Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page i ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESS Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page ii For Ursula and all the other generous friends, both near and far, professional and non-professional, who have given me so much encouragement over the years Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page iii ARCHITECTURE, TECHNOLOGY AND PROCESS Chris Abel Alis-Fm.qxd 6/8/04 7:02 PM Page iv Architectural Press An imprint of Elsevier Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 30 Corporate Drive, Burlington, MA 01803 First published 2004 Copyright © 2004, Chris Abel. All rights reserved The right of Chris Abel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England W1T 4LP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science & Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) 1865 843830, fax: (+44) 1865 853333, e-mail: [email protected]. You may also complete your request on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com), by selecting ‘Customer Support’ and then ‘Obtaining Permissions’ British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 0 7506 3792 7 For information on all Architectural Press publications visit our website at www.architecturalpress.com Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk Working together to grow libraries in developing countries www.elsevier.com | www.bookaid.org | www.sabre.org Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page v CONTENTS Foreword by Ken Yeang vii Preface xi Introduction 1 1 Architecture in the Pacific Century 11 2 Cyberspace in mind 33 3 Technology and process 61 4 Foster and Gehry: one technology; two cultures 91 5 Harry Seidler and the Great Australian Dream 163 6 Mediterranean mix and match 203 Appendix I: Biotech Architecture: a manifesto 233 Appendix II: Birth of a cybernetic factory 237 Notes and bibliography 247 Index 263 Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page vi Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page vii FOREWORD Contemporary architecture is going through an exciting period of experimentation. However, many architects seem to be repeating the same dreadful mistakes that our twentieth-century predecessors have made. Architecture–technology rela- tionships are commonly over-simplified and many designers who are apparently working at the cutting edge are in reality still glaringly conventional in how they actually use and conceptualize technology. Current architectural theories have also been slow to catch up with the new- found morphological freedom that is offered by digital technology. Designers enamoured with their new tools are frantically casting about in search of a the- oretical framework or any kind of hook with which they can make sense of the boundless shapes and geometries that their computers enable them to generate. A multitude of competing ideologies add to the confusion of the times, making life more difficult for architects as well as creating new opportunities. Busy pro- fessionals no less than neophyte designers concerned with the art of architec- ture and how to produce it, are all struggling to position themselves, a task which by its nature entails a rigorous process of self-examination. Added to these issues is the question of what knowledge base architecture should be founded on? What is the fundamental knowledge that we architects possess? In architecture, we find that, while the need to know originates in one discipline, the required knowledge itself often belongs to many others. How can we work from principles when what we do is produce artefacts? How do we take knowledge from another discipline, and adapt it to our own? In the past, our approach has been one of extension. We inclusively expanded the range of our discipline to encompass other fields. Architectural education began to require more and more knowledge that was inherent to or borrowed from other disciplines. At the same time, many of these disciplines were them- selves also rapidly expanding their own knowledge base and independently advancing their own theoretical bodies, creating further problems of assimila- tion. The more we extend, the more we are also forced to trade off knowledge for data, exchanging theoretical concepts for ‘hard facts’. As a result, architects Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page viii viii FOREWORD often end up appropriating the knowledge from other disciplines as an ever- growing database of strategies from which they can pick something that seems appropriate to the task at hand. The danger is that, in converting theory into use- able methods or facts, the original concepts underlying those methods and facts may get forgotten or lost. It often seems that, no matter how hard we try, the more complex the knowledge, the further removed it becomes from us. Chris Abel is a focused writer. His writings are largely about the technology of architecture and the architecture of technology. For the lost and uncertain, they serve as a timely navigational aid – something between an architectural baro- meter and sextant, telling us in each chapter what to look for, which direction to look in, and why we should even look at all. In this one single volume Abel does the work of a horde of architectural critics writing all at the same time from all over the globe. The critical essays here rest- lessly straddle the world from Los Angeles (Gehry), to London (Foster), Malta (Architecture Project), Kuala Lumpur (Kasturi and others) and Sydney (Seidler). Ferreting out incisive profiles from the architectural mise-en-scène on our behalf, Abel writes like an inquisitive and constantly thinking architectural equivalent of Bill Bryson, the prolific travel writer. Along the road, he explains how digital tech- nologies and new science have affected architectural theory and production over the past half century, the way we assimilate new technologies like the Net into our mental frameworks, and the impact of global economic developments on architecture in the Far East, all with equal aplomb. Asian architects will certainly regard the first chapter as a tacit vote of confi- dence in the region. Abel has in one fell swoop moved away from the largely Eurocentric angle of other writers by starting the book with a chapter on ‘Architecture in the Pacific Century’. This is a timely and welcome essay. His arguments will help to allay the angst of those architects living in Asia Pacific in a period when Japan, the world’s number two economy, is still mired in an extended recession, and who may fear that the recent monetary crisis might have permanently eclipsed the bright future they were once promised. Abel reminds us of the reasons for that earlier confidence in the region’s potential, which manifested in a period of intensive building of new townships and super- tall towers. At the same time, he asks us to pause and consider where it might all be leading, pointing to the detrimental effects on the environment of ill- planned economic growth and development. The recent publication in Beijing of a Chinese language edition of Abel’s previous collection of essays, many of which are also focused on related issues, will doubtless confirm his place as a leading critic and thinker in that region, as well as elsewhere. As he reminds us in his introduction, Abel’s approach stems from his early work in the late 1960s on the architectural implications of cybernetics and systems Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page ix FOREWORD ix theory, since broadened by long stints working in the countries about which he writes. Ultimately, this volume, as with all Abel’s writings, must be benchmarked against what is historically his most important polemical essay, ‘Ditching the Dinosaur Sanctuary’, published in Architectural Design in 1969, and which was republished in the first collection. The first time that anyone forecast the liberat- ing impact of computerized production lines upon architecture, Abel’s essay served as a penetrating critique of prevailing dogmas and a keen insight into the new Zeitgeist, anticipating many of the events to come. Evidently, judging from these essays he is still in great form. Ken Yeang Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page x Alis-Fm.qxd 5/8/04 11:25 AM Page xi PREFACE All extremism inevitably fails because it consists in excluding, in denying all but a sin- gle point of the entire vital reality. But the rest of it, not ceasing to be real merely because we deny it, always comes back and back, and imposes itself on us whether we like it or not. (Jose Ortega y Gasset, 1958) The essays gathered in this book were all written since the publication of my first collection in 1997, save for the first two chapters, which were presented as con- ference papers shortly before.