Architecture of emptiness: Human flows as generators of shapes in

future architecture.
Alexandre Mouriño Frdz. - Escuela Superior Gallaecia
[email protected]
Pedro Fonseca Jorge, PhD – Escola Superior Gallaecia
[email protected]

Abstract:
In this article we will try to discuss the existence of a series of haptic and perceptual
indicators that allow us to correlate certain spaces as the most adequate for determined
activities, in an almost unconscious manner. These 'potential or 'aprioristic' spaces
would be nodes or intersections of a map of invisible flows that would demonstrate an
underpinning in which future cities could be established upon. Diminishing the
contemporary architecture's mass would be a way through which the above mentioned
flows could be materialized. We are not suggesting an 'organic' shaped architecture,
only an architecture that is free from its Cartesian bonds, allowed to express itself a an
ordered recreation of the chaos that is hidden below the corseted geometric systems
that define today's architecture and urban planning. The human body would no longer
be defined in its movements by architecture. By the contrary, architecture would be
moulded, in its form and logic, by the human reason and shape.

Key words: architecture, mass, flows/shape, perception, potential spaces.

1
1. The architectural object's mass historical evolution:
There are many parameters considered by historians and theorists when it comes to
analyse architecture's evolution process since its first manifestations till nowadays.
There is however an indicator that has been disregarded and that is the architectural
object's mass and its variations through time, which can offer additional information in
architecture analysis. Knowing its evolving process might become very useful when
conjecturing future scenarios of our built environment. In order to understand this
process it is necessary to historically contextualize certain periods, although we are
fully aware that History is made of parallel flows that evolve discontinuously
according, for instance, to its geographical location. Therefore it is not accurate to
bound History to a chronological scheme, as each historical flow as its own rhythm
and braking points, but still we felt the need to simplify some historical moments in
order to make it easier to clarify the purpose of this article.
Some architecture scholars and critics consider the appropriation of pre-existing
natural structures as the first architectural manifestations. Even if in these actions there
is no actual physical manipulation of the environment, it's undeniable that the cave's
occupation and adaptation could be the first signs of a rational spatial appropriation
and therefore the prelude of architecture itself 1 . With the cave as a starting point
(whose mass would be equal to zero), there is a process taking place by Man where
technical progress would determine different turning points in the history of
construction. After the cave the Neolithic hut would be the first 'artificial'
manifestations of Man's territorial appropriation. We can say that in this stage
architectural mass makes its appearance as an architecture intrinsic element, even if its
amount it's almost negligible2. With earthen and stone construction processes appears
a fundamental element: thickness. Cities like Catal Huyuk (7500 b. C.), located in
what is now Turkey's territory, are considered the first (among the ones that are
known) to use stone and clay as supporting structures. Therefore, mass is no longer a
circumstantial element, but part of the technical solution3. From Egyptian architecture,
that represented a great step forward in the use as mass as a constructive element, until
the Baroque architectural style, monumentality was searched through the use of stone
as its main building material. Like Sigfried Giedion said '…there is a direct tradition
(…), that relates art of our time with the Nile Valley from 5000 years ago, as Greek
artists made their learning from Egyptians, and all of us learned from the Greeks'4.
Being aware of Giedion's statement and the historic correlation between classical
culture and the Egyptian civilization, it's easy to understand why monumentality,
associated with mass and volume, has been a common association among Egypt,
Classic Greece and the Roman Empire.

Since these three stages and until Gothic, the building's mass or volume, mainly
religious, military and those of the elites and leaders, was based in construction
processes where stone and its heaviness were fundamental structural elements,
necessary for an efficient structural behaviour of these types of buildings. So, in most
cases, mass was a need, not a porpoise, to achieve the intended monumentality. Yet, in
those examples, when it was intended to lighten the mass of the building, limitations
were imposed by constructive solutions that had hardly evolved since the introduction
1
PEREIRA Alonso, José Ramón (2008), 'Introducción a la historia de la arquitectura' Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, p. 19.
2
PEREIRA Alonso, José Ramón (2008), 'Introducción a la historia de la arquitectura' Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, p. 23.
3
TRACHTENBERG, Hyman (1986), 'Architecture, from prehistory to post-modernism', Academy Editions, London, p. 47.
4
GIEDION, Sigfried (1969), 'La arquitectura, fenómeno de transición', Gustavo Gili, Barcelona, p. 39.
2
of the arch and the vault by the romans. But mass, an active element until the Romanic
style, is converted in a three-dimensional vector system in the Gothic style, where this
scheme obtained its major expression5. But the Renaissance, since it was based upon
the interpretation of classical Greek and Roman orders, gave back to mass and volume
the lost role in the Gothic architectural style6. Baroque, based upon a scenographic
character and the pursuit of movement, manages to propose new shapes, but these
where still bonded by the imposed structural needs7.
The 19th century and the Industrial Revolution would be the turning point where new
materials (iron, steel, glass and concrete) and new construction techniques managed to
reduce the building's mass through the use of lighter structures. That meant, in time, a
cheaper and faster construction8. In a first phase these materials and building methods
were still 'hidden', as it was intended to keep the classical features, in terms of mass
and volume, throughout an optical 'illusion': iron and steel lightweight structures, for
instance, were concealed under mouldings and claddings that would recreate typical
classical orders, even if these new materials manage to achieve dimensions and
proportions unknown till then9.
With the Modern Movement and its followers as its main promoters, the 20th century
architecture employed 'curtain walls' where huge surfaces of glass over metallic
structures marked the decisive loss of mass than began with the Industrial Revolution,
but now in an intentional and well defined manner. Mies van der Rohe's motto 'less is
more', is the main symbol of the architectural object's lightening.
The Consumer or Technologic Society of the 21st century is reaching a point of
paroxysm, experimenting radical formulas of dematerialization: Virtual Architecture.
'All indicates that the architectural experience is changing from a material form to a
visualization experience, reinterpreting the concepts of space and place'10.

5
PEREIRA Alonso, José Ramón (2008), 'Introducción a la historia de la arquitectura' Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, p. 113.
6
PEREIRA Alonso, José Ramón (2008), 'Introducción a la historia de la arquitectura' Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, p. 129.
7
PEREIRA Alonso, José Ramón (2008), 'Introducción a la historia de la arquitectura' Editorial Reverté, Barcelona, p. 157.
8
VALDEARCOS, Enrique, 'Arquitectura y urbanismo en los ss. XIX y XX', Clio 33 (2007).
9
TRACHTENBERG, Hyman (1986), 'Architecture, from prehistory to post-modernism', Academy Editions, London, p. 496.
10
NOVILLO, Mª Alejandra, 'Esencia y cambio en el concepto de límite' [Tesina Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo]. Buenos
aires: Departamento de investigación, Universidad de Belgrano; 2003.
3
Fig. 1. Scheme comparing: the architectural mass, the available technology and the acceptance
or rejection of man's natural environment evolving process throughout history.

2. Architectural mass in its simplest form. The Japanese School:

If architecture is the physical manifestation of Man's historical, social and economic
moment11 , perhaps the latest generation of Japanese architects is the one closer to
understand a new architectural expression connected to the Information Society: a
social balanced environment amid the materiality of its contiguous surroundings and
the virtual borderless world that new technologies have made possible. There is a
return to past ideologies where there was a constant balance between Man and Nature.
According to Norberg–Schulz 'Man yearn for their hometowns' narrow streets and
irregular squares or try to escape seeking Nature'12.

2.1 Toyo Ito. Diffuse boundaries architecture:

One of the first architects to be sensible to the drastic changes technology was
imposing society was Toyo Ito. In the mid 80's the Japanese architect started to
question himself how architecture could respond to the new social requirements.
To question the traditional definition of 'boundary' was the starting point of his
investigation, since it no longer was adjusted to the Japanese society's ephemeral and
circumstantial everyday life. Opposing the concept of conclusive architecture,
according to Otto Friedrich Bollnow '…to build a house is to raise an ordered space in

11
ITO, Toyo, (2000), 'Escritos' Ed. COAT Murcia, Murcia, p. 24.
12
NORBERG-SCHULZ, Christian, 'La significación en la arquitectura', en: 'La significación del entorno', ed. SUST, Xavier
(1972), Barcelona, p.21.
4
the existing chaos…'13, Toyo Ito argues that the definition of 'boundary' should be
revised in order to describe something more diffuse and ethereal than the traditional
wall with occasional voids. Toyo Ito refers that '…as long as we continue to separate
the inside from the outside (…), nature will remain an outsider for architecture (…). It
seems impossible to me to create an architecture well fitted in its surroundings, as long
as we visualise the human body and architecture separately and unrelated with the
external world'. New materials and building processes made possible experimental
proposals where mass is practically non-existent, allowing an architecture translated
into flows through the city, like in the 'Pao for the Tokyo nomadic girls' (fig. 2). At
this point not only Man was nomad, but also 'his' architecture could be it.

Fig. 2. Pao for the Tokyo nomadic girls. Toyo Ito, (1985).

2.2 Kazuyo Sejima y Ryue Nishizawa, towards an evanescent architecture:

Clearly influenced by Toyo Ito's new theories (Kazuyo Sejima herself worked for him
between 1981 and 1987), SANAA architecture studio has experimented lightness and
transparency formulas in order to define an architecture that dilutes itself in its own
physical expression, being its dematerialization one of its fundamental points of
research. This dematerialization is used to integrate their proposals like a 'collage' in
its surroundings, using its reflection as a way of being assimilated in urban settings, or
through the ubiquitous presence of green elements inside and outside the building
diluting its limits in natural environments thus allowing a great level of liberty in the
user's movements. One of Ito's main ideas is therefore attained: '…architecture that
doesn't make us sense its shape is the least repressive in everyday life'14.
Another question aroused by the team's projetual efforts is the creation of artificial
topographies in a way that natural and unconscious behaviours are encouraged while
using them15. One of the more paradigmatic proposals regarding this question is their
EPFL Rolex University Centre, designed for Lausanne, Switzerland, in 2005 and
finished in 2010.

13
O.F. Bollnow, 'La morada del hombre', traducción de Takehido Kojima, Ed. Universidad Meisei (Departamento de
publicaciones).
14
ITO, Toyo, (2000), 'Escritos' Ed. COAT Murcia, Murcia, p. 38.
15
MOSTAFAVI, Mohsen, 'Una conversación con Kazuyo Sejima y Ryue Nishizawa', El Croquis. 2011; Nº155 : 6-16
[Traducción de Albert Fuentes].
5
Fig. 3. EPFL Rolex University Centre. Fig. 4. Glass Pavillion in the Toledo Museum of Art.

2.3 Sou Fujimoto and the primitive architecture:

Among this group of Japanese architects, influenced by the ideas of Toyo Ito, besides
other lines of investigation, we can mention Sou Fujimoto. Is work tries to reattach the
lost primitive interactions between Man and Nature16, since in its opinion connections
or links are the elements that define space. According to him and his proposals space
isn't defined or even divided, but intensified and with undefined limits, giving path to
fluidic inhabiting experiences, instead of giving a specific function to every
individualized space. This spatial concept's theoretical basis its the same that three
decades ago led Toyo Ito to design the 'Pao for the Tokyo nomadic girls', where
although every architectonic element consists in an autonomous component it can't
avoid to be connected to its environment an even with itself. The study of boundaries
that nourish the interaction between inside and outside is therefore one of the major
obsessions of his career 17 . This primitive relation between Man and Nature is
materialized in two of is most important works: the 'Final Wooden House' is a modern
metaphor of the primitive cave, and the 'NA House' uses a typological system that
makes its spatial appropriation similar to the one of a tree. To a system until nowadays
majorly Cartesian is now given a three-dimensional character that makes way to a new
line of investigation: an intuitive spatial appropriation opposed to functionalist
architecture where every space has a pre-defined use.

Fig. 5. Final Wooden House. Fig. 6. NA House.

16
TOYO Ito, Julian Worrall, 'Arquitectura teórica y sensorial: los experimentos radicales de Sou Fujimoto', 2G, Nº50 : 4-23
17
FUJIMOTO, Sou, 'Futuro Primitivo', 2G, Nº50 : 130-143
6
2.4 Junya Ishigami, architecture is air:
This young architect has been of the latest to use the decrease of mass in architecture
and artwork as a strategy to achieve a closer relation between surroundings and
proposed object. At the same time, through the analysis of the users' circulation flows,
who appropriate his pieces conceived as artificial structures cloistered by natural
surroundings, it's possible to define a capillary symbiosis among Nature, Architecture
and Man18.
With is project 'Architecture as air, study for château la coste', with which he was
awarded with the 2008 Golden Lion for best project at the Venice Biennale, he
manages to merge natural and artificial spaces in an almost mass-free architecture. He
organizes part of a garden through a modular scheme composed by slender columns
that mimics the trees around it. Tension between natural and artificial becomes a
unified spatial perception where architecture offers the user what nature cannot offer
by itself. Without a noticeable intervention in order not to betray nature's character, the
architect manages to promote an honest interaction between pre-existing nature and
the built proposal.
Another Project deserving some attention, through the use of the opposite strategy is
the 'Kanagawa Institute of Technology Workshop'. Here, in a 2000 m2 diaphanous
space, the architect proposes the creation of a multitude of spaces through the strategic
arrangement of 350 small section pillars. Their implantation manages to define
different kinds of the space's visual perception, like those one would find in a wood.
Open areas are therefore appropriated like 'glades', and circulation spaces are used as
'trails'19. The theories of Toyo Ito and its diaphanous limits, the austere lighteness of
the SANAA studio and the return to the primeval in the work of Sou Fujimoto's
proposals are brought together in these Ishigami's two proposals.

Fig. 7. 'Japanese Pavilion Venice Biennale 2008' Fig. 8. 'Kanagawa Institute of Technology'

3. Potential or aprioristic spaces theory. The Unsubstantial Architecture:

Spaces that we can assume as even or similar to voids are, according to Martin
Heidegger, inexistent in common situations, either in natural or built environments.
This supposes the presence of an invisible structure behind every space we see, but
perceivable through a haptic point of view. Space is inevitably appropriated, later in a

18
Serie de conferencias: 'A New Innocence: Emerging Trends in Japanese Architecture', Junya Ishigami lecture, 'Recent Work'.
Cambridge 2011. Harvard Graduate School of Design; 2012.
19
FERNÁNDEZ-GALIANO, Luís. 'Dossier Junya Ishigami: Minimalism and Nature', AV Proyectos. 2013; Nº055 : 6-16.
7
physical and plastic manner20. This is the idea behind the understanding of 'meaning
through our corporeal status, questioning construction through judgement'21.
American writer Marshall Berman shows that 'being modern is part of a universe in
which, like Marx said, 'everything physical vanishes into air''22, and that is why being
sensible to that 'air' becomes a stimulus to its use and appropriation, important as it is
nowadays. The Japanese traditional perception of space, though the Ma (and the way it
is perceived by contemporary architects) allows a more precise perception of this
structure hidden behind the apparent space23. Sou Fujimoto's definition of space is the
one closer to this reality: 'A place is something that could be inhabited by a person.
Nevertheless, it isn't something prepared to be inhabited. It's a place full of
opportunities for a person to discover special places24', based upon the idea of a void
as subjective space, rather than an absence, as it is defended by the Japanese concept
of Ma. According to Günter Nitschke, when Japanese architects were to build a
construction, they would go with their tea set to the chosen site, and would remain
there all day.
By this mean they tried to capture the void, the absence of a house, as the first step in
order to design it. The site's void, its empty space, was the first step to inspire the
architect to create the thing-oeuvre-building25. So, it was a search of the surrounding
potential spaces (an invisible scaffolding, Fig. 9) in order to latter be occupied by his
architecture. Architect Tetsuo Kondo exploited his technic in his ephemeral
installation "A Path in the Forest" (Fig. 10) for the 2011Tallin Festival in Estonia. He
claimed that "walking along this path will give a slightly different sense of the forest.
Instead of looking up at the trees from the ground, people will be strolling near the
leaves, making their way between the branches. A structure made for the forest, a
forest that exists for the structure: with no change in the shape of the forest, it will
seem that the structure and the forest are one"26.

20
HEIDEGGER, Martin, 'Construir, habitar, pensar', (1954). Conferencias y artículos, Barcelona, Odós, 1994.
21
MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice, 'Fenomenología de la percepción'. Editorial Planeta - Agostini. Edición 1993, p.45.
22
BERMAN, Marshall, (1988), 'Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire. La experiencia de la modernidad', Editorial Siglo
Veintiuno, Madrid, p. 81.
23
NITSCHKE, Günter, 'Ma. El sentido japonés de 'lugar' tal como se refleja en la confirmación espacial de la arquitectura y el
diseño urbano tradicional y moderno' en AA. VV. JAPON. UNA NUEVA PERSPECTIVA, Cuadernos Summa-Nueva Visión,
Nº26-27, JUNIO, 1969, P. 48-49.
24
FUJIMOTO, Sou, 'Futuro Primitivo', 2G, Nº50 : 136.
25
NITSCHKE, Günter, 'Ma. El sentido japonés de 'lugar' tal como se refleja en la confirmación espacial de la arquitectura y el
diseño urbano tradicional y moderno' (1969), op. cit. p.50.
26
Tetsuo Kondo Architects: A Path in The Forest | Kadriorg Park . Tallinn", última modificación el 30 de Abril de 2013.
http://afasiaarq.blogspot.com/2013/04/tetsuo-kondo-architects.html
8
Fig. 9. Left. Jose Manuel Ballester, (Untitled), Yellow River (China), 2005.
Fig. 10. Right. Tetsuo Kondo Architects, "A Path in The Forest", Tallinn (Estonia), 2011.

4. The space's intuitive appropriation. Feeling without knowing:

Generally, the main idea behind space appropriation in architecture is based upon
direct appropriation of built space, in which its function is defined previously. A
standard house is its paradigmatic example, where we recognise immediately the use
predicted for each room: which are the bedrooms, which is the kitchen, the living
room… Somehow the design process should follow the opposite procedure. That
would mean that there shouldn't be specific spaces for specific uses, but rather to give
path to the dweller to recognize in each one of them their function according to his
needs. This is a strategy used is primitive architecture, as it has been defined by
philosopher Kurt Koffka: 'For the primitive man each object communicates what it is,
and what is for… a fruit says 'eat me', water says 'drink me', the thunder says 'fear
me''27. Even if nowadays making use of this ideas, even if simplified', would make no
sense, we can use them as manifesto to defend the idea that the complex logic used to
create our built surrounding is not enough or adapted to satisfy entirely our physical or
psychological needs. Following this line of though, Sou Fujimoto argues: 'The cave's
occupants adapt themselves to their environment, improvising and discovering latent
and multiple possibilities in a defined context. This is an unconscious and unplanned
appropriation process, born is our primitive and animal essence. In these environments
we search for a more comfortable location, like cats in a meadow'28.
This intuitive spatial appropriation corresponds to the phase that Nitschke defines as
'unconscious stage', where the apparent nature's disorder is in fact the basis of every
organization system. It's saying that man accepts nature and acts like its extension. A
stage of intuitive and unconscious performance where there is a casual and accidental,
but identifiable order (Arare, in Japanese culture) where the whole system's natural
and geographical characteristics are emphasized 29 . This potential spaces' selection
process in our surroundings, with the help of new construction techniques, could lead
architecture through something like a positive involution, in which the haptic sense
has a role when it's time to choose the volume which will be cloistered by a solid
casing (architecture). The ideal circumstances are therefore provided to make use of
this space through its initial characteristics and qualities, to whose we can have the
inherent qualities of our own architecture intervention, necessary to make them
liveable.
An interesting experience should be to ask a group a persons to enter a wood and
request each one separately to choose different spaces for different uses: one for
sleeping, other for reading, another to eat, etc. By confronting the results gathered
from a large group of individuals we would come to the conclusion that the choices
would be mainly the same, knowing for sure which would be the most suitable spaces
for which use. The same experience, carried out in an urban scale, could be used as a
reference in an urban planning process without previous prejudice. As Edmund
Husserl would say, 'meeting the reality of things'30.

27
KOFFKA, K. 'Principles of Gesalt psychology' (1935), Nueva York, Harcourt Brace. p. 7.
28
ITO, Toyo, WORRALL, Julian, 'Arquitectura teórica y sensorial: los experimentos radicales de Sou Fujimoto', 2G, Nº50 : 18.
29
NITSCHKE, Günter, 'Ma. El sentido japonés de 'lugar' tal como se refleja en la confirmación espacial de la arquitectura y el
diseño urbano tradicional y moderno' (1969), op. cit. p.10.
30
HUSSERL, Edmund 'Investigaciones Lógicas' (2005), Ed. Alianza, Buenos Aires. p. 217.
9
5. The spatial perception phenomenology. Explaining the unexplainable:
As a way to obtain knowledge, phenomenology can contribute with philosophical
bases in order to overcome simple theories of perception, and obtain, with the help of
psychological analysis, a complete sensorial spatial experience. This philosophical
process completes the laws of perception and physiology, when it comes to study the
entire process of physical and psychological of recognition by individuals certain
characteristics in their surrounding spaces. Philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty
thought that phenomenology the recognition of the human capacity of perceiving
symbols through their corporeal status, questioning their human environment through
its use and trial. Merleau-Ponty postulated 'the body, not just as a standing object in
the world but as a mean of communication with it, and the world not as a sum of
objects but as a hidden horizon in our incessant current experience that has no end,
previous to any determinant decision'31.
Experiencing phenomena – experiences in time and space which are different from
object's perception – comes from a distinct method of thinking architecture.
Phenomenology, as a question of perception, leads us to experience architecture
walking through it, feeling it, listening to it, pulling us into a new underworld of
sensations even before architecture is made.
All of this to allow the empathy of the places' essence and build in them, giving it a
corporeal and significant shape, in order not to invade the natural context in its whole.
It makes easy an architecture-nature symbiosis throughout the single occupation of the
aprioristic areas that are identified and marked off through this process of knowledge.
Even over the already built urban environment 'there is another superimposed city that
has its origin in phenomena like sound, light, images, etc. (…). Can´t we find the inner
structure and historic and natural flows inside the constructions of the mechanical age,
superimposing them the electronic age networks, making it all revive again as a
phenomenological space?'32 It's to manage that architecture and nature start to generate
a feedback process.

Fig. 11. Left. Tomás Sarraceno's 'in orbit' installation. Fig. 12. Right. Frank Lloyd Wright's
'Falling water', examples of spatial, appropriations according to the local phenomenological
characteristics. Sarraceno in a built environment, Wright is a natural one.

6. Symbiotic architecture. Architectonic capillary in nature:

31
MERLEAU-PONTY, Maurice, 'Fenomenología de la percepción'. Editorial Planeta - Agostini. Edición 1993, p.32.
32
ITO, Toyo, (2000), 'Escritos' Ed. COAT Murcia, Murcia, p. 141.
10
'I believe that my architecture's meaning is like a metaphor: architecture was already
here, but we couldn't see it, so we had to search for the little pieces that compose it and
search for as process of combine them in order to solve problems that arouse during
the process. This process requires the creative ability to think. That's why I think about
this kind of interaction: interaction with oneself, interaction with the environment,
with the place, with people, all very exciting…' 33 This Sou Fujimoto's statement
describes so far this article's theoretical development. The analysis of the correlation
between built mass, available technology and occasional ecological conscience (the
each moment's natural surroundings rejection level) makes us believe that future
architecture will make use of technique to create 'membranes' that will wrap the so-
called potential spaces found all around us. Appropriating space will no longer begin
in a blank sheet, but as a reciprocal process with the natural environment, its physical
support, and with which man will have a more straight relation, as it has been
requiring for ages. Antonio Saggio said 'a building is no longer praiseworthy because
it's functional (…). We are aware that this metaphorical process influences a great part
of contemporary architecture, and that its fundamental aim is to bring inside the
landscape and the relation between man and nature' 34 . We can define symbiotic
architecture as the one that adapts itself to its site, respecting its fundamental features,
boosting its most remarkable properties in order to respond to man's needs. Just when
ecological conscience and sustainability are becoming increasingly important, this
kind of approach when designing is what will bring back the equilibrium between
architecture and nature that has been lost since our primitive past, but with all the
commodities required by modern society. Sou Fujimoto's definition of 'Primitive
Future' as part of his theoretical architectural approach can resume this approach.

Fig. 13. Conceptual mock-ups that can illustrate the symbiotic architecture theory.
'Futurospective architecture: Sou Fujimoto', September 10, 2013. Centro Cultural de Belém,
Lisboa.

33
SOU FUJIMOTO. Conferencia inaugural de la exposición 'Futurospective architecture', 10 sep 2013. Centro Cultural de
Belem, Lisboa. Respuesta a una pregunta en el turno de intervenciones del autor de este artículo. [Traducción Joanna Vieira
Vasconcelos].
34
PRESTINENZA PUGLISI, Luigi, 'Hyperarchitecture Spaces in the Electronic Age', Epílogo de Antonio Saggio. Ed.
Birkhäuser. Turín, 1998, p.95. [Traducción al inglés Lucinda Byatt].
11
Fig. 14. The“Tree in the House” Project, designed by A.Masow Design Studio, is a glass house located
in the Almaty city (Kazajstán ) that sacrifices intimicy privacy in favour of a unique experience in
harmony with nature.

7. Flows as creatures of shape. The fourth dimension physical expression in the

urban fabric:
Toyo Ito discovered what he has defined as 'flow areas', or ryuiki, a fluid vision, subtly
ambiguous, of internal space. At the same time Arata Isosaki, Kazuo Shinoara and the
following generation of architects like Tadao Ando kept using minimalistic rhetoric,
achieving an architectonic expression easily identifiable as 'Japanese' (although it has
remained solely applied to architecture's outer shell), Toyo Ito submerged himself
researching something that orthodox architectural investigation had left behind: the
environmental, the fluidic and the consciousness of inhabiting35.
Taking into account the 'nomadic' character of the today's citizen we shouldn't see life
as taking place in specific spaces, but rather taking place in in-between (crossing)
places. Human beings inhabit the world as travellers, not as occupiers of a specific
space36.
Defining space as a path implies the necessary use of 'time' as a dimension that can
help us to understand the importance of these 'flows' in our society. Once these paths
are freed from the dictatorship of rational urbanism, it will be possible to observe the
path of human flows. A person's routes from one point to the other, if not conditioned
by artificial external elements, are the expression itself of one's core in a chronological
perspective. It's to understand one's core not as geometric concept but as reference to
the muscular apparatus with kinesthetic and orientation properties derived from the
force of gravity and an inner sense37. This fingerprint will remain and can be read by
current technologies.
Visualizing and analysing real time urban flows has become a powerful tool whose
final purpose is to help citizens and urban planners to make informed decisions, and in
a nearby future to reduce inefficient transportation in order to reduce our
environmental footprint and time waste. But the analysis of this kind of mappings can
lead us to the following question: is urban space connected in a natural way to our
flows, or are these dependent from it?

35
ITO, Toyo, (2005), 'Toyo Ito, Conversaciones con estudiantes' Ed. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona. p. 88.
36
MASSEY, D.B (2005), 'For Space' Sage Publications, London. p.55.
37
BLOMMER, C. Kent, MOORE, Charles W, (1982), 'Cuerpo, memoria y arquitectura' H. Blume Ediciones, Madrid. p.71.
12
Throughout the investigating work of the MIT's SENSEable City Lab, directed by the
architect Carlo Ratti38, we can see some disagreements between the urban fabric and
human flow charts (Fig. 8). This means that the use of this kind of maps can improve
the quality of city life by adapting urban paths to those of people, as long as possible
and taking into account not only a person's movements but also the time they spend in
a specific place. This way future planning would have to take into account these kinds
of studies to create its new infrastructures, making them more efficient at every level.

Fig. 15. Left. Real-Time Roma combines different data in a single interface: SIG data, real
time data and raster images. In this picture the relives highlight time spent in each space (May
2006). Fig. 16. Right. Chart created by Aaron Parecki through a three year period compilation
of geo-positioning data from is GPS device superimposed over a Portland city map, is
hometown. Different colours correspond to different years, and we can see how a person
adapts himself to the urban fabric. If we introduce the 'time' factor, we managed to understand
how the urban fabric is completely insensible to our routes and daily habits.

8. Flows in natural environments. Synapses between potential spaces:

If in an urban context we start upon a predefine network, in naturally preserved
environments the design of such a mesh can be the result of the potential spaces' study
and its connections. Toyo Ito said that '…man's actions are complicated and we
shouldn't limit any action to any given space…'39. We can deduce from this notion that
if it's the action itself that generates space, then space will not be restricted to its
physical expression (architecture) but beyond this wrapping to ensure human
wellbeing. Local connexions of this kind would generate a dynamic but gracious
network.
The resulting architecture would be something fluid, avoiding forced actions, in which
the kinesthetic logic is bindings' free. This kind of space wouldn't need to be cloistered
to be apprehended, just to be liveable for Man, who has a body and a life. In other
words, this space's understanding is only possible once it is produced40. It’s a closed
mutual circle, where flow creates space and it is lived again through its own flow, not
in a prosthetic mode. Human character is, by nature, wonderer, divergent and
adventurous and it requires an environment that allows and nourishes the practice and

38
REAL TIME ROME [internet]. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT, c2003
[Consultado 2013 Sep 14]. Disponible en:
http://senseable.mit.edu/realtimerome/
39
TAKI, Koji, 'Una conversación con Toyo Iyo', El Croquis. 2004; Nº123 : 6-43 [Traducción de Albert Fuentes].
40
LEFEBVRE, Henri, (1988). 'The production of space' Ed. Universidad de Sussex, Brighton. p.168.
13
development of such behaviour 41 . If in the design process we manage to obtain
interaction between built object and its natural environment, we are promoting a man-
nature relation without losing the architecture's character as shelter and protection.
Architecture would be able to be a true vessel of our lives, our desires and hopes, and
not a mere object, significant by itself (although this is a legitimate aim as a collateral
reaction to the architect's good practice).

Fig. 17. From above to bottom, and left to right:'Kurimoto Millenium City' – Japan; Fig.18.
137 kilo studio 'Cross Country House', spatial appropriation, prior to the house's construction;
Fig. 19. Junya Ishigami´s 'Japanese Pavilion', Venice Biennale 2008; Fig. 20. Tetsuo Kondo
Architects' 'Landscape with Chair'.

9. A new architecture for a new society. The digital condition as a disruptive

element between architecture and society:
The digital society is living an historic moment that has just begun, and that has
imposed huge changes in the way knowledge is communicated, the productive system
and even in social relations. Along history there weren't many relevant technologies:
the development of lithic technology, agriculture, industrialization and electricity have
been so far disruptive technologies, which have imposed significant changes in
society, and consequently in the architecture representing that same society.
According to polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and his 'liquid modernity identity'
theory, if in the 18th century society was marked by well-defined social stratus
according to which each individual was strictly classified, nowadays, with the social
network's boom and the ICTs (information and communication technologies) global
identities become fickle, volatile and fragile, and change according to consumer
influenced identities. However, these elusive identities make us increasingly
41
DATTNER, Richard (1969), 'design for a play', Van Nostrand Reinhold, Nueva York, p.44.
14
dependent of each other, and here is where we can find hope to establish the necessary
conditions for growth in terms of humanity, collective consciousness focused on the
individual wellbeing, and harmony towards nature42.
For these reasons, sooner or later, architecture will have to adapt to this new 'liquid
society' in such a way that man is allowed to move from its selfish 'me', and the
ecosystem's symbiotic, non-pyramidal hybridization. Adapting to new requirements,
and a, more than ever, necessity for environmental sustainability, become the only
ways to assure our species survival in a medium and long term.

10. Discussion and conclusions:

According to the theoretical character of this article, it is always possible to make use
of subjective ideas that, however, could be the basis of future discussions for those
who are willing to consult this text and investigate similar themes. Methodologically
the article's characteristics lead to a solution where we tried to create a strong line of
argument in order to support the presented theoretical ideas and concepts, rather than
to follow a traditional research process (although those same ideas where strongly
supported by a deep investigation and the Japanese School's case studies. The aim of
the carried out investigation, more than to give concrete answers, was to stimulate the
discussion over the subject and to promote interest on a different approach of
designing architecture. Undoubtedly, the use, in the future, of quantitative studies that
offer concrete data can corroborate some of the referred assumptions presently
achieved through theoretical approach by the architects, sociologists, psychologists
and academic researchers used as references. To study more thoroughly some of the
article's specific themes would also be useful, even to gathered them in some sort of
compendium that would allow the use of the collected subjects to research further in
architecture and other fields of knowledge.
According to the theoretical approaches presented, we can conclude that there are no
precedents in the architecture design process where the usable potential spaces are first
identified followed by the generated flows connecting these spaces and even inside
them. Nevertheless it seems to have the possibility to become a very effective process
of approaching architectural design giving a response to the needs of those bound to
occupy the generated spaces. Their own bodies and movements will generate the
foundation of what later will become the object's spatial occupation and use, which,
thanks to today's building techniques (and the loss of mass in architecture) will be
confined in a natural way, allowing a clear dialogue with the surroundings of every
project. It also seems that this process of generating spaces benefits some degree of
interaction with the natural environment, one of the mantras of present-day
architecture: a stable and egalitarian equilibrium between natural and artificial, while
helping to construct the longed ecological sustainability and reducing the social,
environmental and economic costs at medium and long term.
For future researches it is recommended that the work and theories of the four above
mentioned studios will be profoundly studied in order to create a personal philosophy
when approaching new projects and challenges.

42
PALOMAR VEREA, Cristina (2007). 'Reseña de 'Identidad' de Sygmunt Bauman'. Espiral VOL. XIII (Nº. 38) p. 205-214.
15
So, it is our desired that the presented research can cooperate in the search of new
horizons in future architectural practice, opening new debates about the need and
convenience to rethink approaching architecture's traditional methods, leading those to
more correlated conclusions related to the changes that the digital age is operating in
present and future society.

Acknowledgements:

We would like to thank Sou Fujimoto's attention and enthusiasm with which he
answered some of the posed questions about the themes debated in the presented
article, during his work's exhibition inauguration, in the CCB (Centro Cultural de
Belém) in Lisbon, in the September 10, 2013.

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