it embraced both the artistic and the arti cial, two terms that are nowadays clearly dierentiated (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 73). For the following two thousand years after its formulation, the de nition of the relation between nature and technique given by Aristotle has been considered valid: technique (or art) is an imitation of nature. According to Aristotle, technique consisted in completing and imitating nature (Aristotle. Física. Libro II. 8. 199a 15-17.) Aristotle says that a man who builds a house does only what nature itself would do if it built houses (Aristotle. Física. 199a 12-15.) Nature and art, or technique, are equivalent in structure: the characteristics of the arti cial environment are the same as those of the natural environment. They obey the same laws. How is this structure that is common both to nature and to human arti ce characterised? The structure is composed of two basic elements: matter and form. The term “matter” is the result of the Latin translation of the Greek concept “húle”, that originally meant “wood”. The opposite concept is “form”, in Greek “morphé”. Both concepts are opposite but inseparable. The oppositional pairing of matter-form is synonymous of the conceptual pairing (also Greek) of potentiality (dúnamis)-actuality (enérgeia) (Aristotle. Física. Libro III, 200b 12-201 b 15.), and both stress the contraposi- tion between absence (the invisible, the hidden) and presence (the visible, the uncovered). The Greek concept of “truth” (alethéia) means “to un-cover” (Heidegger, M. 1993, p. 33), to make present that which is hidden, to bring to light or to bring forth, to give form (give presence) to matter (invisible) or to in-form the matter. Matter in a pure state does not exist, it always possesses some sort of form. In our environment we nd materialised forms or formed matter, that is to say, we are surrounded by objects (form + matter) made of determined materials and with determined forms. The action of informing, of giving form to matter, is called téchne (Heidegger, M. 2000, p. 16.)

Novelty and repetition: the information theory Culture is a type of information: the information that has been learned, archived and transmitted between human beings from generation to generation (Mosterín J. 2009, p15). Material objects are carriers of information by virtue of their form. The information itself is immaterial, carried by the form of the material objects that transmit it. Var- ious material supports can have the same form: dierent units of the same car model, dierent issues of the same edition of a book or various discs with the same music recorded (Mosterín J. 2009, p18). In the book The Mathematical Theory of Information (1949), Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver developed a highly inuential theory of information (Taylor, M.C. 2001, p. 107.) In this theory, the concept “information” diers from its habitual use as “meaning”. In the strict sense, “information” is de ned as the inverse of “probability” (Taylor, M.C. 2001, p. 109): the more probable that something is (a material object or a mes-

Pau Pedragosa Spain 373 sage), the less information it transmits. Information is therefore identi ed with the improbable: the surprise, the novelty, the dierence. Information must be suciently dierent (surprising) as to transmit something new, but not so dierent as to be completely unrecognisable. Information is found, therefore, between the insucient dif- ference (that which is totally undierentiated, homogeneous, always the same) and the excess of dierence (that which is totally other, unique). Both the insuciency and the excess of dierence result in the emission of noise. The information emerges from the noise through the articulation of dierences. When téchne, the technique, transforms an object, it converts it into another one, it introduces a dierence, a novelty with respect to its previous state. This change consists in the transition of how an object is to how it can be, in the realisation of a potentiality or a possibility of the object. This power to be dierent that we impose on the objects through the technique is the new form that we give to them. A built, manufactured or produced object is an informed object. The sum of the informed objects, that is to say, the sum of the new objects, is culture (Flusser, V. 2001, pp. 144, 145). There are dierent ways of giving form to matter, of producing objects, according to the dierent techniques that have occurred historically. In short, there are dierent types of culture: craft-based, industrial and post-industrial culture.

Craft-Based, Industrial and Post-Industrial Techniques Craft-based technique Everything started with the hands. With these complex biological instruments, the rst human beings gave shape to the world around them. But human beings have the capacity to go beyond their natural biological conditioning, and this resulted in the invention of tools as the extension of the hand. Tools were invented because they could be used more quickly and eectively in nature compared to bare hands. Tools are the extension and imitation of the hands. Craftsmen give form to matter using tools, for example, wood in the form of a table. ¿How is this gesture to be interpreted? From Plato onwards and throughout the Middle Ages it is thought that forms are hidden behind appearances and they can only be captured through theoretic sight. In fact, “morphé” (form) is a term usually used by Greek philosophers as a synonym of “eidos” or “idéa” (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 83.) One of these forms is the form of the table, the perfect table (the idea of table). The craftsman “sees” this form, and the criteria used to assess the worth of a particular table is its degree of approximation to the perfect form “table”. According to Plato’s theory of ideas, when a craftsman builds a table, he copies the idea of the table that has always existed: imitating nature means reproducing the idea of table. In this manner, all possibility of novelty is denied: everything already exists beforehand. Nature cannot be enriched by the work of mankind (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 88). When the craftsman builds an object, he does so guided by the forms that govern the totality of nature, to which the craftsman himself belongs. The craftsman does what nature would do rather than what he himself would like to do. The ancient belief that the work of the human is the imitation of nature is based on the understanding of nature as an “ideally preformed” totality, the best possible totality, so it would be foolish to think of improving it or changing it: one can only desire that which already exists (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 90.) The work is not a means towards

374 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the self-realisation and self-knowledge of man. As we will see later on, when the conception of human arti ce as imitation of nature is nally superseded in the modern age, it must also be understood as a liberation. In the Renaissance a revolution occurs (Flusser, V. 2001, pp. 146, 147. Flusser, V. 2002b, pp. 85, 86): in the workshops, craftsmen pass on their knowledge to their ap- prentices, for example, of how to make tables. The transmission of this knowledge occurs through praxis: the apprentice learns to make tables, and the more tables he makes, the better his technique becomes. The forms of the objects are no longer ideal models to be copied and become models that can be progressively improved through the work. This marked a radical change in the conception of the world that opened the doors to modernity. Modernity arms that forms are “exible” models that can be progressively improved, rather than eternal ideas that must be materialised. The concept of theory changes, it is no longer just the contemplation of ideas (ancient and medieval notion of knowledge) and its imitation in matter, but instead becomes the experience and construction of forms. Ideas are no longer revealed to theoretic sight or to faith, but are contrasted with experience or with scienti c experiment. For example, the form “table” is improved by knowledge of materials; a table made of wood is not the same as a table made of stone: the constructive properties of the material condition the form. This knowledge of the materials is empirical, the fruit of experience and experiment. There is no longer a pure theory but rather an empirical science. There is no perfect table, or perfect society or perfect human being. Everything must be improved by work (Flusser, V. 2002b, p. 86.) Therefore, the craftsman’s work improves continuously generation after generation, becoming more professional and specialised. When primary importance is placed on the work (the struggle with materials), the work itself as a production process is scienti cally analysed in order to maximise its productive capacity, resulting in the machine (in 1911 Frederick Winslow Taylor published Principles of Scienti c Management where he describes how the work process can be divided into separate movements that can be regulated with precision) (Taylor, M.C. 2001, p. 7). This is the industrial revolution.

Industrial technique The next important stage after the invention of tools (craft-based culture) was the ir- ruption of machines (industrial culture). What is the relation between matter and form in industrial objects? Industrial revolution brings about the following situation: it is the machines that do the work (Flusser, V. 2002b, p. 86.) First the craftsman materialised an ideal form, then the form was improved through successive materialisations (apprenticeship in the workshop), and now the machine “prints” forms in the objects. Industrial work is divided in two phases (Flusser, V. 2001, pp. 147-149. 2002b, p. 87): the rst, that we can call soft, human or semi-artisan, consists in the design of a form; the second is hard, mechanic or automatic, in which the form designed by a human being is reproduced mechanically by a machine. In the rst phase forms are designed according to the machine’s capabilities; simple and geometric forms, without mouldings, so that they can be reproduced mechanically. And so emerges the aesthetic of the machine and the criticism of ornamentation that de nes the artistic and architectonic avant-garde of the period between

Pau Pedragosa Spain 375 the wars. In the second phase, the industrial one, the machine repeats set movements, which have been scienti cally calculated and programmed, to produce a large quantity of identical objects. If the initial design is an original model, a prototype or a standard, the objects produced by the machine are identical copies of the same prototype. The copies of the same model are interchangeable, but the models are unique (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 148). The most preeminent characteristic of the industrial society is the mass production of identical objects. Industrialisation produces a highly stereotyped and redundant mass culture. To a large extent this is the reason why modern philosophy in the rst half of the 20th century de ned itself by its disassociation from this banality and vulgarisation: the Husserlian epoché or the authenticity and extreme and original situations of Heideggarian anguish and tedium. The consequence is that when a culture becomes more stereotyped, interest shifts from the copies (redundancies) to the originals (novelty). The value is in the original design, in the new form of the object, and not in its inde nite identical copies. The originality and novelty of the form is diluted and “wasted” in its repeatability. When redundancy dominates the cultural panorama, it becomes manifest that what interests us about objects is not their materiality, the material support, but the form that is expressed in these dierent supports. When we buy a table we buy the information that it contains by virtue of its original form. The consequence of this is a separation between the form of the model and its materialisation in multiple objects, a dierence that will be accentuated in post-industrial production.

Post-industrial technique The last phase is the current situation, called post-industrial. Post-industrial society is characterised by a dierent type of machines that are not mechanical anymore, but electronic, and that produce a dierent type of objects. The rst post-industrial machine and the rst post-industrial object are the photographic camera and the photograph (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 151). A photograph is a reproducible object, but it is reproduced in a dierent way than an industrial object (a table, a car, a pen). In the case of photography, the model or prototype is the negative and the copies are its dierent developments. An industrial object (e.g. a car) is mass produced and once it has worn out it loses its value and we substitute it with another identical one (another copy of the same model) or, more often, with a dierent one (a copy of another model). Post- industrial objects like photographs are, on the other hand, reproducible, in the sense that we can develop the same photograph in dierent material supports without it suering any meaningful change. The photograph of a newspaper is not consumed in the same way in which we consume a pen; the newspaper has a short life of just one day, but not because the paper becomes worn out, but because the information is substituted by other information (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 151). The dierence between the industrial and the post-industrial object consists in a dierence in the relation between matter and form. We can use the analogy of a printing press. Industrial machines are like imperfect printing presses: printing presses because they print a form into matter (the table form into wood), but imperfect because the form is profoundly linked to the matter of the object and cannot be separated (the form of the table cannot be separated from the wood without losing the object). The photographic tech-

376 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture nique, on the other hand, is like a perfect printing press: we print (develop) the form (the negative) super cially on any material (from a newspaper to a t-shirt) in such a way that it seems to “oat” on the surface of the material and, therefore, we can separate it, that is to say, the image’s material support is relatively unimportant (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 151, 152). From this point of view we can interpret industrial society as a transition from craft-based society to post-industrial society, a transition from a society of originals, from handicraft, to a society of information or of repeatable forms that glide super- cially without a support: the information society (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 151). A post- industrial object is not exactly an object (matter + form), but pure information (form without matter). Post-industrial “objects” are the digital images and texts that nowadays we nd everywhere: TV, internet, etc. Any design made with a computer is a post- industrial object: it is pure information that we save on the computer or on the “cloud”, that we print on paper or send via e-mail. In all these cases, the information is not altered by the change of the material support or hardware.

Rethinking the Human in the Technological Culture Necessity and freedom Now we can ask ourselves how we have come to arrive at this state of aairs. A possible answer might be: because objects are not good memories (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 157). Objects (information linked to matter) are consumed until they are worn out and then become “misinformed”, redundant. This creates two problems: 1. When the object becomes worn out, the material has to be thrown away, leading to the problem of object accumulation and the need for recycling (giving it a new form, making it the support for other information). 2. If they are not yet worn out, we keep the cultural objects in museums (archives of historical memory), but they occupy a lot of space. On the other hand, pure information is archived in the vast virtual warehouse of the internet, the museum of the future, where it can be manipulated and transformed constantly. The information is created, disseminated and stored in a virtual space that it is nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The information is intangible (because it is immaterial) but accessible everywhere. The human being de nes himself less and less by the culture and the material world of the humanist tradition, and more and more by the relations that he maintains with others, with whom he interchanges information. What is important is the intersubjec- tivity, the dialogue (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 159). Each one of us is a knot in an information net in which we receive, manipulate and send information. From the point of view of the information theory that we have outlined at the beginning we can try to assess the current situation (cfr. Flusser, V. 2001, pp. 153-157). If we de ne repetition in the strict sense as something that must always happen, something that cannot be in any other way and, therefore, that prevents the apparition of novelty as something unexpected, then, “repetition” is equivalent to “necessity”. As we have seen, this is the situation in the ancient and medieval world shaped by craft technique. If information is novelty, we can refer to it by the term “freedom”. Freedom is possibility, that which permits a break in the necessary course of things by introducing something unexpected. Freedom includes the possibility of breaking the law, the norm, the normality. And so, the information society supposes the triumph of free-

Pau Pedragosa Spain 377 dom over necessity, the triumph over death (all information is archived and can be reactivated), the triumph of form over matter, the triumph of the power to be over actual being. If, moreover, as we have said, information is available anywhere in the virtual space, this means that it is nowhere and everywhere. Isn’t this precisely the de nition of u-topia (that which has no place, topos)? This is a possible interpretation albeit a unilateral one (and obviously naive in its excessive optimism), as it de nes human nature exclusively as being free, and, moreover, it presupposes that only technology allows the full realisation of freedom. There is also the other side of the coin, the alternative interpretation according to which the current situation does not result in the triumph of freedom, but with the submission of the human being to the automatism of machines. The reverse of this situation becomes clearly manifest when we answer the question: How do we produce information? Through software programmes, that is to say, through automatic programmes. “Programme” and “automatism” are terms opposed to that of “freedom” (Flusser, V. 2001, p. 153). When we design we do not do whatever we want, but only what the program allows us to do. Automation can already be seen in our gestures: everything is reduced to the movement of the ngers over the keyboard or the “mouse”. If we imagine that we are observing a craftsman in his workshop and a worker seated in front of the computer, the contrast between their bodily gestures alone might lead us to suspect a loss of freedom rather than greater freedom. The craftsman moves his entire body in the space of the workshop, as the material requires different gestures, dierent exertions; the computer only requires the movement of the ngers. The danger is, therefore, that the programme that allows us to design such “free” forms is at the same time programming our gestures, it automates them, as the industrial assembly line had done previously (cfr. Flusser, V. 2002a, pp. 51-58). With both interpretations we are faced with the paradox of freedom and necessity that encloses the concept “technology”. On the one hand, technology frees us from nature (materiality, our body, what conditions us, de nitiveness, death), but, on the other hand, it submits us to another necessity, that of the automatism, the programme. On which side do we place technology: on that of freedom (understanding it, therefore, as opposed to nature, from which it frees us) or on the side of necessity (understanding it as an automated programme)? Phenomenology produces a displacement of meanings that allows us to understand the paradox of technology in another way.

Architecture: technology, art and the life-world We normally associate nature with necessity and technology with freedom. Phenom- enology brings about a shift of meanings that approximates the technological and the natural and distinguishes them from the meaning of freedom. One of the key and more fruitful concepts of phenomenology is that of the life-world (Lebenswelt) or, as he also calls it, the natural world, terms with which he refers to the world of everyday life. The life-world is both the world of nature and the arti cial world of technology that, to us, has already become second nature. This world is not de ned by the types of objects of which it is composed, but by our attitude towards them, by the relation that we have with the things that surround us, whether they are arti cial or natural (Blumenberg, H. 1999, pp. 41, 55). The life-world or the natural world is the world characterised by what is obvious and familiar (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 48), by what

378 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture is presupposed, that is to say, the contrary of information, of dierence, the unexpected and the surprising. In this way, our natural attitude in the world of everyday life is identi ed with an attitude that is technical, automated, thoughtless and unconscious. If a technological attitude towards things is an attitude that moves in the eld of what is obvious, art, on the other hand, can be understood as the dismantlement of things that are considered obvious. The technical relation with the world is a characteristic of our time. An important reason of this situation is the immense quantity of knowledge accumulated throughout history, which we are able to access (internet is the clearest example of this availability of knowledge). When knowledge has accumulated to the point where it is beyond the capacity of a person to acquire it all within their lifetime, then it is transmitted in such a way that although it may not be fully assimilated, it will still be functional, pro table and eective. That is to say, we have a technical or instrumental knowledge that we can use but which we cannot question. When we use knowledge as an instrument, its meaning becomes lost: we know what we are doing and how to do it but not why we have to do it. The techni cation of our knowledge of things therefore becomes an active ignorance (Blumenberg, H. 1999, p. 56). A clear example of the technical attitude is oered by the computer, or any technological apparatus, considered as a black box: objects that we know how to use but that we do not really understand how they work or how they are built. We press a button and this triggers a series of eects. What is important is that the eect is available to be produced. Behind each computer there is a long history of human discoveries, although all of this remains hidden behind its ease of use —and it would be a bad technical object if it allowed us to see the entire history behind it. The technological object refuses all questions related to its meaning, it presents itself in such a way that these questions do not ourish, especially the ones that refer to the justi cation of its existence (Blumenberg, H. 1999, pp. 59, 60). Its ultimate justi cation is that it works. In this way, the technological object presents itself as something obvious, that is to say, it does not provoke any questions, it silences all questions relative to its better optimisation, such as whether it is or is not necessary, whether it is meaningful, whether it is worthy, etc. Arti cial reality makes its home in the life-world, understood as the place of the obvious, the familiar and the redundant. But the very same arti cial reality can distance itself from the life-world and create estrangement, dierence and surprise. Therefore, what is necessary is to create some spaces where questions can be made. A space opened by artistic creativity that, obviously, in our times is realised through technological means. Architecture as an object that is simultaneously technological and artistic is able to open one such space, when it is not considered merely as something functional and ecient. Architecture can show, apart from its functionality, its meaning. According to the measure in which this can be achieved, we can go beyond the simple techni cation of things or the natural way in which we understand them.

Bibliography

Aristotle. 1994. Física. Madrid: Gredos. Blumenberg H. 1999. Las realidades en que vivimos. Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós.

Pau Pedragosa Spain 379 Flusser, V. 2001. Una losofía de la fotografía. Madrid: Síntesis. Flusser, V. 2002 a. Filosofía del diseño. Madrid: Síntesis, 2002. Flusser, V. 2002 b. Writings (Andreas Ströhl Editor). Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Heidegger, M. 1977. Gesamtausgabe. Band 2. Sein und Zeit. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Kloster- mann GmbH. Heidegger, M. 2000. Gesamtausgabe. Band 7. Vorträge und Aufsätze. “Die Frage nach der Technik“. “Bauen Wohnen Denken“. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH. Mosterín, J. 2009. La cultura humana. Madrid: Espasa. Mulder, A. 2004. Understanding Media Theory. Rotterdam: V2_/Nai Publishers. Taylor, M. C. 2001. The Moment of Complexity. Emerging Network Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

380 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Yannis Zavoleas

School of Architecture University of Patras Greece House-as-Machine: the Influences of Technology during early Modernism By focusing on the concept of house-as-machine, machine’s early adaptations to the house are compared to the socio-cultural context of early modernism. A set of variations of all-electric house developed in Europe and the US is presented along with the cultural dierences between these two geographic areas. Meanwhile, in response to the economic crisis of the Thirties, house-as-machine was adapted into case studies on the minimum dwelling [Existenzminimum]. Rooms having speci c mechanical function such as the kitchen and the bathroom were symbolic ones concerning economy and competence. Additionally, the machine became a reference to a more systematic understanding of architectural design. Ernst Neufert’s book Architect’s Data, rst published in 1936, is a comprehensive guide about the integration of machine’s characteristics into architecture, whereat the house is given a prominent place. Le Corbusier’s Dom-ino House and Citrohan House are concise manifestations of the architect’s related interest. Upon comparison, it is claimed that the designs are not always automatic translations of the machine into architectural space; in that case, they rather carry contradictious qualities.

House-as-machine In early modernism, the machine was appointed as a multifaceted reference for the de nition of the modern house. The related research focused on the technological evolution of domestic appliances, also on ecient and ergonomic design, the development of new typologies for the house unit and the housing complex, the standardization of construction using prefabrication and the building industry, the new materials and the highly sophisticated solutions and techniques in the construction site. These studies were framed by an upraising interest in building development, including its market. In the present paper, machine’s inuences to the house are organized according to an evolutionary schema. First, technology is viewed as a cue being supportive to domesticity. Then, ergonomics and functionality are being discussed in relation to the design of the house. Finally, the machine is examined as a model of organization in the modern house, with respect to architectural space and construction. This set of references of the machine represents the spectrum of metaphors between technology and architecture, which has been established since modernism, as it stands to the present. The support of domesticity by technological means was possible due to a variety of technological innovations of electrical appliances, whose aim was to modernize common operations. One of the rst technologically equipped houses was presented in the IV Triennial Exhibition of Monza, Italy, in 1930 (Fig. 1, 2). The Electric House, [La Casa Elettrica] designed in Milan by Luigi Figini, Auido Frette, Adalberto Libera, Gino Pollini of Gruppo 7 and Piero Bottoni, is an exemplary case of machine-house oering a variety of typologies, with potential for mass-production. Apart from the desire to incorporate a number of appliances in the household, the proposal demonstrates a new architectural view about technique, manufacturing and ecient arrangement of space, being expressive of modern life. Technology was present in the form of new building materials and techniques, also of contemporary queries on the problem of dwelling, mainly with the rearrangement of the plan. There are apparent dierences between the Electric House and the folk Italian house. The traditional ways of living were closely attached to the Mediterranean climate, and so it was dicult to adapt the new technological achievements, the international standards and the modern

382 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 & 2 The Electic House [La Casa Elettrica], designed in Milan in 1930, by Luigi Figini, Auido Frette, Adal- berto Libera, Gino Pollini of Gruppo 7 and Piero Bottoni. aesthetics to what had existed before. The Electric House proposes a dialectical relationship between new technologies and the special character of traditional life. In respect, special attention was given to unite the interior with the exterior through wide openings, also with the placement of greenery to the interior and the positioning of semi-open spaces in the building’s volume. Overall, the Electric House demonstrates a mechanical logic responding variously to a set of timely contemporary challenges about space organization, advanced manufacturing and construction methods, hightech equipment and a wholly new approach to aesthetics. During Interwar, industries such as General Electric Company and Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company promoted a series of all-electric houses built across

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 383 USA, aiming to conquer the related market. In 1933, at the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition featuring fully electri- ed houses, General Electric Company introduced the Talking Kitchen as this (Fig. 3):

“‘There are no attendants in this kitchen, but ... a voice from an unseen source announces that this is the last word in kitchen equipment. As if by magic the door of the electric refrigerator opens and the voice, coming apparently from the refrigerator, relates how the refrigerator saves money for the owner. Then a spotlight falls on the electric range, the oven door lowers,’ and a voice explained its operation, and so on through the rest Fig. 3 of the appliances. By eliminating the at- The Talking Kitchen, by General Electric Com- tendant, the company seemed to say pany designed in 1933. that the kitchen worked by itself” (1933, as cited in Nye, 1990, pp. 357-358).

An interest on the matter was growing rapidly and in 1935, General Electric Company in cooperation with Federal Housing Authority sponsored the Home of the Future architectural competition. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company’s dynamic response was to promote its rst All-Electric Home in Mans eld, Ohio, in 1934 and later, in 1939, to publish a proposal on The Electric Home of the Future (Fig. 4) in Popular Mechan- ics magazine, asserting full automation of every function and maximized practicality in design. More ideas followed in the following years and in 1949 “Science Illustrated” magazine hosted an advanced version of the Electric House (Fig. 5), which, apart from automation —using equipment from Touch Plate, Square D. and General Electric Com- pany— was equipped by a central control system operating through a wireless network, with the prospect that a large part of the market embraces these technological advancements within ten years (Science Illustrated, May 1949, pp. 66-69). Taken together, the various companies’ views on the house-as-machine are domestic expressions of the “technological sublime” (Nye, 1990, pp. 359-360). Ideally, the domestic activities would be programmed so that the machine-house functions as a sort of self-decisive mechanism controlling all aspects of everyday life. However, the proposed relationship between the dweller and technology was not unresistingly accepted by the public; rather, the consumer felt a loss of control in his own sphere of control, a probable reason for its marketing failure in the rst place. In retrospect, the venture had much more complex implications. The psychosocial signi cance of the house as a symbol of tradition and of customary habits being transferred essentially unchanged from one generation to the next, had to be replaced by a modern view of the house being at the center of technological advancement. To this end it took a long campaign, so that any of the resident/consumer’s hesitation due to the invasion of technology in the household was eventually alleviated. As an example, in

384 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 4 Hybrid body with mutable extensions in evolving space (drawing by author).

Fig. 5 A technologically advanced example of The Electric House, published in Science Illustrated magazine in 1949, using equipment from Touch Plate, Square D. and General Electric Company.

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 385 The Electric Home of the Future article, the three-dimensional artistic image depicts the living standards of tomorrow: a highly equipped kitchen adds to the domestic cozi- ness, being united to the extended living room, where the children play happily and the husband reads his newspaper, while the wife/mother is serving coee. Advertising images of similar content gradually altered the state of consciousness for the consuming public and technology was related to intimacy, privacy, control, individuality and character. This friendly and technologically advanced domestic environment would be expressive of the new values such as utility, luxury, sophisticated style, or a combination of them. From then on, the modern view of dwelling would be about a stylishly equipped household functioning tirelessly, also with safety, comfort and economy, in so doing providing more spare time for relaxation and wellness (Ross, 1996, p. 89). Over the years, the industry and the market of domestic appliances have managed to be very successful to the updated standards. Designing the machine-house of the future would be about the seamless integration of all sorts of appliances into a unifying total. Technology would serve every domestic activity, while its presence, re ned, contemporary, modern, simple and friendly, suggested a sense of progress towards a better future. Technological evolution has continued since then, being supported by research in engineering, industrial design, electronics and computer science, also under the objective to take hold of the market. Seen from this perspective, the machine- house is better understood as a case study for a new lifestyle, for which technological innovation responds to the daily needs, even those being arti cial. In architecture, machine-house would infer a total redesign of the house as an “apparatus for living.” For that purpose, it was rstly important to identify those everyday activities also oering an updated understanding of them; then, to address these activities with regard to spatial relevance and to the relationships among them, in order to outline the new design principles. This new trend is reected in the House that Works article, published in Fortune magazine, in 1935: “a building, whether it be a dwelling or a factory or a post oce, is a tool. That is to say, the house is an instrument fabricated for a purpose” (Fortune 12, Oct. 1935, p. 59-65, 94, as cited in Nye, 1990, p. 359). The view of machine-house as an instrument refers to all of the functions assigned to the household, with a generalized intent for maximized eciency. Such requirements highlight the importance attached to the relationship between a task and the time needed for its execution. The aim for optimal time-management is typical of modern life. Richard Buckminster Fuller describes time as a new dimension that must be taken fully into account in the design of the house. Time-saving is accomplished by the segregation of functions “being individually solved,” (Fuller, 1928) thus being translated to a dominant philosophy often requiring specialized design and technological support. Overall, the machine-house responds to the idea of a house that “performs” as eectively as possible, under the premise of maximum functionality.

In Response to the Economic Crisis The Minimum Dwelling The de nition of functionality in the house was inuenced by broader social factors, even by historical upheavals. For example, in the early thirties, functionality was viewed as a possible response to the economic crisis. Architecture’s socially driven mission was to meet the living needs of the less privileged layers of population. Thus,

386 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture functionality would be translated to eciency in space utilization. A growing interest on Existenzminimum being about the house on a minimum size would represent a new culture of everyday life in Europe (Heynen, 1990, p. 41). Existenzminimum was part of a broader survey under the name Das Neue Frankfurt, rst presented in 1926 and then published in 1929 for 2nd CIAM held in Frankfurt, whose theme was The Minimum Subsistence Dwelling [Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum] (Heynen, 1999, pp. 43-8 and Mumford, 1999, pp. 33-4) (Fig. 6, 7). The study was to set the minimum standards of quality and comfort for a house unit, then to incorporate this unit into housing complexes and so to make up entire neighbourhoods, all following the same principle. It took place during the Twenties in Central Europe and especially in Germany, where many housing assemblies were built known as Siedlung. Hilde Hey- nen explains how in a short time period from 1927 to 1931, due to the economic crisis, the objectives of the design research on the minimum dwelling were in total harmony to the qualities of the machine (Heynen, 1990, pp. 48-63). Indeed, the dimensions of the constituents of a house unit and the relationships between them would have to be assertive of eciency. The same intention is evident in the functional de nition of rooms being typical of domestic living such as the living room and the bedroom, also in an eort for the minimization of supportive areas such as the entrance hall and the corridors.

Fig. 6 Poster of the exhibition Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum, held in Frankfurt, in 1929.

Fig. 7 Design by Grete Schütte – Lihotzky and Wil- helm Schütte, standard worker’s apartment house in Frankfurt, (2nd CIAM, 1929).

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 387 In particular, the machine model is applied in full in rooms with advanced mechanical requirements, such as the kitchen and the bathroom. Because of their engineering and technological speci cations, these rooms were viewed as symbols of the mechanical operations in the domestic environment and they were often given a hi- tech aesthetics, as in the scienti c laboratory. A typical example of this is The Frankfurt Kitchen [Die Frankfurter Küche] (Fig. 8) by Grete Schütte – Lihotzky in 1926, designed to be in every household. The project was included in the extended survey of Das Neue Frankfurt on the minimum dwelling. As Schütte – Lihotzky explains,

“we regarded the kitchen as a kind of laboratory, which, because so much time would be spent there, nevertheless had to be ‘homey.’ The time required to carry out the various functions was measured using a stopwatch ... in order to arrive at an optimum, ergonomic organization of the space. ... The cost savings resulting from the reduced size of the kitchen remained signi cant, however, so that the Frankfurt Kitchen oered the double advantage of lower construction costs and less work for the occupants. Only by arguing in these terms, was it possible to persuade the Frankfurt city council to agree to the installation of the kitchens, with all their sophisticated work- saving features. The result was that, from 1926 to 1930, no mu- Fig. 8 nicipal apartment could be built The Frankfurt Kitchen [Die Frankfurter Küche], de- without The Frankfurt Kitchen” signed by Grete Schütte – Lihotzky, in 1926. (Schütte – Lihotzky, n.d.).

In the above description, the conditions of eciency and performance are evaluated through a combinatory compromise between optimal work in shortest time and lowest cost. Functionality is directly related to economy and is implemented along with technological support of the domestic activities, size minimization and industrialized fabrication using standardized measurements. In general, machine’s nominative characteristics would be xed up as a set of principles outlining the new ideal about dwelling, and then be transferred to a more systematic design of the house. A focus on systematic design grew along with the development of ergonomic standards and guides describing human activities, as it was extended in designing other building types, too. For example, Ernst Neufert’s Architect’s Data handbook guide provides an essential reference for the design and planning about a building project, as a comprehensive collection of data about requirements, criteria, considera-

388 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture tions of function and site adaptation. Neufert’s book, originally published in Berlin in 1936 (with the title Bauentwurfslehre), has been a prominent contribution to the survey on ecient space design. Neufert addresses the subject using detailed tables and schematic explanations, so that every decision would be taken in response to fully measurable data, also clearly speci ed descriptions and methodologically controlled design operations. In the same logic, the book outlines detailed listings about every space type, function and activity, aiming to lay down any possible case. Speci cally for the house, the schematic proposals refer to each room in relation to function, such as the living room, the bedroom, the auxiliary room, the circulation areas and the engine room, even to outdoor areas, the garden, the pool, the parking lot and every other one. Additionally, a series of alternatives is presented, such as sites with dierent characteristics, cabins, villas, apartment buildings and housing complexes. The variations are exhaustingly analyzed and accurately designed, with speci c dimensions relating to every description, including construction solutions, details, amenities, interior layout and furniture design. The author extends the ideal of ecient design by suggesting an all-systemic approach for the house, as well as for any other functional program and building type. Additionally, he oers solutions about the static behaviour of the building, also sustainability, energy eciency, even aesthetics. In fact, the chapters “The Eye”, “Man” and Colour” are devoted to visual perception (Fig. 9). A set of comparative criteria is given to study the aesthetic eects of various sizes, shapes and colours (Neufert, 36th ed., 2004, pp. 37-43). The chapter “Proportions” is devoted to the geometric construction of Golden Section, which, in subsequent editions of the book, is compared to Le Corbusier’s Modulor. In Neufert’s book, architectural design is treated as a decision-

Fig. 9 Ernst Neufert, The eye and Proportions: Modulor, in Architect’s Data, 36th edition (in Greek), 2004.

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 389 making process, whereby the building’s space and the nal form arise through rmly rationalized steps being related to prede ned imperatives and problems, leading towards their best resolution. Systemic approaches in architecture are notably rooted on this part of modern tradition, whereat the machine model with its symbolic meanings and connotations is infused in every design decision.

Le Corbusier’s Trajectory on the machine-house Since early modernism, Le Corbusier developed laborious studies on the machine- house, nally leading to a complete rede nition of the house. Initially, he focused on space organization with regard to eciency and ergonomy; soon, however, he sought for an entirely new approach, for which the machine-house aimed at establishing the design principles about modern architecture. Le Corbusier’s architectural vision presented in his inuential book Toward an Architecture in 1923 is based on the machine model. As in manifesto style, the architect/author compares the values of modern architecture to those a machine is built. His view of the house as a Machine for Living [Machine à Habiter] (Le Corbusier, 1923), was revolutionary in the sense that contemporary dwelling is de ned as a problem needing rational solution. For Le Corbusier, the house is a central case: “To study the house for the common man, for ‘all and sun- dry,’ is to recover human foundations: the human scale, the typical need, the typical function, the typical emotion. There you have it! That’s crucial, that’s everything” (Le Corbusier, 1923). After attempting to pose “right at last” the problem of dwelling —as it was still pending, he states— Le Corbusier sets the daily necessities as the basis for rational resolution. Then, he establishes a list of “conveniencies” upon which he composes a Housing Manual (Le Corbusier, 1923). In his comprehensive work, Le Corbusier records in detail the requirements of dwelling, also mentioning the signi cance of every room and element in the house, including the terrace as a place for sunbathing, the outdoor space, the garage for the car, the bicycle and the motorcycle, the maid’s room and the bathroom. The list goes on with the walls, the exercise equipment and furniture such as tables, chairs, storage units and drawers, the gramophone and the ventilating panes. The author responds to the problem of dwelling by a set of standards based on the logic of practicality, functionality, economy, prediction, regulating lines and standardization of construction (Le Corbusier, 1923). The machine contributes in the solution as a model that directs, enhances and improves both the design of the house and the experience of dwelling. Two years before, in 1921, Le Corbusier had presented Citrohan House (Fig. 10), as a typical solution for the mass-produced house based on economy. The name invokes the French automaker Citroën, as with it Le Corbusier compares the house to a car. The house-as-car concept introduces two more principles: rst, Le Corbusier prefers using the term “equipment” [outillage] rather than “furniture;” second, he exerts the importance of mass-production, aecting price, availability and fabrication in short time (Le Corbusier, 1923 and Banham, 1960, pp. 221, 233). Spatial arrangement responds to eciency and practicality of function. Special attention is given to natural lighting about each room regarding orientation and occupation, also to the maid’s room and the bathroom. The solutions given reect a long time period of research and were based on standardization of design, also of the plan and construction, under the aim to keep costs as low as possible. The proposal brings up a combination of

390 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 10 Le Corbusier, Citrohan House, 1921 and Dom-ino House, 1914. adaptability of the general design to speci c requirements, along with compatibility of the construction elements and the possibility of fabrication and assembly on the site. In 1914, Le Corbusier had responded to these issues with Dom-ino House, a framework structure that could be repeated also permitting a great variety in the grouping of the houses. The frame is made of elements of reinforced concrete. It supports the walls (cavity walls with 20 cm voids enclosed by 3 cm skins made of cement sprayed onto stretched sheet metal), the oor slabs and the stripes of factory window frames, all to the same module. Most of the propositions of Dom-ino House are present in Cit- rohan House. Citrohan House is highly innovative for its time for the way it readdresses the problem of dwelling under the premise of standardization. With Citrohan House, the machine model conveys a mechanical quality to the processes of design, also to construction and domestic living. First, new techniques are invented for the systematization of fabrication, along with the designing of the prefabricated walls, the framing system and the foundations (Banham, 1960, p.244). The structure exploits the potential of new materials and of reinforced concrete, also of the advancements brought by building technology and industry and so it proposes a new view on exibility in regards to construction and spatial organization. Furthermore, the house meets the challenges of modern living as a “utensil” carefully designed, also being subtle, compound and adjustable. Modern house’s lifetime is de ned by the time period that a house satis es its operational requirements, as it may be repaired even be replaced, much like when a machine, a car, or a tool does not work, does not t, or is not sucient anymore and so this would be the time to throw it away (Banham, 1960, p. 241). Citrohan House may be mass-produced as a system that is repeated horizontally and vertically as well. It may also be in great variety,

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 391 responding to the individual’s requirements, social status and budget, from factory housing to artists’ studios to villas and to mansions for the rich (Le Corbusier, 1923). As Frederic Migayrou comments, “by linking the name Maison Citrohan to the eld of automobile production, Le Corbusier had de nitely caused a seminal break in the understanding of dwelling. The house became a true product, an object entirely organized by a system of processes, nite, circumscribed and valued in terms of cost and return on investment” (Migayrou, 2002, p. 18). The rationale of the machine model yields its qualities to the produced object: the design of the house follows closely the emerging technological capabilities, meanwhile setting the aesthetic trends for the house of the future. Le Corbusier’s extended survey on standardization includes the Village of Pessac (1925). By taking advantage of the recent advancements in the industry of prefabrication, new methods of standardization were applied for the production of architectural elements such as walls, oors, ceilings and beams. The whole village was completed in less than a year at low cost, using reinforced concrete and prefabricated components, also following preplanned methods of assembly. In respect, Le Corbusier’s study on the machine-house would induce to an abandonment of the romantic idea of the traditional home that was expressive of the owner’s customs and personal style, promoting instead the values of the machine, along with up-to-date requirements such as hygiene, comfort, utility and practicality. Soon, similar issues would set the main guidelines for the design of the modern house, further establishing a whole new culture. Architecture’s main interest would be to supervise all of the individual parameters and the decisions along the processes of design and construction. In this course, Le Corbusier went as far as to compare the machine- house to a tool. Meanwhile, he treated architectural qualities and aesthetics as being more permanent, reecting the true values and the essential preconditions of life; in so doing, he would ensure livingness and sustainability for the house and for architecture as well. Le Corbusier’s research trajectory manifests an evolutionary transition towards a completely original conception about architecture, for which the machine represents an integral model about space in regards to function, order of organization and the modes of production.

Conclusion In the course of modernism, the concept of house-as-machine is reected into a set of variations. Initially, it is identi ed as a plain support of the domestic activities by technological means; then, it is extended to ergonomic design of the house, in response to every possible design issue. Rooms with mechanical requirements favour a more integrated implementation of the machine, whereas rooms such as the living room and the bedroom are more exible, as these may change in house’s lifetime. Studies on the house of that era would focus on a special kind of variableness permitting transformations through standardization. The machine oered itself as a main reference to a radical revision of the design principles and a new philosophy about architecture. Com- pound structural models may oer more complex properties and may better respond to space’s total behavior; in that case, machine’s qualities such as eciency and performance may be combined to other ones such as openness, exibility and adaptability.

392 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture References

Anon, The ‘Electric House’ at the IV Monza Triennale. In Domus 32, August 1930. Translated by G. Ponti vol. I, Taschen, Cologne, 2006. Anon, 1949. New Wiring Idea May Make the All-Electric House Come True. In Science Illustrated. May 1949, pp. 66-9. Available at: [Accessed 10 July 2010]. Banham, R, 1960. Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. Oxford: Architectural Press. Buckminster Fuller, R, 1928. 4D Time Lock. 1972. Albuquerque, NM: Lama Foundation/Biotechnic Press. Heynen, H, 1999. Architecture and Modernity: a Critique. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Le Corbusier, 1923. Vers Une Architecture. Toward an Architecture. Translated by J.Goodman., 2007. Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute. Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier 1910-65, 1967. Boesinger, W. and Girsberger, H. eds. 1999. Basil, Boston and Berlin: Birkhäuser Publishers. Migayrou, F, 2002. Particularities of the Minimum. In M.A.Brayer and B.Simonot, eds, 2002. Archilab’s Futurehouse: Radical Experiments in Living Space. New York: Thames & Hudson. Mumford, E, 1999. The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928-1960. Cambridge MA: The MIT Press. Neufert, E, 1936. Architect’s Data. 36th ed., 2004. Athens: Giourdas Publishing. Nye, D, 1990. Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press. Ross, K, 1996. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies. Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture. Cambridge, MA & London, England: October Books / The MIT Press. Schütte-Lihotzky, M, 1980-90. Erinnerungen (Memories). Vienna, unpublished. Available at: [Accessed 12 October 2010].

Yannis Zavoleas Greece 393

Claus Bech-Danielsen1 Anne Beim2 Charlotte Bundgaard3 Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen2

3The Danish Building Research Institute (SBi) 1RDAFA – School of Architecture 2The School of Architecture Aarhus Denmark Tectonic Thinking - Developing a Critical Strategy for a Responsive and Adaptive Architecture This paper derives from a larger research project that is performed across the three major Danish research institutions in the architectural eld: The Royal Danish Acad- emy of Fine Arts, Schools of Architecture, Design and Conservation, Aarhus School of Architecture and Danish Building Research Institute, Aalborg University. This research project, funded by the Danish Research Council, focuses on tectonics, sustainability and building culture. It is thus the project’s overall purpose to update tectonic theories - in the light of current changes in our building culture and in the light of the new challenges arising from the requirements for transition to sustainability. The research group is convinced, that the architectonic quality of a building is closely related to its tectonic structure. The term tectonic is known from geology, where it describes an understanding of the mountains original appearance as well as current activities in the earth crust, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. In a tectonic perspective the planet is considered a living organism, through studies of the forces, relocations and movements that over time have occurred in Earth’s outer surface. In a sustainable perspective, there seems to be a direct parallel to the view of our planet, described in James Lovelock’s Gaia theory from the 1970s (Lovelock, 1979). This theory sees the Earth as a living system - proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are closely integrated to form a single and self-regulating complex system, maintaining the conditions for life on the planet (Lovelock, 1979). Common for the two theoretical positions is that they both lead to procedural and open views on architecture. In a concrete reality it may be harder to spot the immediate relationships between sustainable development and tectonic quality in architecture. One of the greatest challenges in a sustainable perspective is the growing energy consumption and the global climate changes - which disrupts Gaia’s self-regulating system. Construction and operation of buildings are in most European countries responsible for 40-50% of total energy consumption (European Commission, 2010), and the political objective to reduce the consumption of energy, therefore puts high requirements on the built environment. This also includes Denmark where the societal objectives are aiming for a reduction of CO2 emissions by 20% before year 2020. Regarding this the standards on isolation and energy consumption were improved in the Danish Building Regulations in 2010. Further improvements will be adopted in 2015 and in 2020, and by then all constructions in Denmark are expected to be built according to passive house standard. This is done primarily through increased use of insulation. Energy requirements will thus have a major inuence on shaping the future construction and development of tectonic qualities in architecture. Also, in the existing building stock, the requirements for energy reduction results in architectonic challenges. The annual share of new buildings in Denmark is only a bit more than one per cent of the total building stock (Christensen and Nielsen, 1999), and if energy consumption is to be reduced seriously, it is crucial that the consumption in the existing building stock is reduced. Also, in this respect, external insulation is seen as the primary solution, and the energy requirements will thus have major architectonic implications. It is therefore important to discuss how the energy improvements can be integrated in architecture, and can be implemented without jeopard- izing the architectural heritage. A second challenge is the increasing industrialization and its impact on products and processes in our built environment. The development, which has transformed tra-

396 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture ditional craftsmanship, based construction to industrialized construction with computer-controlled production processes, calls for an updated theoretical basis and a new understanding of architectural practice. A reinterpretation of tectonics as a concept must necessarily respond to this. In doing so, the present research project is based on existing exploration of tectonic aspects of architecture, and the project’s primary task is to explore and discuss the existing theoretical positions in the light of current demands and cultural issues. These issues will, among others, deal with sustainability (resource consumption) and our current building culture (technology development and cultural identity), and they will be illustrated through a series of related sub-projects. The research project’s overall objective is to develop a strategy for a tectonic sustainable building practice.

Tectonic Thinking – Research Question The research project is thus based on the fact, that the current environmental agenda entails a number of requirements and potentials to be uncovered and unfolded as active parameters in architectural development. The overall research questions can be formulated as follows: Can tectonic thinking form the basis for new strategies for sustainable building practices and industries? To answer this question it is necessary to understand to what extent and in what manner the paradigm of sustainability inuences the tectonic. In this respect we turn to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio for a moment. He wrote De Architectura in the rst century AD, and in this classical doctrine on architecture he stated that architectural quality occurs in buildings when the quality both includes rmitas (durability), utilitas (functionality), and venustas (beauty) (Rowland and Howe, 1999). Firmitas concerns the material and the constructive items in architecture that is relevant to a building’s physical durability. Utilitas concerns the functional issues of architecture, that is to say the building’s capacity to respond to the demands and needs made by the users and the surrounding society at various times. Venustas concerns the beauty of architecture, which in Vitruvius’ classical universe was about the building’s ability to mime (from the Greek ‘mimesis’) the cosmic order of nature. In this light it becomes interesting to look at the tectonic, e.g. at Semper, who attributed the contemporary understanding of the concept of tectonics (Beim, 2004). We will focus particularly on two aspects of Semper’s concept of tectonics. Firstly, according to Semper tectonics is a result of conscious artistic work (Semper, 1851). Sec- ondly, according to Semper tectonics primary deals with the material design of constructions, while the functional content of architecture is not the main focus in the concept (Beim 2004, p.49). Following the rst point, it is worth noting that the design of tectonic aspects in architecture must involve an artistic idea. Therefore, Hartoonian (1994, pp.29-30) argues that tectonic work has a ‘purpose’, is based on an intention and has a meaningful content. Tectonic design requires an artistic idea, which acts as an organizing and structuring principle. An overall principle that forms materials and constructions into coherent structures. Following the second point it is worth noting that tectonic work in the view of Semper’s de nition can be regarded as an artistic form - having only secondary focus on the functional content in architecture. Tectonic work therefore discusses artistic

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 397 design (venustas) based on architectural physical structures and materials ( rmitas) - rather than focusing on architectures functional content and its everyday use (util- litas). This fact is important when answering the described research-question dealing with the inuence of sustainability on the tectonic work. Part of the sustainability concerns are about resource savings, for example, reducing energy consumption and

CO2 emissions related to construction. These requirements directly aect the choice of materials and constructions; materials must be evaluated from ‘cradle to cradle’ (Mc- Donough and Braungart, 2002), and constructions must likewise be evaluated by their ability to allow the building to be part of a greater resource cycle, such as the ability to disassemble constructions at the end of use in order to have the materials recycled and reused in new contexts. In the present research project, these circumstances raise the research question, whether the tectonic work can be approached so that resources are used more deliberately - and how we, taking into account the growing climate and environmental problems, develop a strong tectonic building culture. Another element of the sustainability paradigm is, however, the social and societal structures providing more general questions to the norms and values; we base our cities and buildings upon. There are in this respect reasons to recall that architecture is not only built on materials - bricks, concrete, glass and steel. Architecture is based on ideas - the ideals and values that express visions and conceptions of ‘the good life’ - that is, conditions that can be categorized under ’utilitas’. These notions are aected drastically by the environmental problems, an idea which manifests itself as a ‘non-intentional dark side’ of the prosperity and consumption that has been the driving force behind the development of Western society since World War II. A similar dark side is reected in the architecture - with Koolhaas’ words in the form of ‘junk space’ (Koolhaas, 2001). Other societal and cultural ideals also have an impact on contemporary building culture. For instance, the increased societal individualization leads to demands concerning architectural diversity, exibility and adaptability (Madsen, 2008). The research project will focus on these issues and discuss their inuence on the architectonic process and quality. Thus - as part of the described research project - it will be discussed whether (and if so, how) the social and humanistic oriented ideals, which among other things arise from the sustainable development, inuence the tectonic work. Can tectonic thinking sustain a responsive and adaptive architecture that involves a more sensitive involvement of human values?

Tectonic Thinking - Hypothesis In this paper, we will discuss the potentials embedded in tectonic thinking as the underlying basis of architectural practice. By focusing on the tectonic aspects of the building itself and the inuence of a tectonic mindset on the connection between the design process and the construction, a set of exceptional vistas arises. These can be summarized in the following hypothesis:

Tectonic thinking – de ned as a central attention towards the nature of the making, and the application of building materials (construction) and how this attention forms a creative force in building constructions, structural features and architectural design (construing) – can be used to identify and re ne strategies for improving contemporary building industry.

398 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The Italian architectural theorist Marco Frascari describes the concepts construction and construing in the essay The Tell-the-tail Detail (Frascari, 1984). According to Frascari the two concepts have to be united to give signi cation to architecture. The actual construction of the building structure, in this way, needs to contain a narrative layer making possible a construing of the meaning embedded in the structure. This close link between the creation of concrete solutions and the creation of meaning forms the core of tectonic thinking. By understanding the potentials in the materials and the construction methods used and by transforming them into a design solution - that reects the logic of the construction - the appearance of a building and the process of construction are united. In her book Tectonic Visions in Architecture (Beim, 2004) the Danish architect and researcher Anne Beim states that when talking about the tectonics of a building, the focus will then be on the meaning embedded in the speci c construction, as it is interpreted both by the architect and the user. The connection of the construction and the construing is then both a core element in the design process as well as in the perception of the actual design result. The concept of tectonic thinking focuses on the potentials in both the genesis of the solution and in the appearance of the nal building structure. In the essay above-mentioned, Marco Frascari uses the work of the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa to describe how the connection between the design of the construction and the meaning embedded in the design solution can be used as a creative force in the process of developing a given solution. In his work, Scarpa pursues an artistic idea as the starting point of an investigation of the detailing of the structure. In the design of the detail, Scarpa studies both the technical construction and the appearance of the nal solution by using dierent ways of sketching within the same drawing. The aim of this process is to unite the artistic idea and the selected construction in one narrative that articulates both the artistic idea and its connection to the logic of construction (Frascari, 1984). By focusing on the construction as a narrative expressing its own logic, then both the process of designing and the nal piece of work become more transparent. This elucidation of the structure and its creation makes it easier to recognise and keep focus on the main problem at play. The transparency of the process then facilitates communication between the dierent parties involved in the design process (architects, engineers, contractors and craftsmen). In this way, tectonic thinking can form the platform for strategies for re ning and improving the contemporary building industry seen in the light of sustainability, by creating a clear focus in the design process and a common language among the parties involved. By focusing on tectonic thinking in the design of buildings, one forms a strategy of establishing a link between the intensions embedded in the design of the structure and the way these are understood by the user of the nal building. Working on the tectonic aspects of the structures strengthens the appearance of its potentials. By of- fering the possibility to the user of the building to conceive the logic of the construction, the user gets actively involved in the understanding of the potentials embedded in the structure. This knowledge can help the user both in the daily handling of the building and in a future reconstruction of the building structure. Tectonic thinking can, in this way, form the platform for strategies in order to ensure a sustainable use of resources through the lifespan of the building by creating an understanding of the logic and the potentials of the construction among the users.

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 399 Tectonic Thinking – State of the Art in Contemporary Building Processes Contemporary building industry has developed radically in terms of advanced industrialized manufacturing. In particular, digital technologies have provided new and dierent ways of fabrication through the past couple of decades. These make series of identical objects unnecessary, industrially manufactured components can now be customized to t a particular architectural construction design. This evident change in manufacturing processes and similarly the associated design processes have at rst glance been de ned as digital tectonics within the architectural realm. According to Leach, Turnbull and Williams, who were among the earliest theorists who thoroughly analyzed this eld; “The term Digital Tectonics is being used […] to refer to a new paradigm of thinking in architectural culture […] computer technologies have in ltrated almost every aspect of architectural production, and is now being used to bring insights into the realm, even of the tectonic. In particular, they are allowing us to model – with increasing sophistication – the material properties of architectural components” (Leach, Turnbull and Williams, 2004). Neil Leach describes this movement as a ‘structural turn’ in architectural culture, which has launched a new spirit for collaboration between architecture and engineering and which seems to inuence the production of buildings in the future to come. One of the earliest - yet advanced and highly illustrative examples underlining this movement is the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (1997), where speci c computer programs, the manufacturing process and the use of titanium as a ‘sustainable material solution’ were developed in parallel (Van Bruggen 1998, p. 4). Although, Leach has criticized this building for being the culmination of separating the structural concerns from the aesthetic ones, it still represents state of the art in terms of developing and applying new computer programs and manufacturing technologies for solving challenging construction solutions. The primary computer program used for this exceptional project was Catia (Van Bruggen 1998, p.135).1 Catia that was originally developed for the French aerospace industry oered a comprising of dierent packages of software. These were among others: A modeller of architectural faces and volumes and a de ner of the paths used by the milling machines in the construction process. Supposedly, the software did not provide all the needs of the designing architects so they had to customize it and invent new applications for the software as they went on. The lay out process was accelerated in making use of the new computer program. Sculptural shapes could be computed, similar to the structuring of the steel frame and the tting of the great number of assorted panels and thereby oering a more time-saving and economical way of building. This way of processing worked both for construction based on high technology, such as numerically controlled manufacturing, as well as for traditional craft by use of full-scale templates in order to design shapes. As for the roof cladding material, titanium was chosen as a replacement for lead copper, which was outlawed as a toxic material. The titanium oered the properties needed for a demanding building envelope like this and it could be milled and cut in endless varieties of shapes. Titanium is a highly expensive material yet the titanium used for the roo ng is a third of a millime- tre thick and there is a hundred year guarantee against deterioration. When comparing the life span of titanium to the one of stone cladding, that is vulnerable in terms of deterioration due to city pollution, Frank Gehry has stated that the understanding of stability has to be reconsidered (Van Bruggen 1998, p. 141).

400 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. View of the curved façade covered with titanium. Photo: Georg Rotne 1998 (KA-billeder).

The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao represents a one-to-one prototype where each and every construction solution and building component were designed, developed and customized for this particular building. As such, the speci c construction solutions may not have been easily applicable or possible to transform into succeeding building projects, yet the computer technology has been developed further into a widely known commercial product: Gehry Technologies, which oers support as well as various digital products. Another highly interesting example is architectural works and ideas by Kieran & Timberlake Architects, who have developed a theoretical framework, a sort of manifest, which forms an investigation into the tendencies in advantages of contemporary construction industry. With the book; Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies are Poised to Transform Building Construction (2004), they oered a different approach to the architectural design process fostered by the computerized tools emphasizing their communicative force as information management tools (Ki- eran, Stephen and Timberlake, 2004, p. xii). In that sense, they bring the discussion of contemporary manufacturing in the building industry and the role of the architect further than initially proposed by Neil Leach and exempli ed by Frank Gehry. They de ne the role of today’s architect similar to the master builder of the past: ”An amalgam of material scientist, product engineer, process engineer, user, and client who creates architecture informed by commodity and art. By recognizing commodity as an equal partner to art, architecture is made accessible, aordable and sustainable as the most exclusive consumer products available today.” (Kieran & Timberlake, 2004) Through projects as Loblolly House and Cel- lophane House, KTA has shown how their ideas can be developed into both experimental and attractive architecture that is not only meant for the few, but which holds potentials for mass production without losing its customizable dimension. As they argue: “[...] Modern humanism is communication not geometry!” (Kieran & Timberlake, 2004, p. xii).

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 401 Fig. 2 Loblolly House. The meeting between the aluminium scaold and the wooden catridges. The house is composed entirely of o-site fabricated elements and ready-made components, assembled from the platform up in less than six weeks. Speci cation is no longer conceived and structured about the sixteen divisions of the CSI that organizes thousands of parts that make up even a small house. Instead, the conception and detailing are formed about four new elements of architecture: the scaold, the cartridge, the block and equipment. The aluminum scaold system, coupled with an array of connectors, provide both the structural frame and the means to connect cartridges, blocks and equipment to that frame with only the aid of a wrench.” Loblolly House was built in 2005 at Taylors Island, Maryland, and is privately owned by Stephen Kieran and his wife. (Kieran & Timberlake, 2008) Photo: CINARK 2008.

402 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Tectonic Thinking – The Making of Architecture We already described Marco Frascari’s two concepts, construction and construed, and we accentuated the simultaneity of construction and narration (Frascari, 1984). Constructing relates to the physical act of building, of assembling building elements, while construing is about creating meaning. According to Frascari both dimensions have to be present in meaningful architecture, and thereby he underlines that architecture cannot simply be construction without also containing a narrative layer – neither can it be pure narration without also having a physical, material manifestation. As to industrialized architecture, one could claim that until now it has mostly been regarded as ‘construction’, emphasizing the building systems and ways of assembling building components. With Frascari’s concepts in mind, industrialized architecture must also contain a narrative and meaningful dimension. We have to develop an architectural approach that may provide a basis for developing and strengthening a contemporary and future building practice. We build ac-

Fig. 3 Cellophane House. The corner of the building showing the meeting between the aluminium construction and the facade elements. The house is a ve-story, osite fabricated dwelling commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition Home Delivery: Fabricating the Modern Dwelling, on display July 20 through October 20, 2008. The concept was that a: “building is, at root, nothing more than an assemblage of materials forming an enclosure. We recognize that these materials came from somewhere, are held together for a time by the techniques of construction, and will at some future time transition into another state. While we tend to think of buildings as permanent, they are in fact only a resting state for materials, a temporary equilibrium that is destined to be upset by the entropic forces that drive the physical universe.” (Kieran & Timberlake, 2011) Photo: CINARK 2008.

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 403 cording to certain conditions in our present time – conditions which are concerned with production methods, construction and materials as well as ethics, meaning and values. Exactly this relationship between the work as such and the conditions behind its coming into being is a crucial point. Industrial prefabrication must be taken at face value and not just as a rationalisation of what craftsmen used to do when they placed brick on brick. Industrialization has resulted in buildings, which are composed of ‘ready-mades’: factory-produced building components which are delivered and assembled quickly and eciently. This method of production forms a basis for the development of an industrialized architecture which utilises and exposes the juxtaposition of building elements, and which thus consciously practices montage as an architectural strategy (Bundgaard, 2011). As building components (as mentioned above) can even be unique and individualized, due to IT-based production methods, it is possible to create a much more heterogeneous architecture characterised by expression and character which is even open to the demands of users and to demands that change over time. Montage architecture takes a signi cant leap away from what has traditionally been seen as the essence of industrialisation, i.e. standardisation, repetition and uniformity. This means that montage architecture is an expression of the conditions of production; it is a result of, and also that it, simultaneously, expresses current tendencies in society for individualization, heterogeneity and a world which is continually undergoing change. As an approach, montage generates alternative contexts and ways of perceiving the built environment. Potentially, current principles and premises allow an opportunity for architectural experimentation and for developing new formal idioms, architectural hierarchies and expressions. The architectural discussion is reinserted in the industrial universe and the consistent pursuit of montage and juxtaposition may trigger a special potential of form, while, at the same time, the advanced methods of production provide an opportunity to work in a controlled and precise manner with material, optimisation, et cetera. One of the most important challenges of our time, the environmental crisis and subsequently the demand for sustainability and resource consciousness, will, undoubtedly, characterise and shape future developments. Industrial production methods and the montage universe are very much capable of accepting the challenge to create sustainable and energy-ecient buildings. The development of industrialized building components, produced in advanced technological environments, will be able to meet the demand for minimisation of resources, experiments with new materials, life-cycle thinking, optimisation of energy consumption, etc. At the same time, the idea of the openness and variability of the architectural work makes it possible to think in dierentiated life spans and possibilities of exchanging building elements, building components and materials (Bundgaard, 2011). Some of the features of contemporary industrialized manufacturing are also comparable to characteristics in tectonic thinking – just as they have a signi cant connectivity to important aspects within the realm of sustainability. The attention to the use of resources (material), the methods of processing (fabrication) and the de nition of systems (context) are important aspects within industrialization, tectonics and sustainability. The relationship between the material, the fabrication and the context underlines the close dependency between the material and the way it is being processed within a speci c context with certain conditions. The three aspects have to be

404 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture continuously unfolded, investigated and brought together if we wish to develop an adaptable and responsive architecture which is able to meet contemporary and future demands.

Tectonic Thinking – A Model of Analysis In terms of working out a model of analysis for looking at tectonic aspects at close hand there is no doubt that this model ought to be open and exible in order to engage dierent sorts of data and analytic approaches, and in order to grasp the speci c context and nature of the study object that is centre for attention. This characteristic is important at all times but maybe more so necessary, when the complexity of the contemporary building industry calls for theoretical models as well as analytical tools that can match this and unfold the complexity in ways that are comprehensible and possible to improve. When analyzed, tectonics should be approached from dierent angles, due to the composite nature of the concept; in this context also de ned as the holder of the interplay between construction and construing, and secondly due to the vast and highly complex eld of building construction (the edi ce) and the building industry (the professional context). In that sense, the model of analysis is primarily based on qualitative questioning and methods, yet it makes sense to de ne speci c levels for analysis, which could reect the scaling in architecture or the order of the building structure and the processes involved. As for the levels of a tectonic analysis, the following three levels can be de ned:

• product level – focusing on assembly of various elements or building components • system level – focusing on integration of various systems • building level – focusing on concepts for various building constructions/designs

When analyzing the product level of building components it is not only a matter of examining the single product or component as individual parts, but similarly important to focus at how these building parts are put together/ assembled and how they work and what they signify, when they are built into a speci c construction. In that sense, both the very object – the building component, its material properties, the manufacturing processes involved and the principles linked to the building technology are targets for analysis. Furthermore, the correlation and the synthesis between these various parts and the meaning embedded in this should be taken into consideration. At system level, the integration of dierent ‘hardware’ systems such as: structural systems, construction systems or service systems et cetera – or ‘software’ systems such as: sustainability issues, aesthetic intentions, organization strategies can be focused on, separately or in common. In this case, systems are not necessarily limited to those found in one singular building project; neither should they be regarded as speci c ‘closed entities’ or ‘systems agendas’ detached from a wider context. They must be examined in relation to other (similar) systems or principles of thought and maybe include elements from analyses at product level and/or building level. Tectonic models for analysis at building level are manifold, yet certain fundamental elements should be included. These are linked to aspects of construction and construing at all levels and how these are connected to a wider context. This may, as men-

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 405 tioned above, include elements of the other two levels of tectonic analysis but maybe more importantly it may include a societal dimension of cultural, historical, social, economical or ecological consideration. In that sense, the tectonic analysis at building level is not self-referential but instead inclusive, and opens for discussion. It is important to note that this proposed model for analysis is to be developed further and the ambition is – through this research project and hereby testing the model in various ways – to see if it works satisfactorily in terms of addressing the nature, practice and ndings linked to tectonics, and nally, to see if it enables us to discuss tectonics in regard of contemporary building practice and construction industry.

Tectonic Thinking – Concluding Statements In this paper we have discussed tectonic thinking as a potential strategy for development of architectural practice. We have pointed out two main issues, from where these demands for development arise: Sustainability and contemporary methods of production. In relation to sustainability we have argued that the growing requirements for energy savings will have a major inuence on tectonic qualities in the architecture, and we have suggested that development of advanced technology, LCA-methods and experiments with new materials are important ways to reduce the resource consumption in construction. Subsequently we argued that tectonic thinking holds potentials to ensure a sustainable use of resources through the lifespan of the building by creating an understanding of the logic and the potentials of the construction among the users. In relation to contemporary architectural methods we have discussed the relation between the uniform and repetitive nature of ‘traditional mass production’ and the new demands on diversity and individuality. Thus we have argued, that computer- based methods makes it possible to create a heterogeneous architecture, that takes a signi cant leap away from what has traditionally been seen as the essence of industrialization, i.e. repetition and uniformity. Subsequently, we have described the work of Kieran & Timberlake Architects as such an example: They have an approach allowing a sustainable architecture, which holds potentials for mass production without loosing diversity in the expression. Finally, we have presented our current ideas for a model of analysis. The model will be further developed in the future, and in doing this we will aim for an open and exible model in order to include dierent sorts of data and approaches. Also the model will be developed in order to comprehend the speci c context of the cases. The analysis will have focal points on dierent levels, reecting the architectural scale as well as the processes involved in construction. The three levels are: 1) Product level – focusing on assembly of various elements or building components. 2) System level – focusing on integration of various systems and 3) Building level – focusing on concepts for various building constructions/designs. The proposed model for analysis will be developed further in the future work of the research group. The model will be tested in various ways in order to see if it works satisfactorily in terms of addressing the nature, practice and ndings linked to tectonics. The ambition is that it enables us to discuss tectonics in regard of contemporary building practice and construction industry.

406 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Note

1 Catia deals with polynomial equations instead of polygons which make it capable of de ning any surface as an equation. This means that the computer can de ne any point at the surface.

References

Beim, Anne, 2004. Tectonic Visions in Architecture. Copenhagen; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Publishers. Bundgaard, Charlotte, 2011. Montagepositioner – en nytænkning af industrialiseret arkitektur. Aarhus; Aarhus School of Architecture Publishers. Christensen, J.C. & Nielsen, C., 1999. Trends i udviklingen af dansk byggeri. Aalborg; Aalborg University. European Commision, 2010. Energy Eciency in Buildings [online]. Availible at: . Frascari, Marco, 1984. “The Tell-the-Tale Detail”. In: VIA 7 The Building of Architecture. Architectural Journal of the Graduate School of Fine Arts. University of Pennsylvania. Hartoonian, Gevork, 1986. Poetics of Technology and the New Objectivity. In: JAE, Princeton ArchitecturalPress. Hartoonian, Gevork, 1994. Ontology of Construction: On Nihilism of Technology in Theories of Modern Architecture. New York; Cambridge University Press. Hartoonian, Gevork, 1997. Modernity and its other: a post-script to contemporary architecture, Col- lege Station; Texas A&M University Press. Kieran, Stephen & Timberlake, 2004. Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies are Poised to Transform Building Construction. New York; McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. Kieran, Stephen & Timberlake, 2008. Loblolly House – Elements of a New Architecture. New York; Princeton Architectural Press. Kieran, Stephen & Timberlake, 2011. Cellophane House. Philadelphia; Kieran Timberlake. Koolhaas, Rem, 2001. Junk Space. In: Domus Gennaio, Januar 2001. Leach, N., Turnbull, D., Williams. C., ed., 2004. Digital Tectonics. West Sussex; John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Lovelocks James, 1979. Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth. Oxford; Oxford University Press. Madsen, Ulrik S., 2008. Robust Arkitektur - arkitekturen som en aktiv del af organisationers Identitet- sskabelsesproces. Copenhagen; The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture Publishers. McDonough, W., Braungart, M., 2002. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. New York; North Point Press. Rowland, I.D. & Howe, T.N., ed., 1999. Vitruvius. Ten Books on Architecture. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Semper, Gottfried, 1851. Die Vier Elemente der Baukunst. Ein Beitrag zur Vergleichenden Baukunde. Braunsweig; Friedrich Vieweg und Son. Van Bruggen, Coosje, 1998. Frank O. Gehry Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. New York; Guggenheim Museum Publications.

Claus Bech-Danielsen, Anne Beim, Charlotte Bundgaard, Ulrik Stylsvig Madsen Denmark 407

Stylianos Giamarelos

University of Athens Greece Have we ever been Postmodern? The Essential Tension within the Metamodern Condition “The contemporary architectural style that has achieved hegemony within the contemporary architectural avant-garde can be best understood as a research program based upon the parametric paradigm. We propose to call this style: “Parametricism”. Parametricism is the great new style after Modernism. Postmodernism and De- constructivism were transitional episodes that ushered in this new, long wave of research and innovation.” Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schumacher (2008)

“My question will always be: can interactive Architecture be beautiful? It is certainly necessary and functional, but can it compete with historic architecture and be appreciated as good, relevant and beautiful? I believe that it can.” Kas Oosterhuis (2009)

The call for papers of the conference de ned its own frame for discussing our reections on the human in the age of technology-driven architecture. This paper will start by relating the conference call with some selected excerpts from Kas Oosterhuis, Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schumacher’s recent texts. By doing so, it will eventually reframe the questions posed by the call for papers and oer a broader alternative perspective of elucidating them. This paper as a whole should therefore be considered as a contribution to the methodology of our reecting on our present condition and the relevant terms that can drive our debates about it. The selected excerpt from a recent manifesto by Zaha Hadid and Patrick Schu- macher (2008) reveals their current self-understanding. Having recently articulated their own parametricism, they opt to present themselves as the direct descendants of modernism, by simultaneously keeping a clear distance from postmodernism and deconstructivism. Meanwhile, Kas Oosterhuis (2009) was recently wondering whether interactive Architecture can also be beautiful – since it is already standing and functioning as a construction. His question echoes Le Corbusier’s plea for an architecture that moves us. This emotive element draws the line between real architecture and a mere construction that is able to hold itself together. On a similar note, Oost- erhuis (2011) seems almost reluctant to call his most recent work ‘architecture’. In his latest book, he opts for a title that reveals his concerns by echoing Le Corbusier once again: Towards a New Kind of Building. The deepest concerns of both architects rest on undoubtedly classical grounds, though. In fact, they reach way back to a Vitruvian origin. However, upon reading the call for papers, one cannot help but notice the fact that it focuses entirely on developments that have taken place over the last decade, when the abovementioned architects express feelings that develop within our modern predicament and go way further back in time. Stemming from some of the pioneering gures of a recent data-driven practice, these feelings need to be elucidated and clearly articulated if we are to gain a deeper understanding and a critical awareness of our contemporary condition which I intend to call ‘metamodern’. Focusing in the last decade would eventually mean ignoring the long roots of the phenomena that characterise our present condition and the latest developments in the eld of technology-driven architecture. It would mean taking for granted what is most cru- cially at stake: Is it at all possible for us to reconcile the value-driven humanistic per-

410 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture spective with a technological perspective that relies on the physical and the factual? Can the data-starving IT really oer the key to answering the distinctively modern problem of the fact-value dichotomy? The call for papers undoubtedly strikes for a crucial balance between accepting IT and technology-driven architecture while maintaining the criticisms that have been addressed to it regarding its acknowledged humanistic shortcomings. However, it is highly doubtful that this desired balance can be attained by focusing on the last ten years only. Although few would be unwilling to admit its often ingenious implementation of the latest developments in IT, the recent guise of architecture as a data-driven practice is essentially intertwined with a complex web of relations with wider historical and theoretical movements that have yet to be clearly, let alone fully, addressed. If that is the case, then it is clear that the place of the human in technology-driven architecture cannot be truly reected upon and comprehended when considered as a matter of the last decade. Hadid and Schumacher’s remarks serve as to pose a thought-provoking challenge. Any serious attempt to reect upon our present condition should start by exploring the implications of their abovementioned distantiation from postmodernism and deconstructivism. Why would a pioneer of technology-driven architectural practice de- nounce postmodernism, when IT is in fact at the heart of the postmodern condition? Combined with the Wittgensteinian notion of language games and an emphasis on particular stories and narratives instead of universal metanarratives, IT is there right from the start, being already heralded as the driving force of a radical change in the production of knowledge in Jean-François Lyotard’s (1979) widely discussed attempt at epistemology, which was to de ne the postmodern condition. How should we understand Hadid’s and Schumacher’s statement of apparent distantiation, then, when IT is clearly at the heart of their work, too? A fruitful way is to read it as a theoretical challenge: If we are to understand our present condition, a whole generation later, it may be more useful to wonder whether we, the architects, have ever been postmodern in the way that Lyotard proposed, and if a term like that still applies in elucidating our present condition. This second leg of the question calls for making a stand for the wider cultural issues and philosophical problems that have arisen during this roughly three-decades-long period of time that has elapsed since postmodernism rst entered the intellectual fray. Posing such a kind of question in a general manner, especially when it concerns terms like modernity and postmodernism which have historically proven rather loose in themselves, certainly risks oversimpli cations and a kind of inability to acknowledge the often admirable argumentative architecture of the diverse approaches to these wide cultural subjects. By covering the various theoretical facets that these terms have presently come to incorporate in a few pages means that we most probably will not be able to satisfy the usual scholarly standards of analysis. However, this is the form in which these intellectual currents usually enter the public domain and shape the dominant ideological trends. Thus, we seem obliged to dare and plead into this mostly insecure and unstable general ground in the hope that we are not unfair or inaccurate to the individual theoretical approaches that are presently labelled as ‘postmodern’. Only after attempting to de ne the contours of a contemporary intellectual uneasiness, can we return to the special case of architecture, if we are to shed a refreshing light upon our contemporary problems. Only after having attempted to face the question of postmodernism in its more general form, can we recognise the way in which it makes sense when posed in the architectural domain.

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece 411 I. The question “Have we ever been postmodern?” indeed alludes to Bruno Latour’s (1991) infamous suggestion that we have never been modern. According to him, we are essentially amodern, as even our most cherished ‘pure’ practices of modernity, like the development of modern science, are always mediated hybrid forms, inter- nally contaminated with the residue of heterogeneous constructions that should have been suppressed or imaginarily exorcised, in case the modern spirit had prevailed. Thus, the Great Divide between man and nature, between modern and traditional culture is a kind of intellectual bias, nothing more than an imaginary construction that was never attained on the practical level. There is in fact no discontinuity, chasm or asymmetry between the moderns and the ancients. Man is still intertwined with Na- ture; Science is still not clearly distinguished from Politics. Latour seems to approach modernism primarily as a mode of thinking, as the adoption of a certain viewpoint or worldview, a kind of ideological prejudice that lters our perception of reality and obstructs us from realising the essential interconnections between what appears as the orderly divided areas of knowledge. In that sense, he wants to be amodern – not modern at all. Hybridisation is the norm and this is the case even for the domains of knowledge that are considered to retain an almost absolute degree of purity. Yet, according to Fredric Jameson (1991), it has been exactly a kind of hybridisation that was visible in the world of everyday life, this common presence of automo- biles and trains moving in the backdrop of a mostly neoclassical or baroque urban environment, for instance, that originally gave rise both to a dynamic sense of modernity and its special relation to history, as well as to the idea of progress in the rst place. The total dominance of the simulacrum that followed in the age that coincides with the third stage of capitalism, accompanied by the loss of historical awareness and the future itself, are in fact the characteristics that distinguish the modern from the postmodern. What is extremely interesting in Jameson’s approach is that he spots the clearest conscious expressions of the modern/postmodern ethos in architecture and the built environment. Jameson relates postmodernism with a special kind of space and a special kind of human consciousness, a hyper-space ideally perceived by a hyper-consciousness that exceeds the modern (and Cartesian) conceptions of space and the human subject. His latest work that invokes a “spatial” kind of dialectic (Jameson, 2009) and in fact follows 1991’s plea for a cognitive mapping of our place within the postmodern condition, which is partly inspired by Kevin Lynch’s (1960) seminal work on the Image of the City, are not to be ignored, either. It seems we have not ceased to be in need of this kind of cognitive mapping and we should probably show the intellectual rigour required for carrying out this task. I am reluctant to agree with Latour that we should abolish the idea of the Great Divide between the modern condition and the condition before that. I can follow him in rejecting the idea of any kind of discontinuity or of a change that can be simultaneously sudden and radical in the historical course of human activity. This unavoid- ably continuous course doesn’t exclude the possibility of reaching a point in history from the viewpoint of which it seems that there is no way to turn back, though. When we have attained that viewpoint, it is certain that we can re-interpret the past as a forerunner to the present condition or trace selected crucial characteristics of other periods that shaped the modern notions in a decisive way. If that is the case, then modernity is indeed a problem for us and the Great Divide not only reappears, but

412 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture it immediately takes the form of a problematic periodisation, since we seem capable to pinpoint it at any point in history, wherever we can trace the genesis of the ‘modern notion of X’ from the early modern 15th century (Toulmin, 1990) or, like Nietzsche (1872) and Bernard Williams (2002), even further back to the age of Socrates and Thu- cydides. This should not be interpreted as a claim that the moderns’ often nostalgic depictions of the past are unquali edly correct (and this is the point where one could meet Latour again), but as an indication that once certain questions have been raised in the way of modernity (read: Enlightenment), we can no longer be satis ed with historical or philosophical accounts which do not face or provide any answer to them. In that sense, modernity is intellectually irreversible, although it can still “be reversed in historical fact, given a substantial enough political power or natural catastrophe” (Wil- liams, 2002, p. 254). If modernity itself is always posed to us as a problem, as a challenge for developing our theoretical, intellectual and practical tools for coping with a world that is in a rapid process of modernisation, then the term “postmodern” itself is representative of a rather awkward condition in our attempt to cope with this major problem that modernity represents for us.1 The pre x “post-” indicates succession in time, rather than heralding a situation that is radically dierent from the modern one. It is not certain if postmodernism could ever lead us to exiting, overcoming or opposing modernity in a polemical way, as some of its guises seemed to imply. By developing as a kind of countermovement, postmodernity was always bound to the essence of that against which it was rebelling. By radicalising the critical methodology of modernity while of- fering deconstructive genealogies of the fundamental modern ideals, postmodernity could only end up in an inextricable entanglement in modernity. In fact, even Lyotard (1988) himself in his later writings preferred to talk about ‘rewriting modernity’ as a term more suitable than ‘postmodernism’, which was treated as redundant by its main inventor from that point on. If we are indeed to abandon the notion of postmodernism, this may be due to an inherent contradiction. The widely heralded postmodern motto “anything goes”, as it was rstly posed by the likes of Paul Feyerabend for instance, should rst and foremost be read as a call for the absolute freedom of a creativity that is not bounded by the chains of any grand narrative; at the same time, it is an ideal that can never be realised: if it was realised, it would immediately have to be rejected!2 We can never continue to hold an ironical kind of distance to the sum of our web of most basic beliefs, even if we have managed an almost impossible feat of gradually replacing each and every one of our beliefs with another. What’s more, postmodernism doesn’t seem able to provide the suitable kind of motives for such an unbounded creativity. Why should anyone really cater to invent endlessly new vocabularies and redescriptions of language games and not stick with the ones already at hand, when at the end of the day none of them is proven to be superior to another or even support a claim to the truth? By putting the emphasis on dierence, postmodernism has led itself to a short-circuit. By strongly opposing modernity’s inherent he- gemonising tendencies that could lead to totalitarianism, the postmodern condition secured a space for the oppressed and minority voices, only for them to retain their current status quo and develop in a juxtaposed seclusion from other voices. Yet, this emancipatory dimension of postmodernism is paradoxically associated with the end of utopian thinking and the rejection of the grand narratives. The separate groups and voices are left as they stand in their polyphony without a clear vision for their future.

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece 413 This loss of the future is particularly evident in times of crisis like ours, this third era of modernity, when the decisively modern and, in its core, ethical question “What should we do?” returns with renewed ferocity. The question is put forth in the sense of “Where should we be going?”. Postmodernism cannot answer it, because it oppos- es any kind of commitment to a minimum of convictions that can produce propositions which are not afraid to – even tentatively – claim truth status. Yet, it is exactly this virtue of commitment to normative or regulative beliefs that postmodernism lacks which is what really matters when guiding our action on the horizon of a desired common future. Therefore, although postmodernism and its recent guise of postcolonial studies may still seem signi cantly proli c in areas like comparative literature, it has already started showing its limits. The feeling that postmodernism has most probably ran its course is gradually becoming common and shared around the globe. Nicolas Bourriaud (2009) has recently proposed the notion of the altermodern, the exemplary hero of which is the gure of the radicant artist. The radicant is happily participating in the multicultural ow of people around the world and is open to communicating with them, while at the same time retaining his roots to his homeland culture (through ‘mobile’ practices that can be as ordinary and everyday as cooking, for example). More recently, the exhibition titled “Postmodernism. Style and Subversion 1970-1990” at the Victoria and Albert Museum triggered a slew of articles that more or less herald the death of postmodernism.3 I am not convinced by the prospects they oer, though. In a way quite similar to that of Bourriaud, Edward Docx (2011) is pleading for the dawn of the age of authenticism now that we can very well understand that postmodernism is dead. Even if one could surpass the doubt of the current relevance of this return to a term of the Heideggerian discourse which developed in the climax of modernity to be explored by postmodern thinkers, his view of authenticism is rather limited, too. The only ground for his argument is a reappreciation of the authentic in the global mar- ketplace. This notion seems too feeble to sustain our present predicament. Although one could agree with Hari Kunzru (2011) that the 9-11 attacks were also a blow to postmodernism as an intellectual current, his notion that postmodernism was ‘essentially pre-digital’ has to be avoided. The internet is de nitely not to blame for the murder of postmodernism, since – as we have already mentioned – it was a vital component of the postmodern condition from the moment of its inception in 1979. Hari Kunzru’s argument rests on statistics regarding the bibliographical occurrence of the terms ‘postmodernism’ and ‘internet’ since 1975 provided by Google ngrams. Howev- er, the causal explanation he attempts is quite dierent from and should not be confused with mere statistical correlation – it requires much more than that, i.e. decent theorising.

II. At the end of the day, although the question of postmodernism remains open, it seems that our current situation seems inescapable and, in that sense, we can never not be modern; nor can we ever be premodern again.4 We can still try to elucidate our unique modernity, though. Could we nally face modernity as a whole, not in the nar- rowly polemical direction that was often followed by postmodernism? We are now able to see the whole modern phenomenon in the light of the shortcomings of post-

414 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture modernism itself. This is a perspective that was not available to any previous generation of thinkers and writers. Now, more than ever, it seems that our task is to reect upon the modern phenomenon as a whole in a way that manages to include the dead ends of postmodern thinking, with the added fuel of the motivation provided by our presently apparent need to move forward. We are certainly on the grounds of a hermeneutical kind of metamodernity. To elucidate this last term, one could draw an analogy with the way in which Al- fred Tarski (1944) used a richer meta-language (that contained the truth predicate) in order to provide an extensional de nition of truth for an object-language. We can most conveniently detect the distinction of object-language and meta-lanaguage in the case of translation, in sentences like «“Schnee ist weiß” is true (in German) if and only if snow is white». In this example, German is the oblect-language and English is the meta-language that allows us to speak of the satisfaction conditions of truth in German. What would that meta-language be in the case of modernity, though? Without ignoring any widely admitted dierences between the modern and the postmodern condition, the thinker of the metamodern condition is called to work on their deeper existential ground, their common root or source. The liminal question of metamodernity would then be: Could we possibly go beyond the one and only correct interpretation, but also beyond the consummative post-modern equalisation (or rather neutralisation or elimination) of every interpretation within the closed sum of an unsociable multiplicity? This would probably involve moving away from a xed truth, as well as from the in nite interior of self-referentiality, the imaginary non-existence of any truth whatsoever. At a time when the major questions have considerably lost their dramatic weight, nobody is looking for answers. Yet, as time goes by and postmodernism is exceedingly running its course, it becomes all the more evident that its formerly euphoric and playful nihilism leads to a dramatic uneasiness, an hitherto unforeseen numbness. What seemed to be the liberation from the arti- cial identity of every kind of ideology (that is, the metaphysical and secular ideal- isms), has turned out to be a step on the vacuum. There was nothing at all outside the endless interior we struggled to overcome. Being metamodern means having the intellectual rigour to re-pose the major questions in a way that can help them regain their weight. Thirty years ago, the pre x “meta-“ would immediately trigger the intellectual alarm of an early postmodern thought: Weren’t we supposed to get rid of all this overarching second-level kind of thinking in the rst place? Could we just as easily return to endowing our trust on metanarratives like we did in the pre-war modern times? We should not treat the term ‘metamodernity’ in its strongest epistemological and metaphysical connotations, though. In the sense that we are avoiding here, metamodernity would also herald a kind of a triumphant exodus from or a surpassing modernity. This is de nitely not the case here. We should rather understand and employ the term in the same way we currently understand metaphilosophy: even if we cannot exit our philosophical way of posing problems and thinking about them, we can still reect upon our philosophising and its method, just as well as we reect upon any other kind of practical activity. In that sense, our current metamodern condition doesn’t mean we have escaped modernity. It implies a re-enactment of our reection upon it with the added experience gained by postmodern thinking.

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece 415 III. After all this general and wider discussion on our current condition and its connections with the ones that preceded it, it is now time to return to the architectural domain and its own speci cities through the questions we posed at the beginning of this paper. As we have already witnessed, Jameson heralds the built environment and the architectural domain itself as an exemplary manifestation of postmodernism that contributes to our understanding of the phenomenon as a whole. What could be said about architecture and this notion of metamodernity we just sketched? In which sense should we pose the question ‘Have we ever been postmodern?’ to the architectural domain? I think there is indeed a strong sense in which our architecture has never been postmodern. Yes, we have de nitely been postmodern in the sense de ned by Charles Jencks and his architectural language of double-coding etc. In fact, ever since the publication of his inuential work on postmodernism, we, the architects, consciously become Jencksian postmodernists for a rather short period of time. However, I don’t think we have ever been Lyotardian postmodernists – at least, not in a conscious way. I would like to propose that MVRDV’s work – in VPRO, for instance – with its explicit emphasis on IT and the construction of stories already represents a kind of unconscious Lyotardian postmodernism. Lyotard’s (1979) “Report on Knowledge” focused on the production and evaluation of knowledge in the age of digital diusion of information. MVRDV’s work unconsciously follows a Lyotardian program, in the sense that they base their architectural endeavour on a conception of the ow of information and its consequences for architectural practice. The introductory text for their work on VPRO attempts the de nition of the architectural object in contemporary terms. Their intentions are already clear from the opening sentence: “Architecture is an interface. Not just now: it always has been” (MVRDV, 1997, p. 3). Their approach rejects an artistic approach to architecture, moving its emphasis on the double role of information in architecture as interface. Traditional architecture is a source of information that can be collected in a statistical database, whereas the element of interaction supplies the de- ning characteristic of the IT age. “Form is […] dependent on […] the handling of information about reality. A part of the ‘unexpressible’ aspect of architecture has come down on the side of its statistical treatment” (MVRDV, 1997, p. 4). The VPRO book constantly reminds the reader that this is not the presentation of a building, but that of a story. Just like architecture, the book is de ning our contact with the reality (of the built), by handling information. “[I]n our own times the handling of information is becoming a basic code for acquiring knowledge about reality” (MVRDV, 1997, p. 9). This almost Lyotardian remark does not lead to any kind of signi cant formal eclecticism from the collected database of past architectural styles. Thanks to the computer, architecture as interface forms an horizontal relationship with reality. Gone is the hierarchical practice of past architecture that rested upon a creator who maintained a vertical categorical relationship with reality. The computer introduces the horizontal dimension to this relation without totally abolishing the primacy of the creator. The conception of architecture as interface rejects any kind of relation to an objective understanding of the world. The transformation of interface-architecture itself transforms in turn our very reality. The history of architecture can be then re-interpreted from the viewpoint of interaction and information.5 A more precise de nition of architecture would then

416 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture be that of an “interface of computerized reality [in a] direct relationship between information and form” (MVRDV, 1997, p. 16). The distance from a Jencksian, as well as the resemblance to a Lyotardian, kind of architectural postmodernism is apparent. But what if we would self-consciously aim for a genuinely Lyotardian postmodernism in architecture? MVRDV’s approach seems to imply that we can move further than proposing IT and digital technologies as a meta-language that can handle and incorporate diverse design logics from ancient and traditional systems of harmony to recent green design, as seems to be the norm today, which works with a clearly Jenck- sian logic at its core. Could our re-visiting of Lyotard’s texts prove to be a source of self-conscious architectural inspiration with IT positively at its core? If that is the case, then we, the architects of the metamodern condition, can realise that we have never been self-consciously postmodern. On the other hand, if metamodernity means re- casting postmodernism in the terms of modernity and vice versa, with an emphasis on the return to a common future, it is still unclear whether IT and technology-driven architecture can provide a satisfying reply. A Socratic reading of the modern question par excellence: “Where should we be going?” turns modernity into a deeply ethical problem, the problem of autonomous commitment to laws that we ourselves pose to ourselves, according to the Kantian ethical project. The aftermath of the Hegelian criticism has left us in doubt about the a priori necessity of a feat that was in principle historical, therefore contingent. In the years that followed, modernity was somehow condemned to constantly re-iterate this debate between Kant and Hegel without proving able to overcome it (Pippin, 1999). It is this kind of a deep ambivalent feeling towards our own autonomy that undoubtedly drives Oosterhuis to the need to appeal to a classical conception of architecture, exactly at the point when his work is at the forefront of technology-driven architecture. There is certainly an essential tension here. It no longer seems plausible to believe we should be rid of the technical rationality that is intertwined with recent developments in the eld of IT. We should instead treat it as revealing yet again the multifarious nature of our discipline and as an urgent need to deepen our understanding of the special characteristics of our contemporary condition and its relation to modernity. Having at our disposal both the results of modernity and the conclusions of postmodernity as an expression of the guilty conscience of the former, we are now in the position to treat modernity ‘homeopathetically’ as both our greatest achievement and our greatest tragedy at the same time.6 It would then be time to return to the complex web of relations that contextualises the development of a critically responsive architecture of the last decade in the depth of its relation with modernity, thus advancing our all too human understanding of technology-driven architecture. There are two ways in which one can be lost: (a) when he has no map of the territory and (b) when he has a map of the territory but cannot de ne his position on that map. I hope that this paper provided at least a rough sketch of that map or a way of positioning oneself on a rather sketchy map.

Notes

1 It should be noted that postmodernism is just one of the available answers to that problem, which usually involves thinkers like Jean-François Lyotard and Fredric Jameson, to name just

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece 417 a few. Other proposed answers include a desire for a partial return to essentially premodern ideals (oered by the likes of Hannah Arendt or Alasdair MacIntyre) or a self-aware defence of ‘the un nished project’ of modernity (oered by the likes of Stephen Toulmin and Jürgen Habermas). 2 Neil Gaiman oers an ample demonstration of this wish turned into an imbearable curse in his “Calliope” story from the Sandman saga. When writer Richard Madoc holds Calliope, the Muse, captive in his attic, Morpheus takes his toll on him by granting his original wish for inspiration to the extreme degree. Madoc suers from a literal brainstorm of his endless inspiration and ideas for stories he cannot even jot down – let alone write. 3 Cf. Docx (2011) and Kunzru (2011), for instance. 4 This could be the case not only due to a present lack of the relevant metaphysical context, but also due to our much dierent practices of social life and institutions that support it. Cf. Williams (2002) and Dworkin (2011) respectively. 5 Cf. MVRDV, 1997, pp. 11-3. 6 This is the term Fredric Jameson himself uses to describe his own method. It is inspired by young Karl Marx’s work on early German history.

References

Bourriaud, N., 2009. The Radicant. New York: Lukas & Sternberg. Docx, E., 2011. Postmodernism is Dead, Prospect Magazine, [online] Available at: [Accessed: 4 November 2011]. Dworkin, R., 2011. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hadid, Z. & Schumacher, P., 2008. Parametricist Manifesto. In: Out there: Architecture beyond Building. vol. 5, Manifestos, 11th International Architecture Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia. Venice: Marsilio, pp. 60-3. Jameson, F., 1991. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press. Jameson, F., 2009. Valences of the Dialectic. New York: Verso. Kunzru, H., 2011. Postmodernism: From the Cutting Edge to the Museum, The Guardian, [online] 17 September. Available at: [Accessed: 4 November 2011]. Latour, B., 1991. We Have Never Been Modern. Translated from French by C. Porter, 1993. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Lynch, K., 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Lyotard, J.-F., 1979. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowldege. Translated from French by G. Bennington and B. Massumi, 1984. Minneapolis: University of Minessota Press. Lyotard, J.-F., 1988. Réécrire la modernité. Les Cahiers de Philosophie, 5, pp. 193-203. MVRDV, 1997. MVRDV at VPRO. Barcelona: Actar. Nietzsche, F., 1872. The Birth of Tragedy. Translated from German by R. Speirs. In: R. Geuss & R. Speirs, eds. 1999. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-116. Oosterhuis, K., 2009. iA Bookzine, [blog] 10 March. Available at: [Accessed: 4 November 2011].

418 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Oosterhuis, K., 2011. Towards a New Kind of Bulding: A Designer’s Guide for Nonstandard Architecture. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers. Pippin, R. B., 1999. Modernism as a Philosophical Problem: On the Dissatisfactions of European High Culture. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Tarski, A., 1944. The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 4, pp. 341-375. Toulmin, S., 1990. Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Williams, B., 2002. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Stylianos Giamarelos Greece 419

Ana Maria Hariton

“Spiru Haret “University Bucharest Romania Reading-Rewriting -Learning from and Building on an Exemplary Precedent: Bucharest`s Blind Alleys Reections on Contemporary Architecture When confronted with the contemporary forms and preoccupations of architecture one cannot stop asking oneself a series of very simple questions:

Where is it from? We are witnessing the emergence of a new International Style at an unprecedented scale and degree of uniformization. Similar designs are built around the world, claiming to relate in mysterious ways to “local traditions” or schools of thought, when, in fact, it is almost impossible to identify the locations of buildings situated in very dierent cultural areas. This lack of identity concerns not only the “conspicuous ashy items of display”1 represented by many public buildings, but also usual building programs like housing. One of the characteristics of contemporary architecture seems to be the disappearance of the multitudinous traditional ways of making and creativity that are absorbed into a dominant way of making and thinking2.

Almost anything can be built – but should we build anything? The spectacular continuous curvilinear forms created by cutting edge technologies in building construction are appropriate for iconic objects and signi cant public buildings. But are they becoming for housing? The question is related not only to costs but also to our way of living. Is it possible to erase trough architectural forms any trace of familiarity in our everyday life?

We respect nature. Should we respect people? Sustainability seems to be the main ethic concern in contemporary approaches, and it is seen in itself as guaranty of good architecture. In the eld of domestic architecture we should ask ourselves how much are we willing to give up, in terms of quality of life. The quest of energetic eciency leads to bizarre changes in the way we inhabit our homes. If living in a hermetic box might be (and already is) an acceptable choice in a gigantic polluted city, the construction of (passive and active) houses with no opening windows situated in breathtakingly beautiful and unpolluted landscapes is somewhat puzzling.3

Does contemporary architecture have any social goals? The disappearance of place, while architectural objects are transformed into gigantic sculptures seems to characterize contemporary architecture. ”Not function but the designer’s highly personal preference dictates the look of the architecture. With that architecture has been brought one step closer to the visual art” 4- and one step away from its complex nature. An auto referential and impoverished architecture, centered on image and technology dominates much of the contemporary production.

Modernism has also rejected the traditional structure of the city creating discontinuity in the traditional urban patterns. This disruptive eect at the level of urban form, was however compensated by its social aims. Are the perfect forms and sustainability of contemporary architecture enough? How should we address the problem of a socially sustainable architecture?

422 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture A human architecture, trying to dissolute the negative aspects of technology and massi cation, seems to be the answer to many of the above formulated questions. The meaning and interpretation of “human” is however very dierent and uctuates according to the dominant cultural paradigm. The modernist approach has started from the “generic human” of the hygienist vi- sion5, considering people as being alike and having the same basic needs: space, light, nature. This type of humanistic approach led to some very inhuman results: monotony, loss of a sense of continuity, refusal of context. Today’s digital architecture (parametric, topological, etc...) emphasizes a “beyond the human” approach, generating forms according to nature`s rules. Architects break and construct codes envisioning “a later stage, more like the stage of organic life in which technology becomes an autonomous species”.6 Relating to nature`s forms and structures was a recurrent theme of XX century architecture, starting with Art Nou- veau and its organic images, continuing after the late fties with Japanese Metabo- lism - based on the principles of organic growth, and ending with Santiago Calatrava`s skeletal structures. The biological approach is valid as long as it is human centered, resorting to our empathic understanding of nature. Biology includes the human, but the human is actually de ned particularly by the fact that it is more than biology. Culture, as the essential human creation, should therefore constitute the relevant aspect of a human architecture. Our quests should be directed not only towards an amazing world forms but towards the culturally signi cant forms.

Fig. 1 Typology and characteristics.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 423 Building in Bucharest – Typical Problems Compared to other cities in Europe Bucharest’s urban evolution is somewhat atypi- cal. Since the nineteenth century the architecture of the city underwent a process of rapid modernizing, reecting the evolution of European building styles. The image of the city was dominated by Eclecticism until 1930 when large scale modernist buildings were erected along the new central boulevard. The Modernist Movement had a particularly strong inuence in Bucharest infusing the tastes of dierent social layers –from the high bourgeoisie to the more modest lower middle classes. Associated with progress and urbanity,the new style was employed to build the vast majority of housing between 1930-40. At urban level, compared to the archetypes of Modernism, interventions in Bucharest were adequate and (with the exception of the main Boul- evard) did not create a radical change in the scale of the urban fabric. The huge scale dormitory districts of the socialist period, though aecting the general image of the city, left its historic area intact. With the exception of major urban destruction in the southern part, caused by Ceausescu`s gigantic “House of the People” and its axis, Bucharest`s central perimeter retained its main morphological characteristics. Urban spread followed in the ‘90ies, bringing the emergence of gated communities and developer promoted suburban architecture. Gentri cation never took place

Fig. 2 Intrarea Ursuletului (Alley )-view.

424 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Intrarea Ursuletului elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Fig. 4 Intrarea Ursuletului elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 425 in Bucharest. Severe building regulations and heritage preservation rules restricted the interventions in the rst ring. The central area situated within the second circulation ring became thus of utmost importance. A new pattern of building behavior emerged: agglutination of adjacent small plots, maximal use of land, height and building dimensions completely out of scale - justi ed by the building masses and heights on the nearest boulevard but completely inadequate to the immediate neighborhood. This type of aggressive building led to the emergence of a series of questions, awaiting an “architectural answer”:

- Is there a more adequate way of building, respecting the scale of the inner city while ensuring an economically feasible density ? - Are there any historical precedents in this type of intervention? - Is there a persistence of spatial models in Bucharest’s housing?

Fig. 5 Intrarea Pictor Verona – general view.

426 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 6 Intrarea Pictor Verona -elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Fig. 7 Intrarea Pictor Verona -elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 427 Fig. 8 Intrarea I.L. Caragiale - general view.

428 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 9 Intrarea I.L. Caragiale -elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Fig. 10 Intrarea I.L. Caragiale -elements of morpho- typological analysis.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 429 Stages and Results of the Design Studio Work The aim was to take housing design to a further level (not by amplifying the number of buildings or scale of the program, but through the study of complex urban sites) and to oer an adequate local response both to the alarming situation in the urban evolution of the city and to the ubiquitous generic in contemporary architecture. In the attempt to create a local but contemporary architecture,studio work focused on questions of typical spaces –at both building and urban scale. The study of urban morphology, considered not only in terms of the built form but as a reection of the narrative of a particular place, was an essential part of the process.

Choosing the model A morphological analysis of the urban patterns in the central area of Bucharest highlights the frequent presence of blind alleys. Their presence is even more noticeable when walking, due to their stylistic characteristics. Built on deep plots, during a relatively short period (1933-1940) they show a remarkable harmony of the facades, avoiding uniformity. Embodying a local form of modernism, and being built by relatively unknown architects, they were considered unrepresentative, therefore none of them is included on the List of Historic Monuments. In fact, their features reect the process of negotiation between domestic and foreign, the way in which the foreign, represented by the Modernist Movement is rephrased within the new context. They represent the main characteristics of late Romanian modernism: moderate, un radical both at formal and social level. Less known than the main Boulevard, the great ocial buildings or the iconic urban villas of the thirties, the blind alleys integrate new stylistic forms in a city dominated then by Eclecticism. Generating a new spatial pattern, that translates the typical sequential pathway that connects the external and the interior spaces of the XIX-th century urban houses7, they create a nontradi- tional but “continuous “use of space, making radical formal change acceptable and enjoyable. The study started from the analysis of the existing models determining their spatial and social characteristics. Built in a variety of alveolar or square shapes (1) all of them are characterized by the existence of a series of intermediate spaces between the public space of the street and the private spaces of the apartments (semi public space of the alley, symbolic garden, decorated entrance door/hall). Their building height usually varies between 1 and 5 oors, but constantly respects the scale of the existing neighborhood. The buildings comprise 1 to 3 apartments per oor, a spatial con guration considered optimal in terms of the inhabitant`s comfort. Their spatial conformation determines a series of social characteristic: the space is lived as a personal one, facilitating the communication and the encounters of neighbors; the possibility of visual survey and the withdrawal from public circulation makes them safe places for children, creating an adequate living environment even in the noisiest areas of the city.

Student work The analysis of a series of characteristic examples of blind alleys started with morpho- typological and stylistic elements. During the study, the stylistic elements were elimi-

430 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture nated, the capacity of assimilating new architectural forms being one of the main reasons in choosing the examples. Each student group was assigned an urban site situated within the second circulation ring in the western part of the central area of Bucharest. One of the more complicated sites oered perhaps the most interresting and adequate responses. Solving the diculties raised by irregular plots in a low rise area was challenging and led to a series of very dierent designs, characterized by spatial coherence. From the interpretation of the same historical model emerged a variety of solutions ranging from subdivision of spaces prioritizing intimacy through uid continuous spaces, to volumes characterized by Cartesian regularity and order. Spatial continuity and coherence, building scale and height were considered essential determinants by every participant, while the questions of stylistic expression remained secondary. The conformation of the apartments, with a dominance of smaller ats, reected the changes in the family structure. The contemporary interpretation of a socio-spatial model of urban living proved to be bene cial, shifting the focus from the architectural object to its spatial and historic relation to the city.

Fig. 11 The site – aerial view, site plan and pictures of the adjacent buildings.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 431 Fig. 12 Student project – Luiza Balaceanu.

432 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 13 Student project – Oana Constantin.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 433 Fig. 14 Student project – Ciprian Sivu Daponte.

434 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 15 Student project – Izabela Davisca.

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 435 Conclusions In a globalised world, cultural identity is one of the main topics of contemporary architectural discourse. Fascinated by the new seamless, uid forms, many architects tend to forget, deny or minimize the historic continuity of the city. The analysis and research of historic urban forms is not directed at striking out contemporary architectural expression, but tries to inscribe it in a logical socio-spatial continuum. This type of research is even more relevant when it is not based merely on stylistic attributes and interprets examples that have themselves successfully introduced changes into the local architecture. Seeking the expression of our cultural identity,our goal is not to banish the new forms related to contemporary technology but to eliminate the forms that cannot be integrated into the continuous and signi - cant evolution of place. Today, when technology is an essential part of our everyday lives, no one can contest its importance in architecture. Computer programs facilitate the move between design generation, structural analysis and design proposal; play an essential part in the of study of energetic eciency; generate complex shadow analysis. However their most inuential and visible area is the creation of a smooth architecture tied intrinsically to a broader cultural and design discourse. The “contemporary digital architects nd their legitimization in their exploitation of the latest technological advances, new digital means of composition and production, and the corresponding aesthetics of complex curvilinear surfaces. As a manifestation of new information driven processes that are transforming cultures, societies and economics on a global scale, they are seen as a logical and inevitable product of the digital zeitgeist.”8 Opposing a new paradigm to the reductionist tendencies of modern architecture9, digital architects fail to see that the claimed complexity is present only at the level of forms and technologies, transforming architecture into an empty permutation of perfect shapes. The progress of CNC techniques allows the fabrication of unprecedented forms, generating a new tectonic. However the major issue in the architecture of digital forms is not buildability but the lack of cultural continuity. Making tabula rasa of the preceding architectural evolution, the digital architects limit built space to form, creating impressive science- ction environments. We assist at the convergence of global interests transforming our cities into gigantic and impersonal show cases. Almost everywhere municipalities try to forge brand new identities, building megalomaniac architectural productions, that ignore and destroy the identity, memory and signi cance of place. In an era of instant circulation of images and ideas, it is essential to understand that built space is not limited to form. The space of architecture is the inhabited space, occupied by the activities and reminiscences of human collectivities.10 By trading our,maybe not so glamorous, but meaningful local way of building for the ubiquitous new forms, we lose more than obsolete buildings, giving up willingly our cultural identity. Therefore we must consider the alternatives proposed to the architect by history and narrative through the study of urban patterns. “For architecture today the opportunities lay where the sources of dierences are located. One source is the narrative that is speci c though not necessarily unique, to a particular place and it`s culture. When we consider the nature of speci c narratives whether canonical and royal or subversive and vulgate, what we nd is the memory of

436 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture times and places that have fragmented and recorded into the past. The potentialities of architecture today reside in the permutation of such mnemonic fragments that can actually pronounce and amplify the dierence”.11 Without eliminating contemporary forms, but trying to relate them to the local dif- ferences, design, based on research of historical models is one of the main sources of continuity and spatial coherence. The study of urban patterns, not as empty forms, but as reections of our culture that are generated by/ and generate themselves patterns of living, becomes - through the acts of reading /rewriting - the source of a spatially and culturally related, human architecture, creating a vibrant palimpsest, opposed to the tabula rasa of globalization.

Notes

1 Gordon Mathews in Cultural Identity in the Age of Globalization – Implications on Architecture in The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2007. 2 Arif Dirlik ,Architecture of Global Modernity, Colonialism and Places, in The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2007. 3 Joinery is one of the major sources of thermal loss. Still, breathing fresh air through ventilation systems and being unable to hear the noises of nature when living in the countryside is a hardly acceptable price for energetic eciency. 4 Kas Oosterhuis, The Synthetic Dimension, in Architecture goes Wild ,010 Publishers, Rotterdam 2002, Pg.209. 5 As de ned by Françoise Choay in; L’urbanisme, utopies et réalités: Une anthologie, Paris, Seuil, coll. « Points », 1965. 6 Kas Oosterhuis, Architecture goes Wild,010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2002, pg.140. 7 Continuous urban fronts were uncharacteristic for Bucharest (with the exception of the boul- evards) therefore this spatial sequence consisting of an ornate gate, garden alley, ight of stairs and a more or less elaborate glass porch (“marquise” ) can be seen even in the most modest eclectic house. 8 Branco Kolarevich, Architecture in the Digital Age:Design and Manufacturing, Spon Press 2003, pg.6. 9 see Lev Manovitch`s article - Abstraction and Complexity (2004), http:// manovich.net/articles/. 10 Noppen, Luc, Architecture forme urbaine et identité collective, Editions du Septentrion , 1995, Sillerry (Québec). 11 Sang Lee , Architecture Remixed, in The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam, 2007, pg. 242.

Bibliography

Baumeister, Ruth/ Lee, Sang (edited by) The Domestic and the Foreign in Architecture, 010 publishers, Rotterdam 2007 Choay, Françoise, L’urbanisme, utopies et réalités: Une anthologie, Paris, Seuil, coll. « Points », 1965. Gheorghiu, Petru, Un model de locuire bucurestean, Editura UAIM, Bucuresti,2007 Kolarevich, Branco, Architecture in the Digital Age:Design and Manufacturing, Spon Press 2003

Ana Maria Hariton Romania 437 Larkham, Peter, Understanding urban Form? - in Urban Design/ Winter 2005 /Issue 93. Machedon, Luminita / Scoham Ernie, Romanian modernism: the architecture of Bucharest 1920- 1940, MITT Press, 1999. Manovitch, Lev - Abstraction and Complexity (2004), http:// manovich.net/articles/. Noppen, Luc, (sous la direction de ) Architecture forme urbaine et identite collective, Editions du Septentrion, 1995, Sillerry (Québec). Oosterhuis, Kas, Architecture goes Wild, 010 publishers, Rotterdam, 2002. Pelletier, Louise / Pérez Gómez, Alberto,(edited by) Architecture Ethics and Technology, Mc Gill- Queens University Press, 1994.

438 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Beril Özmen Mayer

Eastern Mediterranean University Northern Cyprus Digital Design Thinking and Moving Images Syndrome Today’s Psychology – Media Age In the media age today, the psychology of people and their personalities have dierent impacts due to interaction with online technologies; individualism has let paci - cation of face-to-face communication that one could not predict these shortcomings alongside with the technical development. In 1960s, everyday life was predicted depending on more robots than computers. Conversely, if we forecast today for next generation advances, it could be thought of extreme reliance on ICT and media technologies as well as cyberspace and cyber-bodies. Yet, digital domain and technology would bring complex continuum of human-machine fusions, so that new forms of symbolic communication occurs with ‘techno-philiac body’ as declared in1989 that may point out a screen to stare at, of cyberspace and of cyberbodies (Featherstone and Burrows, 2000). Thus, visual dimension provokes us to get away from other dimensions’ necessities. Media remain faithful to the extension of the “global village” to situate our experiences as a happening to support the virtual / unreal world. Whereas, the nature of the design process has undergone dramatic changes with the emergent usage of computer aided design software, which are the tools of information communication technologies developed and used in the eld of architecture profession. The moving images in all mediatique arts were started to be integrated with this very marketing picture. Thus, it is being to be intensi ed with the postmodern thought so that it expels as the popular spatial experience. This is exaggerated, now and then, with a negative eect, as an eyesore in transformation of spatial entities of architecture in a form of image. Architecture has shifted into an obsession with an image creating occupation in the contemporary world and it has become a part of the media itself. Nowadays, large numbers of cities advertise themselves to assure larger number of audience through the image of their architectures such as Sydney Opera House or various Guggenheim Museums that architecture seemed to not have designed for the real users as the immediate inhabitants of the city but to serve the image of a city signature into the global image. This kind of image creating mechanism forces a struggle to bring designated objects into being –just for the sake of- the new and the better, but not in the context of factual data. The star cult architecture that intended to change clichés relatively against to the human nature; it makes the product become more super cial, unreal and abstracted form the real world that works and serves only itself as arts, which is only for satisfying the aesthetical senses, and not considerable opposing view of the role of art within the social, cultural and political notions in this very competitive sphere. Thus, this phenomenon reveals a belief to stand on how this image architecture would inuence and shake the human being with its social entities further as the only functional art until the invasion of the image on realities. Furthermore, our perception of tragic events like wars, disasters, etc. have become unreal and happened alike a trailer through moving images in any screens as in TV, internet and in the movie theatre. Interestingly, architecture, as a profession of construction buildings for real needs, started to serve otherwise. Concisely, the real needs in architectural programme represents itself with unrealistic –moving- images of buildings, out of the context around in a neighbourhood, a community or a town and become a watching / stalking experience for anyone. Outcomes of such design actions become arts only arts as in the famous controversial dictum.

440 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Changes in the Learning Attitude Although perception has not really changed with the new technologies, representation of design has been modi ed in digital design thinking in dierent conditions. Me- dia articulate conceptual schemes into external visible artefacts with the intention of that kind of communication channels bring about alterations in transforming the internal mind to the external world (Wang and Tsai, 2011). Through the shift in the role of computers has promoted from tool to media can be pointed out the ‘social dimension of learning’, which can be observed in extensive use of the net and ICT facilities. However, there is a breaking glass of this interface and collaboration with the digital world that “students see themselves as integral part of the interface between design knowledge and the aordances of new technologies’. (Spicer and Huang, 2001). Whereas the mechanism of accumulating knowledge is based on the human mind has similar standards and limits in the globe, teaching practices may exhibit various approaches. Moreover, student-oriented approaches, mixture of informal and formal learning, dierent experiments in the case of state, private or foundation universities, in which seeing student as a type of customer may aect the education in various levels. Thus, architecture student’s behaviour from the level of awareness to the competence should be investigated through the digital media. When ICT technologies extend to the all over the world, a new type of self learning creates a leap of learning through social networking as a private course provider. In last decades, lifelong learning concept has established due to the need of developing the social capital in the developed countries. Consequently, new era of learning bring a range of possibilities with the screen-based technologies in any place, any way and in any age. Recent pedagogical developments construct a dialogue between teaching and learning to connect two sides of the very same coin to set o a new emphasis on the learning with the individual capacities and the needs of learners. Learners are not seen anymore as the passive recipient of the knowledge and skills, but active participants of the process. In the digital education, ‘Pedagogy before technology’ has turn out to be the common catchphrase, which suggests to locate new technologies within the proven practices and the models of teaching’ rather than to create one in a total new ground. Educational researchers clari ed that tools as ‘papyrus or paper’, ‘chalk or print’; ‘overheads projection or TV’ cannot formulate great dierence unless innovation being assimilated into pedagogical practice without altering fundamental truths on how people learn. Besides, a paradigm shift should be admitted due to multiple impacts on the nature of learning. Traditional pedagogical thought have various approaches such as ‘Constructivism’ (Jonassen, 1999), ‘Social Constructivism’ (Vygotsky, 1986), ‘Activity Theory’ (Engestrom, 1999), ‘Experimental Learning’ (Kolb, 1984), whereas the new approaches to the digital age are developed as e-learning, networked learning tendencies; ‘Instructional Design’ by Gagne, 2004; Collaborative Computing from McConnell, in 2000 and such others (Beetham and Sharpe, 2007).

Digital Thinking in the Studio As a generational sieve, architectural education has changed a great deal in the last century. 1940s was the rst time to catch the notion of the digital, follows 1950s which had some experiments triggering, then rst VLE has started in 1990s in the

Beril Özmen Mayer Northern Cyprus 441 States. At the same time, there were other inuences in the profession as explained below as the “genius of the era”.

‘It was engineering in the early modernists, social advocacy in the 1960s, energy in the 1970s, post-modern historicism and literacy theory in 1980s and computers in 1990s.” (Kelbaugh, 2004)

Architectural education has developed a manner allowing the ICT and media presentations to play a very role to teachers and students in design studies and even publishing them virtually. This has created a new type of education and a professional expression. In the digital use within the realm of architectural education will be discussed and examined with the aim to assess to what extent the digital technology and the use IT tools has inuenced the design thinking and workow of the design product. Architects and educators state that these innovative technologies and computing devices have brought alternative and supportive interactions to both the design phases and project representation in the professional education platform. However, similarly to other IT based professional practices, the implementation of computer technology at the start in design and representation in the virtual environment cause a limited interactive behaviour between human beings and computers if you consider having very powerful background of conventional graphics systems in design professions. This discourages an active attitude, particularly if the software program is the lead of the designer unconsciously not to take the active role, but make him / her the complementary part in the design delivery process due to the expertise and new mindset needed for this new representative image language. The signi cance of the subject lays in how to place ICT in architectural education in order to develop new tactics for architectural education in the context. A key move would be transferring the images world into the reality as in the conventional drawing as a communicative tool to record the descriptions of valuable experience through the emphasis of human-centred architecture; and search for dierent methodologies of conveying design ideas according to these new attempts. Methodologies of communication in architectural design were de ned with the ecological accountability to picture this complex and contingent relationship in a wider perspective within the environment as similar analogy between ‘a river and its banks where moulded in’ versus computer-aided architectural design systems. The weakness of this novelty may not fully acknowledge the environmental complexities of site and context through the design process. In this contemporary agenda in the architecture, every day practices have changed by a transdisciplinary shift ‘towards image and signs in the development of notational systems’. This crucial move to ‘images and signs world’ through new CAD tools has brought a struggle with other discursive media where architecture expels de ciency due to transforming the reality in the educational practices. Transition from the analogue to the digital, which has been still in the early stage, caused that these brand-new tools are being used with the same-conventional perception of a kind of drawing board. The dilemma in this kind of attitude, presentations in this new digital image world are de cient in the crucial relationship with the immediate environment in the context (Murray, 2011).

442 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture As a result, one can point out that our mental schemata have yet not been ready to adapt this new mindset of the new technology and not-known capacity of the new technology to transfer design ideas into images with the best interest due to the high- speed acceptance of the digital innovations. Therefore, this ambiguity may cause to misuse the capacity of the new notational structure of representation in a more eective way. Besides, it needs time to digest new and search for the ways to present and describe design issues as competent as before. In this digital revolution in architectural education, it is a crucial issue to detect what condition or situations make the dierence on the new generation’s the learning attitudes and habits. What kind of social and cultural change goes parallel with this digital revolution speci cally in architectural education? Is there any contextual change in the methods in the architecture design studio? Perhaps, we have a very long way to answer this question; yet we can perceive some of the positive and negative circumstances. In the course of questioning use of those innovations and retaining information of the traditional communication techniques of architecture, which has its own practical skills for such as sketching, scaling, drawing; how architectural presentations to be implemented with the new technologies have remained unanswered.

The knowledge that is forgotten or lost in the process of digitization’ practical skills, know-how, deeply embedded in the context of use, and other tacit knowledge associated with the habits of practice.’ (Dreyfus and Dreyfus, 1986).

As a general attitude, design students’ attempt to producing eye-catching images, animations and three-dimensional models in the creation of design ideas by using various software in order to represent design thoughts and proposals illustrate resemblance to the prima-donna architecture apparently due to the psychology of the digital age. The product itself becomes an abstraction as well due to the media has changed into virtual manner in education. The realization can be dierent in the architecture studio because education is still a cognitive process of a human brain and it is more abstracted. When we compare the studio happenings from the real life experiences, architectural representation actually has shown this abstraction in another manner as in the design process due to dierence between architectural practice and education. Designing virtual environments has dealt with the real world by mirroring realistic images reected from people’s perception. However, if design has not given as a real world problem, the result would be sole creation of an artefact and its accidental images, which are represented from imagination (Wang and Tsai, 2011). Accordingly, digitalizing architectural design studio may exhibit naïve and shallow interpretation of architectural knowledge through images created by software, but not by an architect or designer in some circumstances. It can be said however that the use of ICT and CAD tools have potentials to create better design, and entirely presenting genuine design ideas successfully. This attitude should be encouraged, however, be supported properly not to turn into a threat against a good design production by those unrealistic representative imagery.

Beril Özmen Mayer Northern Cyprus 443 Educational practices in the recent developments in the academia, in the mode of contemporary tutoring may result provocative products to catch this competitive psychology of the digital age. Moving images of the global world gives an impression to the individual learners of today screened and scanned informational graphics everywhere. At the end, it is dicult to perceive how much of these educational practice can reach by the audience as participants and practitioners of designing act in the very fast moments. This psychology exhibits resemblance and reection in architectural education: To be an observer of many things caused to adopt a kind of behaviour may be seen in any presentations; animations, power-points, videos, which are led us less words, more staring at images; prefer neither talk, nor asking questions, but texting messages to others by I-Pads / I-Phones (SMS, twitting, face-booking) and even recording to another media such as photos, videos, and any signals over those images. Architecture candidates should understand where to take position in their profession. As Teymur pointed out the dierence between the concepts of “architecture” and a “building” is quite interesting to think and discriminate the process from the product. Thus, this conict can be considered to be theorized and idealized within architectural design in a more abstract way; architect become someone, who is in between a star-architect and a lay person (Teymur, 2007). Fallacies in our contemporary architecture culture have been conceived with a number of obligations such as being a solo artist, an inventor or an extremist. Most interestingly, triumph of the ‘more bigger and higher’ to the little, ‘urbanism to architecture’ and ‘globality to locality’ were well de ned as well as ‘the forgotten middle’ users in the fast mediated world. Exclu- sively, media architecture can keep this pace of the world with its untrue truths due to the addiction to the newness and science, not being slow, local, site-speci c, human- centric, humanitarian, buildings, simultaneously it should be naked with all senses (Kelbaugh, 2004). Overall, educating architects should give the understanding of such professional attitude in which institutions should consider and emphasize the importance of this necessity and responsibility to act with this ethics. In that sense, re-humanizing the architectural education is necessary in the technologically-driven world of architecture. The architectural product should be represented through images with competent use of the software. A thorough analysis should reveal on the use of the computer aided design, it should be aware of design understanding as a learner towards to competency particularly at a university. Thus, the role of architecture student in the design process should be better than a script writer or scenario creator.

Final Remarks in the Technological Drive Consequently, it has been experienced that the IT representation has led to detect of a shortcoming that is called ‘Moving images syndrome’ by the author, which is based on presentations to catch the eyes at rst sight and avoid deeper design critique. On one hand, using animated language in such presentations expels a strong and dominant tool and it pushes imaginations of designers to the far edges; on the other, it may not correspond to an expertise design solution with this computer aided action or hide de ciencies behind this representative media. This is a growing phenomenon that needs to be addressed in order to understand the new design process and In-

444 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture formation-Communication-Technology-Mindset to encourage the spread of the de- signerly presentation patterns in architectural education. Hence, recent generation of architectural students become an audience and the outcome of architectural product becomes a screen / stage performance. In this case, the software is appointed as the maker of the architecture. Furthermore, computer technology has contributed to the creation of a kind of “Hollywood Scenery” within an educational context, which seems to be a very elitist approach to design, arts and the profession and cannot be reected to social responsibility within. The method and the tool are dierent in the digital however, the problem remain the same or what we are searching for a solution. The main issue here is what digital changes will inuence design education and how; and up to which amount, level or position that would eect and alter the mood of design. If architectural representation becomes only an image, this decreases the quality of design in education and products in the practice, into the more super cial, even arti cial one; to the meaningless and to the drained ones within the context. Then we have to search for a kind of studio education which relies on the solution of an architectural problem, not only consist of context and images. Learning and teaching modes should be tested depend on the main psychology of using these tools in dierent manner in dierent places. From the viewpoint of teaching, it is signi cant to feel the new conception of moving image syndrome could be handled as ‘image and context compatibility’ in the jury presentations at school and not taken for granted with these escape points. In the practice, presentation of technology, fabrication, manufacture and mass production expels especially boutique design to sell as seen building dreams; and in competitions from the concept and preliminary design to the design development phase; from imagination to the reality. These questions remain from the discussion for the moving images syndrome. Design itself needs to be connected with the problem of the life in the built environment, at houses, in neighbourhoods, at urban quarters, and the world ecology. The design of architectural objects no longer abstracted from its duty and the roots. It serves human beings and technology that is created by human, which can be de ned as arti cial as conducted, however it cannot not be contented to serve to the images world, even if we are living at that matrix for long time. The technologically driven architecture is a brand-new struggle; it should be humanized as much as possible.

References

Beetham, H. and R. Sharpe, (Eds.) (2007) Rethinking pedagogy for a Digital Age: Designing and De- livering E-learning, Routledge, New York. Dreyfus, H.L. and Dreyfus, S.E. (1986) Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Age of the Machine, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Featherstone M. and R. Burrows, (Eds.) (2000) Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Tech- nological Embodiment, Sage Publication, India, pp. 1-18. Kelbaugh, D. (2004) Seven Fallacies in Architectural Culture, Journal of Architectural Education, September, V. 58/1: 66-68. Murray, S. (2011) Identi cation of the Burgeoning Field: Eniatype, Design Ecologies, Volume 1: pp. 13–29, Intellect Limited.

Beril Özmen Mayer Northern Cyprus 445 Spicer, D. E. and Huang J. (2001). Gurus and Godfathers: Learning Design in the Networked Age. Education Communication and Information, Volume 1: 3, GSD, Harvard, USA: 325-358. Teymur, N. (2007) Vitruvius in the Studio: What is Missing? In Design studio pedagogy: Horizon for the Future, in Salama, A. M., N. Wilkinson, (Eds.) Gateshead, UK, 91-110, Urban International Press. Wang, X. & J.J.-H. Tsai (Eds.) (2011) Collaborative Design in Virtual Environments, ISCA 48: 131–140, springerlink.com.

446 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Charalampos Politakis

Manchester Institute for Research and Innovation in Art and Design (MIRIAD) Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) Manchester Metropolitan University UK Skeletal Apotheosis of the Human Body The human reception of architecture is interpreted through the human body. The form of the human body has therefore been used as a model and metaphor for architecture since antiquity. This research is based on the relation of the human body and architectural structures and especially how the human body has been the inspiration for the exterior form of architectural structures. According to Santiago Calatrava (2002, p. 91) ‘Another topic that is also very important in architecture is anatomy and the idea of reading in the human body structures, or appreciating in the human body, a sense of architecture. Whatever we do, the magnitude or the dimension of a thing is always related to our bodies. Architecture, in a very natural way, is purely related to humans, because it is done for --and by-- people. This makes anatomy a very powerful source of inspiration.’ This paper explores Santiago Calatrava’s approach to architectural design and the combination of the ‘mechanical’ and the ‘human’ aspect on his work. The case that this paper examines is the Planetarium of Valencia’s City of Science (1996). The building reveals a reference to the shape of the human eye mimicking the mechanical kinesis of the eyelid. The disembodied human eye is structured with a skeletal synthesis adapted to the architectural and mechanical practices with a personal/expressionistic approach to its ‘realistic’ structure. The skeletal synthesis of the eye by Calatrava with the adaptive kinesis reveals a surrealistic approach to the eye’s structure, an approach that presents a part of the human body as a colossal remnant of the human existence. Calatrava reveals the inner architecture of the human eye and transforms it as the external shape of the building. Further- more as far as the colour of the structure it might be said that the extended use of white colour (mimicking the white colour of the human skeleton) that dominates the building, reveals and underlines the skeletal architectural structure. With this practice, Calatrava is creating a paradox of the eye’s structure, creating an in nite chain of structures within the structure; inhabiting an inner layer of the human body that has always been secluded from our perspective, transforming the inner structure and revealing it as the outer structure of the building and of the human body itself. The problem which Calatrava’s work explores is that whenever a creator is trying to imitate/project or approach the human body from its physical shape and function this notion inevitably generates philosophical, sociological and anthropological questions and metaphors upon perhaps the most popular and intimate object; our own body. This notion of mimesis of the human body appears as a single architectural structure in Calatrava’s work (even if it appears as a surrealistic, expressionistic or experimental artistic approach to the human body). Furthermore, it indicates a narrative exploration similar to a narrative ancient Greek metope, or perhaps nowadays the fashionable projections or the use of screens on the outer surfaces of buildings. Through technological advancement the projection of the mechanization of the human body through cyber culture, robotics and computer based practices has many manifestations. An interesting part of this speci c work by Calatrava is the absence of gender/identity with the use of an organ common to all human genres, for that makes it a global mark. As Juhani Palasmma mention’s (1996, p. 45) ‘It is similarly inconceivable that we could think of purely cerebral architecture that would not be a projection of the human body and its movement through space. The art of architecture is also engaged with metaphysical and existential questions concerning man’s being in the world.’ Christopher Hight on his book ‘Architectural Principles in the age of Cybernetics’ (2008) gives an explanation on the relationship between building and body. According to

448 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Feature0184_03x. [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011].

Fig. 2 Feature0184_02x. [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011].

Charalampos Politakis UK 449 Hight (2008, pp. 21-22) ‘The relationship between building and body provides the ground (topos) that sets humanity apart in an architectonically closed and symbolically ordered space from the world of nature.‘ With that, Hight refers to the antithesis between human structures (that create topos) and nature. Hight also mentions that for phenom- enologists and post-structuralists ‘the body is the natural model for architecture, which became a model for nature, which was, in turn, a model for the body...‘ (2008, p. 37). The use of the human body as an architectural structure or building therefore creates metaphors on the meaning of such practice and to what might such practice refer. In their book for instance ‘Metaphors We Live By’ by Laco, G & Johnson, M (1980, p. 3) ‘…metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action’. Going further against the tradition of objectivism in western culture as the authors state: ‘We see metaphor as essential to human understanding and as a mechanism for creating new meaning and new realities in our lives’ (1980, pp. 195-196). Metaphors are an important tool according to Laco and Johnson in order ‘to comprehend partially what cannot be comprehended totally: our feelings, aesthetic experiences, moral practices and spiritual awareness’ (1980, p. 192). An anthropomorphic building (its exterior shape at rst as a visual object and as a public structure and then its interior) manifests a monumental mirror of a new reality. At this point the researcher would like to add that the initial idea of the research came as a result in 2009 in the artistic and architectural application of anthropomorphic structures using 3D design and game engine software. Initially the idea for this research has its roots in ancient Greek mythology, and the tradition on Crete where the Mount Juktas located near Heraklion was believed to be the grave of the King of Gods, Zeus (Rice, 1998, p. 212). The observation of nature and the parallel inuence of the myth generated the desire to create a 3D anthropomorphic building based on the exterior structure of the human head. With the interactive installation, entitled ‘Emerging Face’ the user explores a 3D environment de ned with three main places:

Fig. 3 01_THE_ArxanseXT2 [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011].

450 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 4 Politakis, C., 2009, Emerging Face. [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011].

Fig. 4 Politakis, C., 2009, Emerging Face. [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011].

Charalampos Politakis UK 451 Fig. 6 Politakis, C., 2009, Emerging Face. [image online] Available at: [Accessed 10 October 2011]. the city, nature (symbolized with the use of the mountains) and the human head as a building between these two places. In this dialogue between sculpture and architecture, questions arise about the ‘use’ of bodily structures and mechanized/kinetic bodily inuenced structures in architecture. From an architectural perspective what the meaning of such a bodily representation is and how such architectural practice embodies meaning in the relation between man and the mechanized world? Does this practice dier from the use of information technology driven architecture?

In ‘Timaeus’, Plato’s description of the human body is a cartographical approach with an extended use of metaphors because of the observation of nature. Also common in ‘Timaeus’ is a metaphysical approach, used in order to be given an explanation of the cosmos. Plato’s description of the human body locates features such as the head, the senses, the liver, the bones etc. An important feature in his doctrine is the description of the human head. Plato describes it as the most important feature of the human body, the divine part of us, which imitates the spherical shape of the universe and has a back and a front side. As Plato mentions in ‘Timaeus;, ‘ rst, then, the gods, imitating the spherical shape of the universe, enclosed the two divine courses in a spherical body, that, namely, which we now term the head, being the most divine part of us and the lord of all that is in us: to this the gods, when they put together the body, gave all the other members to be servants, considering that it partook of every sort of motion. in order then

452 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture that it might not tumble about among the high and deep places of the earth, but might be able to get over the one and out of the other, they provided the body to be its vehicle and means of locomotion; which consequently had length and was furnished with four limbs extended and exible; these god contrived to be instruments of locomotion with which it might take hold and nd support, and so be able to pass through all places, carrying on high the dwelling-place of the most sacred and divine part of us. Such was the origin of legs and hands, which for this reason were attached to every man; and the gods, deeming the front part of man to be more honourable and t to command than the hinder part, made us to move mostly in a forward direction. Wherefore man must have his front part unlike and distinguished from the rest of his body’ (Plato, Timaeus). This partly metaphysical explanation and description of the human body gives also the basic philosophical hypothesis of Plato that the body is the medium of the soul; the body therefore is created in such a way in order to satisfy the prospects of the soul ‘and so in the vessel of the head, they rst of all put a face in which they inserted organs to minister in all things to the providence of the soul, and they appointed this part, which has authority, to be by nature the part which is in front’ (Plato, Timaeus). An interesting fact is the description of Plato in ‘Timaeus’ for example of the peptic system and the inspiration and expiration process; his descriptions are always given with a metaphoric paradigm based on the observation of the functions of nature. Speci cally ‘Now after the superior powers had created all these natures to be food for us who are of the inferior nature, they cut various channels through the body as through a garden, that it might be watered as from a running stream’. As far as inspiration and expiration Plato mentions ‘This process, as we arm the name-giver named inspiration and expiration. And all this movement, active as well as passive, takes place in order that the body, being watered and cooled, may receive nourishment and life; for when the respiration is going in and out, and the re, which is fast bound within, follows it, and ever and anon moving to and fro, enters through the belly and reaches the meat and drink, it dissolves them, and dividing them into small portions and guiding them through the passages where it goes, pumps them as from a fountain into the channels of the veins, and makes the stream of the veins ow through the body as through a conduit’ (Plato, Timaeus). These metaphoric descriptions related to similar functions in nature reveal a ‘mechanical’ function similar to the human body.

In contrast to Plato, Descartes observed: ‘I am really distinct from my body, and I can exist without it’. This hypothetical assumption by Descartes mentioned on his 6th Medita- tion explores an unexplored perspective of the soul. The dualistic dichotomy between the corporeal materiality of the human body and the incorporeal soul/mind suggests and separates the presence and being of them in space/dimension; if there is such separation then the mind exists or could exist in separate spaces/dimensions; so on one hand there is a common locative presence for body and mind and on the other hand there is also another presence of mind in a dierent level/location. The body then is just the corporeal carrier ‘the thing’ of mind and soul; therefore it is a medium, an extension of mind in a materialistic level. A further fact that could be mentioned concerning the dualism in the existence of ‘ego’ is based on the observation by Descartes and his distinction on the dierence between the divisible body and the indivisible mind. According to Descartes ‘there is a great dierence between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its very na-

Charalampos Politakis UK 453 ture always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible’. Descartes here outlines clearly the characteristics of the corporeal body explaining that if any part of the body for example a leg, arm etc. cut o this fact would not have an eect on the mind but only on the shape of the body; so because there is no eect on the mind ‘nothing has thereby been taken away from the mind’, this argument separates the corporeal body from the incorporeal mind. Descartes, considering the question of ‘what I was’ proposes his thoughts with the description of the body. ‘Well, the rst thought to come to mind was that I had a face, hands, arms and the whole mechanical structure of limbs which can be seen in a corpse, and which I called the body’. Descartes clearly de nes the mechanistic and materialistic form of human bodies (and animals) by considering also that ‘as a kind of machine equipped with and made up by bones, nerves, muscles, veins, blood and skin perform all the same movements as it now does in those cases where movement is not under control of the will or, consequently, of the mind.’ And he continues ‘by a body I understand whatever has a determinable shape and a de nable location and can occupy a space in such a way as to exclude any other body’. After the metaphoric description of the human body in relation to the functions, the cosmological observation of nature by Plato, and the mechanized description of the human body by Descartes, the researcher has sought to embody these two philosophical theories in regards to architectural buildings and architectural theory. How are these two philosophical approaches connected to architecture? When a building has an anthropomorphic shape and mechanisms have been added in its structure that creates movement, and not merely a sense of movement, what metaphors can be generated from that practice? The duality with regards to anthropomorphic architecture and the human body is not the separation of the mind and the body; rather it is the dual existence of the human body and its manmade disembodied fragmented representation in the structure of anthropomorphic architecture.

The mechanized architectural representation of the human body in Calatrava’s work and the ‘mechanized’ IT driven architectural design raises a philosophical and theoretical question: Are we at a time that we are ‘adapting’ Le Corbusier’s theory to a dierent mechanization of architectural practice and inhabitation involving IT technologies and our bodies? Creating a living ‘digital’ unconventional and conventional architecture? In their article ‘The Mechanical vs. Divine Body: The rise of Modern Design Theory in Europe’ Alexander Tzonis et al., (1975) examined through paradigms the ‘conceptual systems of architecture in France between 1650 and 1800’. In their article they are referring to several metaphorical observations and statements that were made regarding the connection of human body and architecture and the use of buildings as instruments; as they mention ‘The rst buildings conceived as machines were those which were compared to enlarged instruments’. At this stage Le Corbusier’s architectural theory could contribute to the exploration of the hypothesis considering the human body as a building. Le Corbusier mentioned that, ‘A house is a machine for living in’. Taking Le Corbusier’s idea and combining it with Plato’s and Descartes’s philosophical theories it can be said that:

454 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture IF → a House/Building = Machine → Then a House/Building = Corpus ( Thus ↓ A House/Building = Body As a result then from philosophical perspective: Because: a Building = Body → Then the examination of the hypothesis ‘human body as a building’ has a philosophical background that has to be taken further into account. IF → the Building = Body = Machine → Then the anthropomorphic ( shape of buildings could be analysed from a philosophical perspective. In conclusion, both practices (the ‘digital’ unconventional and conventional architecture) through the paradigms that were previously examined generate metaphors, and therefore new realities which according to Laco & Johnson are notions of mechanization not only of the architectural structures and practice but also of the human body itself.

Bibliography

Benedikt, M.L., 1991, Cyberspace: First Steps, MIT Press. Calatrava, S., 2002, Santiago Calatrava: Conversations with Students - the M.I.T. Lectures, Princeton Architectural Press. Cottingham, J., ed., 1996, Descartes Meditations on First Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. Drake, S., 2008, A Well-Composed Body - Anthropomorphism in Architecture, VDM Verlag Dr Müller. Frascari, M., 1991, Monsters of Architecture: Anthropomorphism in Architectural Theory, Rowman & Little eld Publishers, INC. Hight, C., 2008, Architectural principles in the age of cybernetics, Routledge. Hutton, S., & Hedley, D., ed., 2008, Platonism at the Origins of Modernity: Studies on Platonism and Early Modern Philosophy, Springer-Verlag New York Inc. Laco, G., & Johnson, M., 1980, Metaphors we live by, The University of Chicago Press. Le Corbusier, 1985, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications. Lethaby, W., 1994, Architecture Mysticism and Myth, SOLOS Press. Palasmaa, J., 1996, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses, Academy Editions. Politakis, C., 2009, Emerging Face, Available at: [Accessed 10 September 2011]. Rice, M., 1998, The Power of the Bull, Routledge. Sharp, D., 1996, Architectural Monographs No 46: Santiago Calatrava, Academy Editions. The Internet Classics Archive 2009, Timaeus by Plato, Available at: [Accessed 24 October 2010]. Tischhaser, A., & von Moos, S., ed., 1998, Calatrava - Public Buildings, Birkhäuser. Tzonis, A., et al., 1975, The Mechanical vs. Divine Body. The rise of Modern Design Theory in Europe, [online] Available at: < http://tzonis.com/dks/dks/publications/online%20publications/1975-JAE- the%20mechanical%20vs%20the%20divine.htm> [Accessed 24 October 2010]. Zardini, M., 1996, Santiago Calatrava Secret Sketchbook, The Monacelli Press.

Charalampos Politakis UK 455

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli

Politecnico di Milano Italy Wall-e This paper argues on an open question that leads to a statement. Where is interior architecture going to in a technology driven architecture trend? Technology is part of our history and it is a continuous development of human knowledge into practice, thus designers and schools of architecture should consider human and technology as a sustainable system not letting one overwhelm the other. The balance between human ecology and technological systems toward a better future and a higher quality of life is possible in the respect of Nature. Utopia is to consider this unbearable and to prefer one aspect over the other.

Technology is needed today in order to face problems connected with environment and socio-cultural issues. We cannot conceive anymore a lifestyle without a personal computer, a cellular phone or a simple electrical wiring. We cannot imagine a world without plains, fast track trains, or cars when mobility is not the future to be, but the present to take. On the other hand getting used to technology induces to sit down while the machine does the rest. One of the biggest challenges of the digital era is a risen brain activity over the physical. Due to advanced media communication distances have nar- rowed over verbal connections, allowing people from opposite sides of the world to speak and to look at each other at the same time, still remaining seated in their homes or oces or cafés. Most of the times the space of the oce coincides with home, generating a continuous cycle in the daily schedule. Through the www. we might even have the gro- ceries brought directly home or a chat with family and friends and never leave the same ambient. This apparent seclusion than might change the picture, and turn technology into something negative. Indeed the fault is ours because we are addicted to the interactive screen device: the less we actively interact with the outside world the more we are attached to innovative technological devices.

This paper doesn’t assume to nd a recipe in order to control the desire of technology driven interiors, nor to give a good reason to choose one lifestyle instead of another. The paper proposes a positive thinking based on the teaching by Carlo De Carli, Maria Zambrano, Gregory Bateson, Leonardo da Vinci and Henry Riviére.

Where is interior architecture going to in a technology driven architecture trend? Lets begin from the end by introducing the story of Wall-e, the American computer-animated science ction lm produced by Pixar Animation Studios and directed by Andrew Stanton in 2008.

Wall-e is a robot. His duty is to collect wastes on Earth turning them into skyscrapers blocks. It is the year 2700 and humankind is cruising the universe in search of natural soil to colonize, because Earth seems like wasteland and life on it had become impossible. The space ship is a clean, aseptic and shiny scenario, while a computer masters the daily schedule. Inhabitants lay on movable advanced innovative technology couches with an interactive screen in front of their faces. Human’s posture has turned man into a blob shape individual: physical motion has been substitute by IT devices. Emotions and feelings seem frozen on a super cial level until Wall-e nds the way to enter the spacecraft…

458 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Like one of us, Wall-e has curiosities, gets surprised and excited, learns and understands the meaning of beauty. He wakes up in the morning, has a sunny recharging breakfast through the solar panels on his metal body and goes to work. His job is to compact wastes into cubes and store them one on top the other, thus building walls of waste-cubes that turn into skyscraper towers. Indeed his name stands for Waste Al- location Load Lifters – Earth. As any respectable worker he has a break during the working schedule. At lunchtime he collects peculiar objects that make him wonder. His home is a container that shelters him and his domestic objects. But this is not the only peculiar aspect of his personality. Wall-e likes to look at the stars and to listen to music. His uniqueness goes even further by sensing the importance of a touch as something beyond holding hands: a non- verbal communication full of signi cance. On the other hand humans on the spacecraft seldom touch each other, being too busy looking at the screen. The screen is the only contact with the environment and it allows them to interrelate one another on a verbal relationship. The moving device that transports them around the spacecraft is Fig. 1 programmed to follow distinct Aurora. Chania 29/8/2011. trails and directions. The computer master controls the daily light by switching on and o the arti cial sunlight and even changing the color of the peo-

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy 459 ple’s clothing or providing them beverage and food at certain times. Humans pay little attention to the surroundings since it is just the background of their screen. The comparison between Wall-e and the future human is not the point: we are not speaking about who the human is and who the machine is. Wall-e is a cartoon character and we are not turning into robots because of technology or IT driven architecture. The question is about the possibility of the setting: if one day we will have spacecrafts villages like in the Pixar movie or in Star Trek, we’ll we behave dierently than now? Will physical contacts become obsolete? Will interiors reect an automotive system at the expense of human relations?

Human behavior generates space relations. As designers and architects we all have been taught in school that distance matters when human actions reveal themselves into space. Therefore dimensions are important both for the room distribution and the furniture scale. Movement and gestures build the using space of domestic space reecting individual’s culture, background and heritage. Meeting rooms have tables dierent in size and design than living rooms since the interrelation between colleagues is supposed to be detached, standing some steps further than the one with friends and relatives. Dierent relationships require dierent interpersonal distances and particular space situations. Architecture cannot escape from these schemes that should be the basis of manuals and regulations. Behavior, as the synthesis of culture, society, history is related to the origin of the person and it demands a systemic structure of these aspects translated into place. Consequently a gesture is a synthesis of information: social, cultural, functional, emotional, individual. The space needed for a gesture to perform in relationship with the others refers to primary body language. Carlo De Carli (1910-1991) has de ned spazio primario the combination of the two, which is the subject of architecture. During the exhibition for the celebration of his centennial birth, Silvana Annichiarico, director of the Triennale Design Museum in Mi- lan, said that De Carli’s writings: “are testament to the groundlessness of any separation between exterior and interior, or between big and small, do not draw attention so much to a space or to an item as such, but to the “process that led to the creation” of such space or item and to their mutual relationships, in which multiple factors are at stake, sometimes with conicting interests, calling for a solution that must solve as well as transcend them. De ned as the “space of rst inner tensions” as well as the “space of gesture” or “relational space”, the primary space is born as soon as the self opens up to the others and to the world, in a gesture of embrace and human solidarity. This is not just about the physical atmosphere we are all surrounded by and breath, this is about giving sense to or “making sense” of such embrace and thus of the place in which it does or could occur. At rst, the primary space has no physical properties or any shape or any other formal description, it lies entirely in the “preciousness” of the human being in a tight relationship between architecture and ethics, and between architecture and nature, that goes beyond mere functional usefulness in the attempt to understand and translate its meaning into a built project to such an extent as to “pale” into representations laden with existential moments. As De Carli wrote, when it is born it is already imbued with life, with all of one’s lived experience.”

Wall-e’s interest on the meaning of holding hands and the pleasure of dancing or sharing a smile is related to situation and space. Innovative technology doesn’t interfere with human relations but when applied to space it might change the inhabitant’s

460 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 Human relations. Chania 31/8/2011. gestures and therefore their behavior. Changing doesn’t imply substituting them: architecture is the reection of primary spaces in which technology can be an aspect and perform as an attribute. Keeping this in mind humans can participate actively on technology driven architectures through the relations that occur in them, through them and by them. De Carli used to say that the teacher-student relationship builds the classroom, thus architecture shapes space creating the environment for learning. Technology driven architecture has to deal with e-learning in which the extension of speech is l- tered by an electronic device. The question then drives toward the space of human relations and how it has developed over time. It seems that even school can enter the domestic sphere and inhabiting tends toward a hybridism of functions, which people get easily accustomed to. The contemporary trend to interrelate with the outside without moving will produce high quality domestic spaces more and more focused on a world wide communicational platform. Interrelation is the most human aspect of the inhabiting. And due to this reason, even if everything can be performed by a technological white box that turns to be a forest landscape or the house of our dreams in a matter of second, we will still need a real window with a real view in order to open it and to smell the outside. Virtual reality cannot compete with real dimension although it can induce similar feelings, touching the empathic sphere of the human.

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy 461 It is true that everything can be designed as a setting, and it may satisfy all our needs and desires listed on an in nite catalogue of pre-established possibilities. Though man is a curious animal and the Ulysses that each of us keeps in his soul will always lead him toward the unknown and the inexperienced. We will always look for what is beyond the wall. Technology driven architecture is the result of this aspect of the human.

Our domestic world might turn into a private stage controlled by technology, as in the movie The Truman Show. But the question is: can we live inside an installation or a setting where the inhabitant has limited freedom and everything is pretty much decided? Temporarily yes, precisely because it is a short time location. In order to seed some roots the inhabitant needs to interchange with his space, to interfere with it, so to leave a sign into his world.

If technology allows the setting of architecture, it helps also to achieve sustainable constructions. The threat we have nowadays of technology driven architecture is indeed the consequence of a bad use in the past. Don’t forget the application of alternative energies applied to new constructions and renovated buildings, and how green buildings are technologically driven. Even if we can speak of good and bad architecture, technology is pretty much above this concept since it is use that makes it good or bad for the environment. Ar- chitects and designers should always face this responsibility, since for environment we don’t address only Nature but also the primary space with its relations. The architectural project should consider the tensions that occur between the subjects into space. How to see them in advance makes a sensible designer and a good project. There is a link between the relations de ned by De Carli and the tensions into space: an invisible presence that any technology isn’t able to detect.

The Spanish essayist and philosopher Maria Zambrano (1904-1991) in the book De la Aurora wrote about the invisible threads of relations and tensions occurring into place. These tensions, that Zambrano described through analyzing Las Meninas paint- ed by Diego Velasquez in 1656, are always there. The connections and the strength of the spatial relations reveal themselves through light during the aurora. It is a matter of seconds yet it is the essence of space. As an appearance they come into light. Aurora enlightens the relations as well as the observer that witnesses the moment. The apparent distinction between philosophy of art and architecture has indeed an important common aim: the reading of the relations between the actors on stage, the picture, as well as the objects into space. Considering these tensions is part of the creative design process and enables to foresee the in becoming architecture. In Zambrano’s philosophy this characteristic is what may de ne beauty in the painting as something expressing harmony and balance even through the contradiction of the parts. Therefore beauty is always present and its enlightenment depends on the observer’s sensibility and the architecture. Technology helps to control most of the decisions made in the design process, yet the aurora belongs to the experience and the sensibility. Both aspects, technological

462 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture driven architecture and sensible design process, certainly provide a high quality architecture. There shall be no conict between them, thus collaboration.

Hence while space gains its value by gestures and traces, experience runs through the senses. Vision, smell, touch, taste, and sound manifest the qualities of space and allow the individual to recognize and memorize the place. Identity and recognition reveal architecture. Therefore the essence of space, the primary space, lays into the relations that occur in that speci c space over a determinate time. But what happens when space is simultaneous? When technological means allow a continuous transformation of the spatial variables? Contemporary installations tend to be more and more interactive. Active and passive experiences apply to both visitors and space. Sound, touch, vision, sometimes even smell and taste, are design variables in most of the creative events presented in worldwide expos on inhabiting and furniture. Besides the strong impact these experiments have on the public, the real question is: will it become the house of the future? Are spatial tensions becoming more and more dynamic? Can we exercise a sensibility that welcomes technological means in order to assure a good inhabiting? So far these architectures are ephemeral or temporary in the sense that they don’t last the de nition of home. Maybe in the next future it will be dierent, and responsive architecture will be a style of living and not merely a creative event. Indeed technology driven architecture already allow a exible inhabiting, since through media communication there is a conversion of functions into the domestic space. On the other hand re alarms detections, or domotic systems for example structure the building as an organism that responds to certain stimuli. Contemporary technological means assure a value base responsive architecture in two ways: one related with the integration of functions and spatial distribution, the other through the systems that run the building and make it a performing construction.

The picture of extreme responsive interiors is not just a cartoon imagination. The space of inhabiting changes over time, not only as generations go by but also as the inhabitant grows up and turns from individual to family. Home is a space of belonging, which the human considers a small root of identity. Martin Heidegger (1889– 1976) used to call this infeeling of being here and now the Dasein, de ning it as the human condition. This brings to a dual relationship between the inhabitant and space: each of them transforms one another. As a consequence the contact produces a place that the human holds into his memory and takes it as part of his story.

Places and spaces are quite dierent as for the human perception. Marc Augé (1935) used to address place as a space with a higher quality of life than other spaces can provide, since the rst belongs to the people while the second ones are lacking of identity. Architecture has the aim to transform spaces into places, yet it is the inhabitant the secret ingredient. Architecture without the inhabitant is useless, not accom- plishing what it is meant for. Technology driven architecture actually performs even more for the human than previous architecture did. The interaction level between the inhabitant and technological space is higher due to the demand technology reserved to the inhabitant both

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy 463 as function and oer. Technology driven architecture provides spatial relations that traditional buildings couldn’t behave. Basic human needs are always the same and they are assured, though machines, wi- systems, domotic systems and other devices have a reection on the dimensions and the distribution of domestic spaces. Compact electronic devices take less and less room in interiors, and allow smaller spaces to be perfectly inhabited. Indeed the decreasing size of domestic surfaces in cities is also due to the the market prices that rise considerably and consistently over time. If in the Modern Movement compacting was an eort for the machine vivant, today it is even supported by economical means. This aspect though doesn’t change a bit the feeling of the place: home keeps being human’s private rooting place. Even if pictures are stored into small boxes (hard disks) that sometimes substitute shelves of books, the domestic space holds our belongings, memories and history. Even if al- bums are available on line from any side of the world, home keeps being a real 3D place in which relations occur and keep it alive. Being here and now – the Dasein - is sharing the contingent world. Humans need a real hug, a walking together, a shared silence in order to feel the same reality. Thus innovative technological interiors still contain our story and belongings. Even if domestic spaces change over time, receptive architecture is still a social container and it reects the people’s need to be technologically updated. The trend is undoubtedly to isolate the individual in the physical sphere while opening his mind to a wide world of external untouchable possibilities. The digital era is separating the direct social behavior from an indirect relationship made by visual eects and script. Technological interiors may by green for the environment; what about the ecology of mind? Similar to De Carli’s primary space, Gregory Bateson (1904–1980) referred to space in the means of a relational system, addressing architecture to structure the ecology of mind. Culture is a mutually interdependent world wherein individual relationships shape socially shared meanings, while these collective meanings simultaneously inform the individuals’ understandings of their actions. According to the de nition of ecology as the scienti c study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment, architecture builds an ecological system in which to welcome human relations. This systemic approach reminds to Zambrano’s analysis of the tensions between the subjects in place and to De Carli’s primary space. Ecological space refers to a variety of opportunities that make the place alive and proactive. The demand of interactive devices and high performing architecture turns space to be more and more receptive adding a new variable in the ecology of mind: architecture in itself as part of the system. The tensions between the subjects in place gain another coordinate relatively to the technological oer provided. This time the invisible thread is a potential use, a service that yet directs the subjects on certain behaviors instead of others. In this point of view technology is architecture as well. The attitude to look at things in a dierent perspective is part Bateson’s teaching. His youngest daughter, Nora Bateson in 2010 released a documentary about her father “An Ecology of Mind”. At the opening she said: “I am inviting you to do the thing he did best, which is to look at a thing from another angle, anything at all, be it an earth worm, a number sequence, a tree, a formal de nition of addiction.” Ecology of mind is a view toward a sustainable world, possible to build and rebuild according to the contingent human necessities. Thus from the technological point of view we will discover a world of new possibilities that architecture can oer.

464 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Technology driven architectures are a present developing reality and picture contemporary society. In an ecological approach, we shall consider how the local identity (the interior root) and the global belonging (the outside world) equilibrate each other with the need for nature and for the community ensemble. In other words, we should lead technology toward a systemic approach in the respect of sustainability. Architec- ture in this way may also make a dierence in world economy and environment issues toward a building society that respects itself and the generations to come.

The discussion on Nature toward Science leads toward the writings of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). In his books he wrote that Beauty lays into Nature inside form/ function/space relationship. As an exercise of balance between techne and behavioral responses (natural and human), the project is an act of love toward the future inhabitant. If form mat be considered over technique then it drives the architect toward processing an organism, which sustains itself by the technical form and it becomes alive through inhabiting. Through Leonardo’s eyes innovative technology driven architecture is a matter of dedication toward life. The result is a mechanism, a project, a place that can be associated as a primary experience. Getting accustomed by new inventions and technological spaces is also part of the system, since development and enterprises are endless until the human will be a thinking being. Technology is persecuted for the human and relates to the beauty of Nature as an attribute to the human experience. In Leonardo’s conception there is no techne without the human, there is no beauty without Nature, but life is a combination of all. The ecology of mind refers to this kind of relationships that are able to understand one another after discovering each other. Technology is not there to understand but to provide the answer to the human needs. Therefore as an act of love, adaptive architecture may accept a more inuential and decisive presence of human being.

In the movie Wall-e, advanced technology holds the inhabitants as prisoners, which are unable to take decisions for themselves and to oppose their will to a stuck environment. But the real issue is how to have the will, the desire, the curiosity to be an active part of this world. Until the virtual Ulysses that hides in each us will still travel and look for new meanings and new possibilities, technology will not take over. No matter how innovative our homes will turn in, or how automatic system will substitute actions and customs, knowledge and sharing will always pursue the dierence. Why? Because of feelings.

Man will always reach his limits and never satisfy his thirst for knowledge. Emotions are the propulsion to realize his dreams, to answer to his questions and to nd his role into the universe. The transcendent quality of human mind comes into practice through progress. Technology leads to the new frontier of the unknown, but without relationships there is no place, and without a dialogue between the parts, interior/exterior, object/user, space/inhabitant there is no story. Architecture, technology driven or not, refers to this story and enables people to ll their contingent carnet. By considering the memory of the place at any time – past,

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy 465 Fig. 3 History of the place. Chania 30/8/2011.

Fig. 4 Interior roots. Athens 2/9/2011.

466 ENHSA- EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture present, future - architects and designer will respect the human being. How this is possible is a matter of codifying and reading the place. Cities of nowadays tend to transform themselves through futuristic masterplans that provide a metropolitan aspect, most of the times leaving the history of the place behind. The consequence is a high performing urbanization that has lost its roots. It might be a new starting point, but what about the interior roots that a place keeps inside? What about the belonging and the identity of the people that recognize themselves in that place? In order to conceive architectures that allow the continuity with local roots, technology should be able to run together with the sensibility of the place and should not be used to overcome it. This is possible only while facing the project. As a project variable, and for a sustainable future, advanced innovative technology must protect architecture from becoming consumable, self complacent, and formal attractive. Teaching has an important role in this issue. The argument touches every discipline at any level, since what occurs in space is a synthesis of human decisions about economy, environment, politics, society, industry, … Architecture is a subject that considers any implication, yet it needs help in order to proceed coherently. Technol- ogy driven architecture is a group working process that can highlight each part to be part of the story and have a voice in it.

As long as these directions survive into our conscience, space will always be human related, no matter how AIT might be involved into it. The architect Henry Riviére (1965-2010) said “Architecture is only made within the context of human adventure”. The adventure may be giving the rst kiss, tasting an unusual avor, learning how to dance, speaking through a drawing, applying for a job, … in brief experiencing in person. Technology driven architecture participates in it as well.

Where is interior architecture going to in a technology driven architecture trend? It’s to be discovered. Prepare yourselves to the adventure.

References

Augé, M. 1992. Non-Lieux. Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Ed. Dominique Rolland. Milano: Elèuthera. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolu- tion, and Epistemology. University of Chicago Press. De Carli, C. 1982. Architettura: spazio primario. Milano: Hoepli. Heidegger, M. 1951. “Bauen Wohnen Denken”. In Vorträge und Aufsätze (1936-53). Ed. Gianni Vattimo. Milano: Mursia. Moatti et Riviére. 2009. Moatti Et Riviere La Promesse De L’Image, Images En Manoeuvres. Zambrano, M. 1986. De la aurora. Trans. Laurenzi, Elena. 2000. Genova: Marietti.

Lucilla Zanolari Bottelli Italy 467

(Re)scripting and fabricating a Critically Responsive Architecture

Jan Slyk

Warsaw University of Technology Faculty of Architecture Poland Interactive Shadow Play As Lisa Kennedy remarked: “So sci- is really a candy store for someone with imagination. Real science ction always has a platform of truth. The best is really about the preter- natural, and the worst is the kind where there’s no science to the ction (…)”.

Undertaking works on creating life scenery of year 2054, Steven Spielberg gathered huge intellectual capital. He invited fteen experts to the hotel Shutters in Santa Mon- ica. Stewart Brand, Douglas Coupland represented humanistic approach, emerged from their writing experiences, Jaron Lanier, one of the virtual reality research path- nders, shared his experiences from cyberspace exploration, Neil Gershenfeld, chief of Center for Bits and Atoms MIT introduced newest achievements and products of high technology. What is most interesting – substantial part of think-tank works constituted spatial issues. Peter Calthorpe presented urban outlook, and William Mitchell – architectural.

Debaters inquired how technology will inuence changes in the world around us. Concepts and hypotheses developed during the discussion were used over the work on the movie. It is dicult to guess if the milieu presented in the “Minority report” describes our future. Anyway, it seems to be a possible version of the incoming days because of not escalating extreme ideas. It respects human habits and sentiments. Allows the watchman in the cyber jail to enjoy kitsch lamp. And Lamar Burgess – president of PreCrime – to live in traditional Victorian style house. Cyber-transferred elements of space are mixed with conventionally formed, aiming at expanding and functionally improving the environment. GAP store, in which Anderton buys clothes, was organized according to ingrained standard of shopping. The client has to enter, touch the garments placed on the hang- ers, try them on. The dierence is in discretely situated cyber upgrades. Store recognizes the client, remembers his likings and disliking, nonpersistently suggests solutions and asks questions about impressions. All these happens thanks to sensors and signal emitters associated with interactive system. Scenery of “Minority report” can be named as a composite environment embracing real elements – supporting human senses as well as cyberspace components, which raise eciency of perception. What is interesting, many elements shown in the movie have been realized until now. Technical equipment of the environment in which we live has a signi cant inuence on architecture. Ful llment of human needs demands rational action taking advantage of the actual capabilities, with the minimum of cost. Physical building eect arises as a result of negotiations between aspirations and limitations. Among the last ones we increasingly notice reduction of accessible resources – natural, spatial and higher density of tasks aecting reduction of human’s operation capabilities – in timing, physical and emotional aspects. Information revolution creates a chance to overcome barriers in several layers. It allows to obtain more eective solutions according to previously known scenarios (to optimize materials and energy expenditure, organize space in a rational way). It provides global coordination (concerning compatibility with the newest knowledge, collision-free issue, cooperation). It opens the way to physical enlargement of the architectural activity area (through exploration of the expanded and virtual space). It changes interpretation of time and spatiotemporal phenomena (thanks to parallelism of the processes, interactivity, continuous actualization).

472 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Starting from observations from the eld of psychology, Antonino Saggio creates the image of contemporary architectural environment, which consists of the spheres: objective (materiality) and subjective (space). The rst one is based on a Cartesian set of notions and measurements. The other one – requires consideration of individual features of the context. Intensi cation of information structure, which is a result of widespread computerization, extremely strongly inuences interpretation, it is capable to create conditions of perception skipping material means. During the creation of architectural works we transform physical components of the world. Essence of the creative intervention as well as certainty of the communication with the receiver – remains still the form of space shaping, or in fact – information about the form. The continuously variable environment of global connections network marginalizes real things and highlights the signi cance of relation. Precise tools enable to embrace in the package of bits almost complete de nition of architectural object, which includes not only physiognomical characteristics but also description of use conditions, history and range of variability. When, in pre-Christmas season I was walking through the shopping mall hall my sight was caught by a group of people performing very odd body gesture. They were behaving in an organized manner and – at the same time – in a way completely detached from the context. When I approached, I saw a computer screen and control device above it. Multi-sensory access to virtual reality is a challenge, to which contemporary technologies haven’t successfully answered yet. Still - thanks to, inter alia, game consoles - they relatively shortened distance between computer and its user. Power Glove made by Nintendo enables viewing your own hand inside the space of the game. Wii controller, which contains responsive triaxial position sensor - strengthened potential connections linking algorithm realized by the computer with user’s behavior. Grasped in a hand - it was transformed into tennis racket or golf stick. Fastened to an ankle - allowed to score a goal vs Barcelona in the scenery of Camp Nou. People who intrigued me jumping before the screen - were using Kinect driver - even simpler and more versatile. IR camera was scanning chosen area and speci c software reconstructed the arrangement of the objects in space. Thanks to ecient procedure enabling shape recognition, people gestures and relations between participants of the game - became information understood by the computer. For system was reacting in a real time to a behavior (voice, movement, contact with elements of the projection) - participants of the game soaked into virtual world losing contact with the real environment. Developing computer devices, improving mechanisms of interaction - we change ourselves. It is perfectly visible in comparing the behaviors. Mature members of the society do not trust sense ampli ers. Contact with computers, numerically controlled machines and particularly - interactive devices - they treat as a challenge, a task requiring procedure compatible with the manual. Subconsciously they divide the process into components, address functions and hierarchy to each stage. Children - just the opposite - they embrace wholeness of the new environment, learning through exploration. How often we observe irritation of the preschooler vexed because electronic toy “does not do” something. In initial assumption a ve-year old treats information infrastructure as an organism capable of anything, self-learning, reactive.

Jan Slyk Poland 473 Fig. 1 Wooden skin of the pavilion under construction.

Gilles Deleuze explains changes in world perception through comparison of a society of discipline and a society of control. The rst one refers to generation formed by industrial era - linear and direct. Interpersonal relations and interaction with environment are described by the set of rules. A member of the discipline society participates in the processes by acceptance or rejection of the roles, using rules and taboos. He begins and nishes stages of activity (education, work, leisure). He uses machines which he fully controls till they are broken or sabotaged. Society of control is our present day. Contacts have here non-linear character - parallel and relational. Principles and behavior patterns are replaced by passwords and codes providing access to particular contacts and functions. Position in global network of connections depends on full lning certain conditions. Man of control does not use machines dedicated to speci c tasks, he uses computers and Internet. Contact with them does not consist in management, but interactive control.

Architectural communication changed in the age of information technology. Mate- riality of space as well as human responsiveness are exposed now for the impact of digital messages and representations. Mixture of physical and virtual components construct augmented three dimensional context. Multiple interpretation came to architecture in the sense that exists in music (Mitchell, 1998). As a replacement for de nite building image new architecture oers numerous alterations dependent on parameters. Environmental constraints as well as user demands inuence spatial solution in the real time. Interactivity catalyzes architectural creation and perception (Saggio, 2010). Since interaction became a component of the message – architects started to develop creation techniques embracing feedback features. Consequently – architectural

474 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2 1st phase accomplished: skin of the box waiting for the interior. education needs to address interactivity as it complements contemporary professional workshop. However, creating interactivity diers from traditional shaping space as it is forming process rather than any permanent structure. It demands programming and interdisciplinary knowledge. ASKtheBOX pavilion described below came into being as a learning environment built by students to experiment with interactivity. Implemented methods tend to integrate any components needed (space, material, process, program). However – infrastructure and tools are limited to allow full understanding and participation. During two weeks of intensive workshop the entire installation was designed and constructed from scratch. As interactive “instrument” – needed tuning that took place before the exhibition.

Background Architecture for Society of Knowledge – ASK – is a new form of master studies in English at the Faculty of Architecture Warsaw University of Technology. The concept

Jan Slyk Poland 475 Fig. 3 Digital model sliced for fabrication.

Fig. 4 Assembling digitally-cut styrofoam elements.

476 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture of the studies pro le prepared in 2009 by professor Stefan Wrona’s team received - nancial support from European Union resources. Since September 2010, group of 24 students is trained taking part in classes developed particularly for this program. ASK pro le was built around the problems related to information technologies development, their public and social results and consequences aecting architectural activity. During the studies several problems are discussed, in particular: issues of digitally supported creation, algorithmic and parametric design, digital prototyping and fabrication, simulation, optimization, construction of integrated environments for knowledge acquisition, building information systems, mobility, robotic structures. Application of new techniques and technologies takes place in didactic atmosphere ingrained in tradition of Warsaw School of Architecture. Hereof arises form of classes and method of selection of subjects – creating a bridge between valuable achievements of the past and chances, which are uncovered by the future. Experimental projects constitute an important component of the ASK concept. They interweave during the studies with traditional design classes. They allow to focus the attention on the research method. They require to de ne observational environment (laboratory), to perform the tests and experiments, demand objecti cation of observations. Design techniques, spatial result, simulation of the nal target state, functional remarks – co-create background conditions for the architectural experiment, which is a subject of the semester work for students.

Pavilion was built at the Faculty of Architecture Warsaw University of Technology, in the classes room named for Professor Stefan Bryla. It was opened for visitors since 19 April 2011. It was developed as a result of experimental project course as a part of the design studio conducted by Jan Slyk for second semester ASK students. Pavilion ASKtheBOX serves to perform the experiment through separating a place in the space. Place – which state and behavior can be modeled and transformed. Con- stant elements of the endowment determine conditions of usage. Minimalistic infrastructure collect and generates the signals. Control program coordinates sequence of events in time and space. In order to provide functionality enabling manipulation without programmatic interference, pavilion was equipped with “control panel” enabling access to internal regulation mechanism. ASKtheBOX is not only design of space, but Project of the process in which author, or even user – is able to de ne individual environment of interaction.

Space A wooden plate box (2,5 x 2,5 x 3,75 m) was built at the beginning as the limit of space and support for any inside structure. Essential demand for the interior was to stimulate users to undertake various actions (move, sit, stand, dance, touch elements etc.). Taking series of images we researched on how people explore empty space. Multilayer still-frames gave us grounds to bore the cave which became the idea for interactive space.

A three-dimensional model came into being through several alternative procedures: traditional sculpturing in clay + 3d scanning, shaping voxel space with haptic devices (SenSable 3D Phantoms), 3D computer modeling based on the ergonomic measure-

Jan Slyk Poland 477 Fig. 5 Cardboard laser-cut model preparation.

Fig. 6 Pavilion model in 1:10.

478 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture ments. As it was nished a 1:10 scale model was prototyped and the fabrication process started. The complex curve shape needed layering and division. Computer – controlled thermal machine cut out over 500 elements that were labeled and mounted.

Interaction ASKtheBOX plays (creates) music that corresponds to human behaviors inside. We decided to keep installation as simple as possible – therefore no motion detectors and other sensors were installed. The pavilion applies projection mechanism as camera obscura does. Strong light source generates user’s shadow at translucent back wall. The image is then grabbed on the opposite side by simple USB camera. Sequence of images transmitted to the computer managing the system contributes coded information about movements inside the box. Music played as output is composed in the real-time. People visiting the pavilion start from getting familiar with its functionality, investigate possibilities. After that they make more conscious choices. Calibrating their own sound environment and try to move within it composing music... The basic procedure of output production depends on prede ned acoustic loops. Samples prepared to be played simultaneously are stored in the memory of the system. The moment shadow analysis detects signal, a particular loop is switched on and lasts as long as the user remains position. In this mode ASKtheBOX program works like musical sequencer: synchronizes loops controls delays, easy in and out eects. Besides, pavilion generates its own music. The program contains module producing MIDI sound. Parameters taken from shape recognition are transcoded to control MIDI (frequency, time, modulation etc.) There is no functionality generating global structures like harmony or form jet but the system is open to absorb composing algorithms as David Cope’s ALICE. The rst procedure (sequencer) allows to strictly control the rules but limits the variety of output. The second (generator) gives back unlimited sound diversity but demands highly complicated managing mechanisms.

Strong correlation between space and music is not accidental here. And it is not only output format that bene ts from musical methodology. Long time before computing became crucial technique for organizing processes, music researched algorithmic composition using analog or semi-analog tools. You can nd signals of this direction in medieval Guido d’Arezzo Micrologus and in Mozart’s Musikalisches Würfelspiel (where composer sets rules and playing dice contributes needed entropy).

Digital representation is for architecture not a path of choice but a natural consequence of common use of CAD. Each design project prepared with the use of computers is realized in the virtual environment. We can ignore this fact or try to exploit it. In basic aspect – as a cheap research polygon, which – thanks to suitable tools simulates future building eects. In wider view – as an individual environment of expression. Creating objects, which have digital representation we obtain a chance to publish not only their aesthetics but also functionality. Thanks to the Internet and virtual space access devices users “inhabit buildings” remotely, in parallel time, when they are completed, or during construction.

Jan Slyk Poland 479 Fig. 7 ASKtheBOX sensitivity: function controls (red) and behavior switching spots (green);

Fig. 8. Playing with ASKtheBOX – recognizing behaviors and composing music.

480 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Architectural work gains in the digital representation aspect of execution. Accord- ing to used means – it generates signals transferred to several senses or complex simulations. Among the last ones – owing VR visualizations, which are capable to create impressions congenial to natural and automatically fabricated prototypes. Thanks to digital media functionalities, the method of architectural work notation is getting closer to music script speci city. The composition of space, just like musical composition – de nes boundaries of freedom determined by the author. Electronic realization ensures multiplicity of representations and generates space for interpretation. Through opening the access to tools for space perception simulation even buildings not existing in real world for years, obtain new performances, which constitute object extension or its parallel. Society of control, thanks to digital representation can change the character of interaction with spatial work. It will be able to create and use objects not only in linear sequence of experiences. Through telepresence, remote participation and advanced means of communication will gain skill to “steer” architecture, so to interactively modify its forms and usable scenarios. It is also possible, that the relationship between architect and client will be changed. Place of industrial specialization will be taken by integration of competences. Prosumer will obtain ability to independent creation (control) of buildings. Architect will take over a role of coordinator and manager in a process of digital creation and fabrication.

At this point I just want to bring the example of John Cage’s Imaginary Lanscapes from the fties. They belong to the movement called aleatorism that gave much more freedom to the performer than it was permissible before. Prepared score de- nes only components. Real form appears during the concert. Blocks combine global image on the base of performer intuition, audience reactions, a particular moment in time. I have the feeling aleatorism inuences architectural creation now. The digital structure more exible than traditional tectonic substance allows to control architecture rather than constructs static designs.

Process The essence of design – as typical for IT- lled architecture – is not the project but the process (Oosterhuis, 2007). ASKtheBOX depends on the program that runs installation. Each component – physical shape, spatial environment, projection mechanism, computer infrastructure takes part in a cyclic process of interaction. The way installation works is de ned within system procedure that is individually designed and coded. A processing environment was implemented to combine dierent aspects of installation. Images coming to the computer are simpli ed and interpreted. Matrix of 36x24 pixels allows to follow the movement. The grey contrast factor (darkness) contributes information about the presence of the user and the distance from the screen. Particular image sectors are de ned to be active. Detected grey amount in the sector turns on the acoustic component. “Analog” music – comes from an outside application (Logic) as synchronized loops. “Digital” music is generated within a processing program (as MIDI).

Jan Slyk Poland 481 Fig. 9 Interior of the pavilion: light projection and translucent responsive screen.

Fig. 10 Installation elements: pavilion, external sensor, controlling unit with user interface that allows managing interactivity.

482 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture User interface prepared for ASKtheBOX allows to model interaction scenarios outside programming core. Active sectors of the screen are presented as “drag and stretch” mouse sensitive objects. Music content depends on con guration sheet. Even an unprepared user, contacting installation for the rst time can tune its behaviors and change interaction rules.

Conclusions What did we learn experimenting with ASKtheBOX? First, we explored a new medium of architecture. A medium that Bill Mitchell described as augmentation of space that changes rules. According to the typology given by Lev Manovich (2001) the new medium is obviously: digitally represented, modular and automatic. What stroke us much more - it is also variable and transcoding. After the insertion of information genes - space become unde ned. It is the population of possible physiognomies rather than the n- ished form. The medium itself translates signals. Location in space, image, music data are on the basic level identical. By transcoding information we are able now to switch between dierent languages of artistic expression. Design object changed. As Kas Oosterhuis underlined - we do not design objects anymore. Through the evolution of interests we focused on the subjects which are in most cases processes of getting shape, functioning, falling apart, recycling… To design the process ability of programming is needed. As a matter of fact - this new competence determines participation in the process from both sides - author’s and user’s.

As previously proved in XX century music - the role of artist changes. Passive perception does not satisfy prosumer foreseen by Alvin Toer (1989). Men of the age of In- formation customizes the environment. It starts from a smartphone screen and ends in a Concert Hall. Architecture is more and more exposed on individualization. As it absorbs information infrastructure the control gets fragmented. Forming nal shape of architectural objects proceeds in an interactive process. The role of the architect is to coordinate the process and to establish rules. A so called user interface is needed to allow manage interactivity without entering scripting level of the structure. The information environment changes the sense of time so it aects perception of space. Analytical process of building solutions adequate to conditions, which Saggio mentions as a foundation of twentieth century methodology, does not provide the validity of an inference any more. The multithreaded and unstable context of the digital reality becomes a matter of choice and loses its objective meaning. Interactivity turned to be today a dominating feature of the environment and the interaction – main technique of exploration. We are not satis ed with the frozen part of perception. We are also not able to embrace the moving whole. So we download next portions of information in a contextual series of decisions. We develop, verify, actualize and change the picture of phenomena constituting the subject of cognition. Thanks to the hypertext, use network access windows and – with time – also telepresence, we move inside the discontinuous digital environment.

Jan Slyk Poland 483 Thanks to computers building structures can react immediately and the designer obtains control over the interaction scenario (algorithm), which he forms similar to shape the space. The perception of traditional architecture was based on the combination of sensory impressions and interpretations of the context (real and intellectual). Perception of interactive architecture requires consideration of the ambient conditions dynamics.

References

Manovich, L. “The Language of New Media”, MIT Press 2001. Mitchell, W. J., “Antitectonics: The Poetics of Virtuality” [in:] The Virtual Dimension: Architecture, Representation, and Crash Culture, (red.) J. Beckmann, New York, 1998. Oosterhuis, K. Lenard I. “Mission Statement ONL” [in:] Spiridonidis C., Voyatzaki M. “Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design”, Thessaloniki 2007. Saggio, A. “The IT Revolution in architecture; thoughts on paradigm shift”, New York 2010. Toer, A. “The Third Wave”, Bantam Books, 1989.

484 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Alexandros Kallegias

University of Patras Greece Machinic Formations / Designing the System A revolution is currently under way in design-based disciplines such as industrial design, mechanical engineering, and many others, caused by the introduction of digital fabrication technologies to facilitate prototyping processes. Research projects are being conducted in multidisciplinary elds as well as across dierent scales. They extend from the production of human tissues through the printing of stem cells, rapid prototyping of bone prosthetic parts, food printing through the use of edible ink, 3D printing of textiles, furniture and other objects, to the development of contour crafting technologies to print concrete buildings. Digital fabrication is rapidly becoming part of many processes from conception to materialization of physical artifacts at any scale. In architecture, CNC fabrication equipment has given designers unprecedented means for executing formally challenging projects directly from the computer. Yet the impact of digital production in Architecture goes far beyond the mere production of complex geometries. As CNC technologies become increasingly available outside the larger manufacturing industries and information travels at a planetary scale, the physical production of design ideas is becoming distributed and localized. The growing number of fabrication shops, together with an emergent and growing DIY community dedicated to the construction of personal CNC equipment, demonstrates that the development of smaller, cheaper, faster and more versatile machines (desktop manufacturing, Fab@home, ReP Rap and others), is happening at enormous speed. Indeed, it indicates that the fabrication of designed goods could soon happen in local fab centers or directly in people’s homes. The possibility of creating mobile fabrication centers suggests yet another dimension. The deployment of fabrication equipment on to a speci c site, the possibility of building in remote locations which have no infrastructure as well as serving communities that are part of social layers still disconnected from technological advances arise. While traditionally these challenges have been addressed with standardized, prefabricated solutions, mobile CNC equipment enables architects to think beyond the constraints of these production modes. It is now possible to conceive customized prototypical architectures, which can be adapted to dierentiation in various inputs and outputs, distributed across global networks and built in dierent parts of the world. In parallel, the ongoing shift towards customization of computational design methods through the development of scripts and algorithms in the academic and research environments is impacting architectural practices, enabling the surpassing of traditional CAD tools and causing a fundamental shift in the architectural design process. Architecture is liberating itself from limitations imposed by software and is beginning to operate in a territory where it can control both its own digital design tools and the corresponding technological solutions. Equally to how pre-packaged CAD platforms are being updated or replaced by customized scripting tools (open source software), it can be predicted that CAM environments and CNC machines will undergo a similar shift and be supplanted by more open hardware solutions. The rapidly growing number of digital design practices and their increasingly challenging production demands indicate that widely available and sophisticated production facilities may soon be in high demand. Architects should formulate a critical position on the status and characteristics of digital fabrication methods that are currently in use and investigate the potential of producing highly mobile, highly exible, and customized fabrication apparatuses.

486 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Machine-Building Relation | Role of the Machines The way by which machines have been perceived in the architectural discipline throughout history has constantly been changing with the advances in technology, from the medieval castles perceived as defense mechanisms and the poetic imaginations of the Renaissance period, to modern achievements in the age of fast paced technological development. If we consider the notion of the machine in the mid 20th century, we can distinguish two approaches in the perception of machine as part of architecture. The rst approach is pioneered by Le Corbusier’s pragmatic and realistic understanding of a house as a machine for living1, while the second approach can be exempli ed by Archigram’s utopian view through projects like Living Pod (David Greene) or Walking City (Ron Herron)2.

Robotics in Contemporary Architectural Discourse The initial concept of the machine has been developed into a more elaborate approach as a result of the ongoing technological revolution in digital fabrication processes during the 21st century, currently underway in a number of design-driven disciplines. As such, architects are being given the tools for production of complex projects directly from the computer throughout CNC fabrication equipment. This has led to increase in usage of numerous machinic systems in construction processes in the last decade. Increasing research on applied robotics and robotic processes in both academia and architectural practice continues on the research pioneered by the likes of Nicholas Negroponte and Architecture Machine Group at MIT (SEEK)3 (Fig. 1), Cedric Price (Fun Palace)4, John Frazer (An Evo- lutionary Architecture)5. These projects have also dealt with the questions of the interaction between the machines and its environment and how people can af- Fig. 1 fect such systems.

Industrial Robots and Digital Materiality More recent developments incorporate architectural processes involving the use of industrial robots in fabrication processes, which are being developed and applied across the globe in research institutes (Grammazio & Kohler (Fig. 2), MIT, Stuttgart Institute for Computational Design), and by numerous architectural practices (SPAN, Greg Lynn Form, Robo-fold (Fig. 3), Supermanoeuvre). However, in all of these cases the fabrication process itself can be described by linearity, where the robot itself is con ned only to its productive mode; thereby neither acting as a sophisticated tool for carrying out the architect’s ideas nor producing a real interaction with the environment in order to inuence the design process.

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 487 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

Open Source and Custom Robotic Tools Parallel to the use of existing industrial machines, open source robotic platforms, such as the Arduino controlled robot named SERB or other custom built or ‘hacked/modi- ed’ versions of existing machines are nding their way in the process of digital fabrication. The method of ‘hacking into’ robotic devices enhances their performance in terms of sensory capabilities and ability to send feedback to the user or the system which controls them. Robots can become aware of their surroundings as well as communicate with other robots in the same form as the one found in nature’s swarm systems (i.e. swarm of birds, ants, sh). In other words, robots can become, and are becoming important part of the development of the discipline of architecture.

Robot | The Body, the Mediator, the End Eector The conclusion which can be drawn from the above discussion is that, according to the ways robots are used and envisioned within the architectural discourse, they can be predominantly divided into three main categories:

1. The end eector - Machine is used as a fabrication tool which executes programmed commands with the goal of producing highly sophisticated products.

2. The mediator - Possessing a certain degree of intelligence and sensory abilities, machines can provide feedback and act as an interface between the user/main- frame and the architectural object.

3. The body - Machine is the architectural product itself, whether the building is embodied as a machine and functions as one, or the machine/robot is inseparable part of the building’s tissue.

As mentioned in the beginning, the deployment of fabrication equipment on to a speci c site also provides the possibility of having the machines/robots present on

488 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the construction site, even after the construction process is nished. This allows us to extend the process of fabrication from initial ‘birth-giving’ process to the whole life- cycle of the building and allows for the state of constant (re)production, the state in which machines create a unique symbiotic relationship with the architecture. As an outcome, the concept of constant construction gives us the architecture in the state of ongoing evolution, re-adjusting to changing requirements. As shown on the diagram (Fig. 8), standard mode of fabrication is a linear one, where the machine executes preprogrammed commands, and has no further connection to the building. On the other hand, having the machine as a part of the architectural project opens the possibility of achieving the machinic-driven evolutionary process, which would span throughout the whole life-cycle of the building.

Roboteque | Participation and Man Machine Collaboration Roboteque is a team-based design research project completed at the Architectural As- sociation School of Architecture Design Research Lab (DRL) during 2009-2011, awarded with a Master of Architecture and Urbanism degree. In the light of the above discussion, Roboteque’s intention is to challenge the linearity of architectural production process and xity which dominates the world of built architecture, through the use of machinic systems which would recon gure the higher system they inhabit. The challenge of recon guration presents a crucial step in Roboteque research; what is activating the changes in the system? In this respect, the possibility to bring the man and the machine together in the process of production/recon guration becomes important, since man can be seen as one of the key actuators for the process of recon guration. By his actions, man can trigger the process as well as inuence its course. This notion of collaboration has been approached in the past by architects such as Yona Friedman who suggested that the user would interact with the system through a Flatwritter keyboard.6 This system however, was dependant on a supporting infrastructure network, and dealt with the set of prede ned elements. In another example, the collaborative project of Cedric Price and John Frazer (Fig. 4) was about a system that had some rudimentary self-awareness and knowledge. The communication between the man and their project’s system was on the level of the interface, where the machine would take the already mentioned ‘mediator’ role, and the machine would collaborate in the design stage. On the other hand, project SEEK by Nicholas Ne- groponte and The Architecture Ma- chine Group presented in a way an experiment on what could be compared with the real-time responsive construction process, where the robotic arm would respond to the change in the environment made by the gerbils who would re- shue the placed blocks. Fig. 4

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 489 As the ability to transform and to recon gure space constitutes one of the basic ingredients of this project, Ro- boteque seeks to enable the reformation in response to both environmental changes and time-based shifts in human activities. The challenge is to infuse architectonic space with literal transformation capacities, in order to close the gap between the stable physicality Fig. 5 of space and the constant ux of human activities existing in it. As such, in contrast to the precedent mentioned projects, the ambition is to implement a fully adaptive construction logic that follows a human/surroundings-responsive design process in order to allow for a structure that can be recon g- urable throughout its lifecycle. Taking this goal into consideration, the research has focused on an un xed architecture; an architecture that is made out of parts which can be attached and reattached to form dierent structures. This notion of detachable compo- Fig. 6 nents directs our study towards construction methodologies with no use of mortar, connection or scaolding (Fig. 5). Within the discourse of architecture, there are various architectural precedents dealing with this type of construction. These projects can be described as structures that take into consideration gravitational forces and follow the load sharing logic to achieve structural balance. Looking at Fig. 7 historical paradigms in archi-

490 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture tecture, the successful application of this building method becomes evident; from examples found in very early settlements such as the Mycenae in ancient Greece, in India, Cambodia and Ireland to civilizations such as the Aztec, Incas and the Maya. A later instance of this construction style can be found in south of Italy, where dwelling units were built without any cement or mortar, thus avoiding taxation and being able to be disassembled and reassembled in a dierent location. The availability of calcare- ous stone in the area allowed the formation of structures by simple superimposition of equal stones on top of each other. Stability was achieved thanks to the geometry of the house which was always a combination of cylinders and cones; it didn’t require any advanced knowledge apart from an empirical understanding of balancing aggregates. Similarly, Gothic constructions with the use of ying buttresses and ribbed vaults follow the main principle of decomposing forces into a system which remains in equilibrium. Nevertheless, in Gothic architecture one can see a complex combination of the existing technologies of that time, while today’s existing technologies can achieve complexity through the use of an even more straightforward structural methodology. Therefore, considering re-con gurability as the main goal of this project, the research concentrates on the logic of stacking material in order to achieve stability, whereby the design is focused on pure compression structures which oer more t design possibilities for our system.

Roboteque | 3D Cellular Automata Since Roboteque’s design system aims to transcend the construction style of the past and to have a creative system that can be adaptable in real-time alterations, the research goes beyond empirical knowledge of aggregate formations and makes use of computational tools which would allow complete control of the digital design parameters that are characterized by continuous change. Searching for a computational logic which would be able to perform complex calculations from a set of simple rules, Cellular Automaton was selected as a suitable system, due to the CA’s ability to produce elaborate structures given very speci c instructions/rules to follow. Thus, by using simple rules in a Processing script, it was possible to reproduce and study speci c CA rules, such as rule 30, rule 90 (Fig. 6), and rule 110.7 While earlier studies in CA tended to create patterns that could be used as the project’s design grammar, soon it became clear that these patterns should have additional properties. The rst additional property that the digital setup should incorporate is the 3rd dimension. The rules must be applicable to a 3D grid of cells, where every cell represents an aggregate’s position. The second quality of the code should be to enable dynamic intervention between a pattern’s intervals. As such, at any point of a pattern’s formation the user should be able to interfere by introducing his/her choice resulting in an altered and more user-related end form. After recreating some of Wolfram’s CA algorithms, a series of dierent rules were implemented so as to generate patterns for the unit’s structure. A special class of CA known as totalistic CA was used to make a set of three-dimensional digital models since totalistic CA allows for more elaborate rules pertaining to the concepts of neighborhood relations by checking the sum of the values of the adjacent cells (Fig. 7).

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 491 Roboteque | Intervening in the Process The next step in the digital computation setup was to have dierent set of rules interacting in the same code while maintaining the option of interposing in that process. In this way, even after the eectuation of the user‘s initial choices, the shape could still be modi ed and made adaptable to the user’s new preferences. In the following examples (Fig. 8), one can see the very subtle changes that take place as the user interferes with the formation process. In the following computational models, the change becomes more apparent and more speci c as the intervention is precisely targeted. In the two cases on the right,

Fig. 8

Fig. 9

492 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the user interferes with the formation process either by adding extra seeds in the system or by adding seeds and removing existing elements from the form (Fig. 9). The investigations presented aims to provide knowledge in terms of form- nding and pattern-making methods that make use of distinct structural elements. These experiments also help to reach the most suitable geometrical shape for the project’s material system. After deciding that the normal orthogonal is the most tting shape because it allows for both multi-directional aggregation as well as repositioning, the next question poses itself as what are the appropriate proportions of the system’s aggregate. Eventually, the problem becomes a case of choosing between a cube-shape element and an orthogonal with one of its sides elongated. The brick-type or jenga- type component provides more possibilities in terms of design patterning (Fig. 10). The main reason is that these proportions allow for better overlapping of individual components. In other words, the length of this kind of element when it is about twice its width, allows for it to be laid bonded in a structure to increase its stability and strength. In addition to the proportion of the structural element, another crucial factor has been the scale of the component. The variation in scale relates to the size of the working force that is handling the component. In the case of a human worker handling it, for ef- cient layering the brick-type aggregate should be small enough to be picked-up by hand. A bigger size working force such as a crane can handle brick-type boxes 20 times bigger than a regular brick (i.e. containers). In the case of the project’s working machinic system, the optimal dimensions can be found in between the previous two extremes. Fig. 10

Roboteque | Machinic Intelligence Considering the requirement of the on-site fabrication process, as well as the requirements of this proposed system, it has become clear that most of the existing on-site fabrication techniques posses a number of limitations. 3-axis machines used for contour crafting and large scale 3D printing, which could be considered as material de- positing machines are limited by only vertical deposition of the material and fabrication speed. On the other hand, the 6-axis industrial robotic arm presents a high-precision machine which, thanks to its number of operational axes has the ability to place or remove the material in the way that other existing machines cannot. Since Roboteque’s system demands a tool which is able to deposit material in dierent sequences, and due to the delicacy and demand for high precision in the formative process based on dynamic stability, in the further research this type of machine has been the main focus.

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 493 Fig. 11

As an initial experiment, the research team built a physical model with the purpose to gain a complete overall knowledge of what is needed in order to make the system function successfully in relation to recon guration, and man-machine interaction. This model consists of an Arduino controlled robotic gripper and elbow, in conjunction with the CNC machine, which all together forms a 5-axis system. Using this system, it was possible to conduct series of dierent tests, utilizing the CNC machine. The gripper itself has a rotational axis in the head part and an elbow which allows 90 degrees rotation. Attaching the gripper to the existing 3 axis system enabled the control of 5 axis in total (Fig. 11). This system allowed to automate the process completely in which, until now, cubes were being hand placed instead of an automated assembly process. However, having basically 2 separate machines, gripper + elbow and the CNC machine working as a single system, it was not possible to control both parts of the system from the same source. This condition meant that the CNC was controlled through its original software, while the gripper was controlled through Arduino. As a further development of this project, the research has been directed towards introducing an additional level of intelligence in the machinic system. The aim is to extend and re ne Roboteque’s proposal by improving the performance of formation machines with responsive technologies (sensors / control systems / actuators). Thus, in an eort to produce a system that reects the technological and cultural conditions of our time an investigation has been carried forward in order to gain a better understanding on the technical part of our system. Initially, the explorations have been targeted to the possibilities of ‘hacking into’ a 5 axis toy robotic arm. Thus, a light sensor and a web- cam were attached to the arm, and that gave inspiration to take the next step and have better control over the movement of the arm (Fig. 12). By using Arduino, the robotic arm was liberated from constrains of using batteries and the default remote controller. In addition, the Arduino board enabled the control of dierent sen- Fig. 12 sors and also allowed for a more in-

494 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture teractive process. In this way initial knowledge and understanding of the robotic arm’s mechanical system began to built-up. However, in order to obtain more accurate control and achieve intended results Roboteque’s research moved beyond the limitations of this particular machine. In the following experiment (Fig. 13) the possibility of interaction / responsiveness between machine (the system) and environment/sign was tested. Here, the same available tools as in the previous experiments were used, with the addition of the newly acquired gripper, which gave us control over 2 additional axis. The wrist was programmed in a way so its actions are controlled by the light sensor. According to the light values read by the light sensor, the angle of the wrist rotates for 15˚, 30˚and 45˚. The dierences in the light values are consequence of the distance between the sensor/arm and the light source. This experiment aided to test the dialogue between environmental conditions and the nal result. Two lines/layers were created in order to explore the eects that would the rst layer have on the changes of the light values and in that way inuence the shape of the second wall or the second layer of the same wall (Fig. 14).

Fig. 13

Fig. 14

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 495 The concept of the loop incorporates the notion of feedback mechanisms. In our system, two attempts were made so as to get the return of information about the result of the formation process. In this attempt, the aim was to overcome the delay of the feedback in the system. A digital camera was placed to monitor the formation process, which could provide the system with real time information. The input from the camera was ltered by the software named Processing in order to track motions and colors. In this way, it was made possible to read the boundaries of the actual construction in order to understand where a change took place. Then, that information was streamed directly back to the modeling software. Here, although the whole procedure was faster, the quality in precision was insucient. The other attempt was by using laser scanning named David Scanning Device. The device produces a green laser beam that scans the physical environment and then generates a 3-dimensional digital version of that, on screen. This 3-dimensional model was then analyzed and used for assessing the formation steps of the system. In this method, the precision in terms of the outcome was inversely proportional to the duration of the process (Fig. 15). After the consummation of the machinic experiments, the validity of the project’s inception became evident. Indeed, one can move beyond existing top-down design techniques that are governed by a central overview of the system with its subsystems speci ed and foreseeable. One can now argue for having bottom-up architectural methods that can be executed with the use of existing technology.

Roboteque | The Proposal The architecture of smooth transitions and recon guration, being the premise of Ro- boteque, is also achieved at the level of the functionality of the spaces being created. Recon gurable architecture at the physical level is highly linked with dierent events at the programmatic level. The architecture responds to the fast ow of events taking place on two levels, as the collaboration between the requirements of the human being and the responsive optimization system. The requirements of the human being include the pavilion’s temporality, spatial size, spatial composition, spatial characteristics (such as lighting, amount of opening), and requirement of changing. The responsive optimization system operates on the climate condition (environmental data), ow of people through the site (human behavior), intervention on the construction process (human action), and the location of the pavilions (negotiation with the neighbors). These two sets of data are gathered by the central brain and then transferred to the robots implementing construction recon guration during the fabrication process. The phenomenon of responsiveness occurs with two major triggers in Roboteque proposal, the human and the environment. The main interaction between the human and the proposal takes place with the online applet which the user goes through speci c steps that result in the formation of a pavilion. The central brain of the system gathers all the data fed into the website, evaluates it, and produces an optimized end-result that is constructed on site by the robots. This process can be named as system-optimized recon guration. On the other hand, the human can also interact with the pavilions on site, whereby one can inform the robot of the formal changes he/she would like to achieve. The robot receives these signals with its sensor and recognition device and begins to implement the changes.

496 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The interaction between the environment and the proposal occurs as the result of the environment acting as a trigger on the recon guration process. Climatic data relating to the site is collected on a daily basis and fed into the central brain of the system. As the central brain gets the user choices and evaluates them, it also receives the climatic data sequence, which aects the nal pavilion output in terms of its enclosure/ opening level, and sectional thick- Fig. 15 ness. The data collected from the surrounding environment gives the project its contextual characteristics. As such, the pavilion formation comes into being as a result of the interaction of the user with the central brain through the online applet, the interaction of the environmental data with the central brain, and the interaction of the user with the robot on a local level (Fig. 16). Fig. 16

Fig. 17

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 497 Roboteque proposes an “open social playground” in one of London’s tourist hotspots. Discrete structural elements are constantly positioned and repositioned in a range of dierent con gurations to form a series of social pavilions in the area of Southbank next to the London Eye, the Dali Museum and the London Aquarium. The aim is to intensify the level of activity in that area and accentuate the capabilities of spatial modi cation by responding to the people who are visiting the site. Being one of the most attractive locations in London, the site is surrounded by various types of important institutions, such as touristic attractions, cultural, educational, and governmental buildings. The site is located next to a very signi cant transportation hub, the Waterloo Station. Since it is positioned next to the Thames River, the site also bene ts from water transportation (Fig. 17). As such, as a result of being in the center of signi cant landmarks that draw tourists’ attention, and bene ting from the nearby transportation nodes, the Roboteque site will be in constant ux of pedestrian ows that persist throughout the day. The dynamic ows created by humans are an important ingredient for the Roboteque research proposal. The prototypical aspect of Roboteque lies in its assembly processes, whereby the potential user and the robot interact in the generation of speci c units which are built with a unique dynamic assembly procedure. As such, the way Roboteque goes about implementing this scenario is by allowing people to inuence the spatial formation of the “playground” through the operation of the WIFI interface applet. More speci cally, a person expresses his/her spatial preferences through the software that is linked with the fabrication process (Fig. 18). The given choices are rst ltered by a central “brain” that computes what can be realized or not according to the design’s primal system con guration. When all the choices are entered and accepted, the fabrication begins, where a group of robots on rails are put into motion so as to carry out the building of the particular units, within their reach. The entire site can be constructed as the rails are deployed in order to cover the maximum possible area using the minimum amount of tracks. Then, within a speci c timeline the constructions on-site can be transformed. Transformation of architecture is done by using a stacking logic that always respects the structural and material balance of the entire structure. In order to achieve

Fig. 18

498 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture equilibrium, the built models follow speci c formation patterns. By changing the orientation of the elements and ne-tuning the overall structure for stability, the system is equipped with a family of dierent formation patterns that correspond to certain spatial conditions, intended for the user to choose from. The amount of material that is employed for the entire system is kept at a uniform level by shifting it throughout the construction site during the transformational life cycle of the structure. In the end, the whole system of Roboteque comes together as a form of collaboration between the human-being, the machinic system, and the surrounding environment. In that sense, Roboteque’s strategy to piece together independent operating systems, gives rise to a grander system that is characterized by emergence. More speci cally, as the user’s choices, essential design parameters, together with the working machines which are reacting to the external stimuli get combined in an unceasing manner, the entire design and fabrication process becomes dynamic and uid.

Fig. 19

Fig. 20

Alexandros Kallegias Greece 499 In the same manner whereby various systems of societies are shifting towards becoming “uid”, concepts of simultaneity and variation are becoming a signi cant part of the current architectural discourse. We have the opportunity to address the matter of space as having multiple architectonic and contextual properties simultaneously. This condition presupposes a fundamental change in our perception of space. A shift from the approach of focusing on specialized segments of attention, a shift from adopting just one particular perspective, towards the idea of instant sensory awareness of the whole, an attention to the “total eld”, a sense of the “whole pattern” (Fig. 19). Engaging this paradigm shift in architectural thinking and practice to a more speci c typology, the built unit for a pavilion, presents the contemporary perception of the occupiable space as a varying environment rather than just a set of xed spaces on a grid. The built unit no longer has to follow xed boundaries nor needs to be the end-result of combinatory architecture. Thus, instead of setting-up modules and associating each room with a particular function, we can imagine an environment of smooth transitions. The challenge is to infuse architectonic space with transformation capabilities by actually understanding the time which we live in. With today’s available technology and in a world of social networking that is becoming more and more interconnected, Roboteque sees the opportunity that the architecture of smooth transitions and recon gurations can literally take place and provide design opportunities that correlate with our society’s contemporary culture (Fig. 20).

References

1 Le Corbusier. “Toward an Architecture”. Translated by John Goodman. Los Angeles: Getty Re- search Institute, 2007. 2 “Archigram: The Walking City, Living Pod and the Instant City”. Architecture. Victoria and Albert Museum. Available at: Accessed 15 December 2010. 3 “SEEK: MIT’s Machine Architecture Group goes Gerbil”. Available at: Accessed 10 October 2009. 4 Price, C. Cedric Price: Works II, Architectural Association, 1984 republished as Cedric Price: The Square Book, Wiley-Academy, London 2003. 5 Frazer, J.H., An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association, London, 1995. 6 Friedman, Y., “Toward a Scienti c Architecture”. The MIT Press (June 12, 1980). 7 Wolfram, S., “Cellular automata and complexity: collected papers”. Published (1994).

500 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Philippe Marin1 Philippe Liveneau2 Yann Blanchi2 Angelo Guiga3

1 School of Architecture of Lyon 2 School of Architecture of Grenoble 3 Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique France Digital Materiality: an Experiment with Smart Concrete The increasing use of information technology is transforming our design methods, fabrication processes and perception of the architectural space. The hybridisation of modelling tools, digital fabrication and rapid prototyping machines, the integration of communicating devices and the emergence of smart materials, the use and the expanding of an augmented space are all contributing elements that are leading to the emergence of a digital materiality. We will tackle the question of digital materiality design and we will seek to categorize some of these issues through a multidisciplinary experiment. The notion of digital materiality is de ned as the articulation of four contemporary phenomena; the fabrication conception continuum, the use of instrumented materials, the emergence of new perceptive entities and the widespread concept of augmented space.

The Fabrication-Conception Continuum The fabrication-conception continuum is broadly associated with the design process tooling, involving a continual trajectory from the conceptual research phases to the prototyping through the mock up materialisation and up to the nal product building. This informational continuum (Kolarevic, 2008) paves the way of the mass cus- tomisation, the shape is thought as a potentiality, a singularity which takes place inside a larger sequence (Deleuze, 1988). At the same time, these practices have opened the way to parametric, algorithmic and generative design. The digital fabricating machines have allowed the constructability of these complex geometries (Iwamoto, 2009). The generative fabrication (Cardoso, 2008) symbolizes these resolutions and materialisations concerns.

Digital imbrications Thanks to these digital fabrication technologies and advanced computing, a go and return system between bits and atoms are allowed; new representations have emerged with, for example the use of simulation, 3D printing, CNC cutting and robotic manufacturing. The status of the model has changed; these tools are blurring the boundaries between the make-up of an item and the thing itself (Gershenfeld, 2007). The works of the architects, engineers and constructors are rede ned. The characteristics of the fabrication, of the materials and of the construction are embedded in the design of the architect and convoked early during the design process. Technologies allow the realization of complex geometries; the designers are limited by the properties of the materials rather than by the diculty of describing the designs. The logics of digital processes have begun to re-organize the design methods. For Scott Marble (Marble, 2010) three main aspects should be considered. The rst is “designing design” which addresses how design processes being inuenced by digital workow. The process of architectural design is integrated in a complex workow in which geometric and parametric modelling is combined with simulation, analysis and optimization software could lead to the fabrication and manufacturing les generation. The second aspect is “designing assembly” or a material issue, and considers the way material properties and digital fabrication processes take shape in the design concepts. The nal aspect is, “designing industry” which is concerned with the timing

502 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and sequencing of construction with the help of building information modelling and information management. In this context new industry sectors could be incorporated in the building construction.

Tools and ideas Laiserin (Laiserin, 2008) separated the notions of form nding and form making. In form-making, the mental construction arises before the representation. Form-making is a process of inspiration and re nement. In form- nding, representation arises before the mental construction; the form emerges from analysis. Some media and representation aord form- nding more than form-making and vice versa. Ranulph Glanville during his lecture in ECAADE08 marked the important distinction between a model of architecture and a model for architecture. In his view, tools for assisting designers have to focus more on stimulation and subjective meaning than on representation, especially during the initial phases of the design process (Cannaerts, 2009). We considered the verb, the sketch guration, the mock-up representation and the digital model and simulation as the main tools of designing. Each of them bore their own cognitive characteristics, and each of them facilitated more or less such and such components of the perception and allowed such and such understanding of conception hypothesis. All media of representation have dierent aordances (Gan- shirt, 2007). The creation of a tool represents the virtualization of the action, and the assumption of a new tool induces a mental representation of this one in order to be used. Once this virtualization is done, the user has access to a large range of novelties and new perceptions, and therefore the tools could evolve once more (Lévy, 1998). This externalization of functions help of the tools nds an ultimate stage with the ex- ternalisation of our memories. Thus conceptual tools such as shape grammar or other generative processes participate in the representation of the idea, they construct relations and allow evaluations of solutions.

Instrumented Materials The second issue is linked with the use of instrumented materials (Bensaude-Vincent, 2004). It takes root in the materials science and it expands the generalization of the matter to questions and appreciates the speci city of elementary bricks customized for individual purposes. The term smart material refers to a new generation of products likely able to perform various functions until now reserved for the living. Usual- ly intelligence is brought from the exterior and acts as a support (Meagher, Van der Maas, Abegg, & Huang, 2009; Meagher, Van der Mass, Abegg, & Huang, 2009). Other experiments try to operate with the inner properties of the material and focus on the link between matter and information (Menges, 2009; Menges, 2010) (Dierichs & Menges, 2010). Thus and following Manzini (Manzini, 1989), we see a technologisation of materials, which allows designers to de ne the material properties, rather than simply working from existing qualities. Properties could be integrated at each scale – nano-, micro- and macro-scales - and they could modify structural, chemical and magnetic behaviour, even traditional material could become dynamic.

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France 503 Klooster (Klooster, Boeing, Davis, & Seeger, 2009) provides a state of the art of smart materials applications in the eld of architecture and design. The surface becomes the ideal place to negotiate technological, artistic, ecological and social interactions. These intelligent surfaces, thanks to their augmented properties, are an opportunity to enhance social and symbolic meaning.

New Persceptive entities The third issue is associated with the emergence of new perceptive entities. These are induced by the way we interact daily with the reality. Our time, space and speed perceptions were transformed by the use of communication technologies. In the eld of the architecture, the partition between object and subject is challenged. Nowadays, designers are focussing on immersive, sensitive and interactive relations between subject and its environment (Picon, 2010). Moreover the technologic environment in which we live takes part in the manner we perceive the world. For example, automo- biles have dramatically transformed our perception of the speed; we are all familiar with the high-speed displacement and their sensitive body experiences. In the same way, computers, information technologies, immersive environments and ubiquitous technologies are progressively enhancing our common sensations and reexes. New perceptual entities are emerging from the technological evolutions. Tools can be seen as an extension of the human mind involved in our mental activity such as thinking, imagining and interpreting. Architects work by manipulating these visual entities sometimes generated by algorithm within an autonomous process of the machine. In order to expand the limit of the human imagination, in order to help the exploration of the solutions space, a designer has to go beyond the software and has to get skills and knowledge in programming, writing code and algorithms, he or she has to be familiar with computer science, cognitive science and arti cial intelligence (Asut, 2008). In this context, the static architectural forms are replaced by dynamic ow, emergent patterns or computed geometries. Aect, feeling and emotional architecture are some of the main parameters the designers take in account (Ardenne, Polla, & Collectif, 2011). Thus, we note the increasing interest for the surface treatment and the emergence of what is called a new ornament (Moussavi & Kubo, 2006) (Buci-Glucksmann, 2008).

From decorum to ornament This ornament acceptance is dramatically dierent from the common meaning. The sculptural and symbolic dimensions of the Renaissance concept of decorum, which aimed to articulate the building’s cultural and social context, are replaced by a thought on the surface, where patterns are repeated, emergent and digitally generated. Quite dierent from the tectonic role of the structure in the words of Goddfried Semper, and on the contrast of Adolf Loos position in which he declared ornamentation a “crime”. The past decade has revealed a re-interpretation of the ornamentation. The works of Herzog and De Meuron architects or Foreign Oce Architects are symp- tomatic of these practices and the literature is ourishing on this subject. Kolarevic (Kolarevic & Klinger, 2008) made some distinctions about dierent kinds of ornaments in architecture. Ornamentation could be decorative, functional and mi-

504 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture metic. Decorative ornament relies on its application to an already existing surface and could emphasise the speci c qualities of an object. The ornament is considered as functional when it is integrated to the building, thus particular treatment of the structure could be part of this category; ornament is mimetic when the symbolic and expressive dimension characterizes the device. Moussavi (Moussavi & Kubo, 2006) as well, helps us to understand this renewal of interests for ornamentation. The growing number of large building types that are “blank”, department stores, shopping mall, cineplexes and museums, transforms the relationship between inside and outside; in addition, the necessity of exibility in the architectural programs, both compel the architects to work on the external shell and to leave the internal de nition to other designers. The envelope becomes the support of an architectural manifestation. The architects must give the building an expression that is independent from the inside yet participates to the urban structure. The environmental constraints and the energetic performances requirements of the building induce likewise a sharp de nition of the building skin. This focuses the interest of architects.

Aect and sensation Moreover the aect becomes one of the major issues of the architectural design. The sensation is often conveyed by the surface, and digital architecture plays a central role in the conception and construction of these spaces lled of aect. Following Bressani (Bressani, 2010), the aect is immersive and is produced through a constant interaction between subject and object. Subject and object inform themselves mutually, architecture become active and performative. There is no longer a distinction between object and subject but more a sensitive immersion; the space participates in a sensitive experience in which the body is involved. Matter is embedded into virtual realities and smart components, space is no longer stable, autonomous and homogeneous, but becomes interactive, tactile, interface between our internal body, external experiences and distant communication. As in the experiment of dynamic ornament proposed by Maegher (Meagher et al., 2009), data played an important aesthetic and cultural role in the design of architectural spaces, and could help occupants in the task of making sense of their environment. But the eect is also cultural; it depends on our education and cultural environment, our perception is inseparable of knowledge. Cit- ing Baxandall (Baxandall, 2000) it is imperative to “live in a culture, grow and learn how to survive in it, is to make a speci c perceptive training”. The multicultural and the cosmopolitan society involve new symbolic communication and consensual icons that could be found in the technological culture. Thus the ornament represents the invisible forces of the culture, in order to create a collective meaning. The mixed, the continuity, the folds, the curves, the loop represent some imagination of creation based on an interactive and informational time and space (Buci-Glucksmann, 2008). Thus digital fabrication allows new possibilities based on non-uniformity and non-monotony through the use of surfaces texturing and variable patterns. Through extension, comes the practice of augmented space and ubiquitous computing which is enhancing the mix of physical and digital realities as an interaction and sensation vectors. The de nition of the physical limits is modi ed and improved

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France 505 by its blending ability with informational space. The interactive architecture (Fox & Kemp, 2009), the attempts to represent the invisible informational ux through a spatial con guration, the dynamic devices which are responding to the climatic conditions, are some examples which illustrate the stakes of architecture. Architecture is becoming an interface between physical and digital spaces.

Case Study Our experiment is based on a collaboration between three institutions: The CEA (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique) is a French institution involved in research and development of advanced technology in the eld of energy, electronics, nanotech- nology and biotechnology and the schools of architecture of Lyon and Grenoble. Our objective is to evaluate a smart concrete. A one-to-one scale demonstrator is to be achieved. We embed electronics components, leds and sensors, inside a wall made with Ductal©. A luminous pattern was caste in concrete, the implementation is interactive and the lights are evolving in function of the action of the subject.

A multidisciplinary cooperation In a perspective of innovation, we organise our team in a multidisciplinary logic. The CEA experts provide electronic valuation; the architects group de ne the concrete material implementation, the algorithmic process of the design and the user interaction scenario. The one to one scale demonstrator will be built inside the school of architecture workshops with the help CNC machines (Fig. 1).

Objectives and expectations The prototype is to be achieved and will be used for three main evaluations. We need to evaluate the method of casting and the way of incorporating micro-electronics during concrete placing operations. We need to evaluate the electronic behaviour inside the concrete, and even if some preliminary tests had been done in order to de ne the maximal concrete thickness through which waves could operate, we will consider the performances over time. Starting from this demonstrator the user behaviour and understanding will be evaluated and recorded.

Design processes We implement a DLA algorithm (Diusion by Aggregation Limited) in order to generate the pattern. This one will provide ornamentation and tactility on the surface. We are expecting that this bio-inspirited geometry will help the natural understanding of the interaction modalities. The algorithm also generates leds and sensors positions. We note that the project imposes to work with a very high level of precision regarding dimensions and positions and digital manufacturing tools were required in order to guarantee accuracy (Fig.2).

506 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Concrete Panel with pattern, leds and sensors positions.

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France 507 Fig. 2 DLA Tree structure, Led position, Sensors position, global view.

Fig. 3 User Interactions.

508 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Technical description The concrete instrumented project aims to make a slab of concrete (50cm x 50xcm) interactive by integrating RGB leds (Red, Green and Blue: which allows to display any colours wanted) and capacitive sensors. A contact of the user with any sensor causes a single light sequence. The electronic proportion of the system is made up of eight printed circuit boards. Seven of them will be inside the slab well-positioned to match the design of the front face after being treated with an antioxidant lacquer. They contain all of the 6 capacitive sensors as well as the 32 leds monitored by the 7 drivers (one on each board). Light guides will be attached to the leds and they will work out the height of the boards in the mould. In order to easily access the intelligent part of the system, the eighth board will be placed on the back face of the slab. It is composed of the power supply of the circuit, the connectors for the communication with the other seven cards and the components to process and send information which are a microcontroller and a capacitive detector linked to the six sensors. The microcontroller is fully programmable and it stands as the leader of the whole system. Indeed, its ability to use the standard I2C (Inter Integrated Circuit) protocol enables to communicate and to drive simultaneously with plenty of devices (as temperature sensor, antenna, magnetometers ...) thanks to only two wires. In this speci c case, the microcontroller discusses with the seven led drivers which are in charge of the luminous aspect and also with the capacitive detector. It would have been possible to control up to 315 RGB leds independently without adding any other kind on component.

User Interaction Scenario The User Interaction Scenario is de ned and could be scripted. A luminous pattern emerges in function of the human position. Two interaction modes are de ned. The Action 1 starts when the panel is o and progressively each led switches on. The led illumination order is function of the led distance with the interaction point. The Action 2 starts from the previous illumination and a coloured wave moves from the original interaction point to the furthest led (Fig. 3).

Conclusion The notion of digital materiality arises. It is the result of digital modelling constructed with the help of machines. This new materiality is interlinked with digital components and smart materials. And interactions with an invisible informational layer are available. Finally, we put the accent on sensory stimulation and aect. We would like to build relationship and dynamics between human and interfaces. The question that arises is linked with the User Experience. We would like to enable the appropriation and desirability with the help of the kinetic experience. This is what we called the Smart Sensitivity. Further, the internet of things is allowing new perspective and innovative elds. if we want to explore and build relations between interconnected objects without human interferences, we will speak about autonomous sensitive architecture.

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France 509 Acknowledgements Part of this article is based on a paper presented during Algode 2011 conference.

In appreciation of Guilhem Sauvagnac, from the CEA Team.

References

Ardenne, P., Polla, B., & Collectif. (2011). Architecture émotionnelle : Matière à penser (1DVD). Editions Le Bord de l’eau. Asut, S. (2008). Rethinking the Creative Architectural Design in the Digital Culture. Proceedings from First International Conference on Critical Digital, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge (USA). Baxandall, M. (2000). Formes de l’intention. Jacqueline Chambon. Bensaude-Vincent, B. (2004). Se libérer de la matière ? Editions Quae. Bressani, M. (2010). Towards a Digital Theory of Aect. Proceedings from ACADIA 10, New York. Buci-Glucksmann, C. (2008). Philosophie de l’ornement : D’Orient en Occident. Editions Galilée. Cannaerts, C. (2009). Models of / Models for Architecture: Physical and Digital Modelling in Early Design Stages. Proceedings from ECAADe, Istanbul (Turkey). Cardoso, D. (2008). Certain assumptions in Digital Design Culture: Design and the Automated Utopia. Proceedings from First International Conference on Critical Digital: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge (USA). Deleuze, G. (1988). Le pli. Editions de Minuit. Dierichs, K., & Menges, A. (2010). Material Computation in Architectural Aggregate Systems. Proceed- ings from ACADIA 10: LIFE in:formation, On Responsive Information and Variations in Architecture, New York. Fox, M., & Kemp, M. (2009). Interactive Architecture. Princeton Architectural Press. Ganshirt, C. (2007). Tools for Ideas: Introduction to Architectural Design. Birkhauser Verlag AG. Gershenfeld, N. (2007). Fab: The Coming Revolution on Your Desktop-from Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication. Basic Books. Iwamoto, L. (2009). Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques (Architecture Briefs). Princeton Architectural Press. Klooster, T., Boeing, N., Davis, S., & Seeger, A. (2009). Smart surfaces: and their application in architecture and design. Birkhäuser. Kolarevic, B. (2008). Post-Digital Architecture: Towards Integrative Design. Proceedings from First International Conference on Critical Digital: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cam- bridge (USA). Kolarevic, B., & Klinger, K. (2008). Manufacturing Material Eects: Rethinking Design and Making in Architecture. Routledge. Laiserin, J. (2008). Digital Environments for Early Design: Form-Making versus Form-Finding. Proceed- ings from First International Conference on Critical Digital: Harvard University Graduate School of Design, Cambridge (USA). Lévy, P. (1998). Qu’est ce que le virtuel ? La Découverte. Manzini, E. (1989). La Matière de l’invention. Centre Georges Pompidou.

510 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Marble, S. (2010). Designing Design, Designing Assembly, Designing Industry. Proceedings from ACADIA 10, New-York. Meagher, M., Van der Maas, D., Abegg, C., & Huang, J. (2009). Dynamic ornament: The design of responsive surfaces in architecture. Proceedings from ACSA Southeast Regional Meeting. Meagher, M., Van der Mass, D., Abegg, C., & Huang, J. (2009). Dynamic ornament : Climatically responsive surfaces in architectural design. Proceedings from CAADFutures 2009, Montreal. Menges, A. (2009). Performative Wood: Integral Computational Design for Timber Constructions. Proceedings from ACADIA 09: reForm - Building a Better Tomorrow, Chicago (Illinois). Menges, A. (2010). Material Information: Integrating Material Characteristics and Behavior in Compu- tational Design for Performative Wood Construction. Proceedings from ACADIA 10: LIFE in:formation, On Responsive Information and Variations in Architecture. Moussavi, F., & Kubo, M. (2006). The Function of Ornament. Actar. Picon, A. (2010). Culture numérique et architecture - Une Introduction. Birkhauser Fr.

Philippe Marin, Philippe Liveneau, Yann Blanchi, Angelo Guiga France 511

Ioanna Symeonidou Urs Hirschberg

Institute of Architecture and Media TU Graz Austria Developing a ‘Next Generation’ Collaborative Design Platform Architectural design has always been a collaborative task among architects, engineers and clients. Traditionally, however, it has involved the physical presence of the parties involved in the design process. With current technology digital les are transferred across the web with great speed and ease, thus most contemporary architectural practices employ databases, digital design and the Internet to proceed with their collaborative tasks. The globalization of the economy and the rapid technological developments are changing the paradigm of architectural design development. In recent years complex architectural projects have been developed collaboratively by multiple and often geographically dispersed designers. Currently there are many projects by European or American architecture rms built in Asia, but more and more, the exchanges take place in the other direction as well. The Internet is already an indispensi- ble component of any such collaboration. Yet the situation is still far from ideal, especially with regard to the design process itself, which still happens largely oine. The possibilities of current IT are not fully exploited. The most common practice is that of sending nished designs for revision and modi cation, creating loops of design iterations which take place without any real interaction between the designers – a time- consuming and inecient process. We propose to move beyond these limitations by implementing our concept of a next generation collaborative design platform. The universal collaborative design platform we propose would enable architects as well as students to eciently share their ideas, design, store and retrieve design data, thus optimizing the entire process. Our concepts build upon a substantial body of research on collaborative design by both academia and commercial software de- velopers. The two core ideas which we believe must be the backbone of a next generation platform are Open Source and Simplicity.

Open Source: Apart from optimizing time and design costs, a collaborative platform should most of all improve design quality and give rise to better design solutions as an emergent result of interaction between designers. Internet culture has highlighted the success of collaborations with major examples such as wikis and Linux development. Open source tools have gained great popularity in other sectors due to their ef- ciency, self-organizational character, cost reduction and constant development; they have been rarely used in the design world up to now, but the self-correcting mechanisms at work present a great potential for design projects. The open source, wiki-like collaborative database is therefore a key element of our concept.

Simplicity: Another key requirement is ease of use. In contrast to existing platforms we aim to develop a user interface to support real-time discourse that is as intuitive and clutter-free as possible. To make the interactions both smooth and easy to analyse we plan to incorporate a process recorder, which documents the real-time interactions and tracks the design process. Navigation within the platform will incorporate so-called outworld views, which give participants an understanding of the overall collaborative process. The platform should be seamless with regards to continuing existing work practices and with smooth transitions between individual and shared workspaces.

The proposed collaborative design platform is not meant to primarily speed up design processes (although that may be a side-eect), but instead is geared towards

514 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture deepening the collaborative reection about designs and generating novel ideas among distributed designers. As a way of establishing this open way of collaborating in architecture we are aiming to create an Internet platform for architecture schools at a European/global level that could support joint design studios in both synchronous and asynchronous modes. Ultimately this project tries to utilise the potential of new technologies to encourage a culture of collaboration in design. Given the many challenges society is facing with respect to architecture and urbanism (resource- and energy-eciency, mobility, pollution, social integration, etc.), utilizing collective knowledge and creativity in order to bring the best ideas forward is very much in the spirit of the time.

Brief History of Design Collaborations The initial steps of the platform development include extensive research on precedents in design collaborations and the current state of the art in both the professional world and in academia. This oers an overview of the established knowledge and research made up to date, the successful aspects as well as the limitations. Evidently the academic and professional world have dierent aims and target groups, nevertheless the analysis and comparison of these two approaches can highlight good practice and drive our research into a novel paradigm based on the knowledge gained from previous experience, building up on these, towards a next generation collaborative design platform. Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) emerged in mid 1980s as an interdisciplinary research eld (Ishi, Kobayashi, Arita 1994). For several years collaborative design platforms have been extensively used in the industry, for the design of complex products, such as aircrafts. In the last decade commercial software develop- ers have launched collaborative versions of CAD software and plugins, that have also been used for architecture. Current commercial applications include Autodesk Vault, Articiel Plugin (Maya & Blender), ENOVIA (Catia), however none of them have gained popularity among architects for several reasons, mainly due to complexity and discontinuities in workow. “These platforms are mainly based on precedents such as group- ware, concurrent engineering and human-computer interaction which eventually led to human-human interaction via networked computers” (Shen, Hao and Li, 2008). Most CAD systems support a single user while collaborative design processes usually involve the design of parts that are assembled in an integrated whole. This is common practice in mechanical engineering, though traditional design systems employ a sequential mode of form generation, breaking the process into sub-tasks. A recent example of such a platform is Co-cad, based on JADE, where designers can interact through video during the design process (Quanliu, Xingran and Huxiuyin, 2008). The authors of Co-cad claim that video chat can be the most direct way to con- rm the identity of the other participants, which guarantees the safety of the collaboration. Video, therefore, had been a central part of the aforementioned platform. One of the most well-known environments of collaborative design, Autodesk Vault, oers the possibility for collaborative design, by permitting users to work simultaneously on dierent parts of a structure without the risk of overwriting. One designer can see who else is simultaneously working on the same project and can observe the changes on the design object while they happen.

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 515 This platform makes ecient use of data management, though it assumes that concurrent designers work on dierent parts of a structure, similar to the logic of external references (Xrefs) where each designer modi es parts that update a central le that sources Xrefs. Catia, which has been extensively used in automobile industry, has a similar logic. It employs a parametric interface where components can be edited separately by specialized engineers, these are automatically integrated in a whole which is governed by parametric relationships among components. ENOVIA - VPM Navigator (Enterprise inNOvation VIA Virtual Product Manager Navigator) for Catia further aids collaborative design by structuring and storing product data, including tracking of product history and revision management. ENOVIA is an object oriented PLM (Product LifeCycle Management) application; assembly design in CATIA allows parts and small assemblies of parts to be inserted to make larger, more complete products. Assemblies and sub assemblies form a tree structure within ENOVIA, resulting in a very complex document due to its ability to have multiple levels of sub- assemblies and parts. However, most commercial collaborative design platforms are oriented to engineering rather than architecture, they are not simple to use as they require certain programming skills and thus software like Catia is not commonly used by architects. Furthermore, such platforms have been proven very ecient for detailing and CAD- CAM workows, but are lacking features that would aid architects for the rst conceptual sketches in 3D. In more artistically oriented projects, there have also been eorts for collaborative design, one example is the Articiel platform (originally created as a plugin for Maya, but rewritten for Blender) which provides a distributed collaborative work platform over the Internet for 3D wiremesh graphics projects (Lesage et al, 2007).

Fig. 1 Co-design CAD systems and available functions.

Academic Experiments of Design Collaborations In academia, there have been numerous examples of collaborative design platforms which were mainly developed and used within a design studio context, enabling creative collaboration via networks in architectural education. The earliest examples

516 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture of Internet based collaboration in architecture were initiated at MIT and established the term Virtual Design Studio for it (Wojtowicz, 1995). Building on these experiences there have been experiments such as the Virtual Design Studio “Multiplying time” from 1997, where students from three dierent time zones collaborated through the web on one common design task, experimenting with synchronous and asynchronous modes of collaboration (Kolarevic et al., 2000). Similar experiments subsequently took place between many schools (see for example the netzentwurf project carried out at RWTH Aachen: www.netzentwurf.de). Phase(x), a teaching experiment carried out at ETH Zürich, was a pioneering collaborative project in that all students’ work was managed by a central database enabling students to use other students’ designs, thus introducing the concept of collective authorship (Hirschberg and Wenz, 2000). The rst Phase(x) project took place in 1996, exploring the early possibilities of the world wide web and the computer’s double role as both design tool and communication medium. The exchange and development of design projects in Phase(x) was structured as an open-source work ow, as all students had access to images, models and code. The fact that students could pick a model from a pool of design ideas, initiated a type of evolutionary system, as only the “ ttest” works survived to be further developed by others - an embedded self-rating mechanism. Although the outcomes of Phase(x) are collaborative projects, the platform records individual contributions, thus leading to a notion of collective authorship with distributed credits. The whole body of work can be viewed in the so called out.world views, oering a new understanding of collaborative design processes as one can zoom in and out shifting from a general overview to a speci c design problem. Other projects at the same institution include Fake.space, an example of collaborative story-telling where students created a contextual branching structure of architectural content around the topic of space. Fake.space also featured out.world views that could be zoomed in and out using lters resembling a city map. Another related project was Event.spaces, where a networked structure was aiming to collaboratively create an interactive adventure game without a creative director (Hirschberg, 2006). In all of the above examples the out.world views revealed the dynamics and collaboration patterns of the process. They assure the transparency of the process and raised the participants’ awareness of the collaborative dynamics they collectively created. (Fig. 2, 3). Similar experiments have also been carried out in more artistic contexts. “Embrace the Swarm”, a project initiated by DOM laboratory (Shamiyeh, 2006) was inspired in the work of Kevin Kelly, who argues in his book “Out of Control” (Kelly, 1994) that the future lies in networks and that the power of decentralization has been disregarded until now. Building up on previous collective intelligence experiments, “Embrace the Swarm” con rmed once again that in certain contexts the many are smarter than the few. Similar in concept to phase(x), the project was innovative in the way its participants were not limited to the use of some particular software packages but could collaborate using their preferred means of expression ranging from hand-drawing to physical models. This experiment failed in producing a design result but succeeded in highlighting some of the limitations of a bottom-up system of design collaboration. The lesson learnt in this case was that some minimal top-down governance is often useful to avoid a system that is paralyzed by choices.

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 517 Fig. 2 Virtual Design Studio (montage): International Collaboration.

Fig. 3 Phase(x) 3D outworld view (montage): design evolution and collective authorship.

518 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Types of Design Collaboration and Media Design collaboration platforms are organized either as horizontal or hierarchical (Li, Fuh and Wong, 2005). A horizontal collaboration involves designers of the same discipline, for example architects, and can be achieved in both synchronous and asynchronous mode, while hierarchical collaboration, both upstream and downstream, establishes a continuum between design and fabrication, the so-called le to factory continuum. Within the broader context of horizontal collaboration we can distinguish two types of systems: Visualization-based systems and Co-design systems. Visualization systems being much lighter than co-design support review, annotation and inspec- tion of design models and are independent of design platforms, while co-design systems are designed to support co-modeling and modi cation to support real time design collaboration. These can be further classi ed in 3 types of system architecture according to the IT infrastructure (Li, Fuh and Wong, 2005):

Fig. 4 Types of design collaboration.

All three of the above architectures are currently in use, though each of them gives priority to dierent criteria such as communication, adaptability or scalability. Design coordination in co-design platforms can either employ a control token to avoid conicts or an agent-based system (Li, Fuh and Wong, 2005). Hierarchical collaboration on the other hand uses an asynchronous mode of design. It is dierentiated from sequential engineering as design information is streamed in two directions and its main characteristic is that it oers dierent types of model representation ranging from geometric representation to simpli ed geometry or boundary representation. Diverse strategies for mesh simpli cation and re nement are currently in use further aiming 3D streaming across the network. According to Li et al future trends in design collaboration are moving towards the integration of horizontal and hierarchical systems, as they are complementary in function (Li, Fuh and Wong, 2005).

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 519 Why now? Collaborative Design in the Current Social and Technological Context In our days we are experiencing a shift from an object-oriented to a process-oriented point of view in architecture. In that realm a collaborative design platform can further enhance possibilities and explore new options in the design process. The technological advancements of the last decade have set the context for a new approach of the same initial idea. With increased internet speed we are now able to collaborate in real time and transfer huge amounts of information almost instantly. Video conferences and shared desktop applications have become common and accessible to non-specialized users. Furthermore, an average P.C. user is now more trained and immersed in internet culture, able to perform basic tasks online, such as the transfer of diverse media and real-time communication, browsing, storing and retrieving information. We therefore consider that the design community is prepared to step into international collaborations and joint research projects through networks. We are also witnessing a shift in education. Nowadays more than ever, student projects, including design thesis are being de ned and developed as collaborative projects. This started in major architecture schools and is being propagated in many design schools now. There is a correlation here with the developments and tendencies in the architectural profession; the idea of the “lonely genius” has been abandoned already since the 80s and young oces emerge as design collaboratives. Furthermore, data exchange among architects and designers becomes more and more standarized, with format compatibility problems minimized. Current software development facilitates compatibility, with easy and precise methods of exporting- importing design les in an editable format. The development of a collaborative design platform would also trigger issues of data classi cation and management. There is a huge amount of un-classi ed design information online, which designers already use, in diverse formats ranging from code, models, images, or any other form of inspiration. Each of these could be said to be dierent de nitions of an architectural object, negotiating with the level of abstraction-precision of an idea and subsequently the level of editability. One of the goals of the Next Generation Collaborative Platform is to be simple and allow the user to share and retrieve design information eciently, by introducing mechanisms of classi cation and data management. On the other hand, one could argue that excessive classi cation of design information in a collaborative database would lter ndings too much, limiting the creative unpredictability that very often leads to the emergence of original works. An evaluation of the situation would prioritize criteria so as to incorporate several types of design information, but also the capacity to lter it shifting from speci c to non-speci c data. The success of such an attempt in a professional context would largely depend on whether the whole idea of design collaboration receives enough public attention and support by the architectural community (Shamiyeh, 2006, p.167). Considering the vast use and power of social networks (facebook, twitter, etc.) and professional networking tools (LinkedIn, Xing, Academia, etc.) we realize that an online working group can be very easily formed using existing resources, aiming at a specialized professional network or at a broader public (Fig. 5).

520 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Collaborative design in the current context.

The TU Graz Teaching Experience TU Graz pioneers collaborative design platforms and databases in its teaching. The TU Graz institute of architecture and media applies such platforms not only in its computer-based classes, but also for design studios. This collaborative environment fosters the evolution of new kinds of forms through exchange of designs and crossbreeding of CAAD data as well as design ideas (Gruber, Hirschberg and Dank, 2003) The initial phases of the studio course are individual design tasks, whereas during the course timeline, students are prompted to incorporate in their design models of others, in a creative process of blending and merging geometric and compositional elements. The environments of the courses at TU Graz apply the principles of creative collaborations as de ned by Schmitt (2001). The nal design objects submitted by students are compound objects that evolved through several generations of design modi cations and are product of the work of several dierent authors. Thus students become familiar with concepts such as collective authorship with individual attribu- tion (Fig. 6, 7).

Bene ts of Creative Collaborations in Education Among the greatest bene ts of such an educational approach is the fact that students acquire experience in design collaborations. As the profession of architecture is a collaborative task, this has to be experienced as such in education. Furthermore, digital platforms are easy to use and can hold a great amount of data that can be useful for both marking as well as extracting statistics on student performance and collaborative design trends. The joint use of collaborative platforms between dierent schools of architecture can aid the establishment of a research network. Students can bene t from the research undertaken in other schools, share results and conduct joint experiments.

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 521 Fig. 6 The online platform currently used at the Institute of Architecture and Media at TU Graz.

522 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 7 Student work by Max Weil. The project utilizes models created by other students in previous phases integrated in a new design.

Furthermore, by expanding the limits of current practice towards a platform that supports synchronous design collaboration, students would hugely bene t from real time exploration of design processes, observing and learning from diverse approaches to problem solving. These bene ts refer to the design process, however the exchange and crossbreeding of design data, which can take place in diverse modes has its repercussion on the design product as well, expanding design creativity through evolutionary processes.

Limitations of most Current Collaborative Platforms The research on current collaborative design practice reveals the limitations of the platforms in use. The study of current limitations and understanding of the user point of view will aid the development of a next generation design platform that meets the criteria proposed. A common characteristic of such platforms is that their use requires specialized knowledge. The lack of simplicity is a general drawback for their adoption by both students and architects. Another major disadvantage is that these are in their majority software dependent platforms and no Open source, with all the consequences regarding both economical issues as well as the necessity for training in a new software package. Another important observation is that in most cases no real-time collaboration takes place, thus synchronous design collaborations are not supported. One of the aims of our next generation collaborative platform is to explore this interactive feature in the collaborative process incorporating a Real-Time 3D platform.

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 523 Designing a next Generation Collaborative Platform A collaborative design platform will be characterized as successful if it is transparent and user-friendly so that it can be adopted by diverse target groups of users. The dif- fusion of such platform among architectural practices will further motivate architects to use it, just as it happened with current commercial CAD-packages. It is, therefore, very important to employ an attractive and simple user interface. As we have argued elsewhere, whether these ideas have a chance to succeed will largely depend on how the necessary information infrastructures will be conceived and designed (Hirschberg, 2003, 2008). We are aiming for a completely intuitive out-world view to navigate the collaborative process in dierent manners. The visual interface should be as comprehensive as a metro map, where the user can zoom in and out easily shifting from in.world view to out.world view (Engeli, 2001, p. 38). We are aiming at creating a Common Real-Time 3D platform for synchronous and asynchronous, which will also incorporate a process recorder when major design decisions take place. The platform for collaborative design will employ a wiki-style collaboration database, thus users can have dierent level of access. The database will store information of diverse formats (CAD les, code, parametric de nitions, images) that anyone can edit. This open and rapid process of using and editing design information gives rise to an evolutionary system where natural selection takes place and the most interesting and ecient design solutions keep being edited and modi ed, though always maintaining previous versions. Additionally, the platform will oer support for parametric components, this will give the possibility to work independently on components or assemblies and parametric de nitions, thus designers can work simultaneously on different scales of organization and combine or modify components that are generated previously by other designers. The idea is establish a multidisciplinary research group of architects and programmers, that will work fort he initial launching oft he collaborative platform in Beta version to be tested by users. All material will be open-source combining the knowledge from TU Graz previous experience with novel ideas on digital design communities.

Navigation in the Collaborative Platform: The Cosmos and the Agora The Next Generation Collaborative Design Platform will display a versatile yet simple interface that will oer diverse ways of navigating through the platform with the use of dierent lters and criteria. The aim is that the visual interface and representation of information is aesthetically pleasing, novel, informative and ecient (Steele and Ili- insky, 2010). The aim is that users have simultaneously a global and local perception of the cooperative context. There will be two levels for navigation through this environment corresponding to the micro and macro-scale of the platform. The “Agora” is a central component of the platform, a place to interact, design and communicate, where users can zoom in and collaborate through a realtime 3D platform, while the “Cosmos” oers a general overview, what was in earlier experiments named outworld view, a place to observe the design process, collect ideas and share with the community. Users can seamlessly zoom in and out, moving from the Cosmos to the Agora, to have a complete experience of the collaborative process.

524 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The gathering and analysis of data during collaborative design processes, will further highlight patterns of interaction. Thus we can study the rate of interaction, the number of designers involved, the time spent on each design stage and when do turning points occur.

Fig. 8 Our vision for a Next Generation Collaborative Design Platform.

Further Research and Experiments - Expanding the Frontiers At the current stage the TU Graz team is working on a research proposal. This will involve a multidisciplinary team of architects and programmers and will be a project of international collaboration. Initially it will involve representatives in 5-8 architecture schools. The platform will oer support for joint design studios and will aid the establishment of international research networks. In most previous experiments and also in the initial launching of the platform participants will mainly be students of similar age groups. Further building up on current knowledge and experience, it would be very challenging to hold a similar experiment with random users, in an online environment. Certainly more complex issues would arise due to several reasons, such an experiment would involve people with very diverse educational background, nation- ality and also age group. Thus all types of communication issues can arise and nally the process will nd a state of equilibrium, just as an evolutionary mechanism where successful designs will be further developed into architectural artifacts. A Beta version will highlight the bene ts and limitations of the methods adopted and aid in the development of a stable and global collaborative design platform, as this is aimed to be designed for a broader and more international public.

References

Engeli, M., 2001. Bits and Spaces: CAAD for Physical, Virtual and Hybrid Architecture at ETH Zurich, Basel: Birkhauser.

Ioanna Symeonidou, Urs Hirschberg Austria 525 Gruber, A., Hirschberg, U. and Dank, R., 2003. Calculated bananas: De ning a new introductory course in visual design for rst year architecture students, In 21st eCAADe Conference proceedings, Dokonal, W. (ed) and Hirschberg, U.(ed), Graz: Graz University of Technology. Hirschberg, U., 2008. Memetic engineering and transparency. Potential and design of environments for large scale creative collaboration via networks in architectural Diss., Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule ETH Zürich, Nr. 17957, 2008. Hirschberg, U., 2006. Creative Collaborations: do new forms of networking open up a new future for architecture in Michael Shamiyeh and DOM Research Laboratory (eds.): Towards an Interac- tive and Integrative Design Process, DOM Publications, Linz 2006, pp 154-168 ISBN 3-901815-37-6. Hirschberg, U. 2003, Transparency in Information Architecture: Enabling Large Scale Creative Col- laboration in Architectural Education over the Internet IJAC - International journal of architectural computing, issue 01, volume 01; Multi-Science Publishing, Essex, UK, June 2003; ISSN 1478-0771, pp 12-22. Hirschberg, U., Wenz, 2000. Phase(x) - Memetic Engineering for Architecture, Automation in Con- struction 9 (2000), Elsevier Science BV. pp. 387-392. Ishi, H., Kohayashi, M. and Arita, K. 1994. Iterative Design of Seamless Collaboration Media, In Communications of the ACM, vol. 37. Kelly, K., 1994. Out of Control. The new Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World. Cambridge, Massachussetts: Perseus Books. Kolarevic, B., G. Schmitt, U. Hirschberg, D. Kurmann, B. Johnson, 2000, An Experiment in Design Collaboration, Automation in Construction 9 (2000), Elsevier Science BV. pp. 73-81. Lesage, M., Cherkaoui, O.,Abouzaid, F., Poirier, M., Raiche, G. and Riopel, M., (in press)., 2007. A Blender Plugin for Collaborative Work on the Articiel Platform.2007 International Conference on Software Engineering Research and Practice (SERP’07). Li, W.D., Lu, W.F., Fuh, J.Y.H., and Wong, Y.S., 2005. Collaborative computer-aided design-research and development status. In Computer-Aided Design, vol. 37, Elsevier, pp. 931–940. Quan, L., Xingran, C. and Xiuyin, H., 2008. An Agent-Based Multimedia Intelligent Platform for Collaborative Design, In I. J. Communications, Network and System Sciences, vol. 3, pp. 207-283. Schmitt, G., 2001. Collaborative Design, in Bits and Spaces: CAAD for Physical, Virtual and Hybrid Architecture at ETH Zurich, Basel: Birkhauser. Shamiyeh, M., 2006. Towards an interactive and integrative design process, Linz: DOM Publications. Shen, W., Hao, Q. and Li, W., 2008.Computer supported collaborative design: Retrospective and perspective In Computers in Industry, vol. 59. Steele, J. (Editor), Iliinsky, N.(Editor), 2010. Beautiful Visualization: Looking at Data through the Eyes of Experts (Theory in Practice), O’Reilly Media. Wojtowicz, J., 1995. Virtual Design Studio, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.

526 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Ole Vanggaard Anders Munck Ola Wedebrunn

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts School of Architecture Denmark The Origin of Change This article claims origin of change as concept, tools and tectonics of architecture and architectural structures. It presents human as a condition of technology, the sensibility to recognize origin and pursue the change that makes the continuity of architecture. The Origin of Change is based on a non-linear understanding of evolution of architecture and technology where changes appear in fractures and steps. It uses the principle from the theories of biological evolution, originated from Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, by means of natural selection, 1859, and Richard Dawkins extension of evolution into cultural phenomena’s by introducing the meme as a cultural gene in The Sel sh Gene, 1976.

Fig. 1a Fig. 1b Charles Darwin. Richard Dawkins.

Three Conditions for Evolution In the rst of The Ten Books of Architecture the Roman architect Vitruvius writes about the origin of the dwelling house:

And since they were of an imitative and teachable nature, they would daily point out to each other the results of their building, boasting of the novelties in it; and thus, with their natural gift sharpened by emulation, their standard improves daily.1

With this reasoning Vitruvius could be said to emphasize on the three points: ideas, reproduction, and competition, similar to Darwin’s assumptions for the natural selection. With this it could be said, that Vitruvius formed the basis for a general theory of evolution about 1800 years before the theory of evolution of Darwin! Whereas evolution based on the gene has biological evidence and physical existence, the meme is independent of biology. Thus the meme in itself isn’t material, but rather a matter of concept and virtual construction as the origin and the authentic character that makes ideas, buildings, and architecture. As idea, reproduction, and competition the origin of tectonic meme is recognized in time and space.

Pantheon Rome The Pantheon in Rome was built during the reign of emperor Trajan. It had two master architects/engineers Apollodorus of Damascus and Hadrian, the later emperor 100 – 112 AD. Four strong memes are the basics of the dome:

528 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 2a Fig. 2b Pantheon. Plato’s Cave.

- The meme of concrete, developed from burnt chalk to hydraulic cement with poz- zolana ashes of Vesuvius. - The structural shape of the dome as developed from the Stone Age. - The geometrical precision of the sphere resting on the wall of a room with circular plan, could be understood as an ideal. This could be paralleled to the experience of the slaves fenced in The allegory of Plato’s Cave seeing the outside world as shadow on the wall. Plato’s cave concludes the eort of human to seek the reality rather than the shadows. This strong meme is deeply involved in all treaties of architecture. - The orthogonality in the geometrical shape of the coered dome, used in the layout of roman military camps and urban areas of provinces.

Pantheon represents innumerable memes, it is a memeplex where each meme contributes to the successful memeplex of the building. The memeplex represents the concept as well as the character of the building. It is recognized in the single meme as well as it is the sum of memes, the memeplex.

The building itself is neither a meme nor a meme- Fig. 3 plex, it communicates and reproduces the memeplex. In a way, it is what the biologist would call a Roman Colony. vehicle for the gene, the memeplex is a vehicle for the meme. Memes and memeplexes are concepts perceived by the human brain. Maybe we will be able to nd a way to measure the special creative activity it takes to identify memes and memeplexes, but until now it is only possible to treat it as an activity in the brain. As it identi es connections of neural activities it indicates a bridge over the gap between concept and matter.2

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark 529 Humans reproduce the identity of memes – in our case often in buildings. Thus humans inherit buildings, as well as drawings, sketches and even theories and tales through memes, like biologic individuals passes the gene through mutation, selection and reproduction of the evolution.

It could be questioned, whether memes have a singular existence, or if existence of memes requires memeplexes, But it is useful to distinguish between a strong memeplex with many strong memes, and a well de ned meme(plex) as the shadow of reality from the meme of Plato. In reality, memeplexes are fractal and refer to a multiple and diverse scale.

What does it take for a strong memeplex to survive?

Traian’s Market Traian’s market AD 106-112, is a work by Apollodorus of Damascus. The vaulted aisle is lifted from the adjacent walls, thus giving light to the space below. The principle of arches and vault, with horisontal thrust is a meme that illustrate what the Romans called, the gravity in its second position.3 The drawing of g. 3 is a reconstruction of the truss lines in a section of the vault as traced by professor Jørgen Nielsen about 1956.4 This meme is in principle the same as the successfully bracing system in the gothic cathedral, but the meme of Traian’s market did not become a strong memeplex. Seen from a tectonic view, it is a strong memeplex for buildings in stones. But it was presumably to complex to be accepted and strengthened by other memes, to become a successful memeplex in Roman time.

Memeplexes can die as in this example, but opposite to the gene, it can be reused, whereas the extinct gene has a very little chance to be re-established.

There is no evidence whatsoever, that the development of Apollodorus memeplex from the market has been the basis for the gothic development of a similar structural system. Some memeplexes are reborned, presumably because of their basic and fractal character. The gothic masterbuilders developed the same fundamental memeplexes, thousand years later, but it seems likely that their success where due to the strong

Fig. 4a Fig. 4b Traian Market Jørgen N. Traian Market.

530 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture church. Even though the memeplex of Traian’s Market is of certain strength, it has never been an active memeplex as the Gothic cathedrals. Nevertheless the memeplex of Traian’s Market remains active when it comes to brides the gap between art, technology and architecture.

The Gothic Cathedral The external horizontal supports at high level are important memes for the memeplex of the cathedral builders of the middle age. The collapse of the Roman Empire opened for the collaboration and the sharing of power between the state and the church. Thus it was possible to build churches upon the idea of the roman basilica, as three aisled spaces with the central aisle de ned by rows of columns and arches. In the beginning the basilicas were covered by simple timber truss roofs, but later it developed with vaults as the early roman buildings. Demands for larger span led to cross vaults in the roman tradition. An extensive structuring began, but it was only with the scholastic structure, that the real meme of the gothic vault was born. The supports follows the meme of the structural hierarchy of the church: the trinity father, son and the holy spirit, the archangels, and the saints ... it involves the servants of the church: the pope, the bishops, the priests, and the congregation. There are good reasons, to bring the structural meme of the gothic architecture together with the meme of the church organisation with the bishops and the priests represented throughout the branched structure.5 The development of this memeplex brought the necessity of the structure of ying buttresses, as consequence of the strong memes of the church, and independent of Apollodorus meme. Strong memeplexes need to include other strong memes of the time, here with the origin from the church.

Fig. 5 Santa Maria del Mar Barcelona.

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark 531 Is Great Architecture synonymous to Succesfull Memeplexes? The building is not the memeplex. It will always represent a memeplex, formed by its originators such as architects, clients and builders. It can communicate its memeplex, and thereby have great inuence upon the changes in architecture, but its memeplex is its concept or its ideas, not the building. Successful memeplexes are memeplexes that generates many new memplexes within its framework. We have seen that the gothic cathedral concept as such is a memeplex, another could be modernism, the question arise: is great architecture synonym to a successful memeplex, or the opposite, are buildings based upon successful memeplexes always great architecture? The last question could be answered by an example. The concrete system buildings in Soviet in the cold war period were eective and successful memeplexes at that time and place, although at present very few people would call it successful architecture. The rst question could be answered by comparing two buildings, generally accepted as great architecture, Jørn Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, and Renzo Piano and Richard Roger’s Centre Pompidou in Paris. Both projects are a result of a spectacular international competition, with important professional architects in the jury: Eero Saarinen in the case of the Sydney competition and Jean Prouvé in the case of the Paris competition.

Sydney Opera House The competition entry by Jørn Utzon consisted of free form as shells or sails presented by artistic coal drawings and ingenious plan solutions. The description of the work of the jury’s tells the story, that Eero Saarinen, member of the jury, pulled Utzon’s entry out of a group of projects rst rejected by the rest of the jury, to eventually become the winning project. At this time Saarinen worked with the meme of plastic design. Rumor says, that his interest for that particular meme came from his work with the TWA Flight Center in New York inuenced his preference for the choice of Utzon’s opera house. True or not, with the nal opera building the meme of the free form was

Fig. 6 Sydney Opera.

532 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture skipped, instead a fabulous new scheme was developed by architect Jørn Utzon and engineer Sir Ove Arup. The new scheme was based upon a strict Euclidean meme of spherical parts, and a tectonic meme, repeating post stressed concrete units. Thereby the building came to represent a memeplex well established at the time, but in a fantastic new shape. It is a masterpiece in world architecture, but not a successful architectural memeplex of free form and not an origin of change.

Centre Pompidou Sir Edmund Happold, who at that time was partner of Ove Arup claimed that the presence of Jean Prouvé in the jury of the Paris competition was the reason why Piano and Rogers where persuaded to enter the competition. They did so with a project close to the ideas of Archigram and the Constructivists. The nal building with Peter Rice from Arup as the engineer became a spearhead for a new tectonic architecture based on a scienti c developed use of cast steel, and high strength rods. This memeplex is often referred to as high tech, although the architects reject this term. The Centre Pompidou has become a great piece of architecture, and a representation of a very successful memeplex - an origin to an important change in architectural tectonics. Among the reasons for its success in reproducing tectonic memeplexes, was that it contained earlier successful historical memes referring to industrial revolution and the careful presence of functionally designed mechanical parts. It includes the classical proportions that integrate the buildings in the city, and orthogonallity with a rm foundation upon large classical architectural memes.

Classical memes – or memes, that have been successful over a long time are very strong in a memeplex, although the need to identify time could appear as fractals and

Fig. 7 Centre Pompidou competition.

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark 533 chaotic constructions to be develop as strong expressions of a periods. In this case the political memes of the students May revolts in Paris, in combination with the cultural memes of the swinging London, Beatles, Stones and hotpants contributed to an origin of change. It is a general principle that classical memes are strong in memeplexes of architecture. This is the reason why humanism is expected to be important also in future memeplexes avored by new scienti c and technological inputs.

Character of Memeplexes If it is possible to identify and to analyze individual memes of the memeplex the question arises – can we use this aspect to reproduce the memplex, to construct new memplex and even when it comes to predict the future? A memeplex as shown above in the few examples of this paper is complex, and its future is dicult to predict because competing memeplexes will arise on the scene. A memeplex has its time and place. Memes seems to act in a pool, Darwkins calls it a meme pool, (note) parallel to what the biologists call a gene pool containing the active genes of reproduction.

Some memes of the plex are explicit dependent of time; as the scholastic gothic meme is overruled of the dawning scienti c view of renaissance, but others as the platonic clari cation seems to be less inuenced by time. Although this might change with the increasing use of non- Cartesian geometry, and a more common understanding of the physical science of the 20th and in 21th C. Will these new scienti c memes overrule the 2500 years old memeplex of Plato ideal?

As said before the idea of the past is an important source of the memeplex of all memes. New successful memeplexes seems to have a large proportion of successful memes from earlier successful memeplexes, giving a kind of continuity for a more and more complex and chaotic evolution. It is interesting, that new biological theories about the inactive genes in the gene pool, seems to have a similar but disregarded inuence for the evolution.6 Following this reasoning it seems likely to nd a common ground where biology and tectonic could meet.

Non-dimensional Network The Danish philosopher Lene Andresen writes in Baade-Og, translated Either-And, about memeplexes in a non-dimensional network. She introduces the non-dimensional network as model for memes and memeplexes. In such a network there are many nodes with few linking, and few nodes with a large number of links. The internet system can be regarded as such a net. In this model the knots with many connections represents successful memeplexes attracting new memes, thereby growing with many connections – like Google work as search machine of the internet. The successful meme reproduces, mutates, and the complexity grows. New memplexes absorb new ideas, and the successful of them become memes that are built up into strong memeplexes – in a struggle of the ttest. This may give some sense of the mechanism of the change in tectonic concepts, as earlier described, even if it still is a very raw picture of the reality.

534 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Non dimensional network.

Fig. 9 Internet.

We have at earlier occasions, also in connection with EAAE 2009, presented this model of non-dimensional networks, but we do not nd it illustrative enough. It is therefore our intension to look for new ways or structures that can be used as model for change, one of them is presumably to look into the behavior of chaotic systems, and the ideas of strange attractors.

Self-organization You may say that memes have a large degree of self-organization. Successful memeplexes can be regarded as a self-organization and an optimalisation of memes at a given time and place. At the nal speech of the EAAE conference in Chania 2011, philosophy professor Manuel De Landa talked about optimalisations. This is certainly a parallel that can be compared to the problems discussed in this paper. Optimalisation in a neural network, with a self-organization of stable optimal systems as attractors, may be a useful way to look for a stable model of memeplex. For the time being it is still just an idea – a meme to be looked into.

Nonlinear and Linear Time How can we use the memeplex as model for relation to tectonics in architecture, and architectural structures? The nonlinearity, the chaotic and fractal behavior of successful memeplexes, are in many ways outside rational prediction. But, the idea and study of the selection between success full memeplexes as an optimalisation and as information is feasible. Let us assume, that the successful memeplexes are the results of self organizing processes, representing an optimum in relation to other memeplexes active in the memepool at given time and place. This assumption gives us, the archi-

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark 535 Fig. 10 Peacock. tects, engineers and others, a possibility to enter the game with new memes in the memepool, and thereby, it seems possible to place some consciousness in the origin of change. It is obvious to think that new memes, as artistic form, ideas and sculptural work, are active memes in the memepool. They may become the origin of change. Having a picture of the complexity of dierent actors in the successful memeplexes in mind, may give us a guide, how to increase the chances when new memes enter the game. In his second book Charles Darwin wrote: The Descent of Man, and Selection in Rela- tion to Sex about the problem; why the male peacock has developed the fantastic tail; one explanation is that the reason is that the female chooses the male, and that she prefer one who has the strength and courage to set up such a beauty, making himself vulnerable to the dangerous tiger lying in the bush.

Bibliography

Andersen, Lene; Baade-Og, 2005. Darwin, Charles; The Origin of Species, by means of natural selection, 1859. Darwin, Charles; The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871. Dawkins, Richard; The Sel sh Gene, 1976. Nielsen, Jørgen; Idé, Kraft, Form, p. 52, 1988. Vitruvius, Polio; The Ten Books of Architecture.

536 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture References

1 Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, Chapter I, The origin of the dwelling house. 2 Dawkins, Richard; The Sel sh Gene, 1976, reprinted 2009, note p. 323. 3 The authors do not know the origin of this quotation, but it is reered from professor Jørgen Nielsen, Copenhagen. 4 Nielsen, Jørgen, Til Poul Kjærgaard, 1982, and, Idé, Kraft, Form, 1988. 5 Jakobsen, Svend, draft for article, Fra romansk til gotisk kirkearkitektur, 2008, unpublished. 6 With reference to Peter Arctander, professor of evolution at Copenhagen University.

Ole Vanggaard, Anders Munck, Ola Wedebrunn Denmark 537

Theodora Vardouli1 Rodanthi Vardouli2

1SMarchS Design and Computation MIT USA

2NTUA MPhil Design, Space, Culture Athens Greece The Digital Liminal: Reflections on the Computational Transition in Architecture Introduction: Observations In his article entitled “Critical or Post-Critical?”, published in the Architecture Theory Review of the University of Sydney in 2002 Mark Jarzombek was observing what he named the “Fronts of Post- Criticality”: New Urbanism, Green Architecture and Ad- vanced Computation (Jarzombek, 2002). These fronts are discerned from their predecessors: historicism, gender, culture, fashion and rather more recently psychoanalysis, historiography or post-coloniality. However, amongst these three “new fronts”, which are currently marking the landscape of architecture pedagogy, Computation has a rather particular position. With the exception of academic research groups which refrain from digital phantasma- gory in order to problematize the new digital tools and processes within the context of design and architecture, computation is often untroubledly imported and consumed within design curricula. Unlike new urbanism or sustainability, which prime a practical approach to architecture and take a distance from traditional avant-gardist aesthetics (Jarzombek, 2002), Computation bears strong connotations of innovation and rupture with the past. Titles like “ditching the dinosaur” (Kvan et. al, 2004) appear in papers about architecture, computation and teaching and “Advanced Design” g- ures in the titles of renown graduate programs around the globe experimenting with digital design and fabrication. At the same time inuential architectural journals, sub- serve a form of academic and corporate branding, implicitly or explicitly establishing products of computational design as the “new avant-garde” in Architecture. Patrick Schumacher’s “Parametricism: A New Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design” (Schumacher, 2009) is an indicative example of this approach. When it comes to Computation, the technical skill barrier, as well as the employment of an unfamiliar idiolect, with biological or philosophical referents, often creates a “dicult” (Jarzombek, 2011) architecture, inaccessible to the “outsider”. One which according to Jarzombek, is cut o from the world’s “messy realism” creating an auto- referential framework of forms and discourses, which is both produced and consumed within closed cycles of academia and practice. This is followed by a wave of students and educators, who seek the technical skills and environments granting them access to the “computational clubhouse”, as well as resistance forces, negating computation as being in rupture with fundamental questions of the “discipline” of architecture. Within the context of the design process, computers are criticized for priming formal concerns over human experience. “computer imaging tends to atten our magnif- icent multi-sensory, simultaneous and synchronic capacities of imagination by turning the design process into a passive visual manipulation, a retinal journey” (Palasmaa, 2005). Another line of criticism is that the act of coding is inherently reductionist, rst, because it constraints designers to the a strict linguistic activity and second because it excludes from the discussion crucial aspects of design which cannot be parametrized or coded (social, political, experiential factors). This criticism, however, supports the argument that Computation -even as its negation- plays a constitutive role in current architectural discourse, with formative echoes in architecture pedagogies worldwide. If sustainability is preserved by a mega-ethical discourse and the new-new urbanism provides architects with high complexity mega-projects, computation bears a promise of changing not only architecture’s relation with the world but Architecture itself, as body of knowledge, tools and practices.

540 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Discourse on Method: The “Digital Liminal” The goal of this paper is to expose one (of the many) ways to problematize the question of if and how computation changes both “Architecture” itself, and its relation to the human subject. This paper’s main hypothesis is that inquiry into early reactions of the “discipline” to the computational vision can serve as a very fertile ground for the extraction dierent framings of this question, many of which still preserve their argumentative value.

Theodora Vardouli USA, Rodanthi Vardouli Greece 541 We believe that looking back, closer to the rst encounter of computation and Architecture we will be able to place the problematic of the “Rethinking the human in technology-driven Architecture” conference into a historical perspective. This will in turn allow for the identi cation of potential analogies, discontinuities or inertias of questions around architecture, computation and the guring of the human in this discourse, either as the subject-user or the architect-creator. This transition from the pre-computational to computational architecture (or to use the conference brief from the “pre-technology-driven” to the “technology-driven” architecture) is framed as “the digital liminal”. Through the use of this term we refer to a stage betwixt and between categories, which allows us to better discern or negotiate the boundaries between them. Taking into consideration the increasing “nat- uralization” of computation in current architectural practice this transitional stage becomes even more fruitful as it provides the ability to talk about “computation” and “Architecture” as discernible categories, without falling into tautologies and circular arguments. This discussion can by no means ignore the fact that the term “Architecture” itself escapes de nition and that the disciplinary boundaries of the broader eld of architectural praxis are in constant ux (Piotrowski & Robinson, 2001). With this statement as an overarching disclaimer, along with an acknowledgment of the inherent multiplicity of the question of “what computers do to Architecture”, we focus on the tracing of these early discourses in academic environments, which are strongly related to the construction and perpetuation of the “discipline”.

The Tool: “Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture” We have already stated the hypothesis of the importance of early discussions on computation and architecture for the extraction discursive frames on their relation. This paper focuses in one of these discussions, inscribed within this broader agenda. Its basis is a collection of texts edited by Nicholas Negroponte and published by MIT Press in 1975. The title of the book is “Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture”. This “album of attitudes” on Computer-Aided Design was motivated by a very similar vision as the “Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture” conference: to pause, provide an overview of the eld at the time, dissolve myths and niches formed around computer-aided design (CAD) and thus, open the door to new directions. A rst motivation to talk about this collection of texts is the broad sense of disillusionment which it conveys in front of the big promises of CAD. Apart from this intriguing end-of-an-era air, what we found useful for our endeavor in this collection is its diversity, both in terms of the areas of architectural discourse that the writers represent (teaching, research and practice) as well of geographical locations, bringing also to the surface a set of political issues inuencing the discrepancies in the reception of computation amongst dierent architecture schools in Europe and in the US, some of which have an interesting contemporaneity. This structure of the collection allows us to provide both an esoteric (design process, design product) and an exoteric (political and cultural inuences) account of this transitional stage to which we are referring.

542 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture An Esoteric Account: the Design Process and the Designer Negroponte initiated the collection with a series of “Introductions” addressed to different pro les of readers: introduction for the student, for the practitioner, for the computer enthusiast, introduction to the introductions, introduction to my own reections. Despite the expected dierences in content according to the prospective audience, these “Introductions” have a salient common denominator: Negroponte sees the design process as something augmented rather than drastically changed through technology. He envisions the continuation of the fundamental principles of Architec- ture (“with a capital A”) nding a new diachrony in computation. According to Negro- ponte, a change in tooling is by no means a sucient condition for a true disciplinary shift. Although Negroponte recognizes the potential for new formal vocabularies, the question for him seems to lie elsewhere.

“At the birth of computer graphics, it was professed that this new instrument could liberate us from the T square and that we could nally design and live in doubly curved surfaces. I do not believe that the lack of “intestinal” architecture comes from a lack of necessary tools” (Negroponte, 1975).

For him, hard technology is a means to make architecture “softer”. As the subtitle of his 1970 book “The Architecture Machine” denotes, Negroponte envisions machines as the way “Towards a more human environment” (Negroponte, 1970). This subtitle of the “Architecture Machine”, points to a “new humanism”, through “partnership” with “problem-worrying” machines enabling architects to go beyond the simpli cations of

Theodora Vardouli USA, Rodanthi Vardouli Greece 543 the middle scale (the average man, statistics) and be responsive to the very small and the very big simultaneously. The primary obstacle towards this vision is the conict which arises between the metaphor-rich, human oriented capital-A-architecture and the a-contextual computational algebras which are -yet- incapable of having empathy to things important for people, like place and meaning. The consideration of this dicult question is impeded by the fact that computers actually have results. He talks “general feeling of discom- fort passing through universities” (Negroponte, 1975) about a work whose rapid results do not leave time to reect on the human in design (ie. how people and machines deal with the built environment).

Apart from the editor’s accounts and opinions, the collection features an abundance of other writings, where authors -mainly aliated with US universities- share their personal stories of how they turned from technology believers to non-believers. Vladimir Bazjanac’s “The promises and the disappointments of computer-aided design” is indicative of this tendency. Bazjanac, faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley, witnesses himself having been carried away by the emergence of a new technology promising of a new future for mankind, in and outside architecture. “Added to that is the excitement of getting into something really new, something no architect of the past knew anything about. How could he not become a believer? My early enthusiasm was really tremendous” (Bazjanak, 1975). Bazjanak locates the source of his disbelief from the realms of architectural practice. Coming in contact with the inertias of what was earlier referred to as the world’s “messy realism” he conjures that “change” in the way architecture is exercised is signi cantly less drastic than expected. In fact, he warns that the automation of the design process can lead to regression instead of innovation through channeling the architect’s thought into metaphors and formal models which are imposed by the technology. This understanding of the computer as an alien medium, whose incorporation in the design process has socio-anthropological implications which require intensive research, is shared by Patrick Purcell, a research fellow in the Department of Design Research at the Royal College of Art in London. “The main direction of work at the RCA’s Department of Design Research is the use of computer simulation models of design processes and design organizations in the evaluation of CAD systems. The development of these computer models is based on empirical studies of a range of live design projects” (Purcell, 1975). When it comes to design methodology Murray Milne, at the time Associate Dean of the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning, is observing / calling for a settling down from the initial enthusiasm with computers in order to rethink the implications of the computer in the design process, both esoterically and externally. Assert- ing design methodology as the study of methods, principles and rules for regulating the science and art of design, especially architectural design he claims that “the goal of design methodology should not be systems that can design better than the humans (ie. make the creative leap) but rather systems that help humans design better (ie. computer aided design” (Milne, 1975). This brings to mind Christopher Alexander’s renown comment that “In asking how the computer might be applied to architectural design, we must, therefore, ask ourselves what problems we know of in design that could be solved by such an army of clerks” (Alexander, 1964). Exemplifying Alan Turing’s “Lady Lovelace

544 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Objection” (Turing, 1940) that machines cannot be creative, this approach takes a distance from Negroponte’s visions of machine intelligence and computer-designer partnership and places them in the level of tools for tedious, unimaginative tasks, while the human designer maintains the privilege of authorship and creativity.

The main points which emerge from these discussions could be condensed to the following:

First that although computer aided design performs satisfactorily in controlled, constructed problems and hypothetical questions in the lab, it fails when faced with the complexities of the “real world” which cannot be reduced to descriptions that can be processed by a machine.

Second, that the automation of the “tedious” stages of the design process impedes creative thinking by obligating the architect to operate within the boundaries and the language of the technology at hand. Third, that before we make computational tools for architects we need to understand the design process from a socio-anthropological and cognitive perspective so as to allow for qualitative and not just quantitative changes in architecture through the use of computers.

The battle seems to be lost from the beginning: capital-A human and context responsive computer aided architecture requires science ctional arti cial intelligence in order to be achieved, the morphogenetic potential of CAD is discarded as almost ludicrous and there is a commonly shared skepticism around the possibility to automate aspects of the design process in a productive way, which probably makes CAD resort to its most usual use today, that of a architectural representation. However, the writers identify the dynamics of computation within academic institutions, carrying away the students into “a new method and making them easily forget the old” (Negro- ponte, 1975). Besides this skepticism, one can discern a powerful impact of this new tool, which creates a de facto demand for digitization of architecture somewhere, somehow.

An Exoteric Account This leads to the second part of this account, which sees the relation of CAD and architecture exoterically - ie. the political and social factors inuencing its reception by academic environments. For this discussion we analyze the texts featured in the “Abroad” section of “Computer Aids to Design and Architecture”. In this section three “fronts” were clearly discernible to us: the disillusioned pioneers (US and UK), continental Europe (France, Germany, Holland) and the mediterranean (representatives from Spain and Italy are included in the collection - mention is also done to eorts in Greece). Both the Spanish (Javier Segui de la Riva) and Italian (Cesare Blasi and Gabriella Padovano Blasi) writers express the echos of an intense skepticism towards technology originating from the environments within which they operate. Academic environments are portrayed as unwilling to undertake research in CAD because computation

Theodora Vardouli USA, Rodanthi Vardouli Greece 545 is considered by de nition anti-social, an area of competence, far from the main problems of the society or as carrier of an imported imperialist pragmatism harmful for any possible new cultural synthesis (de la Riva, 1975). Cesare and Gabriella Blasi report a continuing schism between innovative political thought and scienti c progress, as the result of the assumption that science and technology can never be known, understood, dominated, or channeled into creating a new society. The writers observe an inherent resistance to areas of special competence, which have little political or social meaning. This makes technology and technological literacy irrelevant to the fundamental political concerns of the time, pointing total revolution as the only acceptable direction for social change. Interestingly, Cesare and Gabriella Blasi advocate for the possibility of a politically or socially responsive computational architecture, proposing an interesting direction which distances itself from the architectural object and focuses on the collective ownership of information and information processing. Researches conducted in centers like the Turin Center for the Study of Environmental Cybernetics evolve around self planning communities, seeing computation as a unique opportunity to remove the architect from the process and initiate peer to peer procedures. When it comes to continental Europe, represented by Paul Quitrand from France and Jos Weber as moving between Denmark, Holland, Germany, the atmosphere conveyed by the writers is that universities do not have this de facto negative position against CAD but neither do they yet have the technical capacity to proceed to applications. This condition is celebrated as a fortunate coincidence, allowing them to spend more time contemplating on what computation means to architecture and not get carried away from impressive but disorienting results. One can discern an attitude where lack of infrastructure is in fact seen as a shield against the mechanical reproduction of given assumptions and the operation within the aordances of the tools at hand which then feeds back into architectural pedagogy with a false sense of innovation. The primary demand is a sustained approach to computation informed by the social and natural sciences, which examines the potential and implications of the tool without yet integrating it into an applied design process. Jos Weber also calls to arms for the need of think tanks which will explore the social potential of computation before establishing a streamline between academia and practice. The assumption is that usefulness, applications and commercialization of computational applications places the focus on the results and inhibits the discussion of more dicult questions, which should be addressed in academia.

Discussion: Rethinking the Human in (technology-driven) Architecture Rejections, unful lled goals and disillusionments The main point that one can keep from this collection, is the demand for a human oriented [A]rchitecture nding its continuity into or besides an unavoidable computational revolution. Apart from providing axes and focal points for attacking this demand, which can be revisited as productive elds of inquiry today, and giving a sense of exoteric factors which can serve as current attitudes towards computation from different academic environments, this collection illustrates the inertia of the question of

546 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture an anthropocentric computational architecture, which we have been discussing here as well for the past two days. However, what also becomes quite clear by browsing through this 1975 album of attitudes is that [A]- rchitecture is used as a slogan, a wish. The speci cities of how and if this architecture was ever achieved are seldom discussed, as if the non-computerized or technology-free architecture is by inherently endowed with humanist values. This hypothesis, which perhaps lies in the substrate of this conference’s brief, is a fascinating eld of inquiry in its own right. After all Christopher Hight argues after a journey into accounts of anthropomorphism/anthropocentrism from the Vitruvian gure to the Modulor “The gure of an- thropos was never so clearly drawn. Its contours were not etched in a sandy rmament soon to be washed away by the tides of “history” but are indeed more like the turbulent ow of waves themselves emerging as momentary singularities, vortices measurable only amidst the laminar and nonlinear ows of history. It is within this turbulent space of formation that architecture and its subjects whirl. And it is within this immanence that we can measure resistances and currents to surf alternative tangents” (Hight, 2008). We therefore propose that perhaps instead of rethinking the human in technology driven architecture, we need to rethink the human in architecture - and as far as technology is concerned we need to be cautious so as to constantly demystify it within pedagogy and practice, so as to avoid priesthoods and theoretical clusters which im- pede its productive crossbreeding with the ever-open questions of architecture.

Conclusion(s) In this account, we traced the current state of things regarding the eects of computation in architecture pedagogies and proposed the “promise of innovation” as a central drive in the formation of ecosystems around (the notion of) Computation and its discursive values. We consecutively framed the examination of the “computational transition” as a productive eld of reference for the discussion of the question of human, [A]rchitecture and computation. As a step towards the broader vision to map the “digital liminal” (early takes on computers and architecture) we diagrammed an esoteric and an exoteric account of the main concerns around the encounter of architecture and computation as discussed in the collection “Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture”. Through this reading, we identi ed a broad sense of disillusionment for the computerization of the design process; a dismissal of the formal potential of computation and an inability of computational algebras to be empathic to the human and to accomplish real [A]rchitecture. This disillusionment led us to problematize the existence of this [A]rchitecture and to argue for the presence of this term as a desired but unattained goal around which disciplinary discussions have been and are being structured. We therefore propose to reopen the discourse on the human in architecture and allow computation to productively participate in it by dis- solving myths, priesthoods and niches of practice. To close with a step for the future we suggest that a way to open this discussion is to bring forth the social potential of information technology (communication, peer design, collective information ownership) and examine it both from the standpoint of human interaction and information protocols.

Theodora Vardouli USA, Rodanthi Vardouli Greece 547 References

Alexander, C., 1964. A Much Asked Question About computers and Design. Serge Chermaye Archive, Avery Archive, Columbia University, NY, NY. Bazjanak, V., 1975. The promises and the disappointments of computer-aided design. In: N. Ne- groponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 17-26. Blazi, C., Padovano - Blasi, G., 1975. Italy. In: N. Negroponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 190-200. Jarzombek, M., 2002. “Critical or Post-critical?,” Architectural Theory Review 7(1), pp. 149-151. Jarzombek, M., 2010. Lecture at the MIT Depatment of Architecture SMArchS Colloquium (online) available at http://4.221.scripts.mit.edu/fa10/?page_id=66. Jarzombek., M., 2008. Un-messy Realism and the Decline of the Architectural Mind, PERSPECTA: Monster, 40, pp. 82-85. Kvan, T. Mark, E. Oxman, R. Martens, B., 2003. Ditching the Dinosaur: Rede ning the Role of Digital Media in Education, International Journal of Design Computing. Milne, M., 1975. Whatever became of design methodology. In: N. Negroponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 30-36. Negroponte, N. ed., 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture. Petrocelli / Charter. Negroponte, N., 1970, The Architecture Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press. Palasmaa J., 2005. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Piotrowski, A., & Robinson, J. W., 2001. The discipline of architecture. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press. Purcell, P., 1975. United Kingdom. In: N. Negroponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 207-223. Quitrand, P., 1975. France. In: N. Negroponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 224-239. Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Call for participation, 2011. (online) available at http://www.enhsa.net/rethinking/web_H_CallH.html Schumacher, P., 2009. Parametricism: A new Global Style for Architecture and Urban Design, Ar- chitectural Design: Digital Cities, 79 (4), pp. 14-23. Weber, J., 1975. Denmark, Holland, Germany. In: N. Negroponte, ed. 1975. Reections on Computer Aids to Design and Architecture, Petrocelli / Charter, pp. 256-270.

548 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Daniel Comsa

Faculty of Architecture “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urbanism Bucharest Romania Contemporary Ways of Space Envelopment – Adaptive Architecture? Some of the adaptive features of architecture are visible at the interior-exterior interface level. The study methodology questions the space envelope related to form, function and signi cation, the trinomial base for the adaptive features of architecture. Rethinking the human space in our highly technology driven future came with the rst relevant questioning step which is rethinking space. Space is de ned by its limits and the space perception could be changed by the space movement. Adaptive architecture seen from this study’s point of view could be either xed, dynamic or complex. The humans and their perception features may be improved with technology. Communication is one feature that brings us closer even if we are far away. Gadgets are still external, but there are some trans-humanists who have considered protecting devices as the future for human development. Being perceived as a commodity generator the contemporary Technology can easily conquer us and we get used to it too easily. According to Vitruvius treaties of architecture the rst example of how to build intelligent Architecture was achieved by properly positioning the building in the town or in the relief. The protective role of the wall started from the city wall as it was in town where he lived. The cela model of Architecture with a porch in front, for shade, describes the system of conditioning temperature for the interior during summer. Intelligent ways of building architecture is one way of how to adapt building to its surrounding, to make an envelope that protect the interior and also use the exterior features in favor of the interior. Adaptive architecture is a system which changes its structure, behavior or resources according to demand. To inhabit adaptive Architecture means living in a dream house or living in ction like Boris Vian’s (1947) built environment where the walls might fall and understand you, so they act in consequence (Fig. 1). Inhabiting adaptive architecture also means a progress in the performance of the space envelope. Living in such a place is now nearer much closer to reality through new technologies and experiment in architecture. Responsive/adaptive architecture seen from outside is just a game, marking a status or advertising something. Seen from inside, the adaptive features mean protection, through materials using technology. As a study methodology I will question the adaptive features of the space envelope or the space way of being covered. The interior sensation given by this protec-

Fig. 1 Parody of van de Velde’s designs by “Van der Bloede”, Lustige Blaetter, Berlin. http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ cas/fnart/symbolist/vandevelde. html

550 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture tion, will bring us results about the visible innovation present in the materials features or its technologies. Living in an adaptive space is a still an utopia but re-thinking the human technologies such to creatively anticipate the new type spaces inhabitability will generate a big step in the digitization or in the experimental part of our profession. The living space is an issue that permanently needs to be protected and privileged by the designing approach and has to remain outside the commercial part of selling buildings. It will always somebody the creative role of making cultural values. Architects are constantly more aware of the materials they can use in creating facades. The use of new technology and experimentation in the building envelopment are also of high interest to professionals in constructions. While architects have to con ne to space and its envelopment, technology experimentation (provided by other sciences) and material experimentation are made through traditional or innovative techniques. Experimental architecture worldwide oers us unsolved issues, proposals or even utopias, but some of them have materialized into iconic buildings. These experiments that happen in the contemporary envelopment process have to be categorized on several criteria. Materials categorized according to texture, geometry or color gain dynamic characteristics like: light, text, vibration are typical in scenery. The technology in use or the technique, as well as original ideas’ presentations in relation to shape, function and signi cance will oer the research observation two points of interest: theoretical and mostly practically applied.

Shape-Function-Signi cance form a trinomial that de nes Architecture and suggests the importance of form in space composition. This is the reason that enveloping spaces is one of the archetypal problems of Architecture. The central element in the study of Architecture is space. Therefore any scienti c research in this concern should have space as main study object. The issues of space envelopment are just as up-to-date as the primordial shelter nowadays as well as in the future of an architect. The interior-exterior interface through the analysis of shape characteristics in Con- temporary Architecture is best de ned formally according to the feedback shared with the trinomial formed by shape-function-signi cance. Adaptive architecture should have in the background intelligent features in order to reply to exterior stimulus in favor of the interior. Intelligent buildings could use green architecture or living walls as components in achieving the adaptive status. Sometimes living buildings and green buildings are speci c cases of intelligent buildings. They behave like Bodies without Organs (Roche 2008, pp. 68-69) in the deleuzian (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983) sense of the heterotopian (Foucault, 1967) relationship with the body as a built entity loses the sense of being merely an envelope of the building and becomes an entire parasite universe attached to the building. “Intelligent skins” present dierent technological methods of expressing the interior-exterior interface. A separate section of the study is dedicated to gathering ethnic and religious elements from the 20th Century as well as an analysis of the interior-exterior interface manifest in Romanian architecture. Contemporary architects are lately interested in enveloping spaces with perfect skins which solve aesthetic and energy-wise problems at the same time. Adaptive

Daniel Comsa Romania 551 Architecture use dynamic facades, transformable structures, bio-inspired materials in creating intelligent skins for building. We should see if adaptability could be another feature that Architecture develops in the future.

Adaptability set by Shape “Any structure formed of walls constitutes delimitation, a pause in the spatial continuity; it is obvious that each building creates two types of space: interior, entirely de- ned by the building its-self and exterior or urban, that is between the building and its surroundings” (Zevi, 1969, pp. 48). Space limits are important. Covering spaces is the rst attitude that we have to explain. The height of a space relates on the level of ideas with proportions that the space is feasible to gain, its status or ergonomics. The minimum height set by law or the limits of healthy human development generates proportions of space that appear with other milestones towards spatial harmony. Vertical closures are also related to spatial limits because they mostly get the necessary voids in order to ventilate or light the space. Issues related to modularity next to transparency, translucent and semantic dierences appear when space is not total and when vertical limits do not fade in the upper ones. Still, for Contemporary Architecture special closures, free of any geometry or using non-Euclidian geometry in shape creation are the most interesting. Mainly their shape may generate the adaptability of these surfaces and their free appearance that describes an ergonomic architecture built around the human being, just as human interior movement may have turned into stone. Architectural creation is strongly related to the amount of falsity or realism truth or falsity / hidden or displayed that the architect may decide to use when makes clearly visible the interior spatial movements towards the exterior or hides away these things in order to surprise in the interior (Leach, 2006, p. 22). Envelopes or interior-exterior interfaces, generally called vibrating membranes Comsa (2011, p. 151)started during the Baroque for the interior space component and got more visible artistic shapes in the Art Nouveau period, where we may nominate Antonio Gaudi’s architecture as successful demonstration of the exterior moves of the envelope. Textile surfaces from the Twentieth Century Architecture expressed as textile materials per se or massive, visible concrete or even composite materials that have turned into stone in free shapes are examples of vibrant, geometrically adapted membranes to any volume no matter how complex. Concerning vibration contemporary architecture sets clear expressions. Eective movement of the façade is only one of those options, its dynamic character being created also by image projections or light scenes present on the façade. It is quite hard to classify the media façade in this category because the image movement takes place on a at surface that doubles the interior envelope of the building. Media façade could be a screen connected to a computer, could also be a light game during night or just an advertising mash. Talking about vibrating membranes, the pulsation of these envelopes is generated by the static expression of advertising placed on buildings. If some of the meshes were vibrated by the wind, we cannot consider them architecture worthy of being classi ed, as they are perceived to be negative on the urban level.

552 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Practical vibrations such as clothes that are hanging to get dry in many historical cities cannot become categories of the vibrant membrane either, their presence being human unattractive interventions, sometimes exposed in a picturesque manner, other times having a negative connotation. Nevertheless, Christo’s artistic envelopes for dierent buildings may be considered ways of expression for the vibrant membrane (Fig. 2). The adaptability of the architectural shape versus the adaptability of the screen image is dierent, the last one being more versatile. Multi-touch capacitive screens are more and more accessible than informative screens in the public space as well as all Fig. 2 personal gadgets. The progress generated by them is not entirely exploited and yet not Christo artisitc experiment -a way of enough used in the buildings’ envelopes. enveloping buildings. Eective, adaptive features, movements http://hydeordie.com/search/Christo managed by elements on the envelope in the interior or in the exterior generate a personal history of it. Future technologies used in the envelope are based on things that still function or not, made over 40 years ago, being proof of past experimental trials or successes. Currently Architecture is the eld where shocking through moving elements or equally creating maximum expressivity with minimal means or eorts is the main attitude. Technique is related to experiment. Therefore all dynamic experiments are complex enough so that their density may create an impressive system of small elements. The technology that uses water drops through controlled channels has developed in such a way that words can be written in water as well as special drawings in a certain rhythm of ow. This is a demonstration of precision working along with technology. Dynamic and adaptive systems formed of elements that are able to move in a simple manner can be extremely diverse in their nal eects. Expressive, inert characteristics of architecture nd new ways of creating the illusion of movement through the reinterpretation of some x elements. Vibrant membrane examples are found at the Spanish, British and Lithuanian pavilions from Shang- hai Expo 2010. Small elements like post-it pieces of paper, semi-transparent as the ones in the Lithuanian pavilion (Fig. 3) move easily in the wind and vibrate even making a certain noise. The illusion of movement on an inert facade can also be created by vibrating the texture of a surface with dierent degrees of transparency as it happens in the Spanish pavilion from Shanghai Expo 2010 (Fig. 4-7). The British pavilion manages to combine movement of some elements in the wind and their dematerialization towards transparency. One example of exclusively using the intermediary space for visual eects is in this pavilion where we nd it impossible to exactly position the interior-exterior interface (Fig. 8-13).

Daniel Comsa Romania 553 Fig. 3 Lithuanian pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010- vibrating textures. Photo Daniel Comsa

Function Depending on Adaptability Built and clearly de ned space - as we have been used to see and perceive - will probably soon be replaced by a dynamic one, adapted to our needs. During the time when the tent was shelter enough for humans and its assembling or movement was possible due to nomad behavior the rst transition space was created. The need of a shelter somewhere or 10 miles further in a valley was equally important, so that movement made possible having only one mobile shelter instead of two xed. Our space from home is not of use to anybody else while we are gone from there. Therefore, its reduction in dimensions in favor of other activities, its treasuring in our await are both possible. Even the space used for work can be reduced while we are having other domestic activities. Complementary functions present in the same space should resolve the functional adaptability feature of a space and generate a higher level of usage, which would be very useful to the city as well the owner of a any building. The mix between daytime and nighttime activities may become an advantage once the habit of having similar activities at the same time is educated. Generous spaces that we leave behind or rarely use are proof of our lack to adjustment that we have accustomed to. The versatility of a space makes it more ecient but its adaptability is more economic and less architectural. Present technology facilitates adjustment/adaptability

554 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Architectural process is also an open system in which we chose to put spaces one next to the other according to a thinking algorithm. Also relation between spaces and inside those spaces between objects could be put in an algorithm. A good computer could help us in choose the best position, but enveloping this space could still be a problem. Using grasshopper or other parametric design software we could obtain several ways of enveloping space using patterns combined with structure shape. Func- tion is a matter that inuences the envelope on a representation level. We suppose to recognize a church by its shape, but this shape is expressing the function from inside. Adaptability dictated by function is not yet something usual but there are some examples where movable structures could be adaptive by its movement. Emerging architecture should have therefore an adaptable component. It should be dynamic and be able to emerge from the box that does not restrain, also be capable to open as a tent or a exible con ning device at the right moment.

Human and Technological Adaptability Are humans adaptable enough?

This is the main question, and what have we do when we face some problems. If we are not adaptable enough we nd new tools for use in helping us. These tools became progress by inventing new technologies. “Gradually, as you lay out these familiar objects, the room seems less alienating.” (Leach, 2006, p. 33)

Talking about space appropriation in a hotel room we could see how in time we adapt ourselves to the existing space. Getting used with a space proof our adaptability.

Is transhumanism an alternative?

New protecting is a need or something that will take possession of our bodies. A little story will help clarify this matter. In 2011 spring I visited South Korea, for academic matters, I have several presentations to INJE University in Gimhae, Busan. Some students join me in one afternoon to show me a temple, some of their projects sites and the center of their neigbourhood. After a while we all got hungry and I invited them to a restaurant. They suggest Mc Donalds and I ask for something more local. We nally agree for a chinese restaurant and the next moment all of them start to scan the surrounding with their mobile phones. Walking in the center of the town with 3 peolpe who let a device read for them the visible advertising made me think about the proper use of a device and if that is helpful or just a new/future habit. Infact if this became a habit than the protecting role of this device will take possition of our body. Of course it didn’t help us in nding a restaurant and we nally eat at Mc Donadls. That story make me ask if people really need a device to guide them trough the public space as GPS guide us on roads while driving cars. Reading the space is another matter not just the writen boards situated outside. Maybe this reading interpret could help me as an european in an asiatic country, but visiting a space with a device in

Daniel Comsa Romania 555 Fig. 4 Spanish pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010- Benedetta Tagliabue – Exterior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 5 Idem. Spanish pavilion– Exterior view, detail on surface. Photo Daniel Comsa.

556 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 6 Idem. Spanish pavilion– Interior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 7 Idem. Spanish pavilion– Interior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Daniel Comsa Romania 557 Fig. 8 British pavilion at Shanghai Expo 2010- Architect Thomas Heatherwick – Exterior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 9 Idem. British pavilion – Exterior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

558 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 10 Idem. British pavilion –Detail on vibrating ber glass tubes. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 11 Idem. British pavilion –Detail on vibrating ber glass tubes. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 12 Idem. British pavilion – Interior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Fig. 13 Idem. British pavilion – Interior view. Photo Daniel Comsa.

Daniel Comsa Romania 559 front of me will ruin the space perceprion in favor of some information not necessary useful.

Are new technologies able to oer us the confort that we need on their own?

Mimesis is something always usefull Intelligent Skin is based on human skin features, and like this we could create intelligent building. Adaptive architecture should include intelligent building as a goal but could be much more: experimental work, artistic artefacts. Enveloping spaces is a human sheltering activity and recently adaptive forms help space con guration.

Conclusions “Technologies therefore come to be associated with a form of alienation. It prevents humankind from being in touch with a richer form of revealing which operates within a more poetic dimension” (Leach, 2006, p. 36)

The fact that human adaptability is strongly related to the technological one is proved by the connection between what we invent, how we use that and how much we are surprised by others’ discoveries. Rethinking the human with new technologies present in Architecture is one way but adapting space should be the really problem that should concern us as architects. Architecture means living, transiting or having dierent activities in diverse spaces. But architecture also means the inert walls that surround us. Criticism in the debate on inhabitation requires quality for space and many times leads to the opportunity of enveloping it. Transparency is good/ healthy for the building whilst nudity or exhibitionism may be harmful due to overexpo- sure to solar radiation and heat. Ventilation systems solve the problem and permit total trans- parence in conditions of full solar exposure, but with non ecient energy waste. Perhaps our ideas on space are wrong. May- be space in constructions should not be simply erect and wait there for us, but adjustable so Fig. 14 that it contains us at the moment of transition. Stratus Project Geo Thün and Kathy The Stratus Project1 develops a kinetic interior Velikov – spatial adaptation responsive envelope adaptive to human presence (Fig. 14). systems. If new technologies will permit space to http://www.tcaup.umich.edu/resourc- adapt to the human presence that will be a big es/research_outreach_and_funding/ revolution in architecture. research_through_making_grant/

560 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Rethinking the human driven architecture implies rethinking the human related to space which ultimately results in rethinking the limits of the space. Space envelopment could dematerialize by design or move/adapt using technologies but the future looks parametric by process. The conclusions go beyond the subject of de-materialization of the interior-exteri- or interface and gather the premises of a contemporary way creating adaptive Archi- tecture along with the designing process. The interdisciplinary character of the study aim to generate new approaches in future scienti c research regarding experiments in space envelopment. Technology will continue to help people to inhabit into architectural spaces but the relation between space and human kind could change in time if new adaptive features will be more easy to use in our life.

Note

1 http://archimorph.wordpress.com/2011/03/ [Accessed 03 November 2011].

Bibliography

Comsa, D. Interior-exterior Interface, UAUIM Press, Bucharest, Romania, 2011. Deleuze, G and Guattari, F. Capitalism and Schizophrenia:Anti-Oedipus University of Minnesota Press, 1983. Foucault, M. Other Spaces (1967), Heterotopias. Available at :http://foucault.info/documents/het- eroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html [Accessed 03 November 2011]. Leach, N. Forget Heidegger, Paidea Press, Bucharest, Romania, 2006. Leach, N. Camouage, Paidea Press, Bucharest, Romania, 2006. Roche, F. art. Bodies without Organs pp.68-69 Marcos Cruz and Steve Pike, Neoplasmatic Design, Architectural Design, Ed. Wiley, November/ December 2008. Vian, B. Foam of the Daze- 1947. Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture, The Project Gutenberg EBook Available at http://www.gutenberg. org/cache/epub/20239/pg20239.html [Accessed 03 November 2011]. Zevi, B. How to understand architecture, Technical Press, Bucharest, Romania, 1969. http://archimorph.wordpress.com/2011/03/ [Accessed 03 November 2011].

Acknowledgment

My post doctoral research “Contemporary Ways of Space Envelopment” is nanced by the National Council of Scienti c Research (CNCS) Project code PD-73.

Daniel Comsa Romania 561

Lucien Denissen

Henry van de Velde-Institute Artesis Antwerp Belgium Simulation of Comfort and Health The designer of a building should take into account the speci c needs of the client. For some clients (and architects as well) expression prevails, for others the buildability, for still others the economy considering the maintenance and the energy during the operational phase. It is usually the far-sighted, and not necessarily the demanding client who wants a high score on all areas: esthetics, technical quality and comfort. These concepts are still the same as that of Vitruvius, but the contemporary concrete interpretation goes further.

To be a good architect it is no more sucient being a good designer. After the euphoria about the tectonic form, the users will know soon whether a functional building is realized, providing comfort in all its facets: a healthy place to rest and work, air, light, safety, color, thermal and acoustic comfort.

This can be to late: more and more clients don’t want to wait until the delivery to determine whether the comfort is achieved, but they want to be convinced at an earlier stage, even in the preliminary draft. This poses no problem for contemporary design oces, who like to bet all their skills to illustrate the options. Besides, for contest procurements they often have to demonstrate the oered qualities by simulations.

Overview of the Comfort Parameters One by one we will treat the main principles on thermal and acoustic comfort, light, safety, color & atmosphere. All those “rules” or “thumbs of good practice” are (or should be) generally introduced in the architects education.

Thermal comfort Fanger discovered that the thermal comfort can be analysed by the complex equation: 2 M - W = R + C + E + Cres + Eres + K + S [W/m ]

Where in the components are: M = metabolic heat production W = mechanical energy (produced by activity) R = heat exchange of the body by radiation C = heat exchange of the body by convection E = heat exchange of the skin by evaporation

Cres = convective heat exchange by respiration (dry)

Eres = evaporative heat exchange by respiration (latent) K = transmission of heat by contact S = heat accumulation inside the body

Under standard conditions (e.g. an oce or a school) one considers in general only the comfort temperature Tc, being the mean value of the air temperature Ti and the mean ambiant radiation temperature Trm.

564 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture T + T T = ————i rm [K] c 2 The latest one can negatively be inuenced by thermal bridges and high-energy glas surfaces, and positively by oor or wall heating systems. TheThe latest analysis one can of comfortnegatively should be influenced be considered by thermal for dierent bridges andtypes high-energy of clothes, glas and for surfaces, and positively by floor or wall heating systems. winterThe analysis of summer of comfort conditions. should be considered for different types of clothes, and for winter of summer conditions.

The latest one can negatively be influenced by thermal bridges and high-energy glas surfaces, and positively by floor or wall heating systems. The analysis of comfort should be considered for different types of clothes, and for winter of summer conditions.

Fig. 1 Fig. 1. The table shows the European recommended limits for the PMV and PPD for the building categories A, B and C. The chart shows the usual statistical deviation The table shows the European recommended limits for the PMV and PPD for the building catego-

The building comfort should respect those recommendations on an energy- and money- ries A, B and C. The chart shows the usual statistical deviation. saving way, not only by well-performing installations, but also by passive measurements (e.g.compactness and better insulation to reduce heat loss in the winter, and passive Theventilation building and comfort sun screens should in the respect summer those to avoid recommendations exceeding the comfort on an temperature). energy- and Fig. 1. Themoney-saving table shows theway, European not only recommended by well-performing limits for the PMVinstallations, and PPD forbut the also building by passive categoriesmeasurements2.2. A, B Acousticand C. The (e.g.compactness comfortchart shows the usual and statisticalbetter insulation deviation to reduce heat loss in the winter, and passive ventilation and sun screens in the summer to avoid exceeding the The buildingThe comfort acoustic should comfort respect control those focuses recommendations on different types on of annoise energy- sources and : noise money- coming from comfort temperature). saving way, outsidenot only (A), by noise well-performing between rooms installations, (B), and noise but insidealso by a roompassive (C). measurements (e.g.compactnessThe direct and noise better transmission insulation fromto reduce outside heat is mainly loss ininfluenced the winter, by theand airtightness passive of the ventilation andAcousticbuilding sun screensand comfort the performance in the summer of thin to layers.avoid exceeding the comfort temperature).

2.2. AcousticThe acoustic comfort comfort control focuses on dierent types of noise sources: noise coming from outside (A), noise between rooms (B), and noise inside a room (C).

The acoustic comfortThe direct control noise focuses transmission on different from outside types ofis mainlynoise sourcesinuenced : noise by the coming airtightness from outside (A),of noise the building between and rooms the performance(B), and noise of thininside layers. a room (C). The direct noise transmission from outside is mainly influenced by the airtightness of the building and the performance of thin layers.

Fig. 2. As widely known, noise reduction levels through glass can be improved by the use of asymmetric glass thicknesses, see the graph.

Fig. 2 Fig. 2. As widely known, noise reduction levels through glass canAs widelybe improved known, by noise the use reduction of asymmetric levels through glass thicknesses,glass cansee be the improved graph. by the use of asymmetric Fig. 3. Horizontal sound transmission is usually glass thicknesses,resolved with see heavy the intermediate graph. walls or vibrating finishings, with attention to the indirect flanking sound transmission.

Lucien DenissenThe mute Belgium of the vertical sound transmission 565 between rooms requires floating floors.

Fig. 3. Horizontal sound transmission is usually resolved with heavy intermediate walls or vibrating finishings, with attention to the indirect flanking sound transmission. The mute of the vertical sound transmission between rooms requires floating floors.

Fig. 1. The table shows the European recommended limits for the PMV and PPD for the building categories A, B and C. The chart shows the usual statistical deviation

The building comfort should respect those recommendations on an energy- and money- saving way, not only by well-performing installations, but also by passive measurements (e.g.compactness and better insulation to reduce heat loss in the winter, and passive ventilation and sun screens in the summer to avoid exceeding the comfort temperature).

2.2. Acoustic comfort

The acoustic comfort control focuses on different types of noise sources : noise coming from outside (A), noise between rooms (B), and noise inside a room (C). The direct noise transmission from outside is mainly influenced by the airtightness of the building and the performance of thin layers.

Fig. 2. As widely known, noise reduction levels through glass can be improved by the use of asymmetric glass thicknesses, see the graph.

Fig. 3

Horizontal sound transmission is usually Fig. 3. Horizontal sound transmission is usually resolved with heavy intermediate walls or resolved with heavy intermediate walls or vibrating nishings, with attention to the vibrating finishings, with attention to the indirect flanking sound transmission. indirect anking sound transmission. The mute of the vertical sound transmission The mute of the vertical sound transmission between rooms requires floating floors. between rooms requires oating oors.

Room acoustics makes noise manageable or will facilitate performances. Sabine’s for- Roommula, acousticsusing absorption makes noise coe manageable cients of materials, or will facilitate simulates performances. the reverberation Sabine’s time, formula, us- usinging absorbing absorption materials. coefficients This of canmaterials, be compared simulates with the the reverberation standards. time, using absorbing materials. This can be compared with the standards. 0,161.V _ α .S Room acoustics makes noise manageable or will facilitate performances. Sabine’s______formula,with α = ______Σ i i T60 = . using absorption coefficients of materials, simulates the reverberation time, using S absorbingαwith S Σ i materials. This can be compared with the standards.

with

Fig. 4. Optimum reverberation times at 1kHz for a number of different room sizes and uses. Fig. 4 Optimum reverberation times at 1kHz for a number of di erent room sizes and uses. 2.3. Fresh air Fig. 4. Optimum reverberation times at 1kHz for a number of different room sizes and uses. TheFresh (a.o.) air by breath and devices polluted internal air has to be cleaned by permanent ventilation, provided by taking in (external) fresh air, in the winter preheated by a heat exchanger, using the warmth of the extracted air. So the efficiency will reach nearly 85 %. 2.3. Fresh air The (a.o.) by breath and devices polluted internal air has to be cleaned by permanent ventilation, provided by taking in (external) fresh air, in the winter preheated by a heat

The (a.o.) by breath and devices polluted internalexchanger, Fig.air has5. The using to Europeanbe the cleaned warmth convenience by permanentof the table extracted air. So the e ciency will reach nearly 85%. ventilation, provided by taking in (external) fresh air,limits in thethe inside winter pollution, preheated added byto thea heat exchanger, using the warmth of the extracted air. Soexisting the outsideefficiency pollution will ofreach the environment nearly 85 %. (which is ± 300 – 400 ppm CO2). Fig. 5 By convenience a certain flow of fresh air pro person is recommended for one of the The European convenience table limits the in- Fig. 5. The European convenience table four types of internal air quality. side pollution, added to the existing outside limits the inside pollution, added to the E.g. for IDA3 the CO2 measurement must pollution of the environment (which is ± 300 existing outside pollution of the environment not exceed 400 + 800 = 1200 ppm, recommending 29 m³/h pers. – 400 ppm CO2). (which is ± 300 – 400 ppm CO2). By convenience a certain flow of fresh air By convenience a certain ow of fresh air pro pro person is recommended for one of the person is recommended for one of the four The balanced ventilation system requires to keep four types of internal air quality. types of internal air quality. E.g. for IDA3 the CO2 measurement must the warmth inside, and does not permit leeks by not exceed 400 + 800 = 1200 ppm, crevices and cracks. E.g. for IDA3 the CO2 measurement must not recommending 29 m³/h pers. exceed 400 + 800 = 1200 ppm, recommending 29 m³/h pers. Fig. 6. The air tightness, proved by a blower door test, should be high : The balanced ventilation system requires to keep566 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture the warmth inside, and does not permit leeks by n 50 ≤ 0,6 h-1 for passive houses, n 50 ≤ 1,5 h-1 for low energy-houses, having a crevices and cracks. heat exchanger.

Fig. 6. The air tightness, proved by a blower door2.4. Light test, should be high : n 50 ≤ 0,6 h-1 for passive houses, Internal activities require enough illuminance, a good unified glare rating, and a CRI allowing n 50 ≤ 1,5 h-1 for low energy-houses, havingto a recognize colors. Beside artificial lightning much attention goes to the daylight factor, heat exchanger. telling which part (%) of the outside illuminance enters at a certain distance from the window.

2.4. Light

Internal activities require enough illuminance, a good unified glare rating, and a CRI allowing to recognize colors. Beside artificial lightning much attention goes to the daylight factor, telling which part (%) of the outside illuminance enters at a certain distance from the window.

Room acoustics makes noise manageable or will facilitate performances. Sabine’s formula, using absorption coefficients of materials, simulates the reverberation time, using absorbing materials. This can be compared with the standards.

with Room acoustics makes noise manageable or will facilitate performances. Sabine’s formula, using absorption coefficients of materials, simulates the reverberation time, using absorbing materials. This can be compared with the standards.

with

Fig. 4. Optimum reverberation times at 1kHz for a number of different room sizes and uses.

2.3. Fresh air

TheFig. (a.o.) 4. Optimum by breath reverberation and devices times at polluted 1kHz for ainternal number ofair different has to room be cleaned sizes and byuses. permanent ventilation, provided by taking in (external) fresh air, in the winter preheated by a heat exchanger, using the warmth of the extracted air. So the efficiency will reach nearly 85 %. 2.3. Fresh air

The (a.o.) Fig.by breath5. The European and devices convenience polluted table internal air has to be cleaned by permanent limits the inside pollution, added to the ventilation,existing provided outside by pollutiontaking inof the(external) environment fresh air, in the winter preheated by a heat exchanger,(which using is ±the 300 warmth – 400 ppm of COthe2 ).extracted air. So the efficiency will reach nearly 85 %. By convenience a certain flow of fresh air pro person is recommended for one of the four types of internal air quality. Fig. 5. The European convenience table E.g. for IDA3 the CO measurement must limits the inside pollution, added2 to the The balancednot exceed ventilation 400 + 800 = system1200 ppm, requires to keep the warmth inside, and does not existing outside pollution of the environment recommending 29 m³/h pers. permit(which leeks is ± 300 by –crevices 400 ppm andCO2). cracks. By convenience a certain flow of fresh air pro person is recommended for one of the Thefour balanced types of internal ventilation air quality. system requires to keep theE. g.warmth for IDA3 inside, the CO 2and measurement does not must permit leeks by not exceed 400 + 800 = 1200 ppm, crevicesrecommending and cracks. 29 m³/h pers.

TheFig. balanced 6 Fig. 6. ventilation The air tightness, system proved requires by a blower to keep door test, should be high : the warmth inside, and does not permit leeks by The air ntightness, 50 ≤ 0,6 h-1 proved for passive by a houses, blower door test, crevices and cracks. should ben 50high: ≤ 1,5 h-1 for low energy-houses, having a heat exchanger. n50 ≤ 0,6 h-1 for passive houses, n ≤Fig. 1,5 6. h-1The forair tightness,low energy-houses, proved by a blower having door a heat 50 test, should be high : 2.4. Light exchanger.n ≤ 0,6 h-1 for passive houses, 50 n 50 ≤ 1,5 h-1 for low energy-houses, having a Internalheat exchanger. activities require enough illuminance, a good unified glare rating, and a CRI allowing Lightto recognize colors. Beside artificial lightning much attention goes to the daylight factor, telling which part (%) of the outside illuminance enters at a certain distance from the window. 2.4.Internal Light activities require enough illuminance, a good uni ed glare rating, and a CRI

allowing to recognize colors. Beside arti cial lightning much attention goes to the Internal activities require enough illuminance, a good unified glare rating, and a CRI allowing to daylightrecognize factor, colors. telling Beside which artificial part lightning (%) of the much outside attention illuminance goes to the enters daylight at a factor,certain dis- tellingtance which from part the (%) window. of the outside illuminance enters at a certain distance from the window.

Fig. 7 The Kruitho diagram uses the illumi- nanceFig. 7. and the Kruithoffthe color diagram temperature uses the of the illuminance and the color temperature of the lamp.lamp. ZoneZone AA wil give give a warma warm atmosphere, atmosphere, zone B a neutral atmosphere, zone C a cold zoneatmosphere. B a neutral atmosphere, zone C a cold atmosphere. The illuminance can be reached by natural or artificial lightning Constructions with mirrors, redirecting glass, and reflecting panels or tubes can prolong the naturalThe way illuminance by which canlight becomes reached in. Those by natural spatial or resolutions arti cial lightning. has to be introduced in an early stage of design. Constructions with mirrors, redirecting glass, and re ecting panels or tubes can prolong the natural way by which light comes in. Those spatial resolutions has to be intro- 2.5. duced Safety in an early stage of design.

People need to feel safe, mainly in housing projects, but also in public buildings and at their work. Active installations like detection and alarm can reduce the consequences of burglary and fire, supplemented by (automatic) extinguishing and smoke extraction systems. Lucien Denissen Belgium 567

Fig. 8. Before the calamity occurs, passive measurements can “reinforce” the building : compartments, protecting wall- and door constructions, enough, well placed and well dimensioned and good indicated escape exits / staircases

Projects following the general principles and the local legislation can allow people to escape from disaster and prepare the building to resist possible danger.

Fig. 9. A safe environment includes ergonomic comfort, especially for the elderly and disabled persons, who deserve an adapted private living space and accessible public areas. This universal design requires a custom procedure.

3. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE : HOW TO SIMULATE ?

So the first step to integrate comfort and health in a project is to know the principles, the rules, and standard details. According to this method, long time working and future architects introduced the “best practice solutions” to deliver a good building.

Fig. 7. the Kruithoff diagram uses the illuminance and the color temperature of the lamp. Fig. 7.Zone the Kruithoff A wil give diagram a warm uses atmosphere, the zone B illuminancea neutral and atmosphere, the color temperature zone C a coldof the lamp. atmosphere. Zone A wil give a warm atmosphere, zone B Thea neutral illuminance atmosphere, can zone be reachedC a cold by natural or artificial lightning Constructionsatmosphere. with mirrors, redirecting glass, and reflecting panels or tubes can prolong the natural way by which light comes in. Those spatialSafety resolutions has to be introduced in an The illuminanceearly stage canof design. be reached by natural or artificial lightning Constructions with mirrors, redirecting glass, and reflectingPeople panelsneed toor feeltubes safe, can mainly prolong in the housing projects, but also in public buildings and natural way by which light comes in. Those spatial resolutions has to be introduced in an at their work. early2.5. stage of Safety design. Active installations like detection and alarm can reduce the consequences of People need to feel safe, mainly in housing projects,burglary but alsoand in re, public supplemented buildings and by at (automatic) their extinguishing and smoke extraction 2.5. work. Safety systems. Active installations like detection and alarm can reduce the consequences of burglary and Peoplefire, need supplemented to feel safe, by mainly (automatic) in housing extinguishing projects, andbut alsosmoke in public extraction buildings systems. and at their Fig. 8 work. Active installations like detection and alarm can reduce the consequences of burglary and Before the calamity occurs, passive fire, supplementedFig. 8. Before by the(automatic) calamity occurs, extinguishing passive and smoke extraction systems. measurements can “reinforce” the build- measurements can “reinforce” the building : ing: compartments, protecting wall- and compartments, protecting wall- and door door constructions, enough, well placed constructions, enough, well placed and well Fig. 8. Before the calamity occurs, passive and well dimensioned and good indicat- measurementsdimensioned can and“reinforce” good indicated the building escape : exits / compartments,staircases protecting wall- and door ed escape exits / staircases constructions, enough, well placed and well Projectsdimensioned following and good the indicated general escape principles exits / and the local legislation can allow people to escape staircases from disaster and prepare the building to resist possibleProjects danger.following the general principles and the local legislation can allow people to

Projects following the general principles and the localescape legislation from can disaster allow andpeople prepare to escape the building to resist possible danger. from disaster and prepare the building to resist possible danger. Fig. 9

A safe environment includes ergonomic Fig. 9. A safe environment includes ergonomic comfort, comfort, especially for the elderly and dis- especially for the elderly and disabled persons, who deserve an abled persons, who deserve an adapted adapted private living space and accessible public areas. private living space and accessible public This universal design requires a custom procedure. Fig. 9. A safe environment includes ergonomic comfort, areas. especially for the elderly and disabled persons, who deserve an adapted private living space and accessible public areas. This universal design requires a custom This universal design requires a custom procedure. procedure.

3. FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE : HOW TO SIMULATE ?

So the first step to integrate comfort and health Fromin a project Theory is to to know Practice: the principles How ,to the Simulate? 3. rules, FROM and THEORY standard TOdetails. PRACTICE According : HOW to this TO method, SIMULATE long time? working and future architects introduced the “best practice solutions” to deliverSo a thegood rst building. step to integrate comfort and health in a project is to know the principles, So the first step to integrate comfort and health in a projectthe rules, is to and know standard the principles details., the According to this method, long time working and fu- rules, and standard details. According to this method,ture long architects time working introduced and future the architects “best practice solutions” to deliver a good building. introduced the “best practice solutions” to deliver a good building.

This assessment was not always easy and sometimes ended with the pretty-ugly dilemma, using terms as “why-therefore”. Now architectural quality should be made clear, as well in education as in commands in real live.

That’s why professors, in discussion with students in architecture, need to exchange methods that allow to control at least the technical aspects of the project. So let’s have a look on them. We do not track the above introduction list with comfort criteria but give an overview of the di erent ways the comfort can be identi ed. At the same time the most comfort criteria are discussed in these examples.

568 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture This assessment was not always easy and sometimes ended with the pretty-ugly dilemma, using terms as "why-therefore". Now architectural quality should be made clear, as well in Thiseducation assessment as in commands was not always in real easy live. and sometimes ended with the pretty-ugly dilemma, using terms as "why-therefore". Now architectural quality should be made clear, as well in educationThat’s why as professors, in commands in discussion in real live. with students in architecture, need to exchange methods that allow to control at least the technical aspects of the project. So let’s have a look This assessment was not always easy and sometimes ended with the pretty-ugly dilemma, on them. usingThat’s terms why professors, as "why-therefore". in discussion Now witharchitectural students qualityin architecture, should be need made to clear, exchange as well in We do not track the above introduction list with comfort criteria but give an overview of the Thiseducationmethods assessment that as inallow wascommands tonot control always in atreal easy least live. and the sometimestechnical aspects ended ofwith the the project. pretty-ugly So let’s dilemma, have a look different ways the comfort can be identified. using on them.terms as "why-therefore". Now architectural quality should be made clear, as well in At the same time the most comfort criteria are discussed in these examples. educationThat’sWe do whynot as trackinprofessors, commands the above in indiscussion introductionreal live. with list students with comfort in architecture, criteria but needgive anto overviewexchange of the

methodsdifferent waysthat allow the comfort to control can at be least identified. the technical aspects of the project. So let’s have a look

That’sonAt thethem. why same professors, time the inmost discussion comfort withcriteria students are discussed in architecture, in these need examples. to exchange 3.1. NO SCALE DRAWING : schedule (NSD) methodsWe do thatnot trackallow the to controlabove introductionat least the technicallist with comfort aspects criteria of the butproject. give Soan let’soverview have ofa lookthe ondifferent them. ways the comfort can be identified.

WeAt3.1. do the not same NO track SCALE time the theabove DRAWING most introduction comfort : schedule criteria list with are(NSD) comfort discussed criteria in these but give examples. an overview of the different ways the comfort can be identified.

At the same time the most comfort criteria are discussed in these examples. No Scale Drawing: schedule (NSD) 3.1. NO SCALE DRAWING : schedule (NSD)

3.1. NOFig. SCALE10. Example DRAWING : Schedule :for schedule the re-use (NSD)of rainwater

Fig. 10

Example:Fig. 10. ScheduleExample : Schedulefor the re-use for the of re-use rainwater. of rainwater

3.2. 2-D DRAWING : (2-D)

Fig. 10. Example : Schedule for the re-use of rainwater

3 .2. 2-D DRAWING : (2-D) Fig. 10. Example : Schedule for the re-use of rainwater

3 .2. 2-D DRAWING : (2-D)

2-D Drawing: (2-D)

3.2 . 2Fig.-D 11. D ExampleRAWING :section : (through2-D) the Infrax-office at Hoboken (B) showing the free cooling by night ventilation

Fig.Fig. 11 11. Example :section through the Infrax-office at Hoboken (B) showing the free cooling by night ventilation

Example:section through the Infrax-oce at Hoboken

3.3.(B) showing Free-Hand the free 3-D cooling DRAWING by night : sketch ventilation. (FH 3-D) Fig. 11. Example :section through the Infrax-office at

Hoboken (B) showing the free cooling by night ventilation 3.3. Free-Hand 3-D DRAWING : sketch (FH 3-D) Fig. 11. Example :section through the Infrax-office at

Hoboken (B) showing the free cooling by night ventilation

3.3. Free-Hand 3-D DRAWING : sketch (FH 3-D)

3.3. Free-Hand Free-HandFig. 12. Arch. 3-D 3-D Willem DRAWING: DRAWING Jan Neutelings : sketch sketch showing (FH (FH the 3-D) 3-D)tectonic of

an apartment building in Antwerp.

Fig. 12. Arch. Willem Jan Neutelings showing the tectonic of

an apartment building in Antwerp.

Fig. 12

3.4. 3-D DRAWING : e.g. REVIT (3-D) Arch.Fig. Willem 12. Arch. Jan Willem Neutelings Jan Neutelings showing showing the tectonic the tectonic of of

an apartmentan apartment building building in in Antwerp. Antwerp. 3.4. 3-D DRAWING : e.g. REVIT (3-D) Fig. 12. Arch. Willem Jan Neutelings showing the tectonic of

an Fig.apartment 13. The building Health inCare Antwerp. Concept ® (HCC) of RENSON for care centres: outdoor blinds + 3.4. natural 3-D DRAWINGair supply & mechanical : e.g. REVIT extraction (3-D) Fig. 13. The Health Care Concept ® (HCC) of RENSON for care centres: outdoor blinds + 3.4. 3-Dnatural DRAWING air supply &: mechanicale.g. REVIT extraction (3-D) 3-D Drawing: e.g. REVIT (3-D) Fig. 13. The Health Care Concept ® (HCC) of RENSON for care centres: outdoor blinds + natural air supply & mechanical extraction Fig. 13. The Health Care Concept ® (HCC) of RENSON for care centres: outdoor blinds + Fig.natural 13 air supply & mechanical extraction The Health Care Concept ® (HCC) of RENSON for care centres: outdoor blinds + natural air supply & mechanical extraction.

Lucien Denissen Belgium 569 3.5. 3-D DRAWING + INTEGRATED QUANTITY SURVEY (3-D + QS)

Fig. 14. Quantities for cost calculation can be generated by intervention of a separate calculation programme or by a direct link of the drawing with the calculation.

It must be admitted that, due to lack of time or support, in general only the basic price calculation in the schools of architecture is explained. 3.5. 3-D 3-D Drawing DRAWING + +Integrated INTEGRATED Quantity QUANTITY SURVEY (3-D + QS)

Survey (3-D + QS) 3.5. Fig. 3-D 14. DRAWING Quantities for + cost INTEGRATED calculation can QUANTITYbe SURVEY (3-D + QS) generated by intervention of a separate calculation programme or by a direct link of the drawing with the calculation. Fig.Fig. 14 14. Quantities for cost calculation can be generated by intervention of a separate calculation It mustQuantitiesprogramme be admitted foror by cost that, a direct calculation due link to of lack the can drawing of be time gener- with or the 3.6. MAN MADE 3-D scale MAQUETTEsupport,atedcalculation. (MMM) in by general intervention only theof a basic separate price calculation calculationprogramme in the or schools by a direct of architecture link of the drawing is Itexplained. mustwith be the admitted calculation. that, due to lack of time or support, in general only the basic price The model can be made on scale in gluedcalculation in the schools of architecture is cardboard or balsa wood, or can be drawnexplained. Itwith must be3-D admitted that, due to lack of time or support, in general only the basic price calculation in the schools of architecture is explained. superimposed floors. 3.6. MAN MADE 3-D scale MAQUETTE (MMM)

The model can be made on scale in glued 3.6.cardboard Man MAN Madeor MADEbalsa 3-D wood, 3-D scale scale or Maquette can MAQUETTE be drawn (MMM) with (MMM) 3-D superimposed floors. The modelThe model can be can made be made on scale on scalein glued in glued cardboard cardboard or balsa or balsa wood, wood, or can or be can drawn be drawn with 3-D superimposed with 3-D superimposed floors. oors.

Fig. 15. Maket for a school at Mekelle (Ethiopia), Fig. 15. Maket for a school at Mekelle (Ethiopia), Fig.showing 15 the learning spaces with natural ventilation from both sides and the solar panels on the porch to showing the learning spaces with natural ventilation Maketaccess for them. a school at Mekelle (Ethiopia), show- Fig.XV Studio, 15. Maket arch. for Xavier a school Vilalta at Mekelle a.o. (Ethiopia), from both sides and the solar panels on the porchingshowing the learningto the learning spaces spaces with with natural natural ventilation ventilation from both sides and the solar panels on the access them. from both sides and the solar panels on the porch to porchaccess to them. access them. XV Studio, arch. Xavier Vilalta a.o. XV Studio, arch. Xavier Vilalta a.o. XV Studio, arch. Xavier Vilalta a.o. 3.7. MECHANICAL 3-D MAQUETTE (MechM)

Some agencies or schools have a 3-D 3.7.printer Mechanical for MECHANICAL the mechanical 3-D Maquette3-D production MAQUETTE (MechM) of a (MechM) (partial) spatial image. Some Some agencies agencies or schools or schools have havea 3-D a 3-D printer for the mechanical production of a (par- Fig. 16. Ex. Model of the Telford’s 3.7. MECHANICAL 3-D MAQUETTE printer (MechM)tial) for spatial the mechanical image. production of a (partial)Craigellachie spatial image. Bridge (1815), made by Gilberts3d, for the Edinburgh Museum.

Fig. 16. Ex. Model of the Telford’s Some agencies or schools have a 3-D Craigellachie Bridge (1815), made by Gilberts3d, for the Edinburgh Museum. printer for the mechanical production of a 3.8. complete 3-D MAQUETTE full size on scale (part of the (partial) spatial image. building)

3.8. complete 3-D MAQUETTE full size on scale (part of the Fig. 16. Ex. Model of the Telford’s building)

Craigellachie Bridge (1815), made by Gilberts3d, for the Edinburgh Museum. Fig. 17. Section of a facade + roof On building fairs manufacturers often present displays to show important parts of a construction. Exercises during the training of architects can be accompanied Fig.with 16 limited (rather experimental) realisations, but ask for an extensive Fig. 17. Section of a facade + roof Ex.infrastructure. Model of the Telford’s Craigellachie Bridge (1815), made by Gilberts3d, for the Edinburgh Museum. On building fairs manufacturers often present displays to show important parts of a construction. Exercises during the training of architects can be accompanied with limited (rather experimental) realisations, but ask for an extensive 570infrastructure. ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture

3.8. complete 3-D MAQUETTE full size on scale (part of the building)

Fig. 17. Section of a facade + roof On building fairs manufacturers often present displays to show important parts of a construction. Exercises during the training of architects can be accompanied with limited (rather experimental) realisations, but ask for an extensive infrastructure.

3.5. 3-D DRAWING + INTEGRATED QUANTITY SURVEY (3-D + QS)

Fig. 14. Quantities for cost calculation can be generated by intervention of a separate calculation programme or by a direct link of the drawing with the calculation.

It must be admitted that, due to lack of time or support, in general only the basic price calculation in the schools of architecture is explained.

3.6. MAN MADE 3-D scale MAQUETTE (MMM)

The model can be made on scale in glued cardboard or balsa wood, or can be drawn with 3-D superimposed floors.

Fig. 15. Maket for a school at Mekelle (Ethiopia), showing the learning spaces with natural ventilation from both sides and the solar panels on the porch to access them. XV Studio, arch. Xavier Vilalta a.o.

3.7. MECHANICAL 3-D MAQUETTE (MechM)

Some agencies or schools have a 3-D printer for the mechanical production of a (partial) spatial image.

Fig. 16. Ex. Model of the Telford’s Craigellachie Bridge (1815), made by Gilberts3d, for the Edinburgh Museum.

Complete 3-D Maquette full size on scale 3.8. complete(part 3-D ofMAQUETTE the building) full size on scale (part of the building)

Fig. 17

Section of a facade + roof. Fig. 17. SectionOn buildingof a facade fairs + manufacturers roof often present displays to show impor- On building fairstant manufacturersparts of a construction. often present Exercises displays during to the show training important of architects parts of a construction.can Exercises be accompanied during the with training limited of (ratherarchitects experimental) can be accompanied realisations, with limited (ratherbut ask experimental) for an extensive realisations, infrastructure. but ask for an extensive infrastructure.

Calculation (C) , comparative calculation = optimisation (O) The meaning of a design in many areas can be converted into numbers. E.g. energy management, acoustics, and cost price are equivalent evaluation criteria for the client as the spatial format. In general the results wil appear in tables and charts.

- In the Belgian (Flemish) legislation new buildings must be characterised by maximum values for two energy levels: - the rst considers only insulation and compactness and gives the passive energy performance level (of the skin), - the second converts also the characteristics of the heating and ventilation installations and the sun blinds, giving the total energy performance level. - From 2012 on also has to be calculated: the energy consumption for heating, cooling and hot water (result = in kWh/m² per year), that integrates better the size of the building.

- Harder to put together are the ecological labels. BREEAM e.g. contributes so called ’environmental section weightings’ to: management, energy, transport, water, materials, waste, land use & ecology, pollution. Each section get credits, contributing to the building’s overall score.

- Dynamic simulations are even harder to make, but e.g. can control summer comfort. The method is based on calculating the variable temperature , and the hours that the comfort limit is exceeded, taking into account the windows performance (glass and shade devices).

- Acoustic calculation: reverberation time, direct noise transmission

- The (quite easy) calculation of ventilation ow rates, based on the human need for fresh air, can learn the designer to overview the spatial eects of the dimensions of the tubes, which are part of the interior, and even sometimes dominate it.

Lucien Denissen Belgium 571 3.9. CALCULATION (C) , comparative calculation = optimisation (O)

The meaning of a design in many areas can be converted into numbers. E.g. energy management, acoustics, and cost price are equivalent evaluation criteria for the client as the spatial format. In general the results wil appear in tables and charts.

- In the Belgian (Flemish) legislation new buildings must be characterised by maximum values for two energy levels : ° the first considers only insulation and compactness and gives the passive energy performance level (of the skin), ° the second converts also the characteristics of the heating and ventilation installations and the sun blinds, giving the total energy performance level. ° From 2012 on also has to be calculated: the energy consumption for heating, cooling and hot water (result = in kWh/m² per year), that integrates better the size of the building.

- Harder to put together are the ecological labels. BREEAM e.g. contributes so called ’environmental section weightings’ to: management, energy, transport, water, materials, waste, land use & ecology, pollution. Each section get credits, contributing to the building’s overall score.

- Dynamic simulations are even harder to make, but e.g. can control summer comfort. The method is based on calculating the variable temperature , and the hours that the comfort limit is exceeded, taking into account the windows performance (glass and shade devices).

- Acoustic calculation : reverberation time, direct noise transmission

- The (quite easy) calculation of ventilation flow rates, based on the human need for fresh air, can learn the designer to overview the spatial effects of the dimensions of the tubes, which are part of the interior, and even sometimes dominate it.

3.10. Simulation: SIMULATION calculation : calculation + visualisation + visualisation by a by (graphical) a (graphical) display display (S) or (S) on or a on scale a scale model

BuildersBuilders and architects and architects often oftenprefer prefer graphical graphical results results above above numbers. numbers. Di erent software - Differenttools (Dialux, software Ecotect, tools Daysim) (Dialux, can Ecotect, simulate Daysim) daylight can and simulate arti cial lightingdaylight, based and artificialon the lightingre ection, based of the on surrounding the reflection surfaces, of the surroundingthe windows surfaces, and their the protection windows againstand their the protectionsun. A workplace against should the sun. have a minimum daylight factor of 2% (optimum 5%). A workplace should have a minimum daylight factor of 2% (optimum 5%).

Fig. 18. The (by Radiance) calculated illuminances can be converted to a a visual image of the brightness. Fig. 18 The (by Radiance) calculated illuminances can be converted to a a visual image of the brightness.

Fig. 19

The software result could possibly Fig. 19. The software result could be compared with a simulation on a Fig.possibly 19. The be compared software result with a could simulation onpossibly a maquette, be compared made with with a a special simulation maquette, made with a special equip- equipment.Theon a maquette, madepicture with shows a special the lab of ment. The picture shows the lab of the equipment.The picture shows the lab of the Belgian Building Research Institute Belgian Building Research Institute WTCB.the Belgian Building Research Institute WTCB. WTCB.

Fig. 20 Fig. 20. The ultimate goal for the designerFig. 20. The is to ultimate get a picture goal for of the The ultimate goal for the designer is to availabledesigner isnatural to get light a picture in an ofinterior the and get a picture of the available natural toavailable save energy natural thanks light in to an the interior use of and daylight.to save energy thanks to the use of light in an interior and to save energy daylight. thanks to the use of daylight. Ref. Axioma, Waregem (B) ProjectRef. Axioma, Callens-EMK, Waregem Waregem (B) Ref. Axioma, Waregem (B). Project Callens-EMK, Waregem Project Callens-EMK, Waregem.

3.12. TESTING THE BUILDING 572 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 3.12. TESTING THE BUILDING Some construction companies develop a prototype building and do comparative tests on the basisSome of construction varying implementation companies develop details. aSome prototype possibilities building : and do comparative tests on the basis of varying implementation details. Some possibilities : - Labtest on materials (TM), eventually in situ (TMS) - Labtest on materials (TM), eventually in situ (TMS)

- an infrared camera scan of the building (IRS), which can - anprove infrared the presence camera scanof thermal of the bridgesbuilding (IRS), which can (canprove as the well presence be simulated of thermal by software bridges like Trisco) (can as well be simulated by software like Trisco) Fig. 21. Coloured camera image showing wall temperatures Fig. 21. Coloured camera image showing wall temperatures

- sound level measurements (SL) - sound level measurements (SL)

- determination of the radiation temperature, humidity, dust, - determination of the radiation temperature, humidity, dust, pollution (CO2), electromagnetic fields. (CIC) pollution (CO2), electromagnetic fields. (CIC) Fig. 22. Combined indoor climate device Fig. 22. Combined indoor climate device

Of course those tests can give usefull information in the case of anOf courseexisting those building tests to canbe retrofit. give usefull information in the case of an existing building to be retrofit.

Fig. 19. The software result could possibly be compared with a simulation on a maquette, made with a special equipment.The picture shows the lab of thethe BelgianBelgian BuildingBuilding ResearchResearch InstituteInstitute WTCB.

Fig. 20. The ultimate goal for the designer is to get a picture of the available natural light in an interior and toto savesave energyenergy thanksthanks toto thethe useuse ofof daylight.

Ref. Axioma, Waregem (B) Project Callens-EMK, Waregem

Testing the Building

3.12. TESTING THESome BUILDING construction companies develop a prototype building and do comparative tests on the basis of varying implementation details. Some possibilities: Some construction companies develop a prototype building and do comparative tests on the basis of varying implementation - Labtest on details. materials Some (TM), eventuallypossibilities in situ : (TMS).

- Labtest on materials - an infrared (TM), eventuallycamera scan in ofsitu the (TMS) building (IRS), which can prove the presence of thermal bridges (can as well be simulated by software like - an infrared cameraTrisco). scan of the building (IRS), which can prove the presence of thermal bridges (can as well be simulated by software like Trisco) Fig. 21 Fig. 21. Coloured cameraColoured image camera showing image wall showing temperatures wall temperatures.

- sound level measurements (SL)

- sound level measurements - determination (SL) of the radiation temperature, hu-

midity, dust, pollution (CO2), electromagnetic elds. (CIC) - determination of the radiation temperature, humidity, dust, pollution (CO2), electromagnetic fields. (CIC)

Fig. 22. Combined indoor climate device

Of course those tests can give usefull information in the case of an existing building to beFig. retrofit. 22 Combined indoor climate device.

Of course those tests can give usefull information in the case of an existing building to be retro t.

Comfort and Health: Assessment of Projects

How to appreciate the architects result ?

Architecture is usually judged by a jury, both during the education as during the professional practice, e.g. as a result of a competition. It relies on the design drawings, calculations, simulations, the comments, the reports.

Lucien Denissen Belgium 573 4. COMFORT and HEALTH : ASSESSMENT of PROJECTS

How to appreciate the architects result ?

Evaluators make for themselves a synthetic imageture ofto the determine quality of their the architecture nal score. toOne gets easily in the temptation to let the result determine their final score. One gets easily in thebe dominatedtemptation to by let certain the result criteria. be dominated by certain criteria. For a clear view one can assign a weight and individual points to the various crite- For a clear view one can assign a weight and individualria, to compose points toa weightedthe various average criteria, for to the nal score. compose a weighted average for the final score.

Fig. 23 Fig. 23. Weighting architectural quality. Weighting architectural quality.

The analysis of the table can show the topics The analysis of the table can show the top- of the exercise as well as the qualities of the ics of the exercise as well as the qualities of architect. the architect.

Critics will say that architecture is more than the sum of weighted parameters. One can still compare the calculated final scoreCritics with the will overall say that image. architecture Without isweighting more than it, the sum of weighted parameters. the chance is big that important qualities, like comfort,One are can not still included. compare the calculated nal score with the overall image. Without weighting it, the chance is big that important qualities, like comfort, are not included.

5. CONCLUSION Conclusion Does the simulation of comfort help to design a better building ? For example : Does the simulation of comfort help to design a better building? For example: - Does a calculated approach of the energy consumption insure a comfortable indoor climate? - Can a simulation of the light clarify the perception - Does ofa calculatedthe “promenade approach architecturale”? of the energy consumption insure a comfortable in- So, is the simulation of comfort necessary to designdoor a better climate? building ? No, but they do offer opportunities to illustrate those - Can forms a ofsimulation comfort. of the light clarify the perception of the “promenade architecturale”? The architect (including those in training) disposes more and more of a detailed list of requirements and calculation & simulation methodsSo, is inthe order simulation to justify of the comfort design. necessary to design a better building? In advance he/she can use some tools to prove whether the design complies with a number No, but they do oer opportunities to illustrate those forms of comfort. of scientific and legal laws. If the simulation demonstrates some technical weaknesses, it is time for a change. The architect (including those in training) disposes more and more of a detailed list of Also the view on comfort can influence the veryrequirements beginning of theand design. calculation & simulation methods in order to justify the design. To make e.g. a sustainable building it is not enoughIn to advance change he/shesome thicknesses, can use some some tools to prove whether the design complies with requirements will influence the buildings shape.a number of scienti c and legal laws. If the simulation demonstrates some technical weaknesses, it is time for a change. Are simulations a guarantee for success ? Even the performances of “the better architecture” are rigorously assessed in practice. Also the view on comfort can inuence the very beginning of the design. Simulations can help to ensure that stars do not fall from their pedestals, but cannot guarantee success. Science and intuition must cooperate.To make e.g. a sustainable building it is not enough to change some thicknesses, some requirements will inuence the buildings shape. But even if the simulation is positive and the building seems in order with the rules, the user can experience insurmountable lacks. Are simulations a guarantee for success ? Even the performances of “the better architecture” are rigorously assessed in practice.

574 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Simulations can help to ensure that stars do not fall from their pedestals, but cannot guarantee success. Science and intuition must cooperate.

But even if the simulation is positive and the building seems in order with the rules, the user can experience insurmountable lacks. A design with no soul or no quality will not get better after simulation: it remains important that the architect has enough latent knowledge on many domains, when starting his design. To transcend the mediocre, students should be given a luggage that enables them to develop their talents. The result only becomes Architecture (capitalized) when knowledge is served with talent.

References for gures

Fig. 1 www.daidalospeutz.be/nl/referenties/publicaties/VTDV02.pdf Fig. 2 “Geluidsisolatie van vensters”, WTCB tijdschrift 98/1, Bart Ingelaere Fig. 3 http://www.ancc.co.za/eLearn/noise/Demo%20lesson/anking_sound_transmission.htm Fig. 4 http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/r/e/reverberation%20time/source.html Fig. 5 Cam l Farr, Segment brochure EN 13779:2007 – European standard Fig. 6 http://www.fertighaus-bauen.info/energiesparhaus/blower-door-test.html Fig. 7 “Code van goede praktijk voor Binnenverlichting”, Belgisch Instituut voor de Verlichting- skunde, www. ibe-biv.be Fig. 8 http://www.bouwbesluit.net/2011/06/28/vluchtsystematiek-eenduidiger-en-eenvoudiger-3/ Fig. 9 www.meegroeiwonen.info/ Fig. 10 “Waterwegwijzer bouwen en verbouwen”, D/2010/6871/004, Vlaamse Milieumaatschappij + VITO, Cattoor en Schiettecatte Fig. 11 http://www.lne.be/themas/duurzaam-bouwen-en-wonen/de-overheid-geeft-het-voor- beeld/uitmuntende-voorbeeldgebouwen; choose: IVEG Fig. 12 http://www.desingel.be/dadetail.orb?da_id=1653 Fig. 13 http://assets.renson100.com/promo/hcc/index-nl.php Fig. 14 http://www.hoskenparks.co.uk/ Fig. 15 http://xvstudio.com/projects/090818%20WebSite%20melakucenter/eng-melakucenter. html Fig. 16 Own photo, ref. http://www.gilberts3d.com Fig. 17 http://www.koramic.com Fig. 18 “Daylight in education”, presentation at the Velux Daylight symposium - may 7, 2007, Magali Bodart Civ.Eng., PhD, Architecture et Climat, U.C.Louvain Fig. 19 “Mechanische zon”, WTCB dossier nr. 3, 4e trimester 2005 Fig. 20 http://www.axioma.be/nl/realisaties/p/realisatie/kantoren-en-scholen/callens-emk Fig. 21 http://www.thermogra emessung.com/Thermogra e/Gebaeudethermogra e.html Fig. 22 MANUALE.BabucAMITA.pdf? http://www.green-lab.it/ Fig. 23 Own table

Lucien Denissen Belgium 575

Stella Dourtme

Architectural Association School London UK Prototypical Matter: Digital Plaster Materiality acquires a catalytic position in formative design processes as far as it is incorporated from the beginning within a design based form- nding process. A number of advances have been made in the casting of complex architectural form that can now be extended into generative computational processes due to advances in technology and material science. A new “digital materiality” can now be explored that offers fundamental insights into contemporary design processes and their implementation within architectural practice. “Digital Plaster” a Masters’ Thesis project undertaken by the team CTRL M1 in the Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association (2010-2011)4 show cases the development of such a methodology that attempts to develop an “Architectural machine” 7 through the development of a digital design process that incorporates fabrication and structural form nding processes within exible formwork plaster casting. This research removes what were existing hurdles in the fabrication and design of complex formed cast architecture and recasts design as a dynamic and systemic process that incorporates digital and analogue constraints as design opportunities. The research proposes an architectural system that embodies design intent within dynamic forms that are derived from emergent material behaviour. The complexity of the resulting forms reects the circular casualty the methodology implements between analogue and digital experimentation, where both material investigation and digital algorithmic design inform each other in a continuous process of feedback. An architecture de ned through a dynamic composition of processes enables architecture to be conceived as a complex system capable of responding with innovative and varied context-dependent design results. Architects must engage with numerous elds of expertise and synthesise their respective constraints within each project. Embedding such constraints within a dynamic design process would empower architectural design to make these constraints intrinsic to design intent. Self-determined functions of matter driven by physical forces exist within all material fabrication processes and therefore these constraints can also play a signi cant role to this. Such prototypical design strategies that negotiate the boundaries between matter and non-linear formative processes are able to describe and ascertain the architects’ emotive intent to create unprecedented qualities of space. Thus, this paper investigates the relationships embedded in the nature of matter both in analogue and digital formative methodologies.

Research in Context A design methodology The body of this research encompasses a series of research strands including material experiments, computational simulation of material behaviour and algorithmic intelligence of a self-organising system. Based on the material study of cast plaster in exible fabric formwork this research explores a digitally controlled design and fabrication process that re nes the process of making by building its results on a time based deployment to a phase changing material, investigating a system of formation and spatial con guration informed by material behaviour. Analogue experimentation is the starting point, where a set of parameters is derived from fabric patterns and material attributes. Digital simulation is the key that enables the evaluation and re nement of the pattern, through various techniques.

578 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture An Architecture machine According to Deleuze and Guattari5, a living organism that grows without genealogy has the rules for growth embedded in each part of its system; hence, it’s possible to guess the next step after stopping the growth at a particular time. This perception about evolution has been used in the design process in form of a diagram that could evolve according to its own rules and also in response to the environment. Architects such as Peter Eisenman or Greg Lynn have employed this way of design process. How- ever, they stop the process in a particular moment in order to create a static architectural form, i.e. there is a split between process and materiality because it becomes in a concrete moment and is no longer responding while the process is evolving continuously. In order to break that split, Negroponte8 introduces the concept of the “architectural machine”, incorporating what the computational tools could change in the design process, turning the conventional space into a computational space. The power of computation enables architects to design dynamic objects where the architectural object responds instantaneously to the changes of the process. However, the components are restricted in terms of movement, hence, the system is conditioned not only because of the nature of the material, but also because of the limitations of technology. In “Digital Plaster” this dynamic approach is depicted through “multi- scalar patterning” 2 which is con gured through dierent scales of processes like an “architecture machine” that does not build a static form but a non-ended digital materiality.

The prototypical system strands The aim of this research constitutes the development of a digitally controlled design and fabrication process that introduces the notion of a time-based deployment. Dig- ital Plaster functions within dierent scales of the process as mentioned above, where patterning constitutes a method to map the genotype into a phenotype. The body of this research encompasses a series of strands including material self-organization, computational simulation of material behavior and algorithmic intelligence expressed as a collective behavior of a self -organizing system. Pattern constitutes a language, which amalgamates dierent types of communication between the architect and the machine throughout the whole process (Fig. 1). Through its embedded intelligence, the system has the capacity to continuously negotiate the dierent strands of research and evolve accordingly. The integration of these conditions into this design system presents the process with yet another challenge of whether the architecture machine treat these aspects as information fed into the system or as sub-systems or strata of the overall design system processing information themselves. Beyond the various studies of complex geometric forms that have been structurally solved and constructed in the architecture discourse, the development of form nding techniques were structurally depended on the complex formwork for their fabrication method.

Form Finding - Analogue machines The methodology is based on material behavior of analogue form- nding experimentation, in which the form follows the ow of physical forces, as pioneered by Antonio

Stella Dourtme UK 579 Fig. 1 “DigitaL Plaster - The three patterning languages”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fig. 2 “Hanging model” of proposed Colonia Güell Chapel, Antoni Gaudi.

Fig. 3 “Soap Foam”, Frei Otto.

580 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Gaudi7 and Frei Otto (Fig. 2) in their conceptual physical models. Gravity and material properties were embedded within their working methodologies, by allowing them to shape their architectural solutions through the negotiations of these relationships. The catenary model that Gaudi (Fig. 3) utilized to de ne the organization of a network of hanging chains according to the tension on their local connections was intensi- ed by strategically added weights allowed him to reorganized and generate a variety of building proposals. He managed to achieve innovative compression structures through inverted models. Along with Frei Otto’s soap foam models these form nding techniques can be realized as an operative tool for the formative process where the constraints that are inherent properties of the matter are reected on every architectural solution. These analogue machines enabled them to understand the interrelationships of matter’s properties, in all dierent scales they occur. This was an approach to relate to the architectural complexity of space.

Geometric shell structures prototypes The structural stability and the morphogenetic forces of the shell structures prototypes acted always towards the optimisation of a dynamic shape. One of the pioneers of the geometric shell structures, Felix Candela (1910-1997) (Fig. 4) gained his reputa- tion mostly through his double curved hyperbolic paraboloid large span shells. Not only did these structures require complex mathematics and engineering calculations but also the use of excessive formwork.

Fig. 4 “Chapel Lomas De Cuernavaca”, Felix Candela.

Stella Dourtme UK 581 Free- form shell structures prototypes Heinz Isler (1926-2009) (Fig. 5) explored free-form reinforced concrete shells following form- nding experimentation according to physical laws instead of mathematical de nition. He claimed that “new shapes for shells” come from simple models, i.e. non- geometric shapes that are more economical to build and based on physical analogies. He employed inverted catenary principles to determine the geometry of pure com- pressive shells using highly complex rigid formwork to construct these. In his search for more economic construction techniques he tested new fabrication methods such as the concept of the inated membrane and the draped cloth or hanging membrane. The main criteria for these thin shell reinforced concrete structures were to minimise the section and material use, i.e. structural, material and economic eciency. Their design was based on careful analysis, however, computations were not determinants in the design process but estimates that served as guides for them.

Reinforced concrete As mentioned above the emergence of material properties, in this research, is intensi- ed by the use of soft responsive formwork that allows the material to compute its most ecient distribution under gravity within the limits of the exible fabric. It is a fact that the need of high complex scaolding during construction eliminates the

Fig. 5 “Centro social de las Hermanas Hospitalarias”, Miguel Fisac.

582 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture emergence of the formative process. Moreover, thin shell structures are usually reinforced and pre-stressed, whereas the use of fabric within the composite system of fabric and concrete can serve as reinforcement. The material distribution observed on the section of a cast analogue model is based on the patterning technique where the inherent logic of material eciency and structural performance are expressed through the redundancy of material – be it fabric or concrete. Thus, in this research the potentials of use of reinforced concrete are growing with the use of fabric formwork as the reinforcement is happening during the casting. “It may be noted that although reinforced concrete has been used for over a hundred years and with increasing interest during the last few decades, few of its properties and potentialities have been fully exploited thus far. Apart from the unconquerable inertia of our minds, which do not seem able to adopt freely new ideas, the main cause of this delay is a trivial technicality: the need to prepare wooden forms.” This phrase from Luigi Nervi stated (1994)9 highlights more the instrumental role of the fabric formwork in the morphogenesis and structural stability of non-standard forms. Compared to traditional steel reinforcement textiles have huge potential – they not only exceed the performance of steel at a fraction of the weight, but oer other possibilities in terms of exibility, structural performance, strength and even intelligence.

Fabric formwork The complex process of forming displays emergent behaviour as the material negotiation between the ow and weight of concrete and the elasticity inherent within the fabric, continuously informs the process of formation. Thus, the interaction of material and technique inuences the design and fabrication process. Fabric Formwork is based on the consideration of edges and pattern. Concrete and fabric negotiate the form, which is articulated by the constraints of edges and the pressure points; hence the edges or seams and the pattern become structurally operative tools. Other tools include pre-tensioning and stretching. Furthermore, the challenge of fabric formwork lies in the connection of fabric cast elements and the ability to control and design the details of these parts. Miguel Fisac used fabric formwork for elaborate surface cladding in multiple scales and ranges of expression. In the 1960s and 1970s he used exible plastic sheets to cast wall panels (Fig. 6). Following this lineage is contemporary researcher Mark West at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST) at the University of Manitoba. West is seeking innovation in both architectural

Fig. 6 “Cast Models” Mark West, CAST, at the Centre for Architectural Structures and Technology (CAST), University of Manitoba.

Stella Dourtme UK 583 form generation and building technology, using exible formwork casting techniques to create columns, panels and beams at scales of up to 1:1 (Fig. 7). Forms emerge through the material negotiation of matter following force paths of tension and compression forces. Similar to his predecessors, he suggests that the type of forces they are exposed to and the material quality of the analogue models, i.e. using plaster to model concrete and light fabrics to model geo-textiles, determines the successful approximation to full-scale construction. From an aesthetic point of view, the composite system oers the qualities of hand- made fabrication, individuality and speci city. It is also the expression of the fabrication technique. Both Mark West and Miguel Fisac took further the fabrication and morphogenetic process based on fabric formwork and the dynamics of this method in analogue. These advanced construction techniques call for a digital design methodology developed and derived from the same principles of exibility and material self-organisation, through which the analysis of all dierent scales of the formation will be possible and therefore adaptable to the design requirements and intents. Such a prototypi- Fig. 7 cal design system is Digital Plaster developed on these research paths “DigitaL Plaster – Analogue Experimentation”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London. and establishing a non-linear design approach.

Material System _ Pattern I In this architectural research thesis project that incorporates fabric formwork fabrication methods within a generative digital design process, the series of negotiations that a Formation typically as a process undergoes to arrive at a solution, are three. They are articulated as dierent scales of patterns starting with the material expe- rimets pattern that develope an algorithmic understanding of controlling parameters in fabrication, continuing with the digital simulations of patterns of material formative process to end to the organizatonal algorithms, a pattern, that allow for strategic design deployments as architectural intervetions that utilise the material technique.

584 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Material Experiments The rst stage of the process - Pattern I - (Fig. 8) investigates forming through machinic design operations on Matter. The exible formwork casting system is based on patterning techniques, including parameters such as pressure points; connection types and pouring points that vary in number, location and height. The folding technique allows creating a mould for any number of connected surfaces out of a continuous

Fig. 8 “DigitaL Plaster – Patterning technique”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Stella Dourtme UK 585 piece of Lycra. The material experiments are based on a module of a minimal surface de ned by three suspended chains, as Gaudi’s technique to study the formation process in structures in suspension under gravity where the catenary systems network of interdependent surfaces deform individually yet as part of a larger population. This modular catenary system is inverted and forms the setup for the exible formwork casting. The initial experiments are based on a format of a 42x42 cm equilateral lycra fabric triangle with a 2 cm grid. The use of exible formwork casting as a technique works towards the inversion of the surface formation found in suspension into a structure under compression. The objective of the material experiments is to minimise the cross section by applying various stitching techniques that are de ned by dierent parameters. The combination of dierent parametric settings within the exible formwork casting system results in a high variation of unpredictable outcomes. While the parameters help to control the material and feedback is built into the system, the interaction of the internal morphogenetic capacities of both plaster and Lycra and external environmental forces result in an innovation of formation that cannot be preconceived. In this sense, matter and its self-organisational properties are used as an operative tool in the design process. The duality of the individual surface and the connected poly surface is adding another level of complexity, in which interactions of material self-organisation at the local level result in emergent behaviour at the global level. Finally, the goal of material experiments was to control the cross section of the individual surface through patterning at a local scale and the deformation between generations of surfaces at a global scale.

Controlling the material distribution The cross-section (Fig. 9) of the surface can be controlled by the distribution of points to counteract the weight and ow of the material. Moreover, during the experiments the gravity acts really intensively on the pattern and this is multiplied by the exibility of the fabric -lycra- and of the not constrained areas of the fabric patterns. The gravity of the plaster casting deforms the grid of the at patterns after casting according to the centre of gravity of each suspended fabric form. The only constrained points that are not deformed under gravity are the pouring points of the suspension points, which are keeping the fabric formwork on the frame (Fig. 10). These points become the leading parameters for the deformation of the fabric and the generation of different forms. From no symmetrical forms to symmetrical forms such as the triangle, the forces act towards the centre of gravity, getting their direction from the pouring points, which have the higher position on the suspended models. Thus no matter the number of connected patterns the deployment of the material is getting more intense from top to bottom, generating an equilibrium where the forces of compression and tension reach their maximum levels. After the cast is dry the form reveals the intense forces acted on it during the process. Elements to intensify such formations are the stitching lines that enclose empty layers of fabric and holes on the pattern which both act towards tension. Finally, according the way that the formwork is suspended (loose or stressed) constitutes a parameter that controls the formations of the exible fabric cast.

586 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 9 “DigitaL Plaster – Catalogue of Patterning”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fig. 10 “DigitaL Plaster – Folding technique”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Stella Dourtme UK 587 The time based deployment The concept of casting in phases (Fig. 11) derived from the necessity of the material such as plaster, of a period of time since it is a phase changing material. Therefore, the formation of complex patterns and moreover the complexity of their fabrication method required a time developed technique. This technique became very signi cant characteristic of our process of design and fabrication that afterwards, developed, determines the hierarchy of the elements of each form. Digital plaster is a study based on understanding how the material operates in dierent conditions throughout the experiments. The dynamic formations of matter through the material experimentation led to a development of an algorithmic understanding of controlling the parameters in fabrication. Furthermore, by introducing the concept of scaolding through phasing in which the initial phase of the cast can serve as scaolding for subsequent castings. Thus, the system has the capacity to grow and evolve over time and adapt to speci c site and programmatic conditions.

Digital Materialism _ Pattern II The emergence in simulation process Material emergence is the hidden motive in the digital simulation of material formative process. The signi cance of its emergent outcome lies in the digital models that reect the unprecedented character of analogue formations. The rules that run both systems are related through the emergent nature of the matter that leads the design process. The discrete hierarchical relationships of material parameters in various stages are represented through the dynamic simulations in order to analyze and embody in the material systemic behavior the design intent.

Material agency The concept of material self-organisation or ‘material agency’ has been discussed in modern science and philosophy in the context of non-linear evolutionary theories. Deleuze and Guattari6 argue that there are innate morphogenetic capacities in all areas of life in opposite to Aristotle’s’ hylomorphic model3, that is claiming that Matter is active and dynamic, possessing self-organising capacities enabling it to negotiate complex organisational patterns and continuously evolve through the interaction of its internal morphogenetic potentials and external environmental forces. In this context Digital Plaster is based on the generative potential of material computation to inform the design process. Thus, the simulation techniques that are utilised here are three and are related with dierent scales of organisation that operates and are applied on dierent stage of the design: a. Systemic relations - Agent based material simulation A simulation system that trans-code the material parameters / control points of the exible formwork casting system into an agent-based system in which simple interactions of agents following low-level rules result in emergent behaviour at a higher level (Fig. 12). These rules are based on the analogue experimentation, i.e. required density

588 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 11 “DigitaL Plaster – Before and after casting in phases ”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fig. 12 “DigitaL Plaster – Systemic relations of material system”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

of pressure points to achieve a certain cross section, required distance between pressure points and connections to maintain structural integrity of the connections. The system is continuously moving over time thus regenerating and rede ning these relationships. This bottom-up approach provides the system with its local optima hierarchies, de ned through a more realistic representation of the non-linear behaviour of complex systems. This agent-based system of simulation consists the introduction of the simulation systems techniques. The correspondence of the material control points to an agent system points hierarchy, embraces the digital materialisation process with a better related and further analysed, coherent material self-organising systemic behaviour.

Stella Dourtme UK 589 b. Physical simulation - Dynamic nets Moreover, signi cant role in the formative process plays the physically based simulation techniques (Fig. 13). Based on the parameters such as the ow, the density, the analysis and the understanding of the material behaviour lead to a better resolution of design. This digital form nding emergent method along with a Finite Element Analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics contribute to the articulation of numerical methods and algorithms that simulate structural behaviour as well as the interaction of liquids and gases with surfaces de ned by boundary conditions. The dynamic meshes that the representational models are shaped from are developed as patterning prototypes in order to provide with information the next level of simulation. c. Agent based simulation - Catenary network The agent-based system is a hierarchical system constructed upon the relationship between a parent agent and children agents (Fig. 14). It reads the environment and it follows simple rules of movement, connection and avoidance. The relationship between parent and children agent is based on the rules derived from the geometric approximation of our analogue experimentation. The code relates the agents based system to the catenary structure, maintaining the system’s structural equilibrium, by evolving towards an organisation behaviour that constitutes the spatial con gurations.

Informed geometry Moving towards the scale of geometric model, pattern dierentiates structural elements from surface and begins to have spatial implications. The next stage of the process is targeting the evaluation of the structural performance of each area on a low-resolution polygon geometry surface. The low-resolution polygon geometry is extracted approximately from the simulated pattern. This approximation of the informed geometrical types is decided towards the symmetry, which is also characteristic of formations under gravity. The generation of the optimised pattern is an important part of the nal design. It is a process that connects the structural analysis of the

Fig. 13 “DigitaL Plaster – Physical based simulations”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

590 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 12 DigitaL Plaster, Casting in phases, London, 2011.

Fig. 14 “DigitaL Plaster – Catenary network”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Stella Dourtme UK 591 form with the distribution of control points on the surface. It is an algorithm that relates the stress points values taken from the structural analysis, to the number of subdivisions on the surface. The lowest the value of the stress on the area of the surface, the higher the number of subdivisions (the thinner) that are created on the surface and vice versa. The aim of this stage is the analysis of the singular form for the design of a network of forms that has distinctive density and scale.

Organisational Model _ Pattern III Algorithmic intelligence The interdisciplinary study of complexity and self-organisation in this project, promotes the notion of heterogeneous space, material complexity and a more ecological understanding of architecture as a dynamic process of formation negotiating the interactions of heterogeneous multi-performance spatial and material systems, with the capacity to adapt to environmental conditions and modes of inhabitation. This concept of heterogeneity entails an alternative understanding of optimisation, eciency and redundancy: redundancy has the inherent capacity to perform dierent tasks, i.e. the capacity for complex performance through dierentiation in response to environmental conditions or spatial-organisational requirements. Eciency is therefore dynamic and not measurable. In this context, computation enables architects to work with large data sets or populations; the use of genetic algorithms allows the study of evolutionary adaptive behaviour of these populations over time, including dierentiation and redundancy at a generative level. Agent-based systems are an expression of non-linearity as they are able to perform multiple calculations at the same time. The interaction between large sets or populations of individual agents following simple rules at a local level results in emergent behaviour at a global level. To understand the interaction of large numbers of agents, the capabilities of the individual agent have to be de ned. The agent’s behaviour is determined by a collection of simple rules. Typi- cally these rules are constituted by the stimuli the agent can receive and the response it can give. The agent-based system allows us to deploy our system at a large scale de ning the rules for behaviour that express the design intent. Particularly when applied to a speci c scenario, the intelligence embedded within this self-organising system enables it to evaluate speci c conditions and environments and adapt as well as gain experience.

Dynamic surfaces - Behavioural system At the scale of organisational model, pattern is the tool to setup the spatial con guration at a building and urban scale (Fig. 15). The goal is to generate continuous complex space engaging a simple fabrication method. In this heterogeneous structures formations of the dynamic process of formation, form, material and structure cannot be seen as isolated aspects but as inherently related systems of that process, that interact with each other as operative tools in the design process. The system is stopped at dierent points over time as these points nd a state of equilibrium - this can be due to internal geometric relationships between points or several external input such as environmental inuences.

592 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 15 “DigitaL Plaster – Dynamic surfaces analysis”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Architectural Prototypical scenarios These organisational algorithms allow for strategic design deployments as architectural interventions that utilise the same fabrication technique This system is able to negotiate diverse programmatic requirements within this context, ranging from a at landscape typology to open covered space, a variety of enclosed spaces and nally inhabitable spaces. The exibility of the system allows to program a variety of scales of spaces as well as a dierentiation in adaptability to inhabitation. Being able to readapt to changes in stress distribution very quickly, the system has the capacity to negotiate multiple level or terrain conditions and create a zone of transition between dierent levels. The spatial con guration that the prototypical system could produce is guided by the incredible exibility of the fabric formwork, and also by the construction process, that produces optimal results in scales ranging from the minimal spatial unit (10 m2) (Fig. 16), to bigger surfaces up to 300 m2 (Fig. 17). This makes the system prototypical also in terms of program, being able to evolve forming small living units but also bigger surfaces that con gure continuous public spaces. The nal product consists by three dierent architectural scenarios that are able to evolve not only in horizontal but also in vertical. The construction process generates enclosed space, stitched together with continuous and opened surfaces. These elements form together an evolutionary process in architecture that emerges from the material to express itself within a spatial form.

Stella Dourtme UK 593 Fig. 16 “DigitaL Plaster – Architectural scenario 1”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fig. 17 “DigitaL Plaster – Architectural scenario 2”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fig. 18 “DigitaL Plaster – Analysis of subdivision logic for the pattern fabrication”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010- 2011, London.

594 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 19 “DigitaL Plaster – Inatable pattern for the facade openings ”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Fabrication technique In order to understand and evaluate the eciency of the pattern and therefore op- timise it, the products of its pattern have to be evaluated according to their minimal thickness, weight and stability, by avoiding the excess of material where possible. The fabrication of singular patterns became a tool for further optimisation. The geometrical type which is extracted from the analogue and the introduction of the inatable membranes in the fabrication process are becoming more obvious and integral to the design result when the patterns are more complex and (Fig. 18). Referring to Dante Bi- ni’s10 techniques to build a concrete dome, in architectural scale the inatable patterns are generating the openings of the domes as well as support the stability of the structure, avoiding the material excess at the stressed points (Fig. 19). The continuous communication of the several steps in the process ensures the best structural performance of the pattern in the real scale. The design of this part is generated according the maximum deformation of the surface.

Conclusions Research in design methodology constitutes a unique way to generate the prototype of a formal expression through a complete and coherent process of design and fabrication. This architectural approach not only give solutions to the practical resolution of design and fabrication, but it embodies and reects the multiple and design criteria that are placed into negotiation throughout the whole formative process. Generative design systems arise architect’s design intent through a proposed organisation of architectural matter.

Stella Dourtme UK 595 In a project like Digital plaster, the incorporation of the materiality from the beginning of the process, is aiming to the better understanding of matter and its nature not only by controlling it through physical movement, but also by digital processes, so that more capacities of transformation could be revealed. Based on physical experimentation in plaster models the analogue material can be turned into a digital material through studies on plaster models (Fig. 20). Material simulation enabled the evaluation of dierent performance aspects of a material system and understands material complexity through analysing material behaviour within certain conditions over certain periods of time.

Fig. 20 “DigitaL Plaster – Analogue model of Architectural scenario 2”, CTRL M - AA DRL 2010-2011, London.

Notes & References

1 CTRL M is a team of four architects; Stella Dourtme, Claudia Ernst, Manuel Jimenez Garcia, Roberto Garcia, working together during their sixteen months master in Architecture and Urbanism, Design Research Lab at the Architectural Association School of London during the academic year 2010-11. 2 The term “multi-scalar patterning” is referred to the dierent scales that the patterning methodology can be applied to. From the structure to the architectural space organization. 3 Aristotelis Metaphysica. Ed. Worner Jaeger Oxford Classical Texts. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. 1957.108. 4 CTRL M, “Digital Plaster”, The Architectural Association School of Architecture, Master in architecture and Urbanism Design Research Laboratory at the Architectural Association (2010-2011) London. UK. 2011. 5 Deleuze, Gilles, & Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. The Athlone Press Ltd, London, UK.1988. 141. 6 Deleuze, Gilles, & Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism & Schizophrenia. The Athlone Press Ltd, London, UK.1988. 148. 7 Gaudi, Antoni & Bohigas, Oriol. Gaudi 2002: Miscellany. Planeta, USA, 2002, 168. 8 Nicholas, Negroponte. “The architectural machine”, M.I.T. Press, USA, 1970. 3. 9 Pier Luigi, Nervi. Structures. F.W. Dodge Corporation, New York, USA.1958. 95. 10 Mary, Krumboltz Hurd. “Formwork for concrete”. American Concrete Institute, ACI committee 347, Farmington Hills, Michigan, USA. 2001. 14.

596 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Maria Mandalaki

School of Architecture Technical University of Crete Greece Sustainable Design Technology: Human Senses versus the Measuring of Environmental Conditions This paper is about the inuence of technology to environmental design research and its relation with the subjective parameters of the user. The user is de ned either as the user of the designed space either as the designer of the space. The question is how technology is involved with these types of users and can contribute to the engagement with the subjective environmental conditions. Examples of research will be presented from both the point of view of the user and the researcher.

Two are the main questions that we will address. A. How subjective parameters of users are taken into account into design analysis? A1. How can we predict spatial comfort conditions accurately? A2. How technology inuences these methods of prediction of environmental comfort conditions? B. How researcher – designers can be engaged with subjective parameters? How much individuality inuences this scienti c process of analysis and design?

In order to answer the above questions the paper is divided in three parts.

In the rst part we will de ne the measured and the non measured parameters that are inuencing environmental conditions and we will focus mostly on visual and thermal comfort.

In the second part we will present the evolution of some environmental research tools. We will see the relation between these tools and human senses. How measured and non measured qualities of space can be de ned, and the way these qualities can be predicted or understood. We will discuss the relation of subjective parameters of user within the environmental analysis. We will focus mostly on visual and thermal comfort.

In the third part we will see the research done at the Environmental design studio of Architecture School of Technical University of Crete. We will see how students are trying to be engaged with environmental parameters of visual and thermal comfort.

Relation of Bioclimatic Design to Humans Needs The de nition of sustainable design is base on the idea to endure, last and reuse and part of it, is the de nition of bioclimatic design that is based on the establishment of humans comfort in the build environment while using natural sources. Bioclimatic Architecture is the Sustainable design conserves resources and maximizes comfort through design adaptations to site-speci c and regional climate conditions (AIA, 2008). More speci cally, Bioclimatic architecture refers to the design of buildings and spaces (interior – exterior – outdoor) based on local climate, aimed providing thermal and visual comfort (acoustic comfort and air quality), making use of solar energy and other environmental sources (Anomymous n.d.). In order to design sustainably we need to predict these Humans’ comfort conditions that are de ned more speci cally as visual, thermal and acoustic comfort, and are depending on quantity and quality of light, air velocity, temperature and humidity.

598 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture In the environmental design science there are mainly two methods of predicting these conditions: either using simulation tools or experimenting in physical models. Both methods are involved in the evaluation of measured and non- measured parameters that are inuencing comfort conditions. We will mostly focus on the relation of technology predicting measured and non measured environmental parameters. More speci cally we will focus on the relation of the technology with the evaluation of thermal and visual comfort conditions and humans needs.

De nition of measured and non – measured environmental parameters that inuence thermal comfort and visual comfort Thermal Comfort Thermal comfort can be de ned in two ways connected to measured and non measured parameters. Firstly thermal comfort can be de ned as a speci c combination of air temperature, relative humidity, air motion and mean radiant temperature (Lechner, 2001). Α basic tool to de ne these parameters is the psychometric chart. The area de ned in the chart as shown in Fig.1 is the combination of all the above parameters and is de ning the ideal thermal environment for the human body. There is another de nition for thermal comfort that includes non measured parameters and is according to ASHRAE: the condition of mind which expresses satisfaction with the thermal environment (ASHRAE n.d.). The condition of mind is a completely non predictable condition and it depends on non measured parameters that are dealing with the type of user, his Fig. 1 level of education, the relation with his ASHRAE, Comfort zones superimposed on colleges and superiors, time of pressure the traditional comfort zones, 1997, (Lech- etc. ner, 2001).

Visual Comfort Additionally concerning evaluating visual comfort both subjective and objective parameters are being taking into account. According to William M.C. Lam (1977, p. 51) important factors for evaluating the quality of humans’ visual perception are: the experience and attention of the observer, the characteristics of the object attended, simultaneous contrast, context, adaptation, the illumination qualities meaning the geometry, dispersion characteristics, directionality, spectral type, quantity, polarization, number and type of sources, consistency of directional characteristics and color rendering eect. On the other hand, Lam (1977, pp. 31) states that “visual perception functions without the attention of the conscious mind; it depends on experience, expectations, current state of perceiv-

Maria Mandalaki Greece 599 er (leisure – happy – depressed)”. The last are parameters that cannot be predicted, even if the reference space is designed for speci c users with changing activity and mood. There are researchers that are de ning speci c parameters connected to subjected human factors that are inuencing environmental comfort conditions. In the work of Frontczak M., and Wargocki P. (2011) is proved that thermal comfort, visual comfort and acoustic comfort depends on dierent subjective parameters and in order to evaluate the environmental conditions user acceptance studies should be done, using questionnaires. More speci cally the results of studies presented in Fig.2 show that thermal comfort was inuenced by the level of education, the relationship with superiors and colleagues and time pressure, but not by gender, age, body build, t- ness, health, self-estimated environmental sensitivity, menstruation cycle, pattern of smoking and coee drinking, job stress or hours worked per week. On the other hand Visual comfort was aected by occupants’ age and type of job, but not by job satisfaction, relationship with superiors and colleagues or job stress and Acoustic comfort was aected by country of origin, but not by occupant’s gender. All the above enhance to the point that environmental design strategies are user speci c and that multifunctional design solutions can correspond better to environmental building systems.

Fig. 2 Table of a Literature survey on how dierent factors inuence human comfort in indoor environments (Frontczak M., and Wargocki P. 2011).

600 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Methodology of Engagement with Environmental Parameters Evolution of environmental measuring tools Traditional way of measuring air velocity with physical models If we look at the evolution of methods, for evaluating air movement for example, rst physical models has been used. In Fig. 3 we can see the evaluation of air movement for dierent shading devices with smoke models (Olgyay, A. and V. 1957). We can see that when an overhang on the window is used the air can be driven to the upper level of the room meaning an advanced refreshing air system. User acceptance study and additional subjective parameters were taken into account in order to arrive to a concrete conclusion for eciency of the shading device.

Fig. 3 Experiments done in wind tunnel, with model build of Plexiglas and kerosene smoke (Olgyay, A. and V. 1957).

Contemporary ways of measuring air velocity. Today this type of analysis can be done with simulation tools and they can arrive to higher degree of detailed information (Fig. 4). Information dealing with air velocity, air age and freshness, and also the level of comfort depending on the air temperature can be provided. These tools can incorporate some subjective parameters as activity of the users, type of dressing. Other subjective parameters cannot be incorporated.

Maria Mandalaki Greece 601 Fig. 4 Foster and Partners, Simulations of air movement.

User acceptance studies with speci c questioners should be added to these evaluating methods. These simulation tools are becoming extremely important for architects (Simulat- ing air velocity and temperature) because they can make visual hidden qualities of space that can be changed or aected by speci c design strategies.

Measuring Visual Comfort Concerning evaluating visual comfort more subjective parameters are being taking into account. Visual perception functions without the attention of the conscious mind and it depends on experience, expectations, current state of perceiver (leisure – happy – depressed) (M.C. Lam, 1977). Le Corbusier was one of the rst that tried to construct a geometry related to daylight and the geometrical characteristic of the windows. Today, these preliminary sketches have been analyzed with computer simulation applications and scienti c conclusions have been extracted connecting the geometry and the materials of the façade to the interior ambient. Traditionally, physical models have been used in order to evaluate visual comfort conditions in combination with lighting sensors and traditional camera (Fig. 5). Today these analyses can be done with computer simulation applications (Fig. 6). The results are extremely close to the reality and they can provide extremely accurate lighting properties of space.

602 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Physical Models for Daylighting Analysis.

Fig. 6 Daylight Digital Simulation.

Maria Mandalaki Greece 603 Fig. 7 Assessment of lighting quality in office rooms with daylighting systems (Velds and Van Der Voorden, 1997).

Nevertheless, physical models are still been used today in order to design speci c fenestration systems. Simulation tools work additionally to these models. In a research level user acceptance studies (Fig. 7) are been held either in scale or in 1 to 1 scale models, in order to evaluate other non measured parameters that simulations cannot support (glare caused by a speci c position, mood of the user etc).

How Technology Helps Researchers – Designers to be Engaged with Subjective Parameters? In the third part we are going to see students’ projects and the tools used in order to be engaged with the environmental objective and subjective parameters. These projects are been done during the Environmental Design Studio, taught at the third year of education at the School of Architecture of Technical University of Crete. We will go through some examples of assessment of fenestration geometries and aerodynamic geometries and the tools that students preferred to use. During the studio, digital environmental simulation analysis tools and their output as well as analogous tools are been shown to the students and they are asked to choose their preferable one or more in order to analyze dierent bioclimatic systems. Here we will see some examples dealing with fenestration, vision and air movement. For evaluating windows’ geometry, students used simulations tools (Fig. 8) and at the same time physical models and sun machines to experiment with visual param-

604 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Analyzing Fenestration Systems. eters of dierent types of windows and shading systems (Fig. 9, 10). Both tools were needed in order for them to be engaged with new non visual qualities of space. By using digital simulations they can visualize non visual properties of space. While using analogue tools they can compare these digital simulations with familiar properties of space and they can introduce more easily their personal subjective criteria. They can be engaged with quantitative and quality properties of visual environment. In a second project in order to de ne the most aerodynamic geometry for a wind turbine both digital tools and physical models were used (Fig. 11). Concluding, it is obvious that students need to be engaged with analogue measuring tools in order to de ne measured and no measured properties of space by using their own instinct and intuition. Additionally due to the fact that the sense of tactility and the communication with natural materials are extremely crucial for the engagement with environmental parameters the Environmental Design studio is supported with in situ workshops. Natural materials contain unmeasured, unpredictable and not yet researched parameters that can only been understood by being in touch with them ( g.12). We promote workshops of building with natural materials, in order for the students to communicate with the materials and the space created.

Conclusion Subjective parameters of comfort are important inuencing environmental design strategies. The combination of research methods and especially user acceptance studies are still needed in order to include the subjective characteristics of environmental comfort in the design. Technology has extremely improved the way of measuring environmental conditions but did not ameliorate the measurement of the subjectivity of the factors. Digital simulations, digital sensors and extremely sophisticated instruments can be used for evaluating environmental comfort conditions. The combination of all the above men-

Maria Mandalaki Greece 605 Fig. 9 Analyzing Façade Systems. Stu- dent project, 2010. Environmental Design Studio, TUC, Tutor: M. Man- dalaki, Students: K. Lazaridou, P. Mylwna, M. Xartsia.

Fig. 10 Analyzing ambient systems. Student project, 2010 during Environmental Design Studio and Digital media and Architectural design, TUC. Tutors: P. Malefakis, M. Mandalaki, P. Parthenios, S. Yianoudis, A. Vazakas . Students: K. Patsiogianni, E. Sklavou, M. Staurakaki.

606 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 11 Research of wind geometry. Student project, 2011. Environmental Design Studio, TUC. Tutor: M. Mandalaki, Students: K. Chamilothori, A. Kampitaki.

Fig. 12 Building with clay, Workshop July 2011, Organized by Piloiko Team and Gernot Minke.

Maria Mandalaki Greece 607 tioned with physical models and user acceptance studies can lead to a user speci c environmentally comfort designed space. The engagement of the designer with environmental factor is crucial for the nal project. The ability of the designer to understand the non visual and non measurable environmental parameters of space has been improved. Technology helped this improvement but did not replace the physical contact with the space itself or the tactility of the materials. Physical and 1 to 1 scale models can contribute positively to this understanding and to the improvement of personal instinct of visual and thermal comfort.

Bibliography

AIA, American Institute of Architecture,Sustainability Design Quick Reference Manual, 2008.Florida. Cres, Vioklimatic architecture and Passive energy systems. Availible at [Accessed 5 August 2011]. ASHRAE, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers. Availible at [Accessed 5 August 2011]. Frontczak M. and Wargocki P., 2011. Literature survey on how dierent factors inuence human comfort in indoor. Building and Enviroment, 46(22), pp. 922-937. Lechner, N., 2001. Heating, Cooling, Lighting, Design methods for Architects. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd. M.C.Lam, W., 1977. Perception and Lighting as formgivers for architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Olgyay, A. and V., 1957. Solar Control and shading devices. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Velds, M. and Van Der Voorden M., 1997. Assessment of the Impact of Dayligting Systems on visual quality of rooms. Right Light, 4 (2), pp. 261 - 267.

608 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Lemonia Ragia Chrisa Tsinaraki

School of Architecture Technical University of Crete Greece A Framework for DYNamic and Interactive Architecture (DYNIA) Architecture usually proceeds in two distinct phases, rst design and then implementation. There is a lot of interaction with dierent groups (other architects, owners, users) during design to evolve the concept. The result of all these interactions is a complete plan. On the basis of this plan implementation can go on. During implementation there is interaction but with dierent groups, mainly involved in the construction and always on the base of the plan. In practice there is always a need for a more general interaction to tie the construction with all the human aspects, the changing requirements and the missing details in the plan. This interaction is very dif- cult since it is often verbal and does not use all the potential of new technologies for representation and interaction. We propose a Framework which ties up the design and implementation and allows to go back and forth between the two in a seamless way. We assume that rst there is a conceptual design phase which produces a conceptual plan without all the details but enough material to start a second phase, including what is necessary to issue a permit. We also assume that as a result of this rst conceptual phase there is an arti cial reality support that allows us to visualize the plan and walk through it in 3D. This in itself is very useful since it is dicult for persons without special training to visualize concepts on the base of standard, static, two dimensional drawings. Then we proceed to the second phase which mixes design and implementation and allows to go back and forth between a plan as it is being completed and the construction as it goes on. This enables the human aspects and the construction details to be blended in as it goes. All groups are able to follow what is going on without separating the conceptual design teams from the construction teams. The building plan in all its detail evolves and it is completed with all the actual decisions until construction ends. The base of our approach is the usage of a special camera the RICOH Caplio 500SE2 which allows us to follow the construction and build incrementally a 3D plan of what it is actually being built on site, including a virtual reality representation. This is compared with the evolving building plan which only needs to be slightly ahead. A basic component of our approach is the usage of the images which are geographically referenced and the extraction of spatial information of them. Details on the building plan, can be shown in the images, are lled as the construction advances enough in advance to allow scheduling of construction teams and delivery of materials. The results of the representation of both the building plans and the building site are available for consultation through Internet for all interested groups dealing with all the aspects of construction from conceptual to building and from human to regulatory. We think that this approach is more in line with human needs and it has many distinct advantages. First, it allows the requirements to evolve dynamically during construction. Second, it allows a more broad interaction of dierent groups with different perspectives. Third, there is a complete documentation in the end, not of an imaginary plan, but the real object as it has been built. Finally, we believe that costly mistakes can be avoided and irritating omissions and misunderstandings can be eliminated. We should point out that this way of incremental dynamic architecture was natural at a time in history that building was proceeding very slowly to allow many and multi-faceted interactions. The results were astonishing both in beauty and in living

610 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture comfort. Unfortunately as building became faster and faster it precluded any conceptual and human interaction during construction with disastrous results. We ended up building according to a plan of objects far removed from real needs and sense of proportions. Unfortunately, we cannot go back building slowly, since there are nancial prerogatives which force construction in a narrow time frame. The only thing we can do is use modern Technology to allow more human interaction during building time all the way to the end. We have used a very powerful camera, the Ricoh Caplio 500 SE digital camera which has Wi Fi capabilities and can be connected with GPS receivers. The Caplio 500SE digital camera is compatible with the digital GPS via the Exif standard interface. The Exif data are captured in the digital camera, and they are saved together with the image5. The Exif data can be send automatically to a computer to extract all the Exif parameters. We expect that similar capabilities will be available not only on modern cameras but smartphones. In this paper, we present a Framework for interactive and dynamic architectural design. Our objective is to create a platform for interaction spatial information including maps, plans like architectural images and objects captured in images. The Framework takes into account multi-sensor digital camera capabilities integrated with GPS, the GPS positions of the images, the metadata encoded in the images, and a set with special architectural terms for construction to automatically integrate spatial information with the image contents. We present very useful functionalities for engineers and other professions with nice and friendly visualization tools. We demonstrate an implementation based on the Framework using real examples. We describe the DYNia prototype that combines textual and image information to support the people to have a better understanding of the building plans and building site. The rest of the paper is structured as follows: In Section 2 we present the DYNIA Framework, in Section 3 we present some case studies and the paper concludes in Section 4, where our future research directions are also outlined.

Previous work The idea of interaction between the engineers and the conceptual plan using images has been presented in dierent approaches1,7. In the rst approach1 a prototype system is introduced where the conceptual design can be assisted with annotated images. In principle the tool layout is supported by an image database browser. The second approach shows how important is the interaction between engineers of dierent elds during the conceptual design of a building. GoogleEarth gives a common interface for the research in the area of integrating and handling spatial information6. It is already used as platform for the architectural design9. There are other applications, e.g. culture and tourism where the idea of using image information is described3,4.

The DYNIA Framework In this Section we present the DYNIA Framework, which ties up the architectural design and implementation and allows going back and forth between the two in a seamless way.

Lemonia Ragia, Chrisa Tsinaraki Greece 611 The automatic workow for the DYNIA users is presented in Fig. 1. The automatic workow consists of the following tasks:

• The image capturing with associated information and GPS coordinates are automatically transferred to the PC. • Then the data processing takes the data and prepares them for the visualization in Google Earth and they are stored and managed then in the database. • The last step is to display all the input data in a friendly user interface and to provide the users with the appropriate components to work with.

In the following paragraphs we describe the DYNIA Framework architecture and we discuss the DYNIA Framework functionality.

The DYNIA Framework Architecture The DYNIA Framework architecture has been based on the MVC (Model-View-Con- troller) design pattern8. According to the MVC pattern, the Framework consists of the Model, View, Controller and Persistency layers. In particular:

1. The Model layer manages the behavior and data of the DYNIA application domain (architecture), responds to requests for information about its state, and responds to instructions to change state. 2. The View layer renders the model into a form suitable for interaction. It consists of the DYNIA GUI (Graphical User Interface), which allows the end-users to interact with DYNIA and access the Framework functionality. 3. The Controller layer receives user input and initiates a response by making calls on model object. 4. The Persistency layer is responsible for the permanent storage of the DYNIA data. It comprises the DYNIA database and the GIS data. Since DYNIA utilizes Google Earth, the GIS data of the persistency layer is the Google Earth data.

An overview of the DYNIA Framework architecture is provided in Fig. 2.

The DYNIA Database Design The DYNIA database stores and manages the data that, together with the Google Earth data, oer the DYNIA functionality. In order to achieve this, the DYNIA database schema (outlined in Fig. 3) accommodates images and metadata elds. As is shown in Fig. 3, the central entity of the DYNIA database schema is the Plan, which represents the architectural drawings of a building. A Plan instance is associated with a set of GPS points (represented through the GPS Point entity); it is also associated with a Map instance, which represents the map of the building area, and a set of images (represented through the Image entity). The Image instances represent dierent views of a building, probably in dierent construction phases. An Image instance is described by a set of metadata elds and is associated with a camera, through a Camera Information instance. A GPS Point instance is a special case of a Point instance, which captures all the GPS information about a point.

612 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1 Automatic DYNIA User Workow.

Fig. 2 The DYNIA Framework Architecture.

Fig. 3 The DYNIA Database Schema.

Lemonia Ragia, Chrisa Tsinaraki Greece 613 The DYNIA Framework Functionality In our prototype we use GoogleEarth as platform in order to be able to keep track the building construction from the excavation until the completeness of the building in real time. We use images with the GPS positions. The images are important because they give spatial information about the objects. Every im- Fig. 4 age includes the metadata which actu- An example of the DYNIA interface. The house is ally gives some additional information shown in GoogleEarth on a map with the GPS po- about the objects of the images. In the sition and some information about the camera. prototype a set of architectural terms is The corresponding images are also displayed. included. The user can depict an architectural term and see what happened in the corresponding images. With our Framework it is not required to have always a local architect, designer or engineer to review the plans, to control the building construction or to supervise the whole process. This can be done also by another person and send per Internet all the necessary input information and material. The basic functionalities oered to the DYNIA users facilitate the de- Fig. 5 scriptions of the changes between the On the left part down an image is shown where conceptual plan and the actual build- a change is made. The change is also shown in ing process. In addition, the log of all textual form. the changes and the corresponding communication constitute a complete documentation of all the building tasks, thus empowering all the dierent professionals. Fig. 4 shows an example of the functionality provided by the prototype. The user can use and specify a set of the architectural terms and possibly some types for each architectural term. When the user points and clicks an architectural term the prototype will decide which images are stored together with terms. Fig. 6 On top of the map we can visualise the The kitchen plan is shown which is made in the construction, or the complete building design phase. The user can notice a particular and on the right the user can see the information about the entrance of the kitchen.

614 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture GPS data together with camera information. The prototype will also list all the images associated with these architectural terms. Fig. 5 shows the prototype that allows interactive searching of the spatial information associated with a particular image and can nd out a change of a spatial object which has been made during the construction and is not planned in the original plans. The user can click with the mouse to an image and see if other images are related to the previous one. The prototype knows already of the spatial coordinates of the pixels where the mouse is located. Fig. 6 shows the kitchen plan during the design of the house. In the prototype all the plans, for example architectural plan, oor plan and other architectural drawings can be saved and displayed. When the mouse is above certain plan, all the relevant information, especially all the images are displayed. The user can select one of the corresponding images and see what kind of information is useful to him. In many cases a lot of changes can be shown and various spatial information can be depicted. For example, the user can ask to see the structure elements of the oor in every room. He can notice that although in one room the wooden oor was planned to be used, tiles have been installed. Or a small wall is in the nal phase of the construction taken out and a bigger room is the result of this. Other information like lot of details about small parts of the construction can be visualised at a larger scale and be stored in images with associated information. Small surface details, for example, additional decorative elements can be located are displayed. All the parts for the location of sanitary, electrical and plumbing, lighting, heating, air conditioning, etc. can be shown in our Framework with all components parts to t them together.

Conclusions – Future Work We presented a Framework that oers personalized services for engineers and other professionals. This Framework enables the users to access in their PC with information which accommodates their interests. We also presented an implementation of our Framework that integrates a speci c digital camera with digital GPS and a prototype for personal applications regarding to architecture. This can be used for a construction of a building from the beginning until the end and also after the completeness of the building to have a complete archive with all the important information about the design and construction process of the building. We use the positions from GPS which are taken automatically and the knowledge from images together with the textual information stored with the images. The prototype can interoperate with architectural terms, that are given by the users together with plans from architects and architectural drawings. With the knowledge from the images and the plans we can visualise changes on the display. This gives us a better understanding of what is shown in the plan and what happened in the images. We use a special camera which has the capability to communicate with a laptop via Blue- tooth for transferring all the images fast in order to be able to see them. The prototype provides a functionality for integrating and managing a personal data base of images, digital maps, which are the architectural plans. The contents of the data base can be seen on the display. The Framework provides functionalities for users to interact, visualize images and textual information related to their interest.

Lemonia Ragia, Chrisa Tsinaraki Greece 615 We plan to work in the future for a system with similar capabilities using modern smartphones and tablets. In this way, all the services will be available in mobile form. Since architects and other professionals are participating in many projects such mobile capabilities are of special interest and oer added value to their services.

References

1 Aliakseyeu, D., 2002: Direct Manipulation Interface for Architectural Design Tools. In CHI 2002, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, pp. 536-537. 2 Camera, R., 500SE http://www.ricoh.com/r_dc/caplio/500se/ 3 Christodoulakis S., Foukarakis M., and Ragia L., 2008: Spatial Information Retrieval from Images using Ontologies and Semantic Maps. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 5288, Springer Verlag, pp. 549-556. 4 Christodoulakis, S., Foukarakis M., Ragia L., Uchiyama L., Imai, H., 2010: Mobile Picture Captur- ing for Semantic Pictorial Database Context Access, Browsing and Interaction IEEE Mulimedia, Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia. April-June 2010, pp. 34-41. 5 Exif 2002. Exif Version 2.2 Digital Still Camera Image File Format Standard, Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Assoc. http://www.exif.org/Exif2-2.pdf 6 Google Earth 2007. Google Earth virtual globe. http://earth.google.com 7 Schmitt, G., 1998: A New Collaborative Design Environment for Engineers and Architects Ar- ti cial Intelligence in Structural Engineering, LNCS, 1998, Vol. 1454/1998, pp. 384-397. 8 Trygve, R., 1979: “MODELS - VIEWS – CONTROLLERS. Technical note, Xerox PARC. A scanned version on http://heim.i .uio.no/~trygver/mvc/index.html 9 Viet Toan Phan, Seung Yeon Choo, 2010: “A Combination of Augmented Reality and Google Earth’s facilities for urban planning in idea stage” International Journal of Computer Applications (0975-8887) Vol. 4, No. 3, July 2010, pp. 26-34.

616 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Teaching a Critically Responsive Architecture

Joanna Crotch

Mackintosh School of Architecture Glasgow School of Art Glasgow UK Linger, Savour, Touch We are moving too fast…fast lives, fast cars, fast food…..and fast architecture. We are caught up in a world that allows no time to stop and think; to appreciate and enjoy all the really important things in our lives. This paradigm shift in the way we live our lives has been facilitated by the rapid development, use and reliance on the computer and all that it can oer in every sphere of our existence. Technology has opened doors that twenty years ago would have been inconceivable; and in the realm of architecture we are now witnessing the results that the use of this new technology; within the architectural profession; has had on our built environment, some good, some not. As we are participants of this ‘new beginning’ we must enjoy its seemingly unfathomable potential but be cautious of what is dose not embrace. Architectural education is one realm where this advancing technology has been fully adopted and students are encouraged to embrace it in both process and presentation; producing digital models, y through visualisations and animations. But do these results provide a true representation of the architectural proposals or a utopian vision– sanitised and without texture or emotion? How can this ‘fast life style’ where everything appears to be instantly available; embrace the less tangible but crucial qualities that make architecture. Can one’s emotional response to proposed designed space; smell, touch and acoustics; be explored and developed alongside the visual? It would be foolish to imagine that removal of digital and electronic tools would either be possible or sensible; more appropriately, how can they help to facilitate explorations that will produce architectural proposals that have truly considered the experiential qualities, embracing these ‘fast’ mediums alongside a more craft driven approach (Fig. 1). Can architectural education utilize the possibilities of current technology and at the same time embrace the skills and patience that are essential in the production of an architecture that is not only visually explored but also sensually realised?

Fig. 1 Exploring atmosphere; N. Mclachlan 2011.

Slow Architecture ‘Architecture has the capacity to be inspiring, engaging and life-enhancing. But why is it that architectural schemes which look good on the drawing board or the computer screen can be so disappointing ‘in the esh’?’ Eyes of the Skin by Juhani Pallasmaa. Pallasmaa’s statement challenges the domination of the visual over the other sensory experiences. His words are key to the direction and the formulation of studio design briefs for third year undergraduate students at the Mackintosh School of Architecture. The programme’s intentions are to question the prioritisation of visual experience in the conception and making of buildings through investigations into the multi-sensory realms of architecture. Recognising the context within which we now live, the computer and all it has to oer us cannot be ignored, in fact its possibilities

620 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture are fully embraced but this is alongside a carefully balanced series of workshops and projects to give a breadth and depth to proposals that embrace the possibilities of technology alongside the textural and sensual qualities of the architectural proposals. The program introduces the students to the concept of Slow Architecture, and en- courages them to explore the potential of this Movements philosophy; sustainability, localism, materiality, construction and permanence; and to investigate these themes through a number of complimentary design projects.

Figs. 2,3 Feeling the space; I. Humphris & B Williams 2010.

The program assumes the premise that speed driven architecture can result in a visually dominant result, one in which the spaces created are viewed rather than felt, therefore the projects require a ‘Slow’ haptic response.

Slow Briefs The ambition of the program is to encourage students to develop a process of working that holistically considers, explores and concludes with an outcome where all facets of the architecture have been regarded. The idea being that the ‘human user’ is placed centrally within the design explorations and the understanding of the sensual experiences created by the proposal are embedded in the process and the outcome, and so complimenting the still valued visual experience. As designers of the brief we studied the concepts of Slow Architecture and rec- ognised that the philosophies that the Movement adhere to were very similar to our own thinking about how we wished the students to consider the user, the building, the context and the proposal. By adopting and developing the philosophies of regionality, sustainability, materiality, construction, craft and permanence, this gave a connection to human experience through referencing to, and careful consideration of these values. The use of technology is an integrated part of the process but not an exclusive tool and students are encouraged not to become reliant on one medium. The majority appear to nd security within the digital medium and the program is designed to

Joanna Crotch UK 621 move them out of their comfort zone to challenge and explore their ideas through a variety of dierent explorations and experiments. It is dicult to describe how technology is utilised without understanding the rationale behind the program, and through this explanation, the integration and exploitation of technology is revealed. There were 3 components that are felt to be vital with regard to the structure of the program. The brief, the site and the process. Each of the three elements require to be carefully selected, constructed and designed to work together in harmony, with the belief that the correct balance of the three components will propel the students into an exploratory process where the design of the sensual, felt experience within their proposals will be developed beside aesthetic concerns and the more pragmatic design issues such as environmental strategies and technology. All facets once considered will collectively work together to produce a result where spatial and experiential outcomes compliment technological strategies. Students are encouraged to research and develop their thinking through thorough experimentation, with many of the projects and workshops working not with the hypothetical but actual life experiences.

The Brief The brief is constructed in a position mindful of the design proposals ambitions surrounding the speci cs of the housed activity, and of the context in which proposals will be based. Each brief confronts and tackles real issues, and speci c activities that have been selected to be studied. The activities that are chosen have particular relationships with the human senses, for example creating music, growing and cooking food, or making art. All oering dierent challenges yet similar in their need for particular and speci c spaces to house and enhance the performance of the activity. As well as the ‘particular’ ‘special’ spaces that are required to be included in the proposal, where the control and provision of an unambiguous environment is required, the everyday more prosaic spaces are also considered – where human experience and comfort are also explored, be it when the participant is sleeping, working, washing, resting walking or eating; inside and out, with community and solitude being considered in order to develop an architecture when the human experience is realised and enhanced in the various designed spaces. Selection of an activity is carried out in conjunction with the consideration of site; the two are intrinsically linked. As the program requires the design of two buildings, these are both considered simultaneously. The bi-project structure allows for the macro and micro to be eectively pursued. The rst project; the Town Project; explores and designs within a built context, analysing place, usually a small town with social and degeneration issues. Following a full analysis of the settlement the design of a strategy for regeneration is made, within which a building is designed that will act as a catalyst within the proposed strategy for rehabilitation. The second project; the Environmental Project; addresses landscape and requires a very intimate exploration of the placement of a proposal within an established natural landscape, the proposals for the building also include the design of full environmental and technological strategies. Each project engages with Slow Ar- chitecture’s principles at dierent scales and both are required to place the user central within the proposal. Working in parallel with the ‘Town Project’ is a written piece of

622 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture work called the Research Project. This is a vehicle to introduce students to the theory of Public Realm. Lectures and workshops support this written submission, with students self selecting their subject within the heading ‘Public Realm’. The Environmental Project, which is the major design project of the programme, has an environmental and technical brief designed to sit in parallel with the design brief. This element of the project challenges the student to develop speci c environments to house and enhance the contained activity in an ‘o grid’ context. All the resources that the building will required should be designed to be produced from what the site can oer, together with the consideration of careful placement and a high performing building envelope. Fanciful ‘bolt on’ devices are not accepted as a means to support a proposal that is in denial of the passive opportunities that the context can oer and one that is not aware of its level of consumption of energy and creation of waste. This may seem an extreme approach, but it is a challenge with no ambiguity. Selection of an appropriate site supports this move and allows this to be presented as a realistic proposition (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4 Environmental explorations; J. Hudspith 2010.

Site

Fig. 5 A landscape with a sense of place; N. Cunningham 2010.

In conjunction with the construction of the brief is the selection of place, or site, where the proposals will be located. This is the second key component that contributes to the programme, and site selection is driven by the demands of the brief. The understanding of the uniqueness of place is important particularly in relationship to Slow Architecture, where a sympathetic approach to localness and regionality, appropriateness of placement and materiality is essential. There is also a connection with the place and user of the building helping to ground the project; and a landscape with texture and a real sense of place is sought. Previous studies have taken us to a Cistercian Abbey near Stranrear; a Roman fort in Perthshire; and the designed estate of an Art loving Marquis on an island o the west coast of Scotland; all unique inspiring yet appropriate and believable. The Abbey and its acoustically perfect chapel complimented the proposed musical retreat; a Roman fort close to the town of Perth,

Joanna Crotch UK 623 Scotland’s only Cittaslow member seemed a perfect location for a Cook house, and the Mount Stuart Estate on Bute which currently runs an Arts program with no residential accommodation was a realistic proposition for an artists’ residency. Nearby settlements to each of the chosen sites were the towns of Stranrear, Crie and Rothesay. All oered challenges addressing rural decline, population decrease and erosion of the core of the town. Each project addressed the challenge through an appropriate proposal for that particular town and with a connection to the site selected for the environmental project. Stranrear became the ‘Town of Music’ with a House of Music to support such a proposition, designed to house a lively music culture in the town that was currently homeless. A ‘supra-market’, home for Crie’s nomadic farmers market and complimentary facilities for the Cittaslow organisation to inhabit; and in Rothe- say a community arts facility to show case the Mount Stuart’s artists’ work and a natural home for the many local artists currently working independently on the Island of Bute. The need for intervention and change on the ground helped to give gravitas to the briefs. Local communities in all of the location became interested and enthusiastic about the students work. A public exhibition of work at the end of the year has helped to close the loop as students present their work to potential clients and communities.

Fig. 6 A walk through the landscape and the building; J. Doyle 2010.

Process The third component is that of Process; and this is where the controlled use of technology is established. The process is structured to guide students through various workshops and experiments utilising many mediums. Whist the computer has its place, after all it would be foolish not to take advantage of the possibilities that it can oer, but bearing in mind that this is often the student’s place of comfort sometimes over more appropriate explorative mediums. They are encouraged to engage with different ways of thinking and exploring – it is a cyclical process and aims to help prevent students being stuck in a design vacuum or within the cul-de-sac of a particular design tool. Where this variety of thinking and doing is formalised within the process, students who might normally rely totally on the digital to support their design proposals and those seeking a ‘quick x’ who default to the computer, are encouraged to embrace workshops where making is essential and recording experience is vital. This multifarious experimentation allows personal exploration into the multi layered thinking that is demanded by the program and can reveal particulars of dierent spaces that would otherwise not be realised. In the initial stages technology plays a key role in research, storing and sharing information. Presentation through Power Point, particularly in the preliminary stages is a really eective method of helping students to align their thinking and communicate a large volume of research, analysis inspiration and ideas and permit critique and subsequent editing and re nement of proposals. Site registration is rst, this goes beyond analysis and involves prolonged periods of time on and around the site. Digital technology permits student to precede their

624 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture site visits with desk top studies that allow access to a diverse range of data and information from historical maps and information, ariel photographs, local plans and population demographic, all prior to the physical registration of the site. Once out in the eld rst initial responses are made and recorded to provide a point of reection later in the design process. Analytical, observational and experiential drawings follow along side, researching, and recordings (Fig. 11) and these are made available to be shared with the year group via the school’s virtual learning environment. The need for the students to take ownership of the place, to carefully observe and interact with it is important giving them the knowledge and understanding of the context within which they are designing, hopefully resulting in an outcome that is for that place and only that place.

Fig. 7-9 Workshops explore materials and light.

Workshops exploring materials and full size making with hands on participation sitting beside per-formative studies are timetabled within the project (Fig. 7, 8 & 9). Dur- ing these students own experiences are realised and they discover that they know things that they didn’t know they knew. Through role play, activity diaries, spatial mappings and less formal studies, the immediacy of a physical connection with the particular activities being studied is sought, for example the experience of 24 hrs of solitude, communal dining, mixing concrete, writing poetry, shaping timber and model workshops. All depend on the act of doing and making being fundamental to the creation of a connection with sensuality, resulting in spaces where experience is designed and not a resultant of other choices and decisions. Experts are invited to work in the studio with the students, musicians, chefs and artists alongside architects who are experts in their particular eld. Complimenting these practical workshops sit another strand of exploration based in technology, where designs can be tested in a different way using programs such as Ecotect and visualisation and drawing packages such as Photoshop, Sketchup and Artlantis all used to capture more than just the visual. The breadth and depth of exploration is designed to reveal not just the visual but

Joanna Crotch UK 625 the sensual qualities that will be a result of the proposed architecture where the smell of paint or the heat of a re can be felt.

Case Study Zumthor in his book ‘Thinking Architecture’ states: ‘The strength of good design lies in ourselves and in our ability to perceive the world with both emotion and reason. A good architectural design is sensuous. A good architectural design is intelligent.’ And whist discussing teaching and architecture he goes on to say: ‘All design work starts from the premise of this physical, objective sensuousness of architecture, of its materials. To experience architecture in a concrete way means to touch, see, hear and smell it’. With these observations at the forefront of our minds and our three stage method of Brief, Site and Process established the following describes one year’s journey, the briefs and sites and the process that was embarked upon by the students. A series of projects that would embrace all that we believed would nurture the connections with sensuality and atmosphere, regionality and sense of place, sustainability and community and also meet the learning outcomes of the third year. The design briefs were supported with hands on workshops with timber and concrete, communal dining (Fig. 12, 13 & 14) and solitary space, analysing activity through active participation, speci c Design in Detail tutorials, Ecotect training, model workshops, lectures by experts, CAD support sessions and visits to buildings, all supporting the holistic and explorative journey. The year became preoccupied with food; it is something that we can all connect with - our need for food as living beings is essential to our survival, but also an element in our lives that touches our senses so directly, gives joy and contentment and evokes memories of past experiences. The ambition for the years work was to utilise Slow Food as our metaphor, it would help to enable students to make a direct relationship with a multi sensory proposal; cooking and eating being a thread that would continue through all the projects and provide the accessible link for students to embrace, explore and develop the more dicult concepts relating to the atmospheres of their buildings through sight, smell, touch and acoustics. It was also hoped that the issues raised would begin a conversation about the social, environmental and economic issues relating to food in terms of growing, eating, trading and long term sustainability.

Slow Food One Day in June This rst short project was designed to act as a preamble to the design briefs, and an opportunity to develop an understanding of indoor environments through a series of real world investigations. The students were asked to plan an experiment that would take place on the 21st June, the summer solstice, the longest day. The experiment required them to select an existing interior space, and by appropriate means register a salient aspect of a very particular environment that they had identi ed. The design of a methodology was required together with a device to measure or register the selected sense. No cameras or other electronic equipment was permitted and the design of low tech devices was required. This rst foray with the sensual produced a diverse range of experiments and results, from the daily range and depth of smells within a

626 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture spice shop in Morocco, to the movement of air in a cow shed in Orkney and drawings of sounds within Glasgow’s Kelvingrove museum ( g. 10).

Fig. 10 Blind drawing and a life aquatic; J. Barton 2009.

Cookhouse The Environmental project required the design of a ‘Cookhouse’. The students were introduced to the principles of the Slow Food movement and Slow Architecture and were immediately asked to consider architecture beyond the visual - an architecture that would address all the senses. This new building type would bring together a community of 15 individuals to live from the land for a year. The proposal for a cook house and its supporting landscape would be a place where slow food would be grown, cooked and eaten. The ambition for the building would be one in which the facility would provide a place to ‘change gear’, a place for its residents to jump o the tread- mill and reect holistically on their lives. Through careful partnership of architecture and food, the house would actively facilitate the enjoyment of growing, cooking and eating of food and provide a positive and sensitive environment within which these activities could be enjoyed. Careful selection of a site in order to support the ideas was important. Perth and Kinross was chosen, as it is Scotland’s rst, and currently only Cittaslow member. Perth has also adopted the Slow Food Char- ter. We sought a site with an historical resonance and real sense of place. Ardoch Fort near the small settlement of Braco on the banks of the River Knaik became the project’s touchstone. On the edge of the broad and fertile valley of Strathearn, 2000 years ago, Ar- doch became home to one of the earliest and most northerly outpost of the Roman Empire. The Romans selected their sites with great care. Proximity to water and good agricultural land being fundamental to the choice of place and the subsequent sustainability of the settlement in what was a hostile country. The choice for the location of the student’s proposals is similar; the proximity of a watercourse and good quality arable and grazing land will be fundamental to the prolonged existence of the facility. Throughout the project students were encour- Fig. 11 aged to explore both the haptic and the ephemeral, Exploring place.

Joanna Crotch UK 627 utilising physical models, hand drawings and computer renders. Proposals were also tested using ‘ecotect’, as well as internal and external visualisation using multi-media techniques.

Fig. 12-14 Dining, exploring and analysisng the ‘feast’.

‘Supra-market’ The Town Project took the students to Crei, a near neighbour to Ardoch Fort. Crei is a town with an embedded history of trade and local industry. The town has evolved and morphed through various dierent identities and now nds itself as an ailing rural settlement suering from the eects of a declining and ageing population. A new community campus school and an out of town supermarket have taken facilities and life away from the town’s core, and Crie is now a town struggling to de ne its identity in the 21st century. The project demanded students to design a strategy for new growth and required to design a ‘supra-market’ and new external public space, and reect on the town’s past, its present and the possible future. The proposed facility transcends the notion of a farmers market - becoming a permanent venue for the current and nomadic monthly market, a public foothold for the Cook House and various other social facilities. It was also required to have a true sustainable agenda in terms of the local community, building again on the concepts of the Slow Food movement. The establishment of such a proposal would have the ambition to act as a catalyst to revive the town’s centre and reverse the current trend of deterioration. Again, students used a variety of methods to explore and design proposals including initial desk top studies, video recording, sound studies and interviews with local people, physical models, 3d CAD models and visualisations. All modes of investigation individually revealed one aspect of the proposal yet collectively a holistic vision for the town and its people was communicated (Fig. 15 & 16).

Fig. 15, 16 New Public Space; O. Kennelly & C. Liggat 2010.

628 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Conclusion Each year students are confronted with design challenges that will enable them to meet the aims and objectives of the degree programme at the Mackintosh School. Often the results produced through more traditional project briefs where currently the use of the digital technology is often the single tool utilised by the students and can result in proposals that have a distance from the end user. Spaces are seldom inhabited and atmospheres not communicated. The ‘Slow’ briefs have been speci cally designed to move our ambitions for the student’s proposals beyond visually dominant results; to a process and outcome that demonstrate students’ exploration and design of place and space beyond a visual conclusion, to outcomes that demonstrate endeavour to communicate the factual, the poetic and the sensual qualities of the proposals. Conventional drawings are mandatory allowing the more pragmatic information to be communicated after all we still need to know where the front door is and how public and private thresholds are dealt with. But these are complimented with computer generated images, lms, paintings and books which try to communicate the softer qualities, those of human experience. The process has encouraged the students to attempt to smell, feel and touch the spaces created in their architecture. The computer visualisations have taken on a new dimension as students endeavour to use these sophisticated drawing tools to produce visions that communicate the feelings that one might have if inhabiting the space (Fig. 17 & 18). The project is now into its fourth year. The design of the programme is within a continual cycle of reection and re nement, as each element of the three stage process is reviewed and enhanced. During this academic year we will discuss the e-book versus the physical artefact, and students will be designing a Book Factory in Penicuik which will be the locale for the Town Study and public realm project. Following on the Environmental Project will be the design of a library and writer’s residency at nearby Little Sparta, the unique gardens of the late artist, philosopher and poet Ian Hamilton Finlay. We will be writing poetry whilst feeling the wind in our hair and giving recit- als.... probably in the rain as we endeavour to engage students with an architecture that should be felt rather than simply viewed.

Fig. 17, 18 A place designed for life; J. Hudspith 2010.

Joanna Crotch UK 629 References

Pallasmaa, J., 2005. The Eyes of the Skin, Architecture and the Senses. Wiley, England. Pallasmaa, J,.2009. The Thinking Hand. AD Primer, London. Solnit,R., 2002. Wanderlust. Verso, London. Zumthor, P., 2006. Thinking Architecture. Birkhauser, Berlin. Zumthor, P., 2006. Atmospheres. Birkhauser, Berlin. Cittaslow, 2009. Available at: http://www.cittaslo.net

630 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Giovanna Franco

Department DSA, University of Genoa Italy Archetips, Symbols, Memory Which Tectonic in Digital Culture? Premise The international conference held in Chania posed crucial questions regarding technology-driven architecture, that is not possible to ignore. Can human sciences still play an important role in a digital era? Can digital culture inuence and even modify human perceptions and behaviours? Is it raising, or not, a new concept of humanity, inuenced by digital tools, characterized by needs, ways of life and perceptions dierent from the recent past? And, lastly, how and how much should digital tools should keep into consideration human sciences? If, as someone said during the conference, the main question for architecture and building construction in XX Century was: “How will we do it?”, XXI Century has to face another question: “For whom will we do it?”. I would like to add; “Why will we do it (this in that way)?” This is the red line along which the presentation, and the following paper, have been structured. According to the “Why?” question, concerning motivations, meanings and sense of our way of thinking and doing, the paper is focused on relations between digital instruments and a cognitive approach (that should be nalized to a «creative knowledge», according to Howard Gardner, speci cally oriented on teaching experience. In spite of some experts who, during the conference, showed us that the computer has now a form of intentionality, the premise that supports my work is still the supremacy of human mind, at least in the process of creative and artistic activity.

Surrounding Conditions Digital culture plays nowadays a primary role, even in architecture. Digital culture, compared to the past, make easier representation and construction of elegant and seducing shapes, more rapidly than the age when architects used mechanic instruments. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t forget extraordinary examples like the construction of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, in Florence. The presence and utility of digital instruments is a matter of fact that we couldn’t deny, even if “old generations” hardly accepted it. The point is not whether we like it or not; the point that we, as teachers (sometimes less skilled than our students in the manipulation of digital instruments), have to face is to prepare new generations to manage and to control this cultural changement, avoiding the risk to become just skilled “digital” executors. Advantages given by digital instruments are widely evident, therefore I would like to focus the attention and few reections on some risks. The hegemony of digital culture implies, in fact, some probable consequences, that I would like to stress using the word “crisis” (Picon, 2010).

Crisis of the dichotomy natural/arti cial, real/virtual Architecture is invested by a radical re-de nition of the limits between the natural and the arti cial. Digital era proposes a world where the edge between reality and virtuality sometimes is not clearly understandable.

Crisis of the concept of scale Object designed and represented in books, or edi ed in contemporary landscape, could be seen, at the same time, as micro or macro objects. We can look, on architec-

632 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture tural magazines, the origin of the form, often coming from molecular biology. The use of fractal geometry, instead of traditional geometry, put in crisis the presence of a xed scale at which things must be deciphered in priority.

Crisis of the context The unde ned scale put in crisis also the concept of context. Some new architectures look like giant urban sculptures; sometimes their shape has been moulded from a formless material (see the work of Jan Kaplicky). Certainly this kind of problem raises the relevance of artistic perception, the capability to comprehend forms and to feel space.

Crisis of traditional tectonic Scienti c research open now to a variety of new materials, arti cial, intelligent, changing characters and behaviours depending on use. How many types of material can we use and adapt? How many shapes could we represent and perform using digital tools? Material is no more a xed data in an architectural design approach.

Furthermore: how does form conform to gravity? Using digital instruments to generate forms, we now assist to a sort of estrangement of architectural design from constructive problems and reality, often demanded to computer or specialists. As a consequence, many buildings are marked by a striking discrepancy between architectural form and tectonic, at least in the meaning we gave in the recent and past tradition (Frampton, 1995). The crisis of traditional tectonic codes and structural conceptions leads to the spectacular return of the ornament, ostracized by modernity, that means the loss of signi cance and relevance of the way to put together and assemble parts and elements. Speaking about consistency and signi cance, no more importance assumes the opposites like load/light, opaque/transparent, structural/non structural. Following just harmonious shapes, using parametric digital tools, manipulating virtual surfaces, as they where “rigid origami”, we run the risk to fall into a new sort of “Manierism”, em- phasized by the research of aesthetics and “beauty” that invest all the branches of our human life (design, fashion, graphics...). Nonetheless, references and legitimation shouldn’t be completely found in technological disciplines, or in the capacity to give materiality to a shape or to correctly pose and solve a structural problem: this arti cial dichotomy between “human sciences” and “natural sciences” has to be overcome.

Inheritance, Sense of History and Responsibility What is even worse, the crisis of traditional tectonic compromises the link between architecture and history, that means also memory (Picon, 2010). Not being able, any more, to recognize immediately what could be considered as a monument, at least in the traditional way of thinking, it seems that we are living in a sort of «everlasting present», without taking care of our inheritance, both in the sense of what we received from our predecessors and what we will leave to future generations. The world of randomness, of unpredictable (at least in the choice of architectural forms, spaces

Giovanna Franco Italy 633 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 BMW Welt, Münich, Wolf D. Prix with Coop BMW Welt, Münich, Wolf D. Prix with Coop Himmelb(l)au, 2007. A 3D digital chessboard. Himmel(l)au, 2007. Display panel of the body- Detail of the double cone (Photo by the author). work (Photo by the author).

Fig. 3 Eighteen Turns, Daniel Liebskind, 2001.

Fig. 4 Eighteen Turns, Daniel Liebskind, 2001. The structural conception, made of folded frames. Drawing by Eleonora Bua.

634 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 5 Den Haag, Netherlands. Stone folding architecture (Photo by the author).

Fig. 6 Osmotic membrane, structural grids, baskets, rigid surfaces: model of the work by Cecil Balmond. Exposition, Denmark, 2007 (Photo by the author).

Fig. 7 Brugge Pavillion, Toyo Ito, 2002, detail of the envelope. Pattern follows non conventional structural principles.

Giovanna Franco Italy 635 and materials) open to another very serious problems: the risk of ambiguity, the lack of responsibility. «Contemporary man lives in a sort of ambiguous thought that allows, both at an individual and collective stage, to elude the trouble of responsibility» (Lumer and Zeki, 2011, p. 35). The multiplicity of images and suggestions oered by contemporary architecture has the eect of destabilizing the “cognitive process” of students; which comprehension do they reach looking at abstract shapes, deformable, modi able, adaptable through parametric design? At the same time and with more danger, the multiplicity of shapes leads to a kind of self-legitimization, or, in other words, an avoidance of responsibility (in the lack of attention to context, in even less attention to human needs in that context). As a result, the student confuses the expression of his/her supposed “creativity” with a total self-referenced act. This crisis appears evident in educational programs too: on the one hand architectural design is pressed to the modellization of pure forms, on the other the teaching of Construction, especially at the beginning, remains anchored to traditional methods, now less eective as they are linked to few constructive materials and traditional tectonic codes. This fact has surely to do with the general crisis of educational methods, speci cally for Construction, where the encyclopedic approach and “taxonomic” classi cation that governed for the second half of 20th Century now reveals its inecacy. The question is no longer whether digital technology is good or bad for design: it is rather about the direction that architecture is taking under its inuence and about what and how should we teach to help students to grow up in a responsible way, full of cultural depth, not renouncing to a creative approach.

Acquisition of Knowledge: Art and Science According to the more recent researches in the led of neurosciences, the link between art and sciences is opening new frontiers on the functioning of human mind, on the reaction of neurons to art and artistic production and the behaviour of neural nets. The surrounding environment and even new digital culture in architecture are characterized by instability and ambiguity (Lumer and Zeki, 2011, p. 4). Information is continuously changing and human mind, in its search for knowledge, should be able to discard variations and to reach the real essence of things. The stability of perceptions, despite the instability of information, is a central issue for philosophers of knowledge. This has to do with the concept of complexity, inside which human mind tries to organize information. Neural nets are capable to recognize similarity, they can extract a sort of prototype, following a process of abstraction, that means the capacity to formulate a general idea starting from the particular. This is the base where the recognition of traditional tectonic was founded, where identi cation of language and signi cance of construction took lead. This process of abstraction, and the learning of a sort of syntaxis in architecture, is absolutely necessary to our mind, to maintain a stable perception despite the instability of information; thus, abstraction corresponds also to the capacity to formulate syntethic concepts, that – in an artistic process like architecture, as at least it partly is – also means creativity. In the digital era, all the above mentioned type of crisis, regarding morphogenesis and ways of construction, contribute to destabilize human

636 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture knowledge and comprehension of the meanings and the values of an “opera”. How is it possible to acquire knowledge, and to attribute meanings and values to things, through an architecture that is becoming, in contemporary context, more and more ambiguous? The crucial question, involving education in architecture, regards possible ways to get unchanging information, essential and constant, when they are continuously changing or they could change during the process of morphogenesis, thanks to digital instruments. According to what Henri Matisse said: «Seeing is a creative art that implies an ef- fort», the aim of the teaching experience is to teach to see, to organize the complexity of information, to attribute a sense to dierent signals that we perceive and to extract the real essence of things, as to recognize the presence of a new form of tectonic and the meanings behind it. A process of elaboration and classi cation of visual forms, exploring the signi cance of sign and design, can’t thus be based any more completely on traditional geometry and harmony, on mechanics and structural requirements, on the interplay of horizontal, vertical and oblique parts, on the relation between supporting and supported members (Picon, 2010). Reecting around these general questions, the author tries to x some educational objectives developing a «creative intelligence» (Gardner, 2006), an intelligence that is able to understand the meaning of a wide range of information, organize them (the fundamental domain of human subjectivity), even in an unexpected way, and also join them to imagine new forms of connection, by following a process, typical of nature, that has been called «simplexity» (Bartoz, 2009).

Architectural Meanings, Values and Syntax The focal point on which teaching experience intends to accompany students in the rst year of a post-graduate curriculum and introduce them to contemporary architecture, intends to answer the question: “Does a syntax of new tectonic exists?” Even though tectonic articulation, in digital era, doesn’t constitute a language, as it was in the recent past, it seems important to give students some keys to enter the semantic of digital era, not to run the risk to leave digital architecture, in their opinion, as a pure product of visual art. The way to pursue this kind of objective has to do with a syntactic–semantic approach. Traditional approach in teaching Construction at the rst stage aimed to give students some bases to decipher and understand principles of building and architecture design and construction: knowledge on main building materials, on principles of stability and structural conceptions, on basic elements that constitute these structural conceptions (punctual or continuous), on possible ways to assemble parts and elements and to join dierent materials. Especially this last part allowed the teacher, in the recent past, to create a sort of “constructive vocabulary-lexicon” made of words dedicated to constructive “actions” (but also based on precise architectural intentions). As an example of this vocabulary: supporting, matching, aligning, covering, super- imposing, translating...are all words whose signi cance has to do with a constructive “history”. Each of these words could be applied and declined in an enormous variety of ways; the fortune, or the value, of architectural masterpieces, depends also on that.

Giovanna Franco Italy 637 Fig. 8 H-edge. Exposition on the work of Cecil Bal- mond. Denmark, 2007 (Photo by the author).

Fig. 9 The white Chapel, Osaka, Jun Aoki, 2006. Filigree tissue and structural behaviour: the role of geometry.

Fig. 10 Serpentine Gallery Pavillion London, Toyo Ito, 2002. Genesis of the structure: rotation and expansion of a square, based on a very simple algorithm. “Structural beauty” is based on proportional models.

638 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Each of these words could be seen as an “entity” and, in the teaching experience, we are proposing various and dierent representations of the same entity, through a linguistic decomposition, for example in the way to join parts and elements or to assemble dierent materials in ancient or modern architectures. This surely encourage student’s imagination and creativity and introduce him/her to the reachness and complexity of architectural design approach. Following a process similar to semantics, students are invited to explore the structure of a language (architectural), made of phonemes, words (materiality) that, organized together, form a vocabulary, a syntax and, moreover a complex of signi cances, message, values metaphors and images. Through traditional lessons (ex cathedra) but also involving students in practical small experiments, they are invited to reect on the deep meaning of a sign, to understand the materiality but also the way to work and put in place (having to do with density, weight, action and reaction, “weaving” of material), understand that, behind the sign, there is a form of work, union, assembly that gives meaning to the architectural work by making it a unique. In other tems they are invited to follow a process of experimentation and, later, abstraction as a synthetic ability to form concepts, to reach the capacity to attribute meanings, to reach the essence of things and to construct mental gures. Behind this process of investigation and comprehension is, in short, the signi - cance of traditional tectonic codes that we are used to perceive (as the corresponding consolidate value of memory and history); this is the starting point to investigate which language, and what images and values could be hidden behind constructive culture in architecture, for example dealing with ways and shapes of connections of discrete elements (bricks, wooden pieces, stones, metal sheet...). These words became, in fact, the language of architectural detail, at least until the end of XX Century, but some of them (and the expressive reachness behind them) have been put in crisis in the digital era, where new ways to produce and to assemble materials, especially with the role of the “ornament”, overcame traditional productive and constructive processes.

Digital architecture requires, also in teaching, a radical inversion of direction. Shifting from skeleton to skin, from discrete to continuous, or vice versa, the traditional approach of architectural lexicon, or the language of details, is not applicable or completely suitable. The way to look at digital architecture has to be changed, not from particular to general but form general to particular, and students, looking at recent projects, are invited to answer the following question: “Is this architecture able to tell us its constructive history?” Of course, in this way of teaching, the choice of new digital architectures is not neutral. Cecil Balmond, for instance, with his research on an alternative tectonic based on non cartesian or informal principles ts very well: his work seems random but it isn’t, and sometimes is based on algorithms very easily understandable, when clari ed to students. Anyhow, the same problems posed for “traditional architectural lexicon” could be raised for digital architecture, after the previous question already posed: which message/s does an architecture launch? How could it/they be expressed through

Giovanna Franco Italy 639 words? Are these words applied to the form or the construction? To the whole or the parts? Gilles Deleuze proposed a philosophical introduction to digital/forder architecture and opened new frontiers (Deleuze, 1988). Stretching/contracting/dilating, com- pressing/exploding, wrapping/developing, involving/evolving, are the new words, and dichotomies, linked to a “folding” lexicon and they are not leaving as ways to fold paper (origami) but also to create architecture using materials that could be load, opaque, massive, or transparent and light. Fold concerns each material through scales and speeds that are dierent; fold determines shapes, and make it become a form of expression. Phonemes and words could be the same of traditional tectonic, but syntax and language are rapidly changing; the same that happened in the work of painter Ar- cimboldo, who gave new sense to his paintings combining elements as meaningless words; anyhow, what he combined together, was able to assume a new meaning. Ar- cimboldo didn’t create signs, he combined them in new signi cance, like a worker of language, understanding and demonstrating that the sum has a dierent eect from the addition of parts (Barthes, 1982).

References

Barrow, J.D., 1995, The Artful Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barthes, R., 1982, Arcimboldo ou Réthoriquer et Magicien, in Barthes, R., 1982, L’obvie et l’obtus. Essais critique III. Paris: Edition du Seuil. Bertoz, A., 2009, La simplexité. Paris: Odile Jacob. Deleuze, G., 1988, Le pli. Leibniz et le Baroque. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Frampton, K., 1995, Studies in Tectonic Culture: The Poetics of Construction in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusset: MIT Press. Gardner, H., 2006, Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Lumer, L. and Zeki, S., 2011, La bella e la bestia: arte e neuroscienze. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Picon. A., 2010, Digital Culture in Architecture. An introduction for the design profession. Basel: Birkäuser.

640 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Evelien Verdonck1 Hubert Froyen2 Sylvain De Bleeckere2

1Hasselt University and PHL University College 2Department of Architecture, PHL University College

Diepenbeek Belgium IT Tools and Human Voices in Teaching Architecture Context During the last two or three decades of the 20th century, architecture retreated from a former interest in the social sciences and in the needs of the diversity of users of the built environment, into its traditional domain as a profession concerned primarily with aesthetics (Milner and Edge, 1998) and with technology (Whitney, 2003). Among other forms of technology the consideration of digital technology in architecture is most paramount and unavoidable, given its ubiquity and widespread eects on architectural practice, teaching and research. Simultaneously, but less inuential, the new Universal Design (UD) paradigm has been developed in the social and in the academic world as a radical human-centred approach. Underlying this more universalistic Design for All strategy is a conception of disability as an in nitely various but universal feature of the human condition, uid and continuous, and to a large extend also contextual (Bickenbach et al., 1999). From the perspectives and the experiences of people in occasional handicap situations (people with prams, cold ngers, broken glasses, pregnant, exhausted, stressed, people in plaster...), and from people with permanent physical, sensorial, or mental disabilities, human-made physical environments are relatively dis-abling or en-abling. Similar to academic projects in the United States and in Sweden, three Belgian schools of architecture (Artesis Antwerp, W&K Brussels / Ghent, PHL Diepenbeek), supported by the government, worked together over a longer period of time 2001-2006 in a Universal Design Education Project (Froyen et al., 2006).

Cover of the ‘Universal Design Toolkit’ (Froyen et al. 2006).

The programme and the publication have been subsidised by the Vlaamse Gemeensc- hap Flemish Government, Belgium) After the initial and formal period, the project was further developed dierently in each of the three schools. The paper describes more in detail the structural integration of Universal Design teaching in the curriculum of one of the schools, PHL Depart- ment of Architecture (Diepenbeek, Belgium). In this paper the focus is neither on IT nor on UD as such, but on the fruitful inter- relationship between both, as well in the learning processes as in the artefacts. The

642 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture main emphasis is on the teaching of a critically responsive and human-centred architecture, on processes and products that combine physical and virtual modalities, and integrate hybrids of Physical and Virtual Space in architecture.

Digital Technology & Architectural Training The role of computer technology has undoubtedly gained a marked signi cance and widespread eects on architectural practice, teaching and research. Architectural drawing, modelling, performance simulation, disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration, construction management and building production are now routinely performed using computer based technology.

Over the last four decades the technology evolved from an assistive technology that would enhance the practice of architecture (CAAD or computer-aided architectural design) to a scope to contemplate ‘totally computer-mediated architectural design’. Furthermore, rendering, 3D modelling, animation and Virtual Reality as well as the power of digital media - to permit the seamless integration of various data types and various modes of presentation - are unleashing completely new ways to display architecture and to communicate with stakeholders in networks and structures of building provision (Ball, 1998) as well as with building managers and with a diversity of users of human-made environments.

In their White Paper to NAAB (National Architectural Accrediting Board) Bermudez and Klinger (2003) urge the Accreditation Board to colour the rhetoric of its discussions with the immediate issues of digital technology and its impact on architecture, and the immediacy of acting with strong and proactive consideration of digital technology. The authors stress the vital capacity of healthy disciplines to remain tolerant of a state of ux by constantly questioning the Inclusion / exclusion, import / export, and collaboration / isolation to / from new ideas, new techniques, new disciplines, and new technology (Bermudez and Klinger, 2003). At the perimeter of this nebulous exchange, they see an innovative digital discourse that is emerging and that oers some unexpected new conduits to an attentive discipline of architecture. Topic nodes within this discourse are evolving with a particular set of important distinctions from one another. Thus, we contend that the digital discourse is augmented by further speci city such as: Digital Pedagogy, Digital Tools, Digital Production/ Fab- rication, Digital Visualization, Digital Projects, Digital Design, Digital Representation, Dig- ital Thinking, and Digital Practice (Bermudez and Klinger, 2003).

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) connects designers in a gigantic digital network of networks, which facilitates and stimulates the exchange of their values, expertise and artefacts, which further the design process. ‘Increasingly, these design settings in academia, research, and professional practice combine physical and virtual modalities such as immersion, projection, and a range of interaction technologies’ (Jabi, 2003).

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 643 Although students now enter architectural education and the profession from a tech- nologized generation, more familiar with digital tools and environments, we still teach them the old skills of sketching and drawing freehand, building physical models, in situ analysis and multi-sensorial experience of built environments, hands on construction, observation and collaboration with real users in the real world. All in all, students increasingly use overlapping physical and virtual tools and artefacts to arrive at a cooperative design of hybrids that integrate physical and virtual space. Peter Anders has described this integrated Physical and Cognitive Space in Architecture as cybrids (An- ders, 1997).

Software has established platforms from which the activity surrounding a design project can be managed but the nal responsibility for a critical dimension, for a human-centred approach, and for ‘enabling built environments’ still remains with human beings. In this perspective the concept of Universal Design can restore a strong sense of immediacy in rational thought, which implies restoration from a condition of abstraction and isolation to its true place in synergy between thoughts and feelings.

Teaching Universal Design: A Case study Though coming from quite dierent histories and directions, the purpose of designing for accessible (assistive technology, Design for Special Needs) on the one hand, and Universal Design (mainstream Inclusive Design, Design for All) on the other hand is very similar: to reduce the physical and attitudinal barriers between people with and without disabilities, and between an inherent diversity of people on the one hand, and physical objects and spaces on the other hand. The Universal Design paradigm extends beyond accommodating ‘average / modal’ users and aims to include the real diversity of user populations, including those with physical and / or mental impairments and functional limitations. It is a conceptual framework for designing and developing inclusive environments. It stems from an attitude, not a prescriptive set of procedures. Universal Design reframes the concept of accessibility, from special features for a stigmatised minority group, to good design for everyone. In an experimental step by step process started in 20011, the concept of Universal Design has been introduced into the curricula of architectural education in Belgium. Speci cally at PHL Department of Architecture a pedagogic-didactic and methodological approach has been developed with: UD lectures and seminars, theoretical and empirical research, participation of users-experts, simulations, Universal Design patterns, Universal Design projects and Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) as key elements.

Universal Design in the PHL curriculum Although the nal goal is to focus on Universal Design, we start, for pedagogical reasons, from teaching the more limited concept of accessibility in relation to older people. The vast majority of students are familiar with older people in their immediate social environment and in the media, and have some implicit knowledge of multi-pa- thology and of physical barriers related to ageing.

644 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture The basic concept of accessibility / adaptability is introduced to the second year students as a part of the Design Theory course, and mainly focuses on housing and immediate environments. There are lectures on accessibility and on housing (re-)design for the elderly. Following this theoretical introduction, students work on a small assignment, an analysis and (re-)design project under the name ‘Senior Citizens Scenario’. Subsequently during the third year, all students attend lectures on design methodology geared speci cally towards the much broader scope of Universal Design. They then take part in a simulation workshop, during which they experience and analyse the context and the site for their subsequent speci c UD design project in the second semester. Also in preparation for this project, students develop UD Pat- terns: they research one particular potential problem (CONFLICT) and its generic solutions (RESOLUTIONS) for speci c public spaces or architectural elements they will be designing in the design studio. All the patterns together form a knowledge database for UD, made available online to all students during their individual design process. In the master years, a limited group of students interested in Universal Design attend elective lectures, symposia and workshops related to Universal Design, both organized by the department and by external instances. These students also write a thesis related to Universal Design. Finally, students can link their master graduation project to UD in general, and more explicitly to the research ndings and to the synthesis made in their thesis.

Summary of the programme Mandatory courses and design projects for Bachelor architecture students - Second year: Lectures on Accessibility and on Inclusive Housing. Adaptable Housing. Home Modi cations. Simulations with Visual Impairment Simulation Packages which reproduce the eects of various eye diseases, blindfolded students walking with a white cane, use of wheelchairs. Workshops with Lead Users / Users-Experts. First semester assignment: students contact an older couple 75+, and analyse and re-design their private house for ‘aging in place’ . - Third year: First semester: Lectures on Universal Design Principles and Practices. Introduction to a methodological approach. Results of personal research structured in Universal Design Patterns (Froyen, 2008). Second semester: speci c Universal Design project, related to the UD Patterns. Optional Universal Design topics for Master architecture students - Advanced seminars on Universal Design - Independent study - Master thesis - Universal Design project

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 645 Thematic UD approach in the PHL curriculum • UD lectures and seminars All PHL members of sta teaching aspects of Universal Design (Froyen, Herssens, Ver- donck) are also members of the PHL / UD research group and are actively involved in UD research. The continuous recharging and resourcing directly in connection with ongoing personal research, is of vital importance for the constant improvement of the pedagogical-didactic approach. For Bachelor students a methodological approach, with a mixture of lectures, seminars and simulations is adopted and constantly re ned. Furthermore the alternative organisation of theoretical lectures for students, alternating with seminar sessions and with simulation sessions, reveals that groups of students that had a hands on simulation session right before a theoretical Accessibility / UD lecture are more attentive and actively involved than other groups. A limited group of students select Universal Design as a topic for further exploration in the Master programme, spread over a period of two academic years. They attend thematic lectures and conferences, both at home and abroad (Erasmus programme), they discuss the ongoing research and publications of their teachers, participate in a series of UD seminars, they do independent study and personal research, write a UD- related thesis and they might design a nal UD project yes or no in the context of an international competition (Schindler biennial Design for All competition).

• Theoretical and empirical research In the context of personal PhD research, dierent members of sta elaborate dierent aspects of the new Universal Design paradigm: analysis of the UD paradigm and development of an overall methodological approach for UD (Hubert Froyen), the haptic perception system, which people with congenital blindness rely on, and haptic qualities in architecture (Jasmien Herssens), Universal Design Patterns: designing a web- based tool with architects (Evelien Verdonck). Fragmentary results from these research projects guide students in their papers and in their design projects. Published papers are directly discussed in seminars with Master students. The centre for people with visual impairments Rosalien Claes (M.Arch. 3rd year) designed, partly incorporates the research ndings of Jasmien Herssens.

Fig. 1 Centre for people with visual impairments (Claes, 2011).

646 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture • Participation of users-experts Lead Users2 / Users-Experts can play a central role in teaching a critically responsive architecture, through simulations, consultancy, collaboration and co-design. On a regular base Users-Experts are invited to collaborate in UD workshops, seminars and public events. Persons with dexterity disabilities, (semi-)ambulant disabled people, wheelchair users, people with severe visual impairments or an autism spectrum disorder for example, are all Lead Users (Von Hippel, 1986) of human-made objects and architectural spaces, and they confront the decision makers and designers with particularly extreme or demanding versions of the stated problem. Most of these users are also lifelong experts (Users-Experts) in the art of eliminating handicap situations and in suggesting design solutions that work, and that lead to a more comfortable and a richer multisensory built environment for all users.

• Designing in the Dark (Froyen et al., 2006) In the context of seven steering group meetings, in preparation of the VIPHEC colloquium (Visually Impaired People in Historic European Cities), of November 2003, the experimental design workshop ‘Designing in the Dark’ was developed. In total, 16 students (third, fourth, and fth year) and 9 people with visual impairments (blind) participated full time in the week long experimental workshop. The title of the workshop ‘Designing in the Dark’ does not refer to the world of experience of the blind and partially sighted, but corresponds with an unknown and in-

Fig. 2 Designing in the dark workshop (Froyen, 2006).

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 647 secure design-attitude of architectural students and teachers in direct collaboration with people with severe visual impairments. Tactile maps, the end-product of this mutual learning process, were constructed by the exchange of knowledge and skills between the two partners, the architectural students and the people with severe visual impairments. ‘With this interdisciplinary exercise the “dierence” was the heartbeat of the mutual enrichment process. The workshop can thus been described as a temporary sublimation of two knowledge systems’ (Renders and Viane, 2006).

• Simulations All simulations took place inside the PHL Architecture building, in the Retail LAB (simulating a small supermarket), and in public spaces on campus.

• Universal Design patterns (Froyen, 2008) The step-by-step expansion of the corpus of design knowledge, to incorporate the needs and wishes of the real diversity of users, requires a large amount of additional

Fig. 3 Simulations (Verdonck et al., 2010).

648 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture information about environment-related human ‘dis-abilities’ (limitations and possibilities). This information about both people ↔ environment ‘Conicts’, and empirically based ‘Resolutions’, is documented in a so-called Universal Design Pattern database. Each Universal Design Pattern (UD Pattern) is a structured and an evolving compilation of design information, this on the level of relatively autonomous aspects (acoustics, arti cial light..) and / or elements (doors, steps..) of buildings and human-made spaces. All UD Patterns have the same twofold set-up with in the CONFLICTS section a detailed description of the relevant functional disabilities, and in the RESOLUTIONS part empirical morphological / technological solutions (generic). Over the last eight academic years (2003-2004 to 2010-2011) almost 400 bachelor students have elaborated and adapted 1049 such patterns, speci cally in the context of a subsequent UD project. The students do research within the following design-relevant categories of users:

- 0.0 Modal users (average, standard). This includes users who are tired, pregnant, stressed, absent-minded, ill or injured, undergoing medical treatment, under the inuence of alcohol or drugs, as well as travellers with a pram or with heavy or sizeable objects. - 1.0 Users with neuromusculoskeletal and movement related functional limitations. - 2.0 Users with sensory limitations. - 3.0 Users with organic defects. - 4.0 Users of exceptional size. - 5.0 Users with mental and / or psychological limitations.

Patterns can provide relevant information in a structured way both about problems (conicts) that occur between users and built environments and empirically supported architectural/technological solutions (resolutions). Since the documented solutions are always tentative and a large amount of room remains open for innovative concepts, the pattern approach can be viewed as an adapted problem de nition method. Because of the detailed description of existing problems in the conicts, they dier fundamentally from the many prescriptive legal ordinances and building regulations that are presently used in design and building processes. The conicts accurately capture descriptions of the ‘why’ for each design parameter, and designers can consult them to determine to what extent a speci c design option might have a dis- abling / en-abling eect Fig. 4 on functional use. The process of generating and updating the UD Pattern database (Froyen and Verdonck, 2009).

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 649 A ten year research programme subsidised by PHL University College, Hasselt Uni- versity The Vlaamse Gemeenschap (Flemish Government, Belgium) secured funding for the organisation of three focus discussions, with 30 user-experts and architects. Twelve exemplary samples of UD Patterns are now put online and put to the test of public scrutiny.

• Universal Design projects After the second Bachelor year (re-)design project, under the name ‘Senior Citizens Scenario’, third year students individually design a public building based on the Uni- versal Design concept. Elaborated UD principles are supplemented by speci c descriptive design information they brought together in de UD Patterns database. The diversity of concepts and architectural styles we can see in the projects, clearly demonstrate that the UD criteria do not limit more than any other set of criteria for an assignment. A speci c UD project partly forces the students into UD thinking, but for most of them the explicit message gets somehow partially lost ‘in translation’.

Fig. 5 UD for the neighbourhood, 3rd year studio project (Beulen, 2011).

Fig. 6 UD for the neighbourhood, 3rd year studio project (Castro, 2011).

650 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 7 UD for the neighbourhood, 3rd year studio project (Mariën, 2011).

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 651 • Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) has its nascence in the US and has been used in one form or another since 1960. It is de ned as the process of ‘evaluating buildings in a systematic and rigorous manner after they have been built and occupied for some time’ (Preiser et al., 1988). From the perspective of Universal Design, POE provides us feedback of how successful buildings are in supporting the diverse individual end-user requirements. It involves systematic evaluation of dierent opinions about buildings in use, from the perspective of the people who use them. Through POE, in mixed groups of students and people with disabilities, we assess how well buildings match users’ needs, and together we identify ways to improve building design, performance and tness for purpose.

• Buildings (Re-)visited (Froyen et al., 2008) In 2007 and in 2008 four recently built public buildings by well-known architects were visited in Belgium by a group of students, architects, and architecture critics. The mixed group shued blindfolded through the halls armed with a white stick. They were being led by User-Experts, people with long time visual impairments.

Fig. 8 Buildings Revis(it)ed in VAC Hasselt, STUK Leuven, Concertgebouw, Bruges and Gerechtsgebouw, Antwerp (Stevens, 2004-2006).

652 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Conclusion The Universal Design approach, used in our teaching a critically responsive architecture, is one possible and explicit way of rethinking the human in technology-driven architecture. It entails a return to the real world and to immediacy and to personal experiences away from abstraction. Together with digital architecture it can keep a certain balance between physical and virtual tools / artefacts. Along with IT skills students should therefore be involved a variety of methods to take the users’ needs into account from the very beginning of the design process, in order to make sure the end result will be truly human-centred and socially sustainable.

The common recommendation for rethinking the human in a technology- and market-driven society, and for addressing qualities of accessibility and usability for a wid- est possible spectrum of users of all ages, is education, particularly for urban planners and architects (World Health Organization, 2007). Research however has shown the ‘diculty of infusing ideas about design, emanating from the social sciences, into the conventional, studio based architectural education process’ (Milner and Edge, 1998).

Within collaborative design projects, Universal Design takes on an additional role. As embodiments of UD ideas and actions, the resulting artifacts become media for communication of user-centered policies and initiatives.

Digital tools may in the end support Universal Design in becoming a human-centred form of making, with high social and cultural value, rather than mere unelaborate problem solving. Various contemporary ICT modes of presentation and communication undoubtedly are of greatest importance in bridging the gap between decision makers / designers and end users of the built environment.

Notes

1 The project responded in part to Resolution ResAP(2001)1, ‘..on the introduction of the principles of universal design into the curricula of all occupations working on the built environment’, adopted by the Committee of Ministers on 15 February 2001. 2 In Von Hippels’ words, lead users are users of a human-made space or a product that currently experience accessibility and usability needs still unknown to the larger public and who also bene t greatly if they obtain a solution to these needs.

Bibliography

Anders, P. (1997) Integrating Cognitive and Physical Space in Architecture. Representation in Design ACADIA97. Cincinatti. Ball, M. (1998) Institutions in British property research: a review. Urban Studies, 35, 1501-1517.

Evelien Verdonck, Hubert Froyen, Sylvain De Bleeckere Belgium 653 Bermudez, J. & Klinger, K. (2003) Digital technology and Architecture. White Paper Submitted to the NAAB by ACADIA. Beulen, J. (2011) UD for the neighbourhood. UD Studio Project. PHL University College. Bickenbach, J. E., Chatterji, S. & Badley, E. (1999) Models of disablement, universalism and the international classi cation of impairments, disabilities and handicaps. Social Science & Medicine, 48, 1173-1187. Castro, R. (2011) UD for the neighbourhood. UD studio project. PHL University College. Claes, R. (2011) Centre for people with visual impairments. Master Project. Hasselt, PHL University College. Froyen, H. (2006) Designing in the Dark workshop: exploring the city, discussions and tactile maps. PHL University College. Froyen, H. (2008) Universal Design Patterns and their use in designing inclusive environments. In Langdon, P., Clarkson, J. & Robinson, P. (Eds.) Designing Inclusive Futures. Londen, Springer. Froyen, H., Asaert, C., Dujardin, M. & Herssens, J. (2006) Ontwerpen voor Iedereen, integraal en in- clusief. Universal Design Toolkit, Brussel, Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Gelijke kansen in Vlaanderen. Froyen, H., Herssens, J. & Heylighen, A. (2008) Buildings Revis(it)ed. Architectuurtijdschrift A+, 210, 82-85. Froyen, H. & Verdonck, E. (2009) Generating and updating UD Pattern Database. PHL University College. Jabi, W. (2003) Crossroads of digital discourse. Annual Conference of the association for computer aided design in architecture. Indianapolis (Indiana). Mariën, K. (2011) UD for the neighbourhood. UD studio project. PHL University College. Milner, J. & Edge, M. (1998) Universal Design: A social agenda within the ecologically designed built environment. Shifting Balances: Changing Roles in Policy, Research and Design. Proceedings of the IAPS Biennal Conference. Eindhoven, The Netherlands. Preiser, F. E. W., Rabinowitz, H. & White, E. (1988) Post Occupancy Evaluation, New York, Van Nos- trand Reinhold. Renders, F. & Viane, H. (2006) Analyzing Spaces in the City of Leuven: The Synergy between De- signers and Users. IN Devlieger, P., Renders, F., Froyen, H. & Wildiers, K. (Eds.) Blindness and the multi-sensorial City. Antwerpen/Apeldoorn, Garant. Stevens, R. (2004-2006) Buildings Revis(it)ed in VAC Hasselt, STUK Leuven, Concertgebouw, Bruges and Gerechtsgebouw, Antwerp. Verdonck, E., Fraussen, S. & Vanormelingen, W. (2010) Simulation workshops with second year students. PHL University College. Von Hippel, E. (1986) Lead Users: A Source of Novel Product Concepts. Management Science, 32, 791-806. Whitney, P. (2003) Design in a global world. Interview with professor Patrick Withney on 4 november 2002. EAAE News Sheet, 66, 17-25. World Health Organization (2007) Global Age-Friendly Cities: a Guide, Geneva, WHO Press.

654 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Susanna Fülöp

Faculty of Architecture Department of Building Construction Budapest University of Technology and Economics Hungary Holistic Integrated Approach of Architectural Education & Practice Terminology & Strategy Widespread awareness of climate and other environmental changes (decreasing natural resources, pollution of environment) together with huge amounts of the technical opportunities have triggered professional demands for architects with advanced skills in design. The successful integration of complex principles and new technologies into a creative design process in practice and education has proven elusive. Although most architectural practices claim “environmental, sustainable, green, energy ecient, holistic” as key elements of their design approach, few recent buildings have lived up the whole complexity to these targeted goals. The exact meaning of these de nitions could help us to clarify the main aspects, demands, tools and techniques according to the challenges of changing nature, globalized society, economy, science and culture.

Terminology Globalization (Wikipedia) Globalization refers to the increasing uni cation of the world’s economic order through reduction of such barriers to international trade as taris, export fees, and import quotas. The goal is to increase material wealth, goods, and services through eciencies catalyzed by international relations, specialization and competition. It describes the process by which regional economies, societies, and cultures have become integrated through communication, transportation, and trade. However, globalization is usually recognized as being driven by a combination of economic, technological, sociocultural, political, and biological factors. The term can also refer to the transnational circulation of ideas, languages, or popular culture through accultura- tion. An aspect of the world which has gone through the process can be said to be globalized (Fig. 1 & 2).

Fig. 1 Fig. 2

Environmentally Friendly Architecture – Green Architecture (www.buzzle.com) Preserving our environment has come to the forefront of our society’s concerns, and architecture should be no dierent. ‘Green Architecture’ is a form of environmentally sensitive design and construction. Energy-saving, sustainable development and natural materials are all hallmarks

656 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture of this form of construction. Green Architecture is also sensitive to the impact of the construction on the environment in the years and decades after the construction is completed. It explores a relationship between architecture and ecology. The focus of Green Architecture is on maintaining harmony with the natural features and resources surrounding the building site. It also uses materials that are sus- Fig. 3 tainably grown or recycled, with a preference for materials from renewable resources (Fig. 3-5).

Fig. 4-5 Green Architecture. Home Design: zero House Photo Gallery. Published by Bonkee, under Green Architecture Design 2009.

Sustainable architecture (Wikipedia) Sustainable architecture is a general term that describes environmentally conscious design techniques in the eld of architecture. Sustainable architecture is framed by the larger discussion of sustainability and the pressing economic and political issues of our world (Fig. 6). In the broad context, sustainable architecture seeks to minimize the negative environmental impact of buildings by enhancing eciency and moderation in the use of materials, energy, and development space. Most Fig. 6 simply, the idea of sustainability, or ec- Sustainable Architecture in Malaysia. Published ological design, is to ensure that our ac- in architecture by seven.

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 657 tions and decisions today do not inhibit the opportunities of future generations. This term can be used to describe an energy and ecologically conscious approach to the design of the built environment.

Digital Architecture (Wikipedia) Digital architecture uses computer modelling, programming, simulation and imaging to create both virtual forms and physical structures. The terminology has also been used to refer to other aspects of architecture that feature digital technologies. Archi- tecture created digitally might not involve the use of actual materials (brick, stone, glass, steel, wood). It relies on “sets of numbers stored in electromagnetic format” used to create representations and simulations that correspond to material performance and to map out built artifacts. Digital architecture does not just represent “ideated space” it also creates places for human interaction that do not resemble physical architectural spaces. Digital architecture allows complex calculations that delimit architects and allow a diverse range of complex forms to be created with great Fig. 7 ease using computer algorithms (Fig. 7)

Holistic architecture (a free database and forum of World Architecture Community) Holistic Architecture can be de ned as built environments that are harmonious with their universe, and prosperous to their inhabitants (Fig. 8). To build holisticly is to work with material, form, meaning and energy to celebrate and respect the miracle of our created lives, and to help us individually and collectively to achieve our highest potential. “This new wave of awareness presents us with a pure principle anchor, a practical grounded philosophy based on simple measurable scienti c principles, which apply in all life circumstances, because it is the way nature works - not a bad frame of reference if one wants to create a truly sustainable world.” (Michael Rice).

Holism (Wikipedia)

(from ὃλος holos, a Greek word meaning all, whole, entire, total) is the idea that all the properties of a given system (physical, biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. In- stead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave. The idea has ancient roots. The general principle of holism was concisely summarized by Aristotle in the Metaphysics: “The whole is dierent from the sum of its parts” (1045a10).

658 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism. Reduc- tionism in science says that a complex system can be explained by reduction to its fundamental parts. For example, the processes of biology are reducible to chemistry and the laws of chemistry are explained by physics.

Fig. 8 Issues The “environmental, sustainable, green, holistic“ descriptions are very often synonyms of each other showing importance the complex natural and human aspects, but do not give us the clear method to achieve the targeted goals. These descriptions are sometimes mystic and idealistic, but have the same time advertising purpose.

“Holistic Architecture can achieve a residence or business of peace and harmony. The ability to relax and nd true laughter within one’s home allows for the rejuve- nation of the mind, body and spirit. A setting lled with creative energies is also a space in the ow of productivity and abundance. We live in a rapidly changing world. We need a place to revitalize ourselves, to be at peace with ourselves, with others and with nature. We need to respect ourselves by creating a harmonious environment that we live and work in. Now is the time to proclaim your true Intent. To commit to the life you desire.”

Architectural ideas have found new forms of digital representations, as information recon gures into digital visualizations, and projects evolve further as digital fabrications. The new genre of “scripted, iterative, and indexical architecture” produces a proliferation of formal outcomes, leaving the designer the role of selection and increasing the possibilities in architectural design. The computer aided architectural design opened new era for architects, but without awareness the basic human and material context of architecture the digitally generated architectural form are only nice pictures, but not real buildings. Globalization makes us familiar with new social, cultural habits, transfer huge amount of products and techniques, but it is not able equalize the environmental conditions of the building on the given site. The question is how to take into consideration the whole complexity of important human attitudes, social, cultural, natural conditions together with integration of scienti c results, computerization, challenging of the changed global, natural, economical situation during the architectural design process?

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 659 Symptoms The problems are shown in the architectural practice and education as well. Unfortunately, due to many reasons, development has resulted with that our houses are not only the protecting and healthy “shelter” we want them to be. Political and nancial reasons can cause this as well as ignorance of new material’s inuence on our health. Many new buildings have proven to be physiologically uncomfortable and unhealthy as well (Fig. 9-10). Several people, who live and work in modern house have complained of periodical symptoms of malaise (headache, fatigues, drowsiness, irritation in eyes and nose, dry throat, non-concentration, nausea and allergic symptoms).

Fig. 9-10 Lack of thermal insulation causes unhealthy mould on the internal surface of the wall.

The globalization idea appeared in the university education as well. The “opened” world gave the students and teachers opportunity for changing their experiences and knowledge. The purpose of the Bologna Process (or Bologna Accord) is the creation of the European Higher Education Area by making academic degree standards and quality assurance standards more comparable and compatible throughout Europe, in particular under the Lisbon Recognition Convention. It is named after the place it was proposed, the University of Bologna, with the signing in 1999 of the Bologna decla- ration by Education Ministers from 29 European countries. This process has been involved into education most of the European University, but the students and tutors are sometimes confused. The dierences in the content of the BsC level University Curricula restrain the eective continuation learning on MsC level in a new university. The evaluation of the topics in rst three university years shows reasons of diculties (Fig. 11-13).

660 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture

Examples of University Curricula on BSc Level

Intelligent Energy Europe Project - EDUCATE program supported the research in 2010.

Fig. 11

1st example of University BSc Curricula.

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 661

Fig. 12 2nd example of University BSc Curricula.

662 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture

Fig. 13 3rd example of University BSc Curricula.

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 663 Strategy The implementation of the Bologna - European Credit Transfer System oers and at the same time requires creating a common basis eld of architectural education. The obligatory topics of University Curricula on BsC level must be very clear and transparent. If the terminology of the educated topics has the same meaning the acquired skills of the student provide them eective continuation of learning on the MsC level all over the Europe. De nitions 4.of targetedSTRATEGY goals are very important, but it can be realized only by the exact education method. We have to focus on the ancient, original aspects of the ar- The implementation of the Bologna - European Credit Transfer System offers and the chitecture, like sameas human time requires scale, reectionto create a ofcommon the surrounding basis field of nature.architectural The architectureeducation. The has been holistic,obligatory sustainable topics of andUniversity environment Curricula on friendly BsC level frommust be the very very clear beginning and transparent. as it If had been interpretedthe terminology in the ofbooks the educated of Vitruvius, topics have Palladio, the same e.t.c. meaning Their the approach acquired skills was of ho- the student provide them effective continuation of learning on the MsC level all over the listic taken intoEurope. consideration always the whole thorough society, economy, nature, and built environment (cities, buildings and constructions). If we try to rede nes these traditional ideasDefinitions we nd of a targeted very clear goals andare very conscious important, way but itof can design be realized process only bybased the exact on the human habits,education demands method. (social, We have cultural to focus and on the physical), ancient, original local environmentalaspects of the architecture, condi- like as human scale, reflection of the surrounding nature. The architecture has been tions (climate, materialsholistic, sustainable etc.). and environment friendly from the very beginning as it had been This complex,interpreted holistic in thedesign books processof Vitruvius, is Palladio,very simple e.t.c. If weand try adaptableto redefines theseall over traditional the world togetherideas with we the find local a very database clear and providing conscious toway t of the design special process conditions. based on the The human uni- habits, demands (social, cultural and physical), local environmental conditions (climate, versity curriculamaterials and education etc.) Their accordingapproach was to holisticthis method taken into could consideration be general, always somehow the whole “globalized”, butthorough the buildings society, couldeconomy, be natureunique, and economical built environment and healthy (cities, reectedbuildings onand the local humanconstructions). and natural surroundings. During this design process the computer aided technologiesThis complex, can be holistic only toolsdesign for process architect, is very butsimple not and independent adaptable all overcreative the world “in- together with the local database providing to fit the special conditions. The university telligences” far curriculafrom the and human education attitudes according andto this real method natural will be circumstances. general, somehow The “globalized”, holistic approach clearlybut demonstrates the buildings could that be unique,people economical can use andholistic healthy analysis reflected for on everythe local aspect human of life. The systemand naturalcan be attitudes. applied During on eachthis design eld process and level the computer of the aidedarchitecture technologies as canwell, be only tools for architect, but not independent creative “intelligences” far from the human for example n caseattitudes of “Publicand real building, natural publiccircumstances. space, Thewhere holistic a very analysis complex approach corpus clearly in which the relationsdemonstrates that exist that peoplebetween can use the holistic parts analysis and the for everywhole aspect are of more life. The important, system can than the sum ofbe the applied parts” on (Prof.each field Nicolas and levelPham, of theUniversity architecture, of Applied for example Sciences n case ofof West-“Public ern Switzerland,building, Geneva). public space, where a very complex corpus in which the relations that exist between the parts and the whole are more important, than the sum of the parts” (Prof. According toNicolas the Pham,holistic University approach, of Applied a building Sciences ofshould Western be Switzerland, thought Geneva)of as a complex system. The house approached as a whole, with speci c features and performance requirements, notAccording as a to collection the holistic approach,of independent a building shouldindustrial be thought engineering of as a whole. disciplines The house approached as a complete system, with specific features and performance requirements, (electrical, mechanical,not as a structural,collection ofand independent so on). A industrialbuilding engineering should be disciplines seen as an(electrical, integrated part of amechanical, process in structural, dialog withand so the on). surroundings A building should and be itsseen occupants as an integrated (Fig. 14).part of a process in dialog with the surroundings and its occupants. (14. fig)

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Fig. 14 10 664 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Preventive and remedial measures and decisions should always be evaluated in the context of the whole. In such a designing process, the architect can go back to his previous stages and GENERALimprove STAGES his AND solutions. LEVELS The OF designer THE ARCHITECTURAL in their practice concludeDESIGN PROCESSthe design process, while they nally choose a speci c design form, technique and materials based on the appropriateGENERAL database STAGES (Fig. AND 15-21). LEVELS OF THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN PROCESS

16.fig GENERALGENERALGeneral STAGES STAGES Stages AND AND and LEVELS LEVELS Levels OF OF THE ofTHE the ARCHITECTURAL ARCHITECTURAL Architectural DESIGN DESIGNDesign PROCESS PROCESS Process 16.fig

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ARCHITECTS:TAPOLCZAI TIBORNÉ, ARCHITECTS:TTAPOLCZAIAPOLCZAI KÁLRA TIBORNÉ, TAPOLCZAIFig. 16 KÁLRA ARCHITECTS:T ARCHITECTS:T17.fig. APOLCZAIAPOLCZAI TIBORNÉ, TIBORNÉ, TAPOLCZAITAPOLCZAI KÁLRA KÁLRA 17.fig. 17.fig. 17.fig.

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15.15.Preventive fig.Fig. fig. 15 and remedial measures and decisions shouldFig. 18 always be evaluated in the context of the whole PreventivePreventiveIn suchSusanna a Fülöp designing and and Hungaryremedial remedial process, measures measures the architect and and decisions decisions can go back should should to hisalways always previous be be evaluated evaluatedstages and in in improvethe the 665 contextcontexthis solutions. of of the the Thewhole whole designer in their practice conclude the design process, while they finally 15. fig. InInchoose such such a a designing designingspecific design process, process, form, the the technique architect architect can andcan go materialsgo back back to to basedhis his previous previous on the stages appropriatestages and and improve improve his solutions. The designer in their practice conclude the design process, while they finally hisdatabase.(15., solutions. The 16., designer 17., 18., in 19., their 20., practice 21. figures) conclude the design process, while they finally choosechoose a a specific specific design design form, form, technique technique and and materials materials based based on on the the appropriate appropriate Preventive and remedial measures and decisions should always be evaluated in the database.(15.,database.(15., 16., 16., 17., 17., 18., 18., 19., 19., 20., 20., 21. 21. figures) figures) context of the whole 11 In such a designing process, the architect can go back to his previous stages and improve his solutions. The designer in their practice conclude the design process, while they finally1111 choose a specific design form, technique and materials based on the appropriate database.(15., 16., 17., 18., 19., 20., 21. figures)

11 Examples of Databases for the Architectural Design Process EXAMPLES OF DATABESES FOR THE ARCHITECTURAL DESIG PROCESS 19.fig

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666 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 12 Example of Holistic Structural Design Approach Green Roofs Principles – Teherminology A green roof also called “vegetated roof cover,” “living roof,” and “eco-roof” is a roof of a building that is partially or completely covered with vegetation and a growing medium, planted over a waterproo ng membrane. It may also include additional layers such as a root barrier and drainage and irrigation systems. (The use of “green” refers to the growing trend of environmentalism and does not refer to roofs which are merely colored green, as with green roof tiles or roof shingles.) (Hungarian example: Buda- pest, MOM Park – Fig. 22-27). Green roofs are known by many names and take many forms, but beneath each is an engineered roo ng sysem that enables the growth of vegetation on conventional rooftops. Unlike traditional rooftop gardens that rely on individual containers and heavy planters, a green roof system allows extensive plant cultivation over a wide expanse of the roof. Most green roof systems fall into two categories, extensive and intensive. This categorization is based on soil depth, but determines a variety of factors including weight, cost, maintenance, plant selection, and function.

Applications What are the most important factors in designing a green roof? • Climate, especially temperature and rainfall patterns • Strength of the supporting structure • Size, slope, height, and directional orientation of the roof • Type of underlying waterproofing • Drainage elements, such as drains, scuppers, and drainage conduits • Accessibility and intended use • Visibility, fit with architecture, and owner’s aesthetic preferences • Fit with other ‘green’ systems, such as solar panels • Costs of materials and labor The standards and guidelines are comprehensive, and include industry standard tests for the weight, Fig. 22-25 moisture, nutrient content, and grain-size distribu- MOM Park Budapest. Architect: tion of growing media. FLL also certi es laborato- DLA Puhl Antal. Garden: An- ries to conduct critical tests, such as the root pen- dor Anikó. Constructions: Fülöp etration resistance of waterproo ng membranes. Zsuzsanna.

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 667 In Depth Green roofs can be categorized as intensive, “semi-intensive”, or extensive, depending on the depth of planting medium and the amount of maintenance they need. Roof gardens, which require a reasonable depth of soil to grow large plants or conventional lawns, are considered “intensive” because they are labour-intensive, requiring irrigation, feeding and other maintenance. Intensive roofs are more park-like with easy access and may include anything from kitchen herbs to shrubs and small trees. “Extensive” green roofs, by contrast, are designed to be virtually self-sustaining and should require only a minimum of maintenance, perhaps a once-yearly weeding or an application of slow-release fertiliser to boost growth. Extensive roofs are usually only accessed for maintenance. They can be established on a very thin layer of “soil” (most use specially formulated composts): even a thin layer of rockwool laid directly onto a watertight roof can support a planting of Sedum species and mosses. Another important distinction is between pitched green roofs and at green roofs. Pitched sod roofs, a traditional feature of many Scandinavian buildings, tend to be of a simpler design than at green roofs. This is because the pitch of the roof reduces the risk of water penetrating through the roof structure, allowing the use of fewer waterproo ng and drainage layers. Green roofs protect exterior roof membranes from ultraviolet radiation, extreme temperature uctuations, punctures and other physical damage. They can signi cantly increase life expectancies of roof membranes, thereby diminishing the need for costly roof replacements and maintenance.

Fig. 26 Materials Quad lock.

668 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 27 MOM Park Budapest.

Many types of waterproo ng are compatible with green roofs. World-wide, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polymer modi ed bituminous membranes are the most common. Many of these installations have now been in place for over 30 years and continue to perform as designed. PVC, EPDM and thermal polyole n (TPO) are, in most cases, inherently root-resistant; other common waterproo ng materials require a root barrier between the waterproo ng materials and the vegetated cover (Fig. 26). Presently, the only widely-accepted, established standards for green roof construction are those developed in Germany by the Forschungsgesellschaft Landschaftsent- wicklung Landschaftsbau. e.V. (FLL)

Green Roofs – holistic approached education Green roofs are one of the most complex structural elements of the building.

At rst the university curricula could oer an introduction into green roof construction, installation and maintenance to teach students about green roof bene ts and incentives, reviews of green roof products, waterproo ng, roof membranes, and drainage. The elementary age students are learning about whole complexity of design aspects and the stages of design process according to the environmental and functional impacts and requirements: storm water retention, urban heat island eect, plant growth and environmental ben- e ts The goal is not just to convey a great deal of theoretical knowledge, but to give the students a perspective, which allows them to solve real situations and problems in practice, to understand the interactions without calculating. Based on teaching

Susanna Fülöp Hungary 669 GREEN ROOFS – holistic approached education

Green roofs are one of the most complex structural elements of the building. At first the university curricula could offer an introduction into green roof construction, installation and maintenance to teach students about green roof benefits and incentives, reviews of green roof products, waterproofing, roof membranes, and drainage. The elementary age students are learning about whole complexity of design aspects and the stages of design process according to the environmental and functional impacts and requirements: storm water retention, urban heat island effect, plant growth and environmental benefits The goal is not just to convey a great deal of theoretical knowledge, but to give the students a perspective, which allows them to solve real situations and problems in practice, to understand the interactions without calculating . Based on teaching content they can develop their skills for understanding and application the given construction in different circumstances. At a later time the students must be creative to develop their own course curriculum applying green roof concepts, such as soil composition, drought tolerant plant choices, landscape design, energy consumption, water utilization, sound insulation, effects on architectural design of energy conservation and the utilization of alternative energy sources in order to limit environmental pollution etc..

5. content CONCLUSIONS they can develop their skills for understanding and application the given construction in dierent circumstances. The holistic integrated approached design method as a common ground of architectural education and practice supports the decision steps to achieve the targeted goals taking intoAt consideration a later time the complexity of social, economical, natural data and provide the controlthe students of the decisions must beduring creative the whole to develop project. Bytheir re-thinking own course the architectural curriculum design applying green process as a coordinated set of stages, and sub-stages, replacing the traditional experience-relatedroof concepts, processsuch as by soil a morecomposition, conscious, drought rational, tolerantand theory plant based choices, approach; landscape de- choicessign, andenergy solutions consumption, for specific design water problems, utilization, traditionally sound insulation,taken base on eects experience on architectural or designindividual of thinking,energy canconservation be now taken, and base the inutilization technical awarenessof alternative and attentive energy tosources in or- potentialder to alternatives.limit environmental (28. figure) pollution etc.

28. fig. Fig. 28

This work is connected to the scientific program of the " Development of quality-oriented and harmonized R+D+I strategy and functional model at BME" project. This project is supported by the New Széchenyi Plan (Project ID: TÁMOP-4.2.1/B-09/1/KMR-2010- 0002) Budapest,Conclusions 2011. 10.18. Susanna Fülöp Ph.D . The holistic integrated approached design method as a common ground of ar- 15 chitectural education and practice supports the decision steps to achieve the targeted goals taking into consideration the complexity of social, economical, natural data and provide the control of the decisions during the whole project. By re-thinking the architectural design process as a coordinated set of stages, and sub-stages, replacing the traditional experience-related process by a more conscious, rational, and theory based approach; choices and solutions for speci c design problems, traditionally taken base on experience or individual thinking, can be now taken base in technical awareness and attentive to potential alternatives (Fig. 28).

670 ΕΝΗSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Jim Harrison Cathy Dalton

Cork Centre for Architectural Education Ireland Learning to Imagine the Invisible: Using New Technologies to Enhance User-Friendly Architecture Emerging technologies present extraordinary opportunities and potential for creative design solutions to bene t the users of all building types. But technology is only as good as the imagination of the designer, whether architect or engineer, in making useful and eective environments or products. Architectural design may appear to be more concerned with building form and less with the users, for whom everyday buildings could be more ‘friendly’ rather than being merely ecient. In the last century mechanical building services were re ned to provide various means to make interiors more comfortable, while aesthetic considerations were largely regarded as separate entities in the design process. Engineering in the service of humankind has always made up for the limitations of the body and brain, such as the means to lift heavy loads, to travel or process information at ever faster speeds. Some aspects of technology have potential for enhancing the aesthetic qualities of building, such as structural expression or good auditorium acoustics, but the perceived bene ts to occupants of such aspects are dicult to quantify in convincing terms, when compared to measuring the physical comfort that the same building delivers. Could our present technologies open up the possibility of being able to measure and de ne users’ preferences in aesthetic aspects and hence allow designers to make more informed rather than ‘intuitive’ decisions on these? Recent advances in sensor technology and machine learning show that there is the capability to anticipate both the physical needs of the users and, more signi cantly, their preferences. Furthermore, we can now imagine buildings that can adapt according to the feelings of their occupants, rather than simply responding to de nable physical aspects such as temperature, motion, or sunlight. ‘Aective computing’ refers to computer systems or devices capable of inferring emotion or psychological aect. This may be achieved by observing and interpreting aspects of behaviour as varied as facial expressions, movement patterns or voice inection, through video, sensoring or sound recording. All of this data is also available to a human observer: we constantly receive and process this information in order to infer what the emotional state of others is, and to decide how to react to it. A computer system can be enabled to receive and process such data for similar ends. In addition, such a system can have available to it information which a human observer could not possess, for example, bio-signals such as heart-rate, blood pressure, skin conductance, all of which exhibit patterns and changes that are indicative of changes in an individual’s emotional state. A system can be programmed to learn and predict an individual’s patterns from interpretation of such data. It is beginning to be possible to gather and interpret biosignal data on a real-time basis, and for a system to use the processed data to initiate changes, for example in a room environment controlled by a Building Management System (BMS), also on a continuous, real-time basis. The notion of such a responsive architecture was anticipated by Nicholas Negroponte (1971), who focuses on responsivity, geared at improving function in the built environment. The emerging discipline of interaction operates at the interface between the user and the technology; interaction design is likely to become of increased signi cance in the built environments, as wireless technologies and sensor networks become commonplace.

672 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Art vs Technics? Technology provides an array of means, but without a real and holistic awareness of the users’ needs and wants the net result may be sterile. The dichotomy between Art and Science lingers in architectural education and the fallacy still persists in some tutors’ minds that functional requirements will diminish the designer’s creative freedom. Examples of the tectonic and visual expression of award-winning buildings sometimes demonstrate the disparity of care in design between achieving spectacular visual qualities whilst also providing the requisite environmental standards for such a building; the interesting and rich architectural language is not matched by satisfactory acoustics in the lecture theatres, for instance.

Fig. 1 Spectacular architectural features are not matched by adequate acoustics in this building; the iPhone is popular - not for its stylish looks but for the fact that it is also very usable - function and aesthetics are in harmony.

A factory obviously needs functional aspects such as lighting, functional planning or environmental control to be correct above any aesthetic qualities, or else eciency or production could be aected. For an oce space the quanti able environmental conditions must be right, achieving the ‘well tempered environment’ that Reyner Banham (1969) has described so succinctly. But for real eciency the sta also need to be satis ed with more intangible environmental conditions of the space in which they work: a sense of community, the quality (rather than the quantity) of the lighting, both natural and arti cial, and other factors. Our built environment includes buildings that we need in many forms; some are workaday and some are special. A church or cathedral, for instance, may be created to uplift the soul through its use of space, light and soar-

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland 673 ing structure. For these reasons we are less critical of any lack of thermal comfort or functional eciency – although we might not want to spend a lot of time in its cold interior. Fitch (1975) has argued that architecture may be seen to have contradicting requirements of functional as against formal criteria; but is this argument still valid? Not all buildings are based on the same parameters; an operating theatre, Fitch reminds us, has a dierent set of criteria to a church. “The more complex or vital a process to be housed, the more critical the contradiction becomes. Hence the architect’s freedom to create necessarily diminishes in inverse proportion to the criticalness of his task” (Fitch 1975, p.25). (Fig 1.) But this argument is only true up to a point. Even though some buildings must be more functional than ‘intuitive’, this does not mean that they must inevitably be less humane and aesthetically considered. Indeed, there is evidence that buildings which have the intangible qualities that we may describe as Fig. 2 ‘satisfying’ or ‘cheerful’ are likely to have Adapted from J. M. Fitch (1975). a positive eect on their inhabitants (Dilani, 2008).

Educating Designers for Tomorrow The education of the architect must include exposure to the sort of design problems described by Fitch, where both the functional and the intuitive are reconciled in equal measure. An appreciation of the capabilities of those technologies that make this possible thus becomes a vital factor in the design studio programmes set in schools of architecture. What skills do the architects need to be equipped with to take advantage of the accelerating change in future technology, and how could this eectively bring the particular needs and wants of each human being into the equation? In order to go beyond the necessary but dry logic of the ‘human factors’ approach, real creativity is needed. Selected projects should be set to encourage dierent imaginations and allow the student to explore the hidden potential of ‘the World that has never been’, to provide something better, both aesthetically and functionally: rather than reiteration of accepted styles. Environment-behaviour studies allow some degree of investigation into these less tangible aspects of the built environment, but because real measurement of users’ feelings about a space are not easily quanti ed, these aspects lose out against more technical factors when used as justi cation for a particular design decision. The observation and understanding of human behaviour receives less attention than it deserves in design education, and yet it remains a fundamental in the creation of good architecture. Student design projects should encourage investigation of the possibilities

674 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture that this throws up and make the connection between what they observe about people and their ‘ t’ in buildings and reinterpret this positively in design. By encouraging a consistent study of human behaviour designers may learn to satisfy human needs qualitatively and spiritually, not just functionally. Imagining new futures through role-playing has the advantage of extending the young designers’ imaginations to enable them to see the world through the eyes of a range of users, not only about their diverse physical needs, such as wheelchair accessibility but also about their expression of the degree of emotional satisfaction and kinds of qualities that made them feel that the architecture embraces them (Zeisel, 2008). Imagine the potential of an environment which can adapt to the feelings and emotions of an occupant, or the aesthetic possibilities of an architecture where colour, image and lighting is constantly mutable, regardless of constraints of siting and seasonality. A potential application currently being researched at CCAE employs environmental responsivity actuated by observing, anticipating and ameliorating stressed states. This has particular signi cance in healthcare architecture where there is already a signi cant body of evidence to support the thesis that certain aspects of the built environment can inuence user well-being. Such is the acceptance of the evidence that, in the UK, ‘well-being’ is currently being considered as an aspect of rating for building interiors. However, for an architect to embrace fully the creative potential of sensoring technologies in the built environment requires knowledge at least of interaction design, if control of design outcomes is not to be lost. There is also a role for the architect/ designer in research teams developing of sensor technologies for speci c user-groups, as an interpreter of needs for ICT researchers, and as “technology gatekeepers” for user groups in whose needs the architect is well-versed. These might be, for example, children in an educational setting, users with special needs, elderly people, patient in hospital settings, all of whom present a particular set of challenges. Imagine the potential of an environment which can adapt to the feelings and emotions of an occupant, or the aesthetic possibilities of an architecture where colour, image and lighting is constantly mutable, regardless of constraints of siting and seasonality.

Adaptive Architecture Buildings are one of the most static creations that mankind produces; they often last longer than the functions for which they were created. Standards improve and tastes change, so that any design factor may become outmoded and redundant. Occupancy can also change and functional requirements may thus require adaptation; traditionally this can be a slow process of retro tting, relying on predicted usage in the near future. How much better it would be if some inbuilt factors could respond to the more rapidly changing requirements and so be adjusted over the course of any time frame. Virtual and augmented 3-dimensional reality, ubiquitous computing and embedded network sensors are all technologies that promise a range of exciting possibilities. Though many designers seek inspiration through precedents to some extent, so far we have few useful built examples of buildings or environments that respond in an unthreatening way by adapting conventional settings to suit the needs and preferences of their occupants to inspire or inform us. In current examples of adaptive architecture, for instance, walls and roofs may be designed to slide and adapt according to

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland 675 climate change. Though such responses are useful, they may be less signi cant to the occupants than aesthetic variations, such as daylight playing onto textured walls and vegetation, or arti cial light enhancing particular spaces. Most ‘adaptive’ buildings respond to climate or function, rather than to human responses. Collecting the physical data for modifying the external envelope for environmental control is far easier than trying to assess user preferences, since measurement of people’s satisfaction remains dicult to undertake. But while human physiological comfort and security are more constant and far more readily understood and provided for, this does not mean that aesthetic satisfaction is any less important. Although Maslow’s well-known Hierarchy Diagram (Maslow, 1943) does not overtly include the individual’s emotional response to built environments, yet this aspect must surely be part of the ‘sense of belonging’ in the Third Level.

Fig. 3 Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Is it then possible to create environments that can simultaneously serve the aesthetic, spiritual or experiential needs of everyone, since these are so diverse and intangible? One potential way to predict these emotional needs and preferences is through the use of Networked Embedded Sensors. These allow occupant’s biofeedback data to be

676 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture monitored in various ways and then processed to provide optimal conditions without the need for constant human control. Sensors might be wearable, and completely non-intrusive, supported by research trends towards miniaturisation. Alternatively as sensors become more sensitive, and wireless networks capable of operating over greater distances, sensors might be embedded invisibly in the architecture. Beyond this, Machine Learning enables the system to provide wider responses that are sensitive to users’ changing feelings and emotions. Conditions that have positive eects on their users can be achieved and can be shown to be doing so, but until now, only through traditional survey methods that are relatively simplistic or generalised. “Good design contributes signi cantly to the health outcomes of patients.” (Lawson and Phiri, 2003) But how are we to determine ‘good design’ and so turn a mundane building into a piece of real architecture? The functional aspects of any design can usually be given speci c values, the qualitative aesthetic ones are more dicult to evaluate. If these subjective qualities could now be de ned more positively through the use of sensor technology, this presents a potentially powerful tool in assessing what constitutes ‘Good Design’ in terms of user-friendliness.

Ethics or Aesthetics? In the book ‘Architecture Depends’, Till (2009) discusses the design uncertainties with which architects have to contend, but deates the dichotomy that, in the design process, aesthetics and ethics are mutually exclusive, since there is always the obligation to provide more than just the basic physical environmental conditions. Aesthetics, he argues, are not an arcane appreciation of tectonics and spatial re nement, things which ordinary people, the building’s essential users, are unable to appreciate. The modernist view that re ned buildings would lead to better moral behaviour in society has proven to be largely unfounded, but there are emerging opinions that some of the more natural elements of the world around us are important, not only in providing orientation and comfort, but as reassuring and calming inuences; ‘salutogenesis’, the opposite of Pathogenesis, equates healing of the body with predictable and benign sensory conditions and, by extension, reduced stress or aggression in the occupants (Antonosky, 1984). Describing a current NEMBES Research Project, based in the Cork Centre for Ar- chitectural Education and Cork Institute of Technology, the MyRoom design prototype allows real-time observation of user reactions to variations in the room environment, ultimately facilitating contributions to the knowledge base of EBD, based on objective measurement” (Dalton and Harrison, 2011). While the current research MyRoom project promulgates the concept of an individual’s physical responses being monitored and interpreted to provide changes in a single personal space, the question arises of if/how this might be extended to be applied in spaces used by a number of people, who may not even use the space regularly. Could the ndings of the project suggest its potential development as a tool to quantify these aspects which have always been applied ‘intuitively’, since we cannot put any absolute values them?

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland 677 Imagining the Invisible The well-known Vitruvian de nition of architecture as constituting ‘Commodity, Firm- ness and Delight’ has a certain relevance in any architect’s desired aims. But although not all buildings may necessarily be delightful, they should never be dismal or disappointing. Vitruvius’ idea of what constituted architecture must, of course, be rather different to our own in the 21st Century. Architects now design a wider range of dierent types of building, but the qualities that elevate mere construction to become good architecture have not changed, even if they are hard to de ne absolutely. Notably, we have limited words to describe places that are uplifting to the spirit. But how are we to assess the value of these compared to providing physical comfort of the occupants? Good architecture must serve the less tangible needs for environments that are emotionally satisfying, whilst also being appropriate to the diverse uses that buildings serve. For instance light, one of the essential ingredients that make architectural spaces perceptible, can be accurately measured as a level (on the working plane) but it can also be provided (naturally or arti cially) in so many dierent ways, which will aect the user; we know that in extreme cases a high intensity harsh lighting can be a form of torture, whilst at the opposite end of the scale it can be satisfying and restful even if inadequate to read by. But it is not simply the amount of light that is signi cant. In some settings, dim lighting may seem romantic and yet the same light levels may seem gloomy and oppressive in others. How the light is directed, its colour temperature and the ability for it to be adjusted according to mood or time of day will also have a strong inuence on whether or not it is a pleasant experience. At very least the interior should be “well-tempered” – quietly appropriate and not having any disturbing qualities that might detract.

Evidence-Based Design Evidence-Based Design (EDB) is a powerful tool to convince clients and also help the architect to shape the design in better ways. Increasingly EDB is used to provide positive justi cation for design decisions - especially where cost is involved. Typically this may help to con rm visual observation of how people use and respond to their physical settings and thus forms one of the underpinning incentives for creating therapeu- tic environments in healthcare. Research shows that such ‘salutogenic’ environments signi cantly reduce in-patient recovery time, so proving cost-eectiveness where a higher aesthetic standard of healthcare facility is provided. Collecting and analyzing occupants’ biofeedback responses to their environment can provide useful evidence to assist the designer to take responsible design decisions. There are, of course, some ethical questions that might be raised. The use of polygraphs or lie detectors serves an example where simplistic technology failed to be convincing in providing evidence in criminal law. Subjective aesthetic qualities could, however, be more positively assessed in broader terms, from a much wider range of bio-data, to allow these to become the ‘evidence’ in EDB.

Developing Creativity And Imagination “The key agent in this transformation is that of imagination, because it is only through the exercise of imagination that one can see the potential for change in what otherwise might

678 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture appear restrictive. Social or architectural reality, if viewed as a set of determinate rules and procedures, tends to shut down the imagination, because the apparent certainty leaves no gaps for it to open up. However, the contingent, with its multiple but uncertain potentials, allows the imagination room to project new futures.” (Till, 2009). The current NEMBES ‘MyRoom’ research project uses embedded networked sensors which allow evaluation of users’ real-time reactions to environments, and how this may adapt to suit their individual preferences: colour, lighting and other factors, but ‘blue-skies’ thinking about more imaginative ways that the space may adapt could form an excellent basis for an undergraduate design project. Moreover, the research model could potentially help students to be able to make appropriate aesthetic decisions based on users’ detected preferences, not just on their arbitrary and untested opinions – at an early formative stage in the design process. Role-playing and similar exploratory techniques could then be backed up by with real information. Through future developments of the experimental model they may be able learn more con dently about how real people feel about the environments that they occupy.

Analogy and Narrative How can we educate designers to create design buildings that satisfy and uplift the spirit rather than just providing the functional necessities? Until now most of the aspects that designers have to manipulate in any design are visible and imaginable, but probably will lead to a predictable built outcome. A narrative or role-playing approach allows us to imagine changes for dierent users, adaptable by dierent means, but these would be activated either by the users themselves or some form of automatic programming, relating to changes in, say, external environmental conditions. Analogies for a really responsive environment might include historic references to an intelligent and caring manservant, thoroughly wise to his master’s likes and dislikes, devoted to his personal comfort and satisfaction. The ‘servant’ is able to read the occupant’s /his master’s moods, and so predict and provide for these. Through ‘ubiquitous computing’, where the sensors and the hardware to deliver the required services or environmental conditions are embedded in the building fabric, the ‘manservant’ is now invisible and the means to deliver a completely satisfying environment can be embedded in the building itself. Louis Kahn’s often-quoted ‘served and servant spaces’ description begins to take on a dierent character, as they become integrated into the building itself.

Can any Design Please all of the People all of the Time? If the current NEMBES project experiment demonstrates that MyRoom is able to adapt in response to a single occupants physiological signals, then how much further could this be developed? In principle it should be possible to gather and process information from a number of individuals and to make some broad but appropriate assumptions about their general likes and dislikes. From this data it may then be possible to provide an environment that can adapt in various ways and is capable of at least “pleasing some of the people all of the time”. ‘MyRoom’ may eventually become Our- Space in due course!

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland 679 As well as using sensors to respond to users’ feelings or emotional state directly they should also be capable of gathering data to be processed and used, through machine learning, as potentially useful feedback – which, properly analysed, could provide the veri able ‘evidence’ in Evidence Based Design (EBD). This would enable designers to make more rational decisions, without necessarily dictating the outcomes of any design problem. The evidence could con rm what is generally preferable to users, information which so far has been either guesswork or the results of cumbersome survey techniques with potential semantic problems. Surveys also have the disadvantage of being able only to qualify a limited number of separate aspects of any environment. Sensor technology, using ‘aective computing’ which can simultaneously read and interpret a number of signals immediately, could pave the way to establishing reliable values that can be easily-applied in any design decision-making process, human or mechanical.

Conclusion The joy of an approach that exploits continuous sensoring and responsiveness is that it can, with imagination, be enabled to adapt to any user. From the systems’ point of view (and it may well have one, if it is made capable of experiencing psychological af- fect), everything is data, either received from the user or transmitted to actuators. The architect is called on to make the imagined real, in the same way that she has always aspired, but is now faced with an almost entirely new set of technologies, which are only just being imagined as part of the arsenal of technologies, old and new, becoming available to the designer. This ever-expanding battery of technologies oers the architect the potential of multiple creative solutions to situations where technical and functional aspects previously conicted with aesthetic considerations. By applying “What If?” thinking into the curriculum through design projects, these ideas could become a valuable resource to prepare young designers for the future. Invisible technologies oer real challenges for designers to learn about ways to reconcile functional requirements with the qualities that make ‘good design’. Through an understanding of how the principles of sense-responsive architecture can be applied, stimulating and instructive topics for design studio projects may be evolved with many educational possibilities. By making students in undergraduate years aware of the current research thinking taking place within their own schools, though less-experienced, these students have less constrained imaginations and so might incorporate relevant ideas into otherwise unremarkable schemes, yielding fresher ideas. In the recent past most of the technology available to designers was visible and its physical principles apparent, making its application relatively straightforward. Cur- rent technology, however, is increasingly more invisible, as well as developing at a pace with which it is hard to keep up. Yet building remains far behind communication or automotive engineering in its versatility and ability to adapt itself, rather than be modi ed at a later date. Much architectural design relies on learning from other buildings, often recently constructed. Examples of real cases where the technological potential of intelligent embedded sensor techniques have has been applied are few, but the hardware and software are already there, awaiting further development and viable applications. ‘Blue-skies’ thinking about where these might be gainfully applied demands real imagination; some may call it science ction, but this remains to be

680 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture seen. If 19th century writers had not envisioned journeying to the moon would NASA have been motivated to make it happen? It is said that necessity is the mother of invention, but how true is that in today’s world, where technology is moving faster than ever? Many potentially useful forms of technology currently available await someone to nd a valid use for them, to envision connections that could enhance quality of life. Designers may not really need to know exactly how it is done, but should rather be made aware of what could be done, what information is needed to put into the system and what innovative outcomes could be provided. However, this is not to under- estimate the complexity of the design of software, hardware, interfaces, and such systems as a whole. Education has a role to ll this lacuna, but few initiatives appear have been taken up into the curriculum to extend thinking about possible ways in which technology can better serve a building’s occupants. Future technologies should oer exciting challenges for designers to learn about the opportunities to reconcile stringent functional requirements into designs for ecient buildings and spaces that are equally elegant, beautiful and user-friendly. Even at an early stage in their architectural education, designers of tomorrow should be challenged to imagine the invisible, where technologies that have yet to be developed are integrated into the design to achieve more satisfying, well-tempered and delightful places for everyone to enjoy.

References

Negroponte, N., 1975 Responsive architecture. In Soft Architecture Machines. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Banham, P. R., 1969.The architecture of the well-tempered environment. London: Architectural Press. Fitch, J. M., 1972. American building: the environmental forces that shape it. New York: Houghton Miin. Dilani, A., 2008. Psychosocially supportive design: a salutogenic approach to the design of the physical environment. World Health Design July 2008. Zeisel, J., 2008. Inquiry by Design. New York: Cambridge Norton. Maslow, A., 1943. The Theory of human motivation. Psychological Review 40(4) pp. 370-96. Lawson, B, and Phiri, M,. 2003. The architectural healthcare environment and its eects on patient outcomes. London: TSO. Till, J., 2009. Architecture depends. Boston: MIT Press. p.192. Antonosky, A., 1987. The salutogenic perspective: Toward a new view of health and illness. Advances institute for the Advancement of Health, 4, (1) pp. 47-55. Dalton C., and Harrison, J.D., Designing an adaptive salutogenic care environment. Proceedings: International Adaptive Architecture Conference, London, March 2011 (in publication).

Jim Harrison, Cathy Dalton Ireland 681

Jana Revedin

School of Architecture Umea University Sweden Architecture with the People - Teaching a Critically Responsive Architecture with a Human Aim “Don’t look at what I do. See what I saw.” Luis Barragán

Like Hans Georg Gadamer, we could call the following attempts to approach a critically responsive architecture Horizons. “A person who has no horizon does not see far enough and hence overvalues what is nearest to him. On the other hand, to “have a horizon” means not being limited to what is nearby but being able to see beyond it.” 1 The concept of Horizon has already proved to be helpful in approaches to research in architectural education. It has the virtue of including both the visual and the intellectual act. As Frank Weiner points out, “there is no perspective without establishing a horizon” and, going back to the de nition formulated by Heidegger, “the act of forming horizons belongs to the essence of what it means to be human.” 2

Heidegger has written that “a horizon is thus not a wall, that cuts man o, rather, the horizon is translucent.” 3 For Heidegger we look through a horizon in order to examine the questions evoked by the encounter with tradition and, at the same time, look ahead to the future. And he refers to one special quality of all horizons: their luminosity. With this touching quality, luminosity, Luis Barragán’s words come to mind, when he nds that an alarming proportion of publications about architecture and the teaching of architecture have banished the words “beauty, inspiration, magic, spell- bound, enchantment, as well as the concepts of serenity, silence, intimacy and amaze- ment. All these have nestled in my soul.” 4

We will remember these words and concepts as we try to develop a possible method of teaching a critically responsive architecture with a human aim. Architecture with a human aim is an attempt to embody an Architecture for the people, but not in the sense of charity or a gift, rather in the sense of local and personal empowerment, which is to say an Architecture and a Design of Urban Spaces with the people, at the scale of the people, adopting their horizon as our horizon, in a precise place and time.

A Horizon of Teaching Today, half of the world’s population lives in urban areas. And the major part of the population in developing countries lives in so called “informal” settlements, which are miles away from commoditised western standards, but which produce a multiplicity of surprisingly creative solutions for achievable, sustainable and very human development. Thus, half a century of Architecture teaching has apparently led to the result that Urban Planning is not “zonable” as predicted by the International Style and that western hightech, energy-zero solutions are keeping neither our cities demographically balanced nor our populations in peace.

In the core concept of her “what if” scenario in “Wie, wenn wir ärmer würden?” 5 (What, if we all became poorer), written in the period of the rst worldwide ecological crisis of the 1970s, Luise Rinser cites Willy Brandt, who states that, “the moral power of peo-

684 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture ple does not prove itself in a high programmatic of parties, in a political governance, an intellectual or technical elite but in its readiness for Mitleiden, engagement – in its ability to assist those who need assistance – and in its tolerance towards the Other. Peace is, understood in this way, not a condition, but a Lebenshaltung, a way of living.”6

As we experience the transformation of our society in the directions of knowledge and integration, of circular and energy-aware economies, we cannot allow the teaching of Sustainable Design in an integrated and multidisciplinary way to mean that architecture and urban planning are measured exclusively in terms of technological standards or rigid, site-unspeci c planning solutions. Sustainability is a socio-political responsibility which must address the new challenges facing humanity: the provision of digni ed housing for the rapidly growing global population; the need to understand, take seriously and upgrade informal settlements around the world and the creation of shared spaces which use the simplest means to facilitate communication and compassion or, put another way, “civicity”. How do we thus transmit the complexity of our practice, how do we refer to history and to the alteration of built urban space, to the character and the quality of life in a city - let alone osmosis, communication and human dignity? How do we evidence the fundamental roles of labour and economy which are, after all, the very basis of cities as places for the exchange of needs and services? How do we understand the social importance of the broader urban landscape and the cultural weight of nature with all its power - which we must learn now to respect and protect rather than energetically attempt to control and short-sightedly tame? How do we, on the other hand, at small scale and “from within” listen to the hum- blest human needs, teach dedication to nely detailed design, knowledge about materials and craftsman-ship and the adequate nishing of the creative act, which can ensure that our work will meet peoples´ expectations and endure?

Innovative Teaching Practice: a Tradition Teaching and transmitting by experiment and investigation in a humanly responsive way is a working method which has been used since the medieval Bauhütte, since the building teams of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment and which was rediscovered at the time of the Early Moderns with the Werkbund, the Bauhaus, the Hochs- chule für Gestaltung at Ulm or ETH and its revolutionary combination of industrial and artisanal design, technical and human sciences and applied arts. Yet, as Frank Weiner points out, not without self-irony, “architectural educators have spent little time documenting their tradition”.7 This is why today’s students and faculty may not be aware of this tradition of socially responsive teaching. A way of transmission of practical and theoretical knowledge that examines the horizon of local culture and politics and tries to develop it in economic and social terms through the design – then the testing and then the building! - of adequate working, living and common spaces. Changing habits and obsolete models slowly. Because, as Suzie Greiss8 uses to say: “Change is slow.” The result of this lack of “documenting a tradition” is the confusion between talent and tradition, an overvaluation of individual “artistic” or “technical” talent and a lack of visible holistic teaching traditions. Following T.S. Eliot’s sharp analysis in “Tradition and

Jana Revedin Sweden 685 the Individual Talent”9 we happily and uncritically encourage “talent without tradition and termination of talent rather than its continuation.” 10

But in the past ten to fteen years radically experimental schools have proved their level of innovation and human responsiveness in the complex problematic of informal settlements and emergency interventions. In this way, the very role of architecture, to raise peoples´ living conditions, can be clearly, yet sometimes shockingly, transmitted: Spatial quality proves to be de ned by activity and character rather than by functional zoning and technocratic plans. The fundamentally existential dimension of architecture and design is investigated and researched by a profound mapping of spatial truth as much as of social and cultural needs and expectations. Because “Sustainable Mapping” means exactly this: the understanding of a physical spatial existence through the human life that it contains.

Sustainable Mapping Methods While the traditional physical survey discovers and lists typologies, built and open spaces and the void as much as building techniques, materials, motifs, art and artisanal work together with the engineering state-of-the-art in such areas as infrastructure, transport, water and lighting, innovative Sustainable Mapping goes much deeper: into everyone’s personal social and living conditions. Population, status, activities, ows, fears, strategies and dreams are mapped, interviewed and discussed. A period of Sustainable - that is to say socially and culturally integrated - Mapping means that one lives an area from the inside. And experience shows that, following this long-term and humble research path, we architects may dare to answer people’s needs. Architecture can in fact provide development and prosperity as much as silence, protection and safety - which in certain environments are much more necessary. Marie J. Aquilino, in her recently published collection of architectural interventions for Crisis points this out: “What does it mean to be safe? Safety, I have learned, is not only anchored in better technologies or better buildings. Safety lies somewhere beyond shelter, in the freedom of being secure enough to relax, play, aspire, and dream for generations.” 11

To illustrate how to approach this “raising questions from the inside” we can examine contemporary urban renewal projects developed and executed by colleagues all over the world with and by students. Experiences from the self-development projects of Rural Studio in Alabama, Sergio Palleroni with BaSiC Initiative in Portland, Alejandro Aravena with Elemental in Chile, Teddy Cruz in San Diego, Arno Brandlhuber in Berlin or Patrick Bouchain and Loic Julien in France form a reservoir of methods and results that can serve as a “do-tank” to prepare students for precise experiences and actions in the eld. Similarly, we can examine the work and workshops of researchers and craftsmen who make innovative use of traditional as much as high-tech and recycling materials and building techniques: CRATerre, Bijoy Jain, Anna Heringer or Fabrizio Caròla with earth, concrete and local stone or the wood explorers Sami Rintala or Pekka Heikkinen

686 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture are most helpful in motivating students not to adopt “quick” commercial solutions for their material and technical choices.

Cairo’s Zabbaleen: An ongoing Urban Laboratory The Zabbaleen, literally “the garbage people” have created a district in the heart of the Egyptian capital devoted to the collection and treatment of waste. Built into the former quarries of Moqattam Mountain, their community operates like a huge open- air recycling centre. Adapted to Cairo’s urban geography and trac, this ancient system proves itself to be more ecient and ecological than any industrialized approach. In fact, during and since the Revolution, the Zabbaleen economy was and is the only growing economy in the urban area. In this community nothing is thrown away. 5,000 tons of garbage are recycled in the district every day, including plastics, textiles, timber, metal, glass, paper, copper, bones, bread and further organic waste. 260,000 people work in the area, 60,000 of whom are residents while 200,000 come for a week at a time as migrant workers from Upper Egypt. Before 2008 the entire organic recycling cycle was achieved by breeding pigs. As soon as the government exterminated all pigs, however, this rst stage of economic balance had to change and the local stakeholders opted for a major redesign and re- nement of the industrial and artisanal production cycle and a further development of the settlement, with the result that the economic cycle of their recycling industries shall be completed, creating an eco-district based on social integration and material innovation. The actual objective is thus to establish a second cycle of development, after the rst phase of urbanisation in the brick-built domino-typology of the 1980s. This was the moment when it became necessary to acquire industrial and urban planning know-how from abroad which could help transform the district into an example of cyclical urban economy.

In 2010 the locally acting ONGs12 together with the Coptic Church of Zabbaleen asked the LOCUS Foundation13 to launch a long term urban renewal project in the area. The Swedish Umea School of Architecture has been collaborating with LOCUS since 2011, developing a critical analysis and sustainable mapping of the district. In 2012 Trond- heim NTNU University and the French University of Cairo will send students to carry out Urban Acupunctures in the eld, in coordination with architects and engineers who are experienced in social and immediate interventions. 14 Hence, in September 2011, the Umea third year bachelor teaching team15 started the research and Sustainable Mapping project. The pedagogical aim of this action is to overcome the notion of an architecture which proposes, still embedded in the colonial discourse of the “white men’s voice”.16 We wish to lead the students away from the westernisation of the Other, of his and her local culture and tradition. The students were given an historical and cultural preparation before visiting the site, during which time we lived in Cairo examining the urban development of greater Cairo and, especially, the informal settlements of the last fty years. This was organised by a team of lecturers - historians, urban planners, social scientists, economists

Jana Revedin Sweden 687 Cairo´s Zabbaleen Garbage Collectors District, a complex urban texture of industrial working and living spaces, es-tablished in the 1950s on a former quarry at the slope of Moqattam Mountain, developed in the 1980s by local ONGs and today entering in its second development cycle.

688 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Welcome to the Umea students by Father Samaan in the Coptic Church, an excavated cave in Moqatam Mountain.

Jana Revedin with Father Samaan in the Coptic Catacombs.

Jana Revedin Sweden 689 Mapping the district “from the inside” from all possible perspectives - with the help of the EQI architects from the rst development phase of the 1980s and members of the local community.

690 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Final review of the mapping analysis in front of the local ONGs, scientists and the Coptic Community.

Jana Revedin Sweden 691 The Zabbaleen Main Square at night today.

… and in Bijoy Jain’s Lighting project using recycled metal waste for 2012.

692 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture and environmentalists together with the French Cultural Centre - to all of whom we are very grateful. In the four hands-on weeks in the Garbage Collectors District we applied our method of Sustainable Mapping, looking through the translucent horizon of external facts and starting to “feel” the area, watching, asking, being present, from the inside. The students were divided into small groups of ve or six and guided by local youngsters of the same age, university students, industrial or social workers and members of the religious community. They had to map a spatially interesting part of one area and formulate a concern, which they then had to question closely. The concerns, that were chosen out of a vast variety of interdisciplinary questions we raised – economic, industrial, process-orientated, social, anthropological, religious, gender, educational, physical, hygienic, urban, architectural, artistic etc. - turned out to be “hot” questions for the traditional religious community: The social role of women; of the elderly; of children; the meaning of “community”; the economic and power system; the role of religion; progress through education; the neglected public space, etc, but these concerns were discussed with the local guides and also, constantly, with the religious and social guides of the community.

Simple Tools Then we implemented tools. Photography and lming, but not in the traditional way! Photo shooting on the street without asking permission was anyway forbidden. As we wanted the students to experiment the daily life inside the peoples´ families and working realities, they discovered that it was much more meaningful to convince children, youngsters, their local guides, working women and men or elderly and migrant workers to document their life environment for themselves! Using photographs, short lms, drawings, writing, theatre, pantomime, masquerades, sports, hobbies or music. In this way they soon discovered hidden soccer pitches as much as coee shops and “online”- billiard bars; the “arrival suburbs” - the suburban slums of the poorest rural migrants´ as much as fancy upper class interiors; carefully detailed balconies and urban decoration as much as pigeon towers, bird cages and: the empty rooftops – with a view! But there was another tool for achieving a true change of horizon: the workshops we initiated with the people. We invited Carin Smuts to stay some days in the area and give advice from her 25 years experience of working with South African Townships. Her way of “asking” worked amazingly. The “progress through education” group asked, for example, the people in their street: “How do you dream about the area in ten years from now?” The answers were: We have a Metro to get downtown easily; we have a re and police station, a better school, clean streets, public lighting and a park. The second workshop question was: “What can we do for this in the next six months?” The answers were simple. And revealing: Light up the streets. Plant a tree on the corner. Sweep in front of your door and up to the middle of the street, Hence: Organize the cleaning of the garbage that covers all public areas.

In the coming months the students will analyse their common mapping results in depth and start to work on individual Urban Acupuncture proposals. In February 2012 these proposals will be given back and explained to the community. A local micro-development can start from and with those rst ideas and students who wish to develop

Jana Revedin Sweden 693 their projects further can interact over the coming years with LOCUS and the professionals appointed to develop the ideas.

Empowerment, Dignity The aim of the overall project is to promote this interactive bottom-up development, empowering the local stakeholders and the population to create shared urban spaces which meet their own needs. The application of material and structural innovation and the best use of local resources will be accompanied by LOCUS and the local NGOs with interdisciplinary specialists. The resulting minimal Urban Acupuncture interventions aim to be encouragements to self-development, trying to show how “conviviality replaces productivity”,17 how technical values are replaced by ethical ones and how we can realise rather than merely materialise. The local population, supported and surprised by the invited experienced architects, specialists in ows, structural and material innovation and by the questioning of the students can self-develop new skills. And in doing so they will be driven by the basic human impulse, which here is still so alive, “to do a job well for its own sake.”18

References

1 Gadamer, HG, Truth and Method, New York: Continuum, 2003, 302. 2 Weiner, F, Five critical Horizons for Architectural Educators in an Age of Distraction, Virginia School of Architecture, 2005, 3. 3 Heidegger, M, Nietzsche, Volume Three, edited by David Farrell Krell, San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991, 87. 4 Burri, R, editor, Luis Barragán and René Burri, London: Phaidon Press, 2000. 5 Rinser, L, Wie, wenn wir all ärmer würden?, Percha am Starnberger See: Verlag R. S. Schulz, 1974. 6 Brandt, W, Regierungserklärung, Bonn: 18.01.1973. 7 Weiner, Five critical Horizons for Architectural Educators in an Age of Distraction, 5. 8 Chairwomen of the LOCUS partner APE Cairo. 9 Kermode, F, editor, Selected Prose of T.S.Eliot, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1975, 37-44. 10 Weiner, Five critical Horizons for Architectural Educators in an Age of Distraction, 6. 11 Aquilino, MJ, Beyond Shelter: Architecture for Crisis, London: Thames & Hudson, 2011, 10. 12 Following the work of Sister Emmanuelle and Mother Theresa of Calcutta, the Coptic minority has developed since the 1970s thanks to the work of the local ONGs A.P.E. and EQI. 13 LOCUS was founded in 2009 with the aim of encouraging innovative practices of Urban Re- newal in emerging countries, www.locus-foundation.org 14 In 2011 and 2012 LOCUS calls in its Global Award winners Bijoy Jain from India, Sami Rintala from Norway, Carin Smuts from South Africa and Philippe Samyn from Belgium, They will develop rst im-mediate interventions for shared spaces, street lighting and lightweight structures. 15 Jana Revedin together with me Mette Harder, year responsible, Mark Ochel and Alberto Altés. 16 Bourriaud, The Radicant, translated from the French by James Gussen and Lili Porten, New York: Lukas & Sternberg Press 2009. 17 Illich, I, Tools for conviviality, London: Marion Boyars Publishers 1973. 18 Sennett, R, The Craftsman, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.

694 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Balázs Balogh

Department of Design Budapest University of Technology and Economics Hungary Changes in Architecture: Think - Design - Practice - Education “A fundamental aim of architecture is to establish an arti cial environment independent of weather adversities for purpose of human existence and activities and, to make this with use of wonderfully complex devices of the trade for everyone’s delightfulness”.

Coming from this: architecture was always dependent upon the location and the genius loci (spirit) thereof, the gross-social possibilities of the given age and, prepared- ness and intuition of the creator. Architecture always used the newest technologies and made experiments with them.

The greatest change: The change of scale taking place in the last century, meanwhile the human nature remained unchanged!

With turning into mass product of the construction, the building became more and more “detail-less” and this dinginess – as process exerted by the mass production – resulted in a poor-stimulus arti cial environment.

The greatest challenge: in this situation is to nd – with revision of our possibilities – adequate solutions, which may result in a built environment providing again amicable and pleasant general conditions suitable also in mass volumes for “human consumption”.

Regarding tools depository: decisive are the versatile possibilities, the industrial background: exact knowledge of the products and technologies of the building industry.

We may have chance for “survival” only through ecient information acquirement. In the recent intensi ed rhythm of life for complex acquirement of this information best suited are the deeply dedicated sensitive, responsible persons. (Not only architects!) These can be successful if knowing the interests of all those who are participants of the “big” process. What is expected from the society by an expert and by a nonprofes- sional persons. With this discussion introducing lecture we attempt to give answers to these issues by searching for feasible solutions.

Changes of Design Fundamentals of the Recent Architecture 1. “It can be stated with peaceful soul that development of the architecture was always characterized by the eagerness to cover the possible biggest space by the possible less material and, each age was striving to satisfy this desire by means of the available newest technical achievements.” 2. In this sense, each individual custom-made and architectural plan is at the same time, an “experiment”, too. It is a paradox that the society expects from this “experiment” almost exclusively a positive result, a perfect “ nal product” although it is also a result if a given way of approach can be later excluded from the line of the rationally considerable variations. (This possibility, due to the cost demanding nature of the construction, is accepted by the actual Client only in extremely exceptional cases, in negligible number.) Being a designer architect I have a rm conviction that rst of all a major factor has to predominate and, this is the function of the building. The modern architecture

696 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture handles this factor with striving for completeness over a wide scale ranging from architectural appearance of the building and structural construction of the same to the interior space climate. Nowadays all designer’s activities serving for optimal satisfaction of the function are indispensable primary conditions. The change is fundamentally characterized also by the fact that the architect employs, out of the otherwise conscious and instinctive, personality dependent factors of the designing activity, mainly the conscious factor although activation of the subconscious representing approximately 85% of the brain capacity would also be necessary. This does not mean that we are not able to use more – by means of the available communication techniques – but in spite of this support by logic arguing is needed. Nevertheless, the really successful creations of the recent days – in their major proportion – are based on instinctive aection, “functioning in hidden dimensions”. Here the change is represented by the fact that the fundamentally two-faced (intuitive and objective) architect activity more prefers the latter. Thus the formal architectural representation (intuitive part) of the creation seems to be pushed into the background, whilst the technical-technological parts which can be attributed as objective, manifest themselves with an overwhelming dominance. 3. Development of the technique today leads to a formal “dismalness”. (Spaces which earlier could be spanned only by various vaults and which due to structural necessity provided form-rich solutions at the same time, nowadays can be covered by simple planar or least proportioned elements – exerting a mostly stimulus-poor general impression.) The today’s successful architectural creations closely correlate with the place (genius loci) and a given culture. The change is striking if it can be amalgamated with the modern technique. (The recent benchmark Japanese architectural creations even with use of the mostly up-to-date technologies reect a genuine national character. According to Charles Jencks: Only the super-talented Japanese architects succeeded in realization of their theories”) Striking is the architectural application of primary geometrical space forms based on pure geometry and designed to substantial and timeless solution. For this reason, are benchmarks the buildings where conception of this spirituality can be recognized. The time lapsed soon over the “idea lines” of Oscar Niemeyer and Lucio Costa implemented in Brazil. 4. Since in designing of self-contained buildings establishing of demanding space connections and space proportions can be rarely realized, the role of the intermediary spaces occurring between them becomes more essential. This transitional space is formed by grouping of the surrounding masses. The role of architectural sections of historical ages has been taken over by the dividing order of the frontage elements and texture of the materials used. The system based on complex relationships aected by the organic unity of the space-mass, the exterior and interior, the “body”, which so far was subordinated to a unique settling principle (person) – became more and more decentralized.

Balázs Balogh Hungary 697 5. In today’s architecture the substantial order and harmony rarely assert themselves. Though architectural projection of the laws of nature would be utilizable, they are only rarely employed. In today’s architecture – should any type of the given building be involved - it is dicult to recognize the expressive, pleasure providing intention of the designer, in spite of the assessment that human beings spend 80-90% of their lifetime in arti cially created environment. 6. Harmony between the arti cial and natural environment, which would be a task of the recent age architecture based on brittle balance, can be discovered only on rare occasions. 7. Architecture ceased to be fundamentally an ethical-moral issue, as it became businesslike. 8. Last, but not least – drastic change in nature of the Patronization: whilst patrons of ages more lucky from architectural points of view were investigating what they can “put into” a building, the today’s investors primarily seek what they can “pull out” from the building! The only aspect is controlled by the desire for the possible earliest reimbursement. 9. And nally, the most striking change: lack of modesty. This is replaced by the words of the well-known “wolf law”: “Only the strong survives!”.

Following this: What Eects these changes may Impose on the Practice? 1. What is requested by the purchaser oriented market? - The market – from Purchaser’s side – expects a stimulus-rich, friendly usage of materials which with development of the technique become more and more arti cial and, application of spaces of friendly mood counterbalancing this with use of natural or quasi-natural materials (named by nowadays fashionable term of so-called „Building Performance”). In addition, the Purchaser requests: - Oer of goods based on wide assortment (and price range) suitable to serve the above said requirements. - Information technique bringing all these to accessible proximity. - Presentation suitable for real sensation. - Traditional market colourfulness and human-friend communication facilities. 2. What is requested by the architects and the co-designers? - Simple access to data - Convenient information channels - Quick data supply - Site-bound comparing possibility 3. What sort of competition our practice has to cope with? - Establishing of permanent product showrooms - Access to all essential data by INTERNET

698 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture - Aggressive product campaign of manufacturers and dealers - Spoiled customers - A world concept suggesting purchaser-centered orientation!

From all these it reveals that we can be successful if we give such surplus which targets simple human factors retraceable primarily to psychological reasons, which remained unchanged from ancient ages!

Factors of this kind are that:

• People like to look around • People like purchasing, “marketing” • People like the social events • People like to see and touch the goods in real environment • People like the smell of materials • People like to deal with beautiful things affecting them directly – and through residential basic services – meanwhile entertaining. • And, that people are fundamentally social beings, who – although may satisfy their more and more demands by throwing their money into automatic machines of sparsely populated spaces – prefer enjoying themselves in the builted environment.

These are the reasons why I am optimistic regarding the future of contemporary architecture, believing in the recognition and rethinking the human in technology-driven architecture.

Balázs Balogh Hungary 699

Antonis Papamanolis Katherine Liapi

University of Patras, Department of Architecture Greece Thoughts on Digital Architectural Education: in search of a digital culture of architectural design It is apparent today that despite the widespread implementation of information technologies in all aspects of the architectural eld, their introduction in architectural education, both in theory as well as in practice remains haphazard, fragmented and lacking a holistic conceptual framework. This I believe is a crucial matter that merits further research, if digital architectural design education is to set its own criteria and values and avoid merely following trends that originate in other elds (i.e. software and hardware development, animation, engineering etc). At its conception it can be theorized that, digital, or information technology driven, architectures aimed (to a certain extent and mostly subconsciously it must be admitted) to inherit the incomplete project of modernity i.e. “to develop objective science, universal morality and law, and autonomous art according to their inner logic” (Habermas, p.9). Michael Benedikt’s “cyberspace” or Markos Novak’s “transarchitectures” are typical examples of this. Digital media provided -in theory at least- an external, objective collaborator (Ne- greponte, 1970) on which architects would be able to rationally map the inner workings of the logic of architecture (Mitchell, 1990).However, it is apparent that despite theoretical advances and innovative methodologies, current digital architectural discourse falls short of de ning a conceptual framework for IT driven architectures. The purpose of this paper is to examine the causes, conditions and consequences of the apparent inability of information driven technologies to facilitate the evolution of a new digital architecture. Highlighting the need of the architectural eld as a whole to conceptualize digital media as more than a glori ed pencil this research argues for the need of a digital architectural culture to transcend current theories and methodologies. Furthermore, this paper examines the architectural educational framework, as it plays a pivotal role in the emergence of architectural paideia (education or culture) be it digital or otherwise. The discussion in this paper poses questions regarding the preferred methodologies for tracing (both theoretically and through case studies) the various aspects involved in the transition of architectural design to the information age. These elements will I believe allow for a better understanding of the impact of information technologies in architectural design and support the proposal for necessary improvements to the architectural curriculum.

Digital Truths and Methods In his magnum opus, “Truth and method”, published in 1960, the German philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer (1900 – 2002) argued that since the enlightenment, scienti c research methods in general have been increasingly interrelated with the methods and norms of the so-called natural sciences. “The logical self-reection that accompanied the development of the human sciences in the nineteenth century is wholly governed by the model of natural sciences” (Gadamer, p.3). The inductive method, Gadamer continues, basic to all experimental sciences is therefore to be considered the sole valid methodology in all scienti c elds, regardless of their object. As a result, humanistic elds of studies, among which one can count architecture, have suered, forced to adopt the tools, methods, goals and ultimately philosophy of the natural science. In this eort to understand themselves by analogy to natural sciences “… the idealistic echo implied in the idea of Geist (spirit) and of a science of

702 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Geist fades into the background” (Gadamer p.3).1 The problem lies, according to Gad- amer’s line of thought, in the impossibility of grasping certain aspects (”problems of thought”) particular in humanistic elds if these are measured against the “yardstick of a progressive knowledge of regularity”. He argues that certain experiences (for example “the sociohistorical world”) cannot be raised to a scienti c level through the method of natural sciences because they do not aim to con rm and extend univer- salized experiences in order to attain a universal law, rather understand “how it happened that it is so”. It can be argued that the introduction of information technologies in architecture highlights this discrepancy between scienti c means and ends. Furthermore, the as- cendancy of digital tools in architectural design facilitates and accelerates the process described above, namely the alignment of digital architectural research with the norms of natural sciences. Ultimately, the above signify the culmination of a process “that reduced all that is worth knowing about architecture to transparent, productive knowledge”(Vesely 2004). In other words, as a consequence of the predominance of natural science methodology, it can be argued that the scope of architectural thought has been diluted and restricted to objective knowledge. As a result, a certain spirituality (along the lines of Gadamer’s “geist” quoted above) that is implied in architectural oeuvre (setting architecture apart from the craft of building) is eclipsed, as non applicable to a natural science mode of thought.

Quanti able and Non Quanti able Elements This reduction of architecture to transparent productive knowledge remains a central issue in today’s IT driven architectures. The digital media of information technologies - themselves a tool of the natural sciences- operate based on quanti able elements. On the contrary, the environment in which they are called to operate (architectural synthesis) is a process that to a large extent operates based on concepts that are not readily (if at all) reduced to –quanti able- elements necessary for digital manipulation. As a consequence it can be argued that the introduction of information technologies media tends to favor certain aspects of architectural design (those that are more suited to digitalization) over others, those that cannot be reduced to quanti able elements. A question therefore can be raised regarding the nature of the aspects of architectural synthesis that are marginalized by the introduction of digital design methods, as well as the examination of the repercussions of this discrimination on the resulting architectural artifact. Faced with the new (digital) time that is upon us, it is useful to recall Mies van der Rohe’s observations, regarding a dierent new era, that of the industrial revolution 80 years ago. Mies Van der Rohe argued that confronted with the emergence of a new time, (a “pure given”) what are crucial are not the methods of building “that say nothing spiritually” but the task of “setting new values and ultimate goals in order to gain new criteria”. Mies concludes “For the meaning and justi cation of each epoch, even the new one, lies only in providing conditions under which the spirit can exist”. It can be argued that this call for an architectural project of the spirit (one is reminded of Heidegger’s concept of “dwelling”), is echoed the dilemmas of the current IT epoch. It can also be suggested that digital tools, despite all their computational power cannot, in their present implementation supply the desired meaning and justi cation.

Antonis Papamanolis, Katherine Liapi Greece 703 Fig. 1 Fig. 2 The digital modern – modern and digital architecture. Aegis hypersurface – the digital as a collaborator.

Digital Culture of Architectural Design It appears therefore that certain questions raised regarding information technologies in architectural design escape the scope of current digital design methodologies. Wil- liam Mitchell underlined this by underlining the “urgent need for a comprehensive rigorously developed computational theory of design” (Mitchell, 1990). The roots of this “missing architectural language” (Summerson, 1957) can be traced to the fragmentation of architectural culture and its replacement by architectural theory and architectural praxis as autonomous entities [Hays]. Max Stakhouse, quoted by Vesely, supplies a vivid image of the results of this fragmentation “When individuals and groups develop a link between their own imagination and their own reason that serves their own ends, and are not fundamentally concerned with the overall shape of society, fragmentation inevitably ensues. Everyone emotionally or intellectually, politically or economically grabs his fragment which is partially real and creates a total reality with it. The splintered identities, competing ideologies, the frac- tured parties and the glaring, cluttered advertising of competing businesses assault the person and the society from a thousand sides” (Stackhouse, 1972). One can only wonder whether the spaces projected by today’s digital architectures are but a further (spatial) reection of this general process of fragmentation.

704 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Illuminating this aspect of architecture is Frederic Jameson’s description of the Los Angeles Bonaventura Hotel by J.Portman. In this postmodern mega-structure, Jame- son reads the manifestation of the disorientation and fragmentation of postmodern man and society. At this point it must be said that architectures role as something more than a spatial con guration (i.e. architectural space as the projection of the ideals and values of each society) is a subject that would require an in depth analysis, beyond the scope of the current research. For the purposes of this paper, it suces to remark that the structures and spaces projected by digital architectural designs -as well as their sociopolitical implications- merit a “comprehensive, rigorously developed computational theory of design” as part of an equally comprehensive digital architectural culture of design.

I.T. Architectural Education Furthermore, it can be argued that the digital architectural culture required to assert ourselves vis a vis the new digital age can stem from architectural education. In this context, the relationship within the education environment between (digital) architectural theory and praxis can also be examined. Kastoriadis, in his essay “Psychoanalysis and the demand of autonomy” (1989) laid out the following principles he considered of paramount importance to any educational system.

a. An educational system that cannot rationally answer the logical question of those subjected to its education “why must we learn that?” remains incomplete b. An educational system that does not aord the maximum possible degree of freedom to those educated is bad. In this regard, if we take for granted the changes aected by information technologies in the eld of architecture, and recognize the need for a comprehensive digital design culture that can stem from architectural education, we must ask ourselves if the processes of architectural training emerging in the wake of the digital revolution are “incomplete”, or even “bad”.

How, What and Why we (digitally) Design In the current debate about digital architectural education it is important to remember that information technology driven (or digital) architectures revolve around the basic tenet that how we design ultimately eects what we design (Kolarevic, 2000). Two interrelated aspects of this tenet in my opinion are of special interest to the educational process. The rst is the eect of information technology driven methods on why we design. Digital media, being tools of the natural sciences are ill equipped to tackle such questions that are essentially of a humanistic nature. As a result, the opportunities for introducing critical thought regarding architectural artifacts in a digital media dominated design process are limited. Furthermore, digital architectural research, itself geared towards “transparent, productive knowledge” falls short of giving any convincing answers to questions of a critical nature (Martin, 2005).

Antonis Papamanolis, Katherine Liapi Greece 705 Fig. 3 Fig. 4 Quanti able and non quanti able Digital and postmodernism. elements.

This leads to the second aspect worth noting in current digital discourse. Namely the rei cation of the digital, the consideration of an abstraction or an object as if it had living existence. Digital media remain in nal analysis a technology, utterly devoid of any spiritual meaning or purpose. Therefore, attempts to infuse meaning to “digital architectural artifacts” by means of the information technologies applied during their production are doomed to failure (Goulthorpe, 2003). The two interrelated issues of lack of criticality and the digital rei cation are in my opinion important challenges architectural education must face. It remains open to discussion what are the strategies by which the architectural educational framework can rst describe these issues then analyze and nally implement them. Also worth noting are what will be the eects of this implementation on the architectural curriculum.

Axes of Research Goal of the proposed research is to outline of the eects of information technologies on the educational processes of architectural design. It can be stated that this is primarily a problem of de nition. William Mitchell argued, quoting the infamous modernist motto “form follows function” that such sentences remain meaningless so far as we cannot agree what “form”, function”, or for that

706 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture matter “follows” mean (Mitchell 1990). Digital methodologies nd themselves I believe in a similar cul de sac, and, it follows, the rst task is a comprehensive (to quote Mitch- ell again) architectural de nition of the terms digital, Information technologies, educational processes, digital architectural design and so forth. It is my opinion, as stated above, that these problems of de nition can be tackled within the conceptual framework of a culture of digital architectural design. Such a culture inevitably means a turn towards humanistic sciences in order to counterbalance the described hegemony –via the digital- of natural science methodology. Once a digital architectural terminology has been de ned, one that does not depend either on loans from other scienti c elds or on traditional architectural conventions, further questions can be raised regarding the

a. The eects of Information technologies in the design processes of architectural education. b. Precise description of the individual design processes mostly aected by IT. c. The changes eected on the resulting architectural artifact. d. By what means can architectural education respond to and integrate the emerging digital design trends.

A crucial point of the research is the need for practical data on the introduction of digital media in the design process. In order to successfully implement IT in architectural synthesis, it can be argued that it is of vital importance -based on the aforementioned theoretical background – to analyze actual case studies. It is therefore a second challenge to set up digital studio experiments (Asanowicz, 1998, 2003, 2007), where the integration of digital media in the educational process can be put under close scrutiny. The conditions, parameters and methods of such experimental studios also remain a matter that requires serious debate (Akin, 2005).

Outline of Goals The direction this research wishes to take will be towards the emergence of a genuine digital architecture project (Habermas, 1981)], through a process of transcoding2 (Jameson, 1981) of IT and synthesis within the architectural education framework. Through paradigms of digital architectural education processes as well as theoretical analysis results of the research are expected to aid in

a. The critical reevaluation of the architectural curriculum regarding the integration of information technologies in architectural synthesis. b. Providing data regarding IT speci cations and requirements stemming from actual design education needs.

Notes

1 “geisteswissenschaften” is German for human sciences, literally “sciences of the spirit”. 2 Transcoding –- “the invention of a set of terms, the strategic choice of a language, such that the same terminology can be used to analyze and articulate two quite distinct types of objects or “texts”, or two very dierent levels of structural reality”.

Antonis Papamanolis, Katherine Liapi Greece 707 -“New theoretical discourse is produced by the setting in active equivalence of two preexisting codes, which thereby in a kind of molecular ion exchange, become a new one. What must be understood is that the new code (or metacode) can in no way be considered as a synthesis between the previous pair… It is rather a question of linking two sets of terms in such a way that each can express and indeed interpret the other”.

References

Akin, O., 2005. Mixing Domains: Architecture plus software engineering. Digital Design: The Quest for New Paradigms.23rd eCAADe Conference Proceedings. Asanowicz, A.,2007.Evolution of CAAD teaching methods. Predicting the Future [25th eCAADe Confer- ence Proceedings. Asanowicz, A.,2003.Form follows media- experiences of Bialystok school of Architectural composition. Local Values in a Networked design world – added value of computer aided architectural design, Stellingwer, Martijn and Verbeke, Johan (Eds.)DUP Science - Delft University Press. Asanowicz, A., 1998. Approach to computer implementation in architectural Curriculum. Computer- ized Craftsmanship eCAADe Conference Proceedings. Baird, G.,1969.”La dimension amoureuse” in architecture. Meaning in architecture, Charles Jenks and George Baird (eds), New York: George Braziller. Cheng, N.,1997. Teaching CAD as a foreign language. CAADRIA ‘96 proceedings. Gadamer, H. G.,1975,Truth and method. Second, revised edition 2004 Continuum Press. Goulthorpe, M.,2003.Scott Points: exploring principles of digital creativity. Branko Kolarevic (ed) Architecture in the digital age, Taylor and Francis. Habermas, J.,1981.Modern and postmodern architecture. In: M. Hays Architecture Theory since 1968. CBA 2000. Hays, M.,Architecture theory since 1968.CBA 2000. Jameson, F., 1981.The political unconscious. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Jameson, F., 1991 Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism Verso. Kastoriadis, K., 1989.Psychoanalysis and the demand of autonomy. Speeches in Greece. Ypsilon. Kolarevic, B.,2000.Digital architectures. Eternity, In nity and Virtuality in Architecture,Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Design in Architecture. Lefebvre,H.,1991.The production of space. In: M.Hays Architecture Theory since 1968. CBA 2000. Lynn, G.,1999. Animate Form. Princeton Architectural Press. Martin, R., 2005.Critical of what?. Harvard design magazine. Mitchell, W.,1990.The logic of architecture. MIT Press. Negreponte, N.,1970.The architecture machine. MIT Press. Novak, M.,1998. Transarchitectures and hypersurfaces. In S.Parella(ed) AD PROFILE 133:Hypersurface architecture II, London Academy Editions. Ponegratz C., Perebellini M.,2000. Natural born CAADesigners. Birkhäuser Basel. Sutherland, I.,1963.Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system, Cambridge University. Tauri, M.,1969.Toward a critique of architectural ideology. In: M.Hays Architecture Theory since 1968. CBA 2000. Vesely, D.,2004. Architecture in the age of divided representation. MIT Press.

708 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Peter Staub

Institute of Architecture and Planning University of Liechtenstein Vaduz Liechtenstein Imagining the Real Architecture’s relationship with its representations is peculiar, powerful and absolutely critical. Architecture is driven by belief in the nature of the real and the physical: the speci c qualities of one thing – its material, form, arrangement, substance, detail – over another. It is absolutely rooted in the idea of ‘the thing itself’. Yet it is discussed, illustrated, explained – even de ned – almost entirely through its representations. (Rattenbury, 2002, p. xxi)

When I show students in architecture images of Etienne-Louis Boullée’s (1728 – 1799) Cenotaph for Newton (1785) and ask them whether this is architecture or not, the opinions are divided. The same applies for a picture of Le Corbusier’s (1887 – 1965) book Vers une architecture (1923) or a lm still from Fritz Lang’s (1890 – 1976) Metropolis (1927). When I present photographs (or computer generated imagery, CGI) of built architecture, everyone con rms them as “architecture”. What I am interested in with this experiment is not to add to the never ending discussion on “what is architecture?”, but to better understand the role of the image of what is a vision of architecture. With his famous painting “La trahison des images” (1928/ 29) René Magritte (1898 – 1967) highlighted the dierence between an object that can be experienced (the pipe) and its visual representation, its image. This relationship is particularly relevant in architectural education, as studying architecture means learning the profession through the simulation of design processes that almost never manifest themselves in built, constructed form at a 1:1 scale. What do we really teach students during their architectural education? Of course, they will gain theoretical knowledge of construction as well as of architectural history and theory. Plenty of other subjects related to the responsibilities of an architect complete the taught curriculum. However, most attention is paid to the actual design of architectural proposals. This is not, as often mistaken, the design of architecture, as this would imply that the proposal would reach the stage of construction and completion. Design studios in architecture schools teach how to design the design process and – most importantly – how to visually and spatially communicate it. During ve or more years of studying architecture, students build digital and analogue three-dimensional models, produce montages and collages, draw diagrams and scale-drawings and use any other media, ranging from 2D to 3D to time-based 4D and interactive 5D, to help generate and communicate a project. Although that is a remarkable catalogue of skills in constantly evolving contemporary techniques and technologies that sets up graduates to successfully participate in architectural competitions, it becomes of secondary importance when it comes to actually constructing a building. The construction industry is slowly adapting to integrated design tools that allow multiple parties to collaborate using a common tool, but still relies principally on traditional methods of numerical representations, such as detailed construction drawings to scale. The creative design process still has to be translated into such a format. Built architecture is three dimensional, yet most abstracted information leading to it is two-dimensional (Staub, 2011). It seems obvious that the techniques and technology used to produce spatial designs and images during the design process have a signi cant role in determining the built outcome. For example, key innovations in computer-aided design, manufacturing technologies and construction processes have enabled designers to explore space beyond the right angle. Software can simulate any building in any condition, helping

710 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture to eliminate risks that previously prohibited construction. However advantageous such innovations might be, they still do not change the designer’s need to represent three-dimensional space through a series of two dimensional images – whether this is for collaborators, clients or planning applications.

Generating the Image Limitations in computer software interfaces or render engines inuence and to some extent predetermine their user’s output. Generally, when one installs the newest version of a 3D CAD software, on start-up its standard interface appears. The ones I am and have been working with in the past generally divide the screen in 4 windows which show the object one is designing from dierent sides and perspectives. Tool- bars lled with icons and command lines are organised around them. Generally a virtual grid supports each view. The general colour scheme is grey, possibly dark grey while the icons provide minimal colour. While it is rather easy to customise the interface, including preferred colours and toolbars, users generally rather adapt to the given layout and settings. When it comes to software, we all learn by doing. Unfortunate- ly we often (without knowing) accept detours to achieve a certain result rather than customising the tools to facilitate a quicker and easier path to the required outcome. Just like the good, old parallel ruler, ink pen and drawing paper restricted the architectural output prior to CAD, contemporary tools help predetermining the results. This, combined with readily available 3D models of any type of window, door, bathroom, furniture, car or other accessory, potentially leads to a lack in conscious decision making during the design process. Besides the given tools it might also be necessary to take into consideration the role of the visual appearance of the interface. Architects work and mainly think visually. Given the long working hours of architectural students (and architects) I wonder what eect the given tools and interface have on their ability to make design decisions. If one is to consider the many hours students and architects spend in front of the computer, designing with CAD, I cannot help but think that the overdose of the generally grey image we are looking at has a subconscious impact on how and what we design, let alone on our mood. Just imagine (practicalities aside), the overall background would be pink or bright green, would that encourage us to come up with more fun or more sustainable designs? Could the grey possibly have an inuence on the choice of material for a building, say, concrete rather than wood? Similar questions can be raised when it comes to material maps, render engines and their settings. In recent years, a few common render engines have strongly contributed to a global visual language in architecture. Reasons for their success are easily named: combined with their ability to accurately simulate light, shadow, reections and materiality, it is the increasingly powerful computers that can calculate the complex generation of rendered images faster. As a result, photorealistic representations become more and more common. This applies for both, architectural competitions as well as images produced in architectural schools. When showing students the comparison between a photograph and a photorealistic computer generated image of a random architecture, the class cannot decide which one of the two architectures is built and which one exist purely as an image. The human eye (and brain) seems to have become incapable in distinguishing the real from the imaginary, a point also highlighted by David Greene (2002). Seeing becomes

Peter Staub Liechtenstein 711 Fig. 1 Gertsch, F., 2010. Sommer. Acrylic on unprimed cotton. Collection of Franz Gertsch and Maria Gertsch-Meer. Available at http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gertsch/en/gallery.php?id=set4 [accessed on 10.11.2011]

Fig. 2 Gertsch, F., 2008. Herbst. Acrylic on unprimed cotton. Collection of Franz Gertsch and Maria Gertsch-Meer. Available at http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gertsch/en/gallery.php?id=set4 [accessed on 10.11.2011]

712 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Gertsch, F., 2009. Winter. Acrylic on unprimed cotton. Collection of Franz Gertsch and Maria Gertsch-Meer. Available at http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gertsch/en/gallery.php?id=set4 [accessed on 10.11.2011]

Fig. 4 Gertsch, F., 2011. Frühling. Acrylic on unprimed cotton. Collection of Franz Gertsch and Maria Gertsch-Meer. Available at http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gertsch/en/gallery.php?id=set4 [accessed on 10.11.2011]

Peter Staub Liechtenstein 713 Fig. 5 Gertsch, F., 2010. Sommer. Acrylic on unprimed cotton (detail). Collection of Franz Gertsch and Maria Gertsch-Meer. Available at http://www.kunsthaus.ch/gertsch/en/gallery.php?id=set4 [accessed on 10.11.2011]

a matter of believing. How, for example, without ever having visited certain places or buildings in this world and only having seen them on images, do we really know they exist? The images’ atmospheric qualities and thus their ability to simulate a spatially remote instance make them more real than the represented “original”. This process, coined by Jean Baudrillard (1929 – 2007) as ‘hyper-reality’, de nes the real as “that of which it is possible to give an equivalent reproduction. […] At the limit of this process of reproducibility, the real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is always already reproduced. The hyperreal.’ (Baudrillard, 1983, p.146) On the other hand photorealistic images of an architecture-to-be are frequently being submitted for planning applications, public inquiries etc to demonstrate the building’s future (visual) impact on its surroundings. This could include aspects such as materiality and its reective behaviour, the building’s infringement into viewing corridors, the shadow it might cast and so forth. Here, the computationally generated image can be understood as part of a contract. It can be used as evidence after construction to verify whether the “contractual” promises made during the design phase were kept or not, meaning that the image becomes the benchmark or blueprint for the architecture to be constructed. This could potentially lead to a process of reverse- engineering, where the built outcome simulates the originally provided image, rather than the other way around. Given this new emphasis on photorealistic representations it seems imperative that students of architecture develop the necessary skills to apply them in their future

714 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture professional life. However, the lack of individuality triggered by the wide spread availability of software as well as the presence of photorealistic imagery in the media often results in indistinguishable student work. On the one hand one could argue that common tools of representation allow for comparison between projects with a focus back on content. On the other hand, personal and customised representations add atmosphere and possibly a narrative to an image.

Perceiving the Image Over the last decade, when computer generated, photo-realistic imagery developed to the highest standards now predominant in the lm- and gaming-industry as well as in architecture, the appreciation of the image was often related with its high quality, rather that its content. Didn’t we all ask ourselves at one point “how did they do it to make it look so real”? Don’t we all recall engaging in discussions with fellow students or architects about certain settings, tools or techniques used to generate an amazing image? The craft that lies behind creating an image becomes a de ning factor particularly for a professional eye in assessing it. This applies not only for architecture and CGI in general, but also for art. Take as an example the Swiss artist Franz Gertsch (*1930) who is probably best known for his large scale, photorealistic paintings. Among them are portraits but also scenes from nature, such as a recent series of a view into the forest, one for each season (2008 – 2011). As a basis for all his work serve photographs. When seen from a distance, the paintings still resemble a photographic image and only at closer inspec- tion, they reveal themselves as paintings. His obsession to perfection translates into a painting technique not too dissimilar from pixelisation in a digital picture, meticu- lously reconstructing the photograph through tiny dots and strokes of paint. It is at this moment, at the point of realisation, that the image is a crafted painting when the viewer shifts his or her attention from the content of the painting – what it depicts – to the technique of the painter. All of a sudden the appreciation of the piece of art is no longer with its aesthetic appearance, but with the craft of its author. This is a crucial shift in the perception of the image, as it puts the creator of the image at centre of attention and with him/her a personal narrative that cannot possibly be reproduced. Returning to architectural education one could argue that the production of computer generated images that strive for the photorealistic provokes a similar change in how we perceive both their content as well as their authors. On the one hand, the uniformity of imagery produced at architecture schools around the world allow for comparisons in content, just like this might be the case in architectural competitions. Simultaneously, little dierences in the technique resulting in even more photorealistic imagery put the craft of the author in the foreground. “How did you do that?” might be the reaction from fellow students or tutors alike. The representation is the nal output for each architectural project produced at universities around the world. It is therefore no surprise that the image, together with representations using more than two dimensions, is the equivalent to an architect’s completed building. The image alone no longer represents an architecture-to-be, but remains entirely self-referential, lacking critical spatial qualities under-represented in two dimensional images.

Peter Staub Liechtenstein 715 Fig. 6 Haspica, A., 2010. Gondoland (University of Liechtenstein, Architectural Design Theory).

Fig. 7 Mohamed, M., 2010. Two Stories Below (University of Liechtenstein, Architectural Design Theory).

716 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 8 Hanak, A., 2010. The Uplifting City (University of Liechtenstein, Architectural Design Theory).

Fig. 9 Ne, C., 2010. Ad City (University of Liechtenstein, Architectural Design Theory).

Peter Staub Liechtenstein 717 From the Image to the Experience of Space: Content vs Container It is one of the qualities of the architect to understand space through a series of representations including drawings, images and models that, on their own, contain limited information but mentally collaged together convey space. The exhibition “Ar- chitecture and its Image” curated by Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in 1989 was organised in groups of architectural representations. In the catalogue to the exhibition the organisers state that “for the most part, architectural representations are not single images but groups of images; that the full signi cance of architectural imagery can best be recovered within the serial context of the group” (Blau and Kaufman, 1989, pp. 13). Each of the representational technique has its aws. Any two-dimensional representation can only really be perceived from one point. Architectural models on the other hand provide an experience that includes – to some degree – materiality and multiple viewpoints. However, due to their miniaturisation and abstraction they also are limited in conveying the full experience of space. The same applies for time-base media (animations, lms etc) and interactive tools, which have their advantages in enabling a narrative or an alternative haptic reading of a project, but often lack in precision. Individually, each representational technique represents a limited aspect of architecture, just like Boullées sectional drawing, Le Corbusier’s book or the scaled models of skyscrapers in Metropolis did. What is of particular interest to me here is to investigate the potential of a merging of multiple representational techniques to create a multi-sensual, spatial experience that goes beyond the mere representation of information towards one enabling the narration of spatial scenarios and atmospheres. In the ongoing debate in architectural education around the role of representation in architecture there are always those who will favour an emphasis on content rather that its container, the technique with which the architectural space is visually communicated. I on the other hand prefer to understand the container as a generative tool that enables to create space, rather than just represent it. This means nding ways to spatially translate one representational technique - say the two-dimensional photorealistic image or the sectional drawing - into a three-dimensional model and further into a narrative, time-based (4D) experience. Each transition requires a merging of techniques. For example: a series of sectional drawings arranged in a sequence will automatically result in a three- dimensional space which can also be read as a model. Reading each section of this assembly in sequence will at the same time provide a narrative. Add to the visual a tactile, haptic experience and you have your recipe for a multi-sensual, multi-dimensional experience that provides more than the sum of its parts. The project “Paper City” in the course Architectural Design Theory (MSc Arch) at the University of Liechtenstein helps to illustrate this concept. Inspired by the artist Olafur Eliasson’s (*1967) work “Your House” (2006) and the writer Italo Calvino’s (1923 – 1985) “Invisible Cities” (1972), students were asked to develop architectural proposals through spatial books. Each book tells the story of an architectural intervention on the islands of Venice through a sequence of laser-cut, sectional drawings that resulted in both, spatial depth and a narrative. In hundreds of pages, each individually designed, architectural space emerges and allows the reader to visually and haptically experience the unfolding stories page by page. Each book and thus the various spaces it contains were assembled over a period of four months in 2010. They were not pro-

718 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture duced after and as a consequence of a lengthy design process involving many other representational techniques, but they were the actual design process itself, with pages being added on a daily basis. This carries with it a degree of unpredictability sometimes resulting in happy spatial accidents. Thus, this method led to both, the content and its container using the container as a generative tool to develop architectural narratives and spaces. Each book is crafted, manufactured by its author und therefore unique. They are originals and thus preserve what Walter Benjamin describes as “aura”, an element “which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction” (Benjamin, pp. 215). These are important factors in dierentiating pure CGI from a hybrid representational technique as described above. Similar to the perfect photorealistic image the focus remains on it being appreciated for the skills of its author. After all, the precision and technique with which they are produced can be considered a craft. However, instead of becoming entirely self-referential and void of content, the hybrid technique acts a catalyst for spatial production in a continuous and rigorous process. And this process, unlike the nite image, is also the narrative with which the viewer experiences the architectural vision represented. The role of the human in architectural representation becomes thus equally important in its conception and perception, as the personalised experience is as unique and individual as the process that led to its creation.

Bibliography

Baudrillard, J., 1983. Simulations. New York: Semiotext[e]. Benjamin, W., 1999. Illuminations. London: Pimlico. Blau, E. and Kaufman, E., ed. 1989. Architecture and its Image, Four Centuries of Architectural Repre- sentation. Montreal: CCA. Green, D., 2002. Foto-graph, Foto-shop. In: Rattenbury, K., ed. 2002. This is not Architecture, Media Constructions. London: Routledge. Rattenbury, K., ed. 2002. This is not Architecture, Media Constructions. London: Routledge. Staub, P. 2011. 2D or not 2D – What’s lost in Translation between the Dimensions. In: Lorenz, T. and Staub, P., ed. 2011. Mediating Architecture. London: AA Publications.

Peter Staub Liechtenstein 719

Anastasia Tzaka

School of Architecture Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece Digital Design Pedagogies A critical case study approach Architectural Education in the Digital Era While understanding architecture as a cultural discourse, an open and critical debate about the future aims and strategies of architectural studies, could not help but address the speci c challenges that shape the architectural practice in the XXI century. In a fast changing, globalized and networked society, the value of an education understood as the process of teaching a given set of architectural solutions is rapidly diminishing. The new dynamics direct a shift of architectural education towards design research that allows for the systematic buildup of innovative project work, investigates new forms and types of spatial organization and enables feedback loops of information between users and their living environment. The most profound perhaps aspect of contemporary life, i.e. the rapid technological innovation, has brought decisive direction to the advancement of architecture as a discipline. Moving past the obvious implementations of computer-based technologies in eciently and precisely elaborating with complex forms and artifacts, the experimentation with new digital media in design and fabrication, beyond mere representation and analysis tools, has led to the development of new architectural paradigms and vocabularies. Dynamic modeling, parametric design and scripting, are only a few of the morphogenetic strategies that contemporary forward-looking architects are sophistically employing. While the current mature phase of digital experimentation opens up a whole new range of potentialities to architecture’s scienti c and professional eld, the aims and strategies of architectural education are constantly being rede ned. Mastery of digital techniques is anticipated as a result of the academic process. This already is a dicult and demanding task by itself that could catalyze teaching strategies, methods and techniques. But still this alone does not necessarily yield ingenuity. The real challenge is to critically engage computational media in teaching and learning architecture in order to propagate innovative designs with inherent aesthetic sensibilities and a high degree of sophistication.

Experimental Digital Pedagogies: a Case Study Committing itself to the continuous necessity of re-de ning education in theoretical and practical terms as the main focus of teaching, the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning and Development of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (A.U.Th.) coordinated an experimental student workshop on urban design. The organization of the activities in December 2009 was a common pedagogical initiative of the two Schools in collaboration with the rectorate of A.U.Th., the Faculty of Engineering and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki. This paper examines the operative strategies and teaching outcomes of this design experiment in the form of an intensive one-week workshop, titled “SKG IN_FLUX”1. Twenty- ve students from both Schools participated in the workshop, which explored advanced parametric strategies for the urban design of a new large scale development near the city of Thessaloniki. An interdisciplinary group of numerous professors, together with two distinctive visiting professors, Patrik Schumacher, professor at the Innsbruck University and director of Zaha Hadid Architects and Reiner Zettl, architecture and art theorist and assistant professor at the University of Applied Arts of Vien-

722 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture na, guided students in order to animate an alternative form of architecture and urbanism “in ux”. The urbanist potential of parametric design has been explored intensively in the last few years by a global network of architecture schools and design researchers. Ver- ebes (2009)2, former co-director of the AADRL postgraduate program, notes that “associative design systems can control local dynamic information to eect and adjust larger human life processes by embedding intelligence into the formation, organization and performance of urban spaces, uses, activities, interfaces, structures and infrastructures.” Explaining why the parametric approach is particularly suited to large- scale urbanism P. Schumacher (2009)3 further suggests that the interaction between parts and the associativity with environmental criteria and human behavior “lead to the systematic modulation of architectural morphologies which produces powerful urban eects and facilitate eld orientation”. In this context, the strategies and methods that the SKG in Flux workshop put in use, de ned a eld of design experimentation in response to the broader disciplinary discourse related to the use of advanced digital tools, the potentialities these oer in dealing with urban form and their role in architectural education. It is worth mentioning that the great majority of students involved in this design experiment had little or no prior experience with parametric techniques such as dynamic modeling or scripting, thus a big part of the workshop’s goal was to familiarize students with some genuinely new for them digital tools but at the same time introduce them to a whole new design thinking and approach which shifts the focus from the design of forms to the design of the processes of the morphogenesis of those forms and their articulations into coherent urban elds.

Design Methodology and Techniques The workshop’s experimental agenda moved on two parallel directions seeking to connect the contemporary complex urban dynamics with the challenges of new technology- driven architecture techniques. Interdisciplinary scholarship on urban planning broadly admits that, “ the manifestation of the powers that con gure the city has shifted from the outwardly visible to the invisible – that is, the city is not rendered through composition, gravity, form, or material, as much as it is through demographics and economic performance.” (Kool- haas, Boeri, Kwinter, Tazi and Obrist 2000).4 Contrary to the deductive logic of conventional master planning schemes, parametric paradigms oer an alternative responsive model for the processing and computing of complex information into systematically articulated urban elds. Looking at such paradigms, the workshop tried to initiate students in design strategies that investigate urban space in terms of continuous yet dierentiated elds of urban massing, voids and circulatory paths as interconnected elements that allow for an almost in nite range of varied and exible arrangements. Towards this end, intensive tutorials on parametric associative design tools and scripting techniques sought to help students master some computational skills that could allow them to come up with a mode of systematic versioning and adaptation of architectural forms according to correlated parameters of human interaction and contextual conditions.

Anastasia Tzaka Greece 723 Methodology Given the short duration of the workshop and the inexperience of students in dealing with parametric design methods and relevant architectural concepts, the teaching strategy was to develop a coherent design process as a goal-orient experimental procedure. Accordingly, the design process involved four distinct interdependent steps:

1. Dynamic modeling of urban forces and ows For the purpose of the exercise, students were asked to select three parameters that would prioritize speci c environmental conditions of the site, main programmatic requirements and spatial qualities, according to the urban strategy adopted. A set of initial mapping diagrams – dynamic and/or static- were extracted this way, creating multiple datascapes that would subsequently become design input for the articulation of the urban eld. In a more realistic scenario, parameters in play are far more complex, numerous and often times contradictory. Nevertheless, in order to maintain a level of complexity that would be appropriate for the exercise, students abstracted the design process according to prioritized design requirements and strategies.

2. Development of an urban massing component with inherent geometric associations according to internal organization rules and parameters Complex systems are characterized by hierarchical relationships between components and elements that synergetically give rise to biologically inspired architectures. This step of the exercise focused on the associativity and interdependency of local and global scale. Students had to come up with complex con gurations, constructed as a parametric model with extremely sensitive guration variables. Ideally, these geometric con gurations would be constituted out of multiple subsystems so as the architectural morphology, tectonic articulation and interior organization would be parametrically malleable as a continuous urban system.

3. Versioning and dierentiation of the initial component Mutation of types and evolution of multiple ‘programmatic hybrids’ There is a direct analogy to natural systems’ dierentiation for specialization; within one organism some cells specialize to do a speci c function, for example to introduce air in the structure. Thus local dierentiation responding to performative requirements leads to an overall optimization. Multiple environmental inputs drive the dierentiation of components along the structure, increasing the performance of the urban con guration. Formal dierentiation of the component developed by the students generated a population of gradient forms that are topologically equal, yet morpho- logically dierentiated and thus responding dierently to diverse performance criteria. In this stage students were encouraged to investigate the correlation between performance and its organizational and formal manifestation.

724 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture 4. Adaptation of the dierentiated types to multiple datascapes and systematic articulation of a complex urban eld of interconnected elements Having understood the repercussion of the form to the performative capacity of a component in local scale, this step was seeking for an emergent global form that would respond to environmental requirements by creating links between the dynamic maps generated in step 1 and the dierentiated component proliferation across the site, creating urban massing, circulation paths, urban voids. The exercise was coupled by introducing students to the general theoretical discourse on current architectural research which focuses on the performance, adaptability and intelligence of the built environment. “New technologies have accelerated the shift from a Modernist preference for homogenous space to a contemporary preference for heterogeneous space”5 (Hensel et al. 2009). This step involved the translation from site data to form, which was not always a very straightforward process; it involved in a great extend the designer’s preferences with regards to the rules that would condition such translation, based on both performative and aesthetic criteria.

Evaluation and Future Steps The design processes described here aimed to explore a relatively new eld of architectural experimentation related to the dynamic mapping, simulation and design of urban systems through advanced parametric tools. The combination of computational techniques and design methodologies in a continuous integrated system led to a design approach where geometric characteristics, spatial qualities and environmental performance iteratively informed architectural form generation. Data exchange played a critical role in enabling a multi-way ow of information among dierent entities and scales. The workshop was a short term experimental approach for an alternative design of complex dynamic urban systems and a valuable pedagogic exercise for students in order to explore new techniques, concepts and strategies. The complexity of such a task, linked on one hand with the mastery of computational tools and on the other hand with the critical engagement with upcoming design problems and the real urban development requirements, would demand a further elaboration of the methodologies and techniques described above and a more critical investigation of such a research agenda by the students. A year-long design studio could constitute a future educational framework that through experimentation, critique, confrontation and debate, would allow for an in-depth exploration of such a research agenda as a more mature phase of digital experimentation with urban form. In this case, the experimentation would aim at a further development of the ways the contents and forms of expression of the parametric approach to urban design are converted into design processes and results. The real challenge of an innovative parametric approach would be to come up with considerably new spatial constructs that eectively parameterize urban processes rather than architectural geometries but this is inevitably a far more complex and long-term research route.

Anastasia Tzaka Greece 725 Fig. 1 Student project: “Poro(C)ity”, M. Chiou, A. Georgopoulou, M. Velenis, A. Samara, K. Stefanidis. Multiple parameters shape the dierentiated urban eld. The resulting urban geometries manifest the continuous dierentiation and adaptation of new urban elds across multiple vectors of transformation.

Fig. 2 Student project: “U.S.E.”, D. Koroni, P. Mamoura, K. Petrou, S. Psaltis, Ε. Sgouropoulou, G. Tsakiridis. Dynamic mapping of parametric attraction and repulsion relationships of programmatic elements.

726 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 3 Student project: “Forming the negative”: V. Apostolakeas, S. Avramopoulou, M. Charitonidou, I. Michopoulos, A. Thomidou, P. Vasilopoulou. Variation studies of urban massing components with inherent geometric associations according to internal organization rules and parameters.

Fig. 4 Student project: “LSP”: D. Athanasopoulou, M. Chatziparaskevas, E. Georgiadou, D. Giovos, A. Gkoumas. Adaptation of the dierentiated types to multiple datascapes and systematic articulation of a complex urban eld of interconnected elements.

Anastasia Tzaka Greece 727 Notes

1 http://skginux.blogspot.com/ 2 Verebes, T., 2009, ‘Experiments in associative urbanism’, in Leach N. (Ed.), AD Digital Cities,79(4), John Wiley & Sons, London, pp. 24-33. 3 Schumacher, P., 2009, ‘Parametricism: A new global style for architecture and urban design’, in Leach N. (ed.), AD Digital Cities, 79(4), John Wiley & Sons, London, pp. 14-23. 4 Koolhaas, R., Boeri, S., Kwinter, S., Tazi, N. and Obrist, H.U., 2000, Mutations, Actar, Art en Reve Centre d’Architecture, Bordeaux, France. 5 Hensel, M., Hight, C., and Menges, A., 2009, Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture, John Wiley & Sons, West Sussex.

Acknowledgements

The workshop ‘SKG IN_FLUX’ was organized in December 2009 by the the School of Architecture and the School of Urban Planning and Development of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in collaboration with the Rectorate of A.U.Th., the Faculty of Engineering and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art of Thessaloniki. Organization: Kalogirou N., Papakostas G., Tzaka A. Academic sta: E. Athanasiou, P. Chatzitsakyris, Ch. Christodoulou, G. Giokalas, D. Gourdoukis, A. Kalfopoulos, D. Kaimaris, N. Kalogirou, N. Karanikolas, D. Kontaxakis, A. Paka, M. Pantazi, A. Papa- giannakis, V. Papadiamantopoulos, S. Papadimitriou, A. Papadopoulou, G. Papakostas, P. Patias, G. Pozoukidou, K. Spiridonidis, I. Symeonidou, P. Tarani, A. Tellios, K. Trifonidou, S. Vergopoulos, F. Vasilakis, M. Voyatzaki. Visiting professors: Schumacher P., Zettl R.

728 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Alexandros Vazakas

Faculty of Architecture Technical University of Crete Greece High Technology - High Aesthetics ? This paper presents the course “Associative design and manufacture” held at the School of Architecture, Technical University of Crete in Chania during Spring/summer 2011. The course is addressed to students of 4th and 5th year. It is based on a critical approach to digital technologies in architectural design. This approach relates to three issues associated to the author’s experience thus far in teaching digital technologies and Architectural Design:

• The use of computers, although inspiring in many ways, during the design process, often alienates students from the actuality of space, from its relation to human body and the senses. This is probably due to the fact that the interface of the screen produces images: it does not produce artifacts with spatial qualities that the human body could relate to and interpret in multiple ways, implicating more senses than vision alone. • In architectural practice and teaching, there is no immediate link between the design phase of a project, which is carried out on the drawing board, and the act of building, of constructing the project. Theorists and architects argue that there is a physical tendency of humans to de ne, control and therefore to shape their environment. And yet sometimes even architects are alienated from this process. • When teaching digital architecture, we need to combine an imaginative approach to space, one that is inspired and explored with the help of digital technologies, with a problem solving approach, one that exploits digital technologies in order to make complex geometries treatable and constructible. This is a possible way to avoid the misconception that computers and cnc machines allow the construction of any form regardless of cost, materials, and techniques. On the other hand, according to Francoise Choay, Utopia has been one of the two main paradigms that established architecture as a separate discipline. Therefore somehow, both approaches should be used.

The Digital Fabrication Laboratory In order to confront the issues of the relation between digital and material world among others, and connect the drawing board to construction, we have created the Digital Fabrication Laboratory at the Faculty of Architecture in Chania, which is fully operative from this last academic year. It is currently equipped with 2 laser cutters a 3d printer and a 3 axis cnc router. The laboratory is addressed to students to use for their assignments, to tutors for their courses, and anyone who wants to make something real out of a digital le (Fig. 1-2).

The Course’s Brief In order to deal with the issues mentioned, the course’s brief developed around the following axes:

• Projects should follow a “Vertical” approach: from design to fabrication. The forms developed should be able to be fully elaborated within the Laboratory. In this way students experience designing and building a small project from start to nish. They gain valuable experience from the friction with real parameters such as the materials used and the need for structural coherence.

730 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 1-2 View of the digital fabrication laboratory, School of Architercture, T.U.C.

• Projects should use associativity as a means to handle complex geometries both conceptually and structurally. In this way, besides dealing with the software (in this case Rhino Grasshopper) students get familiar with the logic of programming, with creating relations between forms and learn to hierarchically structure their projects. • Projects should make extensive use of physical models created both manually but also with digital tools. These should reach even 1:1 scale in order to test both aesthetic and structural qualities.

The design task given was to design a canopy out of plywood. This canopy should have a minimal use (i.e. de ne a space for 2 or more people), be associatively designed with no particular regard on the reasons of this associativitie’s initial parameters (could be sun path, topography or just a set of curves), be constructed at the school’s Digital Fabrication Laboratory and use solely wooden detailing with no other material involved. For this last parameter, we used the research of prof. E. Burdek and J. Gros at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung Oenbach on the digital construction

Alexandros Vazakas Greece 731 of wooden joints, as a basis for our detailing. Each team of students had to present a fully associative digital model, a physical model in 1:6, full scale physical models of the joints used, the design process, plans, and the like.

Project Presentation and Assessment The eighteen students that chose the course formed 3 teams of 6 and three projects occurred. There were one midterm, and a nal presentation on June 2011. At rst, all teams experimented with sketches and small physical models. At the same time, they started elaborating the joints they would use and created wooden physical models of those.

Project #1 A set of curves de nes a surface of double curvature. This is then constructed out of a “wae” system of intersecting plywood beams and 2 ribs that form the transition to the ground. A set of triangles is placed between the openings providing shadow where needed and at the same time stien the structure in both directions (Fig. 3-8).

Project #2 A horizontal path curve is the generative geometry of this project. This curve is surrounded by 6 other horizontal curves that de ne the vertices of vertical irregular hex- agons. These are interconnected with beams, creating a continuous path of variable section, that opens up at its two ends (Fig. 9-13).

Project #3 Two 3rd degree surfaces that touch each other at three points, form the canopy, but also its “deck”. The lowest surface, touches the ground in three points which are different from the rst set of points. Manipulation of the surfaces creates dierent af- fordances for use, relation to the environment and atmosphere (Fig. 14-17).

Conclusions • The hands on approach to both design and construction, the close relation to the actual artifact was enthusiastically accepted from the students, proving that it responded to an actual need (Fig. 18). • Because of the “minimal use and minimal overall associativity” requirement of the brief, the course, instead of producing just constructible canopies, it rather produced Architectural inventions orphan from use, with speci c aesthetic qualities that are open to interpretation. In this case, interpretation remains open both in the actualized structure, but also in the virtual models.

Credits

Tutor: Alexandros Vazakas, Architect NTUA, Lecturer. Students team #1: Nikos Assimakis, Michalis Giannadakis, Georgia Liakoy, Eleni Lionaki, Marios Messaritis, Stathis Vlachiotis.

732 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 18 Final review, exhibition opening day - participants.

Students team #2: Xanthi Baladima, Katianna Patrelaki, Klodian Hondaj, Alkistis Roussou, Mina Voyatzaki, Katerina Tsiolaki. Students team #3: Yiorgos Velivassakis, Dimitris Mairopoulos, Yiorgos Andressakis, Yiorgos Igglezakis, Vassilis Tsesmetzis, Alexandra Saranti. Grasshopper tutorials: Dimitris Mairopoulos, Yiorgos Andressakis. Invited Jury Midterm & guest lecturer: Dimitris Papanikolaou, Phd Candidate, Media Lab, M.I.T. Invited Jury Final presentation: Irini Apostolaki, Architect NTUA. Digital Fabrication Laboratory sta: Stratos Georgoulakis, Kalliope Bouraki.

Bibliography

Barr, Stephen. 1964. Experiments in topology. New York: Crowell. Cache, Bernard. 1995. Earth moves: The furnishing of territories. Cambridge, Massachussetts. Choay, Francoise. 1980. The Rule and the Model. On the theory of Architecture and Urbanism. Cam- bridge, London: Mit Press. DeLanda, Manuel. 2002. Intensive science and virtual philosophy. London New York: Continuum. Schodek, Bechthold, Griggs, Kao, Steinberg. 2005. Digital Design and Manufacturing: CAD/CAM Applications in Architecture and Design. New Jersey: John Wilwy & Sons. Trummer, Peter. 2005. “Spatial regimes. Material organization and its architectural eects.” Hunch. The Berlage Institute report.

Alexandros Vazakas Greece 733 Project#1

Fig. 3 Concept and parametric model.

Fig. 4 Fig. 5 Overlap of systems. Interior view – working model, laser-cut cardboard scale 1:20.

734 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 6 Fig. 7 Detail model scale 1:2 CNC cut 9mm mdf. Presentation model scale 1:20. Laser-cut cardboard, CNC milled styrofoam.

Fig. 8 Assembly sequence of 1:2 mdf model.

Alexandros Vazakas Greece 735 Project#2

Fig. 9 Concept and parametric model.

Fig. 10 Presentation model. Scale 1:6. Laser cut 3mm mdf.

Fig. 11 Presentation model. Scale 1:6. Laser cut 3mm mdf – interior view.

736 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 12 Flattened parts t to the laser cutter dimensions.

Fig. 13 1:1 working models for joints. Cnc cut 21mm plywood.

Alexandros Vazakas Greece 737 Project#3

Fig. 14 Concept and parametric model.

Fig. 17 Joint model, scale 1:1. Cnc cut 21mm plywood.

738 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Fig. 15 Presentation model. Scale 1:10, Laser-cut 3mm mdf.

Fig. 16 Presentation model. Scale 1:10, Laser-cut 3mm mdf interior view.

Alexandros Vazakas Greece 739

Helle Brabrand

The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Schools of Architecture Copenhagen Denmark Body-Space Interface Re-scripting and re-fabricating a responsive architecture Space-of-presence and Space-as-presentation Space-of-presence1 basically consists of kinaesthetic feelings of narrowness and ex- tensiveness, all the while transgressing demarcations of the body as feeling-out in space. Space of architecture converts this feeling-out into how and the extent to which our freedom of movement is limited or widened. In contrast to topological and metrical spaces, for example, body-space de nes a ‘here, where I am’. Architec- tural and musical designs are concerned with this space-of-presence, using articulation to convey hints of movement, of condensation, of opening and of closing. These are space-operations which, in principle, have always been a part of architecture but were not conceived as conscious issues of the architectural process until the twentieth century. Spaces-of-presence are thus characterized by feelings inuencing our state of mind. Whether musically or architectonically composed, we conceive space in a certain way saying it has atmosphere just as making spatial changes alters the way we feel.

Space-of-presentation involves space-of-presence. Space as a medium of appearance and conception is where we practice our daily life, overlaying it with life-form patterns and representations. Therefore, conceived-space is a hybrid, weaving together spaces- of-presence and spaces-of-presentation, coupling senses and media. Presentations may produce augmented reality to the person/player who experiences them in the form of bodily reactions and/or emotional and biographical meanings. Though space as a medium of appearance and conception is overlaid by life forms, this doesn’t indicate that space-of-presentation is limited by ordinary representation-patterns; quite the contrary, it is possible to simulate a virtual being in an actual presentation, pointing at whatever kind of structure or imagination.

Architectural Drawing and the Body Drawing as aesthetical production is aware of the act of appearance. To draw is to ‘argue’ with ever-new investigations of the world, working with structures, dispositions, conceptions of space-time, special ways of relating etc. Aesthetical production has to choose and assemble from a chaotic eld of independent perspectives and ways of construct, and the style you may recognize in a work of art no longer forms ‘a whole’. A contemporary work of art may be characterized by process, by the incessant unfolding of signs and expressions that move in a special way and make use of possible transversals to a special form of becoming. This kind of drawing is distinguished by the non-separation of being and appearance.2 The space-time formation of a drawing emerges in free schemes, where different orientations, left, right and so on, are determining vectors, making an actual conception of space-time visible. A drawing not only creates gures, objects etc., it concurrently produces schemes of the very way in which dierent conceptions at stake may interchange. Artistic/architectonic mode of expression may self-consciously articulate and work out levels of statements, also by pointing at dierent modes of operation. The choice of perspective or the form of articulation isn’t alone a question of formal categories but is a decision that qualitatively discriminates and opens up other registers. Statements of drawing present a searching and working encounter

742 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture between the world and the viewing, simultaneously challenged, explored and worked on. Embedded in drawing practices, in techniques and in the very moves of the draw- er, composition of space therefore makes use of aesthetical competences signi cant to ethical constructing as well.

Drawing relates to uncertainty.3 With a visible front and an invisible back, the uncertainty of drawing already conditions sensory perception. Front and back are dierent ‘logics’: the front always being conceived in a focused act with the back never being thematic but implicit. In dierent ways, the back potentially shows and opens up the freedom to act via diverse forms of presentation. Every sensing of an object makes up this ‘impossible’ synthesis of visible and invisible. Drawings, too, only present ‘fronts’. In visual presentations, the uncertainty shifts from the back of the object onto the very ground of the image. Thematic focus and uncertain dimensions are here converted into a tense resonance- eld of transparencies and layers, making factual material into a process of aect and meaning. This inversion is possible only if the ground/ eld may be experienced as a carrier of energy and a potential uncertainty. The logic of intensities or forces is bound to a quali ed sensing of what emerges; basic iconic acts are made up of deixis, i.e., pointing, thus employing chosen layers and transversals to make ‘something’ visible. Visibility, or seeing, includes the whole body. Movements and kinaesthetic feelings are decisive to the perception process, qualifying and augmenting an experience dierently, even by the use of small-scaled moves or minimal navigations in space. Video installations,4 among others, have demonstrated how much media technology may demarcate, decide and mediate relations between man and the outside world, as well as intersubjective connections. ‘New media’ may be used to articulate a changed conception of body, viewing the body not primarily as body-concept or construction seen from without, but as embodiment or body-experiences felt from within. These exchanges between a mediated external and an incarnated internal body may be productive in a search for modes of operations capable of seizing and unfolding relations between the subject and the world more ‘seamlessly’.

Body-Space Interface is part of a project which formats the drawing- eld as interactive ‘space-time-tablets’. A space-time-tablet may widen the eld of drawing, making experiences of space-constructing visible and the body felt and appear as operational force. A space-time-tablet is a screen or a projection eld presenting aspects of architectonic becoming. Various tectonic-topological motives and modes of construction and presentation are instrumentalised by dierent movement parameters, including a kinaesthetically acting ‘player’. A space-time-tablet raises an architectonic eld of ‘uncertainty’ that may negotiate with an engaged body. Thus, body-space-appearances expand before you, making the body/player encounter an articulated drawing material and producing a 1:1 relation. The kinaesthetic desire is oered ‘somebody’ to dance with and to stretch out via. The viewer/player is invited to act out, directly relating to the vertically dominated schemes of the drawing, incorporating its plastic spaces and layers of changing data. By moving tectonic components or moving herself, the player produces architectural meaning in the trying out of alternative body-spaces.

Helle Brabrand Denmark 743 Dynamic Drawing and Modes of Operation

A) Listening materials and modes, the project distinguishes between atmosphere, stroke, motive and scale The notion atmosphere5 is used as both tectonic condition and material and mode or state of mind. Atmosphere is conceived as a kind of ‘tangible’ space you are inside of or surrounded by; concurrently, it acts as a personal life-space and a common emotional eld. Atmospheres are fundamental for inter-personal and social connections which aren’t logical and discursive, but emotionally synchronized. So, to draw and construct into this sphere of openness is a challenge, setting up a framework for a wealth of possible choices and occurrences. The drawing- eld of the project gives rise to atmospheric space as appearances in between and around ‘bodies’, constructed as their reections, sedimentations and erosions. The modelling of light-space and textures includes a notion of space as ‘tangible’ or ‘dense’ and of construction as resonance between space and contours, between atmosphere and ‘esh’.

The notions of stroke or line are considered as both rhythmical appearances and structuring traces.6 Courses of lines are potential traces, combining local sensorial forces with a feeling of orientation. A trace is a scent to be followed, possessing possible rules to be discovered. The scent is detail- xated and at the same time strives for the distant. Scent outlines mass, quantity, space and time, i.e., outlines schemes that in one way or another can transmute any morphology. Drawing may expose this mechanism of becoming-drawing as well as, indirectly, the ability of imagination and allow a glance into generative and emerging forces. Drawing may manifest an authentic form of world-creation. The drawing- eld generates lines and traces in exchange with atmospheric light- space. Knots and braids, seams and cuts of the line-ows, function as compositional rhythm as well as code or diagram, pointing out actual motives. The drawing incorporates these life form forces, recollected as kinaesthetic and inter-human memories of embodied life-experience. The traces both assemble and split, both articulate and transverse, dierent layers and series of the drawing- eld, transgressing conventional concepts of section and elevation, surface and depth.

The project’s motives are taken from the ‘middle of a current’, being aware of the ordinary walking body as an event of tempo, rhythm and aect. The movement is video recorded and transformed into a drawing series, making selected gures and rhythms relate to simple tectonic-topological motives and forces. This constellation of material and motives opens up a generating series of diagrams: setups as tectonic-movement variables which overlap and borrow features from each other. Chosen characters may nonetheless be focused and set to work in a speci c series, while other series open up to foreign characters, provoking jumps and mutations. The drawing- eld shown in this paper relates to the tectonic-movement variable: dislocating-forward/backward. Tectonic motive-at-stake is a composite of frames, ribs, stitching, membranes, insides and outsides. Rhythmic features make the tectonic

744 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture components pulsate ahead and behind, reluctant and exposed, opening a eld which braids con ned and released ows of movements.

Scales of the project glide between acts related to a labile ‘landscape’ and those related to ‘fractal’ or elastic thresholds. As ‘landscape’, the actual topology is disposed to a ‘ lled’ but airy eld of tectonic components and related movement forces. A ‘landscape’ is to be comprehended here as a kind of structured matter, appearing as a porous eld with permeable boundaries and oating hierarchies. Also, conventional scale references are negotiated: ‘building’- components oat into ‘landscape’ and vice versa, while the drawing softens dierences between space and matter, element and context. Moving the topology makes the components pulsate and provokes the player’s focus to switch between changing local situations. The drawing- eld deforms and models the material, structured as dynamic, ‘tangible’ space intensities. Concurrently, the eld functions as ‘soundboard’ and frame for the ‘fractal’ level, creating shifting cracks, pockets or sites open for insertions or extractions. As ‘fractal’, the actual topology is inscribed/overlaid the ‘landscape’. The drawing is now arranged as an ’empty’ eld stretched out by threshold-fractals and related movement forces. A threshold marks a demarcation, not necessarily physically but merely as a speci c change in atmosphere. Concurrently, thresholds couple dierent kinds of ow or modes of movement, couple dierent appearances and scales, producing an articulated feeling of choice between related but alternating passages. The drawing- eld produces complex gures as well as speci c atmospheres, coupling the animation of components with changes of body-orientations. Threshold- fractals iterate, convert and deform into variable passages, pockets and expansions. The gures drift between regulating and free-setting force-ows and create subtle changes of ow-condition and of local atmospheres.

B) Listening viewpoints, the work interchanges between body-space-time, tectonic-space-time and drawing-space-time Body-space-time generates free movements as well as orientated moves and encounters. Body topology structures exchange between internal kinaesthetic- and externally perceived forces, unfolded as free ‘dance’ as well as moves oriented by particular acts. The space of action is articulated by characteristic physical directions like ahead and behind and basically experienced as potentiality or freedom of choice. Body-topology transcends demarcations of the body, the immediate here and there, own-body and other-body. Bodies act as scale-gliding, interchanging kinaesthetic competences and displays of daily life and social values. These transversal operations are basic potentials of architectonic creation responsively opening up kinaesthetic resources into inter-human scales.

Tectonic-space-time distributes thresholds and territories, textures and spheres. Tecton- ic topology structures the ‘building’-form of a speci c matter as well as the atmosphere of a speci c space. A tectonic eld involves the body through its mental and emotional tone and is simultaneously aected by atmospheric moods that the body radiates.

Helle Brabrand Denmark 745 Tectonic topology thus relates to body topology, structured by feelings of con- traction and expansion, movements of con ning or releasing. Like feelings of being included or excluded, being above or below, these movement-forces constitute sets of values which frame spatial as well as sensual domains. Tectonic-space-time components are value-setting constructions, distributing body-social values and imaginations dierently, dependent on how territories and thresholds are viewed and organized, how spheres and textures are articulated.

Drawing-space-time seizes and makes visible focused sensing and thinking with architecture. Drawing topology relates to body- and tectonic-forces, pointing out and incorporating them so that they tread into forms of operations and appearances in the drawing eld. Simultaneously, the expression and ‘style’ of the drawing as such aects the body. Drawing topology operates aesthetically/ethically on an individual basis, as well as inter-humanly. IT-driven architectonic drawing may lose sight of human beings but may alternatively function as augmentation of kinaesthetic capacities. Questioning space-time gures as well as modes of operation, a responsive drawing may provoke and articulate alternative body-space conceptions and imaginings, inviting a participating body to act and try out.

C) Finally, listening layers and constructions, Body-Space Interface resonates between layer1, layer2, and layer3, presented as assembled elds of resonance Layer1 articulates and deforms light-space. The construction generates sensually appealing atmospheric intensities, modelled and animated as shifting tectonic thresholds. Related to the actual topology, threshold-fractals are built up as bended and sliced membranes and reections, dislocating simple, forward-oriented ow-forces. Using repetitions and inversions, a fractal softly multiplies and articulates possible cracks, passages, pockets and extensions and thereby oers dierent ways of feeling- out in drawing space. The move of a ‘player’, unfolded as the shift and/or assembling of selected points of view, crosses the move of components. These composite moves deform appearances and open up the interference of ambiguously disposed characters, possibly inuencing local re-constructions and articulations. The moves provoke a ‘folding’ and displacement of intensities in the drawing-space, forcing texture, light and ow to al- ternate and twist. New trails, pauses and overstepping, new shadows, faces and rears present themselves as mental and sensual choices.

Layer2 draws and transforms lines and traces. The construction generates complex courses of line, pointing out actual diagrammatic motives or memories of embodied life-experience. Combining the feel of territory and orientation, the lines stretch out or bend back upon themselves, tracing expansion or enclosing; parallel line-series of enveloping loops or pockets are distributed. The gures engage the composite threshold-topology, making local twists between assembled and split domains. The plaiting and rhythms of lines concurrently appear as characters in their own right. They break up the drawing- eld, cut up and sew together, and open and close

746 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture texturally atmospheric characters. Line- gures as well articulate as transverse dierent layers and series of the drawing- eld. They appear rhythmically measuring, but also as reecting loops transgressing dierent layers and conventional concepts of surface and depth.

Layer3 draws in foreign motives and appearances as local disturbances. The construction generates ‘alien’ bodies and movements using a video recording that intrudes on the drawing eld with new rhythms and narratives. A video clip is masked and distributed dierently, triggering rhythmic lines and staples related to motives and local components of the drawing. The encounter allows a mutual trans-illumination of collateral impressions, each passing through the other with a potential for interference – as well as a potential for making modi ed motives and emerging mutations provoke the whole perception of the scale and orientation of the drawing- eld.

The present drawings are from a series related to the actual tectonic-movement variable; cf. the above section about motives. The three layers are assembled in a drawing- eld of resonance, exempli ed by two frames. As described above, every layer constructs its own logic and expression; simultaneously, individual components of a layer change, meeting components and forces of other layers and meeting the ‘drawing’ body. The two frames, gs 1 and 2, present a shift of intensities and feeling-out in drawing-space: Frame1 by making a rhythmical displacement, which turns orientations and ow-forces from a series of forward-looking, vertically-oriented narrow passages into horizontally dominated and expanding occurrences, and Frame 2 by turning the point of view, knitting together series of condensed passages, where vertically dominated rhythms and pressures pu out into more quiet pockets of darkness, glow and emptiness.

Conclusions Compared to value-settings of conventional architectonic representations, my project questions human-space-becoming by focusing dierent kinds of aects and modes of operation: How to seize the ow of daily life and twist it into rhythms that may challenge customary sensory-motor experience and representation? How to exploit transgressing abilities of the body to measure rhythmic intensities and aects and to activate this as part of the drawing process? And, how to unfold a drawing- eld multi- rhythmically and polyphonically so that the complex ‘other’ body of the drawing resonates and interchanges with your creative body? – These are the kinds of questions the project asks, gliding between sensing and reection, between aesthetical and ethical resonance.

Notes 1 Böhme, G., Atmosfære, Den kropslige tilstedeværelses rum og rummet som fremstillingsmedium, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole Institut 1, Copenhagen 2007.

Helle Brabrand Denmark 747 2 Boehm, G., Ubestemthed. Om billedets logik. Paper from seminar, Kunstakademiets Arkitekt- skole Institut 1, Copenhagen 2011. 3 Boehm, G., Bidrag til billedets hermeneutik. Paper from seminar, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole Institut 1, Copenhagen 2011. 4 Petersen, A.R., Navigation, immersion og interaktion i videoinstallationen [Navigation, Immer- sion and Interaction in Video Installation Art], Kroppen hinsides post-humaniteten [The Body Beyond Post-Humanity], eds. Ulrik Ekman and Arild Fetveil. Online-anthology published by the online-journal turbulens.net, 2008: http://www.turbulens.net/Temaer/Livkropogteknolo gi2/?article=188. 5 Böhme, G., Atmosfære, ibid. 6 Boehm, G., Spor og fært. Om tegningens arkæologi. Paper from seminar, Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole Institut 1, Copenhagen 2011.

748 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Contributors Teaching

Edith ACKERMANN, Professor of Psychology MIT / E14-433B, (Swatch Lab). 75, Amherst Street, CAMBRIDGE, MA 02139 USA Email: [email protected]

Balàzs BALOGH, Prof. Dr. habil. DLA, Head of the Department of Design Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Müegyetem RkP. B. K.EP. III, EM 1, H1111 Budapest, HUNGARY Tel.: 0036 1 463 3048, 0036 30 53 690 53, Fax: 0036 1 463 3171, E-mail: [email protected]

Claus BECH-DANIELSEN, Professor / PhD Aalborg University, The Danish Building Research Institute (SBi), Neergaards Vej 15, 2970 Hørsholm, DENMARK Tel.: 0045 9940 2287, E-mail: [email protected]

Simon BEESON, Course Leader Arts University College Bournemouth, Wallisdown, BH12 5HH Poole, UK Tel.: 0044(0)1590681043, Fax: 0044 (0) 1202537729, E-mail: [email protected]

Anne BEIM, Professor / PhD The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen K, DENMARK Tel.: 0045 32686355, E-mail: [email protected]

Herniette BIER, Dr. Ing. Assistant Professor TU Delft, Faculty of Architecture, Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft, NETHERLANDS Tel.: 0031 6 39251029, E-mail: [email protected]

Antonio BOSCO, Ricercatore Confermato Dipartimento de Restauro e Costruzione dell’Architettura e dell’Ambiente, Via San Lorenzo 4, 81031 Aversa, ITALY Tel.: 0039 3286627544, E-mail: [email protected]

Charlotte BUNDGAARD, Associate Professor / PhD Aarhus School of Architecture, Nørreport 20, 8000 Aarhus C, DENMARK Tel.: 0045 32686355, E-mail: [email protected]

Ermis CHALVATZIS, Architect, Principal / NEON ARCHITECTS Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, WC1B 3 ES London, UK Tel.: 0030 6978684414, 00447861457554, E-mail: [email protected]

Nadia CHARALAMBOUS, Lecturer University of Cyprus, Department of Architecture, PO Box 20537, 1678 Nicosia, CYPRUS Tel.: 35722892965, E-mail: [email protected]

750 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Teaching

Panagiotis CHATZITSAKYRIS, PhD Student / Principal .27 Architects 17 Androutsou Str. 54643, Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel./Fax: 0030 2311 248007, E-mail: [email protected]

Daniel COMSA, Lecturer Doctor Architect University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, 18-20 Academiei Str., 010014 Bucharest, ROMANIA Tel.: 0040721505910, Fax: 0040213123954, E-mail: [email protected]

Joanna CROTCH, Lecturer Glasgow School of Art, Mackintosh School of Architecture, 167 Renfrew Street, G3 6RQ Glasgow, SCOTLAND Tel.: 07753695011, Fax: 01413534686, E-mail: [email protected]

Manuel DE LANDA, Professor University of Pennsylvania School of Design, 102 Meyerson Hall, 210 South 34th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA E-mail: [email protected]

Lucien DENISSEN, Professor Artesis Faculty of Architecture, University of Antwerp, Mutsaardstraat 31, B2000 Antwerp, BELGIUM Tel.: 0032 32056170, Fax: 0032 32260411, E-mail: [email protected]

Stella DOURTME, Architect 26 Heron Court, 63 Lancaster Gate, W2 3NJ, London, UK Tel.: 0044 7796 051012, Fax: 0030 2510221124, E-mail: [email protected]

Christian DREVET, Teacher Architect ENSASE - Ecole Nationale Supéurieure d’Architecture de St Etienne, 1 rue Belozon BP94, 42003 St Etienne, FRANCE Tel.: 0033 (0)4 77 42 35 49, E-mail: [email protected]

Alessio ERIOLI, Researcher PhD DAPT-Faculty of Engineering-Universita di Bologna, 2, viale Risorgimento, 40136 Bologna, ITALY Tel.: 0039 328 3031 200, Fax: 0039 051 2093156, E-mail: [email protected]

Ava FATAH gen. Schieck, Lecturer 1-19 Torrington Place, University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT, UK Tel.: +44 20 7679 1811, Fax: +44 20 7916 1887, E-mail: [email protected]

Giovanna FRANCO, Associate Professor University of Genoa-DSA, Stradone di S. Agostino, 37, 16123 Genoa, ITALY Tel.: 0039 010 209 5753, E-mail: [email protected]

Participants 751 Christian FRIEDRICH, MSc ing, PhD Candidate Technische Universiteit Delft, Hyperbody Group, Berlageweg 1, 2628 CR Delft, kab. 1.37, THE NETHERLANDS Tel.: 0031 (0) 15 27 85954, E-mail: [email protected]

Hubert FROYEN, Professor PHL Department of Architecture, University Campus Building E, B3590 Diepenbeek, BELGIUM Tel.: 0032 (0) 11 249 200, E-mail: [email protected]

Zsuzsanna FULOP, Professor Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Architecture, Department of Building Construction, Müegyetem rkp. 3. II. Em. 27/A, H-1111 Budapest, HUNGARY Tel.: 0036 30 281 4506, Fax: 0036 1 203 1534, E-mail: [email protected]

So a GERODIMOU, Architect Private practice Tel.: 6972870201, Fax: 0030 2108079422, E-mail: so [email protected]

Stylianos GIAMARELOS, Architect National Technical University of Athens, Patission 42, 10682 Athens, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6937435533, 0030 2102817257, Fax: 00302102817257, E-mail: [email protected]

Dimitris GOURDOUKIS, Architect Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, AUTH, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel.: 6936512175, E-mail: [email protected]

Konstantinos GRIVAS, Lecturer Department of Architecture, University of Patras, University Campus, Rio, 26500 Patra, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6932277672, 0030 2105822607, Fax: 0030 2107515210, E-mail: [email protected]

Mihaela HARMANESCU, Assistant Professor University of Architecture and Urbanism “Ion Mincu”, str. Academiei nr. 18-20, 10014 Bucharest, ROMANIA Tel.: 0040 721 760 645, E-mail: [email protected]

James Douglas HARRISON, Doctor Cork Centre for Architectural Education, 10 Copley Street, Cork, IRELAND Tel.: (353) 024 95955, E-mail: [email protected]

Alexandros KALLEGIAS, University of Patras, School of Engineering, Department of Architecture, University Campus, 265 00 Patra, GREECE Tel.: 00447725917939, E-mail: [email protected]

752 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Kai KANAFANI, Ph.D. Fellow Det Kongelige Danske Kunstakademis Skoler for Arkitectur, Design og Konservering, Institut for Teknologi, Philip de Langes Allé 11, 1.sal th., 1435 Copenhagen, DENMARK Tel.: 004527485144, E-mail: [email protected]

Anna KARAGIANNI, Architect Columbia University, 2540 Amsterdam Ave., 10027 New York, USA Tel.: 0030 6947843368, Fax: 0030 2107701426, E-mail: [email protected]

Anastasia KARANDINOU, Dr., Lecturer in Architecture University of Portsmouth, Portland Building, Portland Street, PO1 3AH Portsmouth, UK Tel.: 0044 (0) 7804531763, E-mail: [email protected]

Leonidas KOUTSOUMPOS, Dr., Adjunct Lecturer University of Patras, School of Architecture, University Campus, 26504 Rio Patras, GREECE Tel.: 0030 210 3464635, E-mail: [email protected]

Ada KWIATKOWSKA, Ph.D., Assistant Professor Faculty of Architecture, Wroclaw University of Technology, Prusa 53/55, 50-317 Wroclaw, POLAND Tel.: 0048 713206448, Fax: 0048 713206448, E-mail: [email protected]

Natassa LIANOU, Architect, Acconci Studio Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, WC1B 3ES London, UK Tel.: 0030 6973699357, 0044 7832905963, E-mail: [email protected]

Marianthi LIAPI, Adjunct Lecturer TUC, PhD student AUTh 11 Loulakaki Str., 73134, Lentariana, Chania, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6944592633, E-mail: [email protected]

Ulrik Stylsvig MADSEN, Assistant Professor / PhD The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen K, DENMARK Tel.: 0045 50937200, E-mail: [email protected]

Maria MANDALAKI, Adj. Lecturer Technical University of Crete, Faculty of Architecture, El. Venizelou 127, 73100 Hania, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6972328133, Fax: 0030 2821234390, E-mail: [email protected]

Philippe MARIN, Teacher and Researcher School of Architecture of Lyon, 3 rue Maurice Audi, 69512 Vaulx en Velin, FRANCE Tel.: 0033 6 2005 91 34, E-mail: [email protected]

Participants 753 Antonios MORAS, Architect, PhD Student AUTh Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, AUTH, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE E-mail: [email protected]

Stefano Francesco MUSSO, Full Professor, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture University of Genoa-Faculty of Architecture, Stradone di S. Agostino, 37, 16123 Genoa, ITALY Tel.: 0039 338 6390359, E-mail: [email protected]

Caroline NEWTON, PhD Sint-Lucas School of Architecture, Paleizenstraat 65/67, 1030 Brussels, BELGIUM Tel.: 0032 (0)496508026, E-mail: [email protected]

Kostis OUNGRINIS, Assistant Professor TUC, Architect, PhD 11 Loulakaki Str., 73134, Lentariana, Chania, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6936706360, E-mail: [email protected]

Beril OZMEN MAYER, Dr. Assistant Professor Eastern Mediterranean University, Salamis Road, University Campus, Mersin 10 Gazimagusa, TURKEY Tel.: 0090 392 630 1118, Fax: 0090 392 6302365, E-mail: [email protected]

Aristie PAPADOPOULOU, Professor of Architecture School of Architecture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University Campus, 54124 Thessloniki, GREECE Tel.: 0030 2310 995574, Fax: 0030 2310 995575, E-mail: [email protected]

Antonis PAPAMANOLIS, Doctoral Candidate University of Patras, Department of Architecture, University Campus, Rio, 26500 Patra, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6977807268, E-mail: [email protected]

Pau PEDRAGOSA, Architect and PhD Philosophy, Professor Escola Tecnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (ETSAB - UPC), Av. Diagonal, 649, 7 oor, 08028 Barcelona, SPAIN Tel.: 0034 678967195, E-mail: [email protected]

Rita PINTO DE FREITAS, Dr., Architect, Professor at ETSAB Escola Tecnica Superior d’Arquitectura de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 649, 651, 08028 Barcelona, SPAIN Tel.: 0034 600 44 3997, Fax: 0034 93 45 22144, E-mail: [email protected]

Charalampos POLITAKIS, PhD candidate Manchester Metropolitan University, MIRIAD, Righton Building, Cavendish Street, M15 6BG Manchester, UK Tel.: 0044 7544814040, 00306974823617, E-mail: [email protected]

754 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Dimitris PSYCHOGYIOS, PhD student, Architect National Technical University of Athens, Ermou 64, 10551 Athens, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6977831745, E-mail: [email protected]

Paola PUMA, Doct. University of Florence-Faculty of Architecture, Piazza Ghiberti 27, 50122 Florence, ITALY E-mail: paola.puma@uni .it

Spyros RAFTOPOULOS, Professor, Head of School of Architecture NTUA School of Architecture, NTUA, 42 Patission str., 10682 Athens, GREECE Tel.: 00306944423335, Fax: 00302107723873, E-mail: [email protected]

Lemonia RAGIA, Dr. Eng., Adjunct Lecturer Technical University of Crete, El. Venizelou 127, 73100 Chania, GREECE Tel.: 6944707615, E-mail: [email protected]

Jana REVEDIN, Architect PhD Senior Lecturer Umea University, School of Architecture, Art Campus, 90187 Umea, SWEDEN Tel.: 0043 664 1214014, Fax: 0043 4242 23998, E-mail: [email protected]

Sergio RINALDI, Professor Department of Restoration and Construction of Architecture and Environment, Faculty of Architecture, Second University of the Studies of Naples, Via S. Lorenzo, 81031 Aversa, ITALY Tel.: 00393388004280, E-mail: [email protected]

Antonino SAGGIO, Professor Sapienza University of Rome, Via Flaminia 359, 00196 Rome, ITALY Tel.: 00393333625887, E-mail: [email protected]

Jan SLYK, PhD, Professor Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Koszykowa 55, 00659 Warsaw, POLAND Tel.: 0048 228154590, E-mail: [email protected]

Constantinos SPIRIDONIDIS, Associate Professor Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, University Campus, 54125 Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel.: 00302310995589, Fax: 00302310994241, E-mail: [email protected]

Peter STAUB, Visiting Professor Architectural Design Theory University of Liechtenstein, Institute of Architecture and Planning, Furst Franz Josef Strasse, 9490 Vaduz, LIECHTENSTEIN Tel.: 00423 265 1130, Fax: 00423 265 11 21, E-mail: [email protected]

Participants 755 Sally STEWART, Postgraduate Programme Leader, Acting Head of School Mackintosh School of Architecture, Glasgow School of Art, 167 Renfrew Street, Glasgow, G3 6RQ Glasgow, SCOTLAND Tel.: 0044 7946629538, Fax: 0044 1413534703, E-mail: [email protected]

Ioanna SYMEONIDOU, Teaching Assistant, Architect Institute of Architecture and Media, TU Graz, Ineldgasse 10/II (Institut fur Architektur und Medien), 8010 Graz, AUSTRIA Tel.: 0030 0 6978893474, E-mail: [email protected]

Anastasios TELLIOS, Assistant Professor Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel.: 00306976513271, 00302310995458, Fax: 0030231995568, E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Kostas TERZIDIS, Associate Professor Harvard Graduate School of Design, 48 Quincy Str., Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA Email: [email protected]

Anastasia TZAKA, PhD Candidate AUTh Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Chair Building of Faculty of Engineering, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel.: 6977078079, E-mail: [email protected]

Renata VALENTE, Architetto, Ricercatore Confermato Second University of Naples, Via San Lorenzo 4, 81031 Aversa, ITALY Tel.: 0039 3358006630, Fax: 0039 0815752325, E-mail: [email protected]

Ole VANGAARD, Professor The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Philip de Langes Allé 10, 1435 Copenhagen K, DENMARK Tel.: 0045 40897796, E-mail: [email protected]

Rodanthi VARDOULI, Graduate Student NTUA, National Technical University of Athens, Patission 42, 10682 Athens, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6979698110, E-mail: [email protected]

Theodora VARDOULI, Architect, Masters student SMArchS Design & Computation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, RM10-485, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA E-mail: [email protected]

756 ENHSA - EAAE no 55 Rethinking the Human in Technology Driven Architecture Alexandros VAZAKAS, Lecturer Technical University of Crete, Department of Architecture, El. Venizelou 127, 73100 Chania, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6944351164, Fax: 00302821234390, E-mail: [email protected]

Georgia VORADAKI, Student of Architecture Technical University of Crete, Department of Architecture, El. Venizelou 127, 73100 Chania, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6977838391, E-mail: [email protected]

Maria VOYATZAKI, Associate Professor Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Architecture, University Campus, 54124 Thessaloniki, GREECE Tel.: 00302310995544, E-mail: [email protected]

Sophia VYZOVITI, Dr. Architect, Assistant Professor University of Thessaly, Department of Architecture, Pedio Areos, 38334 Volos, GREECE Tel.: 0030 6945854727, E-mail: [email protected]

Xin XIA, Researcher at Hyperbody Architecture Faculty, Delft University of Technology, Julianalaan 134, room Bg. West 140, 2628 BL Delft, THE NETHERLANDS Tel.: 0031 6 16261306, E-mail: [email protected]

Socratis YIANNOUDES, Architect - Lecturer Technical University of Crete, Department of Architecture, 127 Eleftheriou Venizelou Street, 73100 Chania, GREECE Tel.: 00306936631749, E-mail: [email protected]

Chris YOUNÈS Nationale Supérieure, École d’ Architecture, Paris la Villette, FRANCE

Lucilla ZANOLARI-BOTTELLI, Architect, PhD Student Politecnico di Milano, Via Golgi 39, 20132 Milan, ITALY Tel.: 00393480302004, E-mail: [email protected]

Manos ZAROUKAS, Architect, PhD Student, Lecturer University of East London, Docklands Campus, University Way, London, UK Tel.: 0044 7940344466, E-mail: [email protected]

Yannis ZAVOLEAS, Assistant Professor School of Architecture, University of Patras, University Campus, 26504 Rio Patras, GREECE Tel.: 00306945880198, E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]

Participants 757