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 Following pages: Melting ice
field in the Chukchi Sea,
northwest of Alaska, 2002.

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 3 10/9/06 11:00:31 AM
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 Architecture at Rice

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 First published 2007 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
by Routledge The editors thank and acknowledge the con-
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN tributors for their sustained efforts during the
preparation of this publication. We also thank
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada the Rice School of Architecture Dean Lars
by Routledge Lerup and Associate Dean John Casbarian
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 for the many opportunities afforded to us,
beginning with an exhibition at the School
Published in association with in the Spring of 2004 which was the origin
Architecture at Rice, the publication series of of Softspace. We gratefully acknowledge the
The Rice School of Architecture Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies
6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005, USA in the Fine Arts for their generous support,
which permitted these ideas to move forward
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group graphically and visually in the publication as
we originally intended. Thanks to Christopher
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
Hight, the managing editor of Architecture at
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis Rice, to Melanie Pratt for her help during the
or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks early stages of this research, to Florence Tang
please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” for her help during the final stages, and to
Mildred Crocker for managing the details. We
© 2007 Architecture at Rice, selection and editorial material
also thank our editors at Routledge, Caroline
© 2007 the contributors, individual chapters
Mallinder and Katherine Morton, for working
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or with us to make this project happen.
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, me-
chanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.

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 ISBN 0–203–96713–5 Master e-book ISBN

Softspace: from a representation of form to a simulation of

space / [edited by] Sean Lally and Jessica Young.
p. cm. ISBN10 0-415-40201-8 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-40201-8 (hardback : alk. paper) –… ISBN ISBN10 0-415-40202-6 (pbk)
0-415-40202-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Architectural design. ISBN10 0-203-96713-5 (ebk)
2. Architecture–Research. 3. Architecture and technology. I.
Lally, Sean, 1974- II. Young, Jessica, 1975- ISBN13 978-0-415-40201-9 (hbk)
NA2750.S594 2006 ISBN13 978-0-415-40202-6 (pbk)
729.0285–dc22 ISBN13 978-0-203-96713-3 (ebk)

2006013554

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 vii

Sean Lally & Jessica Young viii Preface: The Stuff Between, In & Around

Sean Lally 01 Introduction: Energies, Matter & the Gradients

of Space

Christopher Hight 10 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline: Parables of

Entropy and Homeostasis from the Second Machine
Age to the Information Age

Sean Lally Weathers 24 Potential Energies

Michelle Addington 38 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual

Michael Hensel & Achim Menges 52 Nested Capacities, Gradient Thresholds & Modulated
OCEAN NORTH Environments: Towards Differentiated and Multi-
Performative Architectures

Open Source Architecture 68 Dissipative Procedures: Optimization through

Chandler Ahrens, Eran Neuman & Aaron Sprecher ‘Phenomenonization’

Marcelyn Gow servo 88 Cybernetic Anything...

Tobi Schneidler maoworks 98 The Archoid Chimera: Electric Space as Social

Machine

Helene Furján 114 Eco_logics

Jason Payne & Heather Roberge Gnuform 126 Matter and Sense

Lars Lerup 142 Postscript: This Pipe is Not a Pipe Dream

Bart Lootsma 144 Postscript: I, the Scent Cube and CSI; or, the
Controlled Soft Interior

148 Notes, Credits, Biographies

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 PREFACE

The stuff between,

in & around
Sean Lally and Jessica Young

That architecture has often traditionally been preoccupied with the ‘hard’ (structure,
forces, geometries of form), letting the ‘soft’ (qualitative environments, mood, atmo-
sphere) become secondary, or residual, is a fairly obvious fact. Looking back, we find
endless variations on form defined through structure and envelopes, often ignoring
what’s in between these fixed elements. This is due in some part to techniques of rep-
resentation, which have reinforced pervasive (and conventional) notions of both how to
make architectural space and what constitutes architectural space. These surfaces and
structures, envelopes and skins, were considered to be the material pieces of architec-
ture (yet are no longer the only elements that are definable and measurable), allowing
space to be the ‘stuff’ that’s left over between them – or, more simply stated, space is
whatever form is not. Further, the distinction between the two has evolved into another
simple opposition: form occupies the material, while space occupies the immaterial
realm of design. This space, however, has always been imbued with endless qualities,
behaviors, and effects, whether intentional or not – air, gas, fire, sound, odors, mag-
netic forces, electricity and electronics to name a few – which are, within the realm of
‘softspace’, distinctly material in nature. At the end of the day, isn’t space the ‘stuff’
that we’re after, anyway?
Softspace takes stock of a moment in design and research occurring now, and draws
upon historical and ideological trajectories of projects that have been occurring over the
past fifty years, while also foregrounding current architectural projects and essays that
point to where these opportunities may take us. The work begins to break down the pre-
conceived opposition between space and form, initially through the use of new tools
and technology previously not part of the architect’s vocabulary, but then moves beyond
a fascination with the technologies and towards an exploration of the implications for
space and its organization. Softspace looks to how architects can explore the materials
that exist between the envelopes of geometry and structure. What potential role does
something as seemingly omnipresent, inert and dependent as air play in the formation
of space? Can emotions, sensations, temperature, humidity and scent, for example, be

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 Preface ix

quantified, simulated and deployed as definitively as structural forces and descriptive

architectural geometries? If we can visualize, quantify and instrumentalize qualitative
effects and conditions as design materials, what then are the opportunities in the ways
we may define boundary and edge in the spaces we inhabit?
Softspace is projective in nature, rather than documentary, and looks to suggest
many possible futures rather than define discrete outcomes. Given that, we’ve refrained
from organizing the book into distinct chapters, trying instead to present the material in
a more continuous, somewhat linear progression where each contribution builds upon
the subject matter of the others. Softspace is a body of research that looks between, in
and around the structures and envelopes that capture space, and seeks to acknowledge
its lineage in the past, act on the opportunities that exist today, and project what is still
to come.

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 1.1: Yves Klein with architect
Claude Parent – Fontaine de
Feu, 1959.

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 Energies, Matter & the Gradients of Space 1

INTRODUCTION

Energies, matter & the gradients

of space
Sean Lally

Until now, the appropriation of digital tools to architectural design has been largely focused up-
on innovating the generation of form. At the same time, advancements in the visualization and
simulation of energies and material qualities have been relegated to design optimization, as
a means to simply refine preconceived spatial and organizational conditions. Yet today, through
these very technologies, energies and intensities such as air, gas, fire, sound, odors, magnetic
forces, electricity and electronics have become architectural materials that can be visualized
and operated upon as systematically and accurately as the forces that guide structure and geo-
metry. Softspace examines the opportunities available today to employ such energy-matters as
catalysts of innovation.

Caves to campfires
In The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, Reyner Banham highlighted architects’
continued fixation with defining a boundary or edge condition through formal strategies based
on monumental skin and shell enclosures. In contrast to this cave mentality of capturing spatial
organizations through form, Banham pointed to the campfire as a means for spatial organiza-
tion. The campfire is both a source of energy and a territorial organizer, creating micro-climates
of heat, light and darkness with the potential for variable conditioning. The radiating gradients
of light and heat create a soft boundary that rises in intensity before slowly dying back only to

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 1.2: Robin Evans’ The Devel- Etruscan Room, Osterley Park,
oped Surface. Left: ‘Section’ of with furniture as of 1782, Oster-
a stair hall by Thomas Lightoler, ley Park by Robert Adams,
from The Modern Builder’s 1775-9.
Assistant, 1757. Right: The

be activated once again later, all while organizing an Fire Fountain of 1959. These examples, specifically
individual’s placement around a gradient and variable the sketches and watercolors of Yves Klein, capture the
territorial boundary. It’s these mechanical systems, imagination regarding how walls and roof exist not
responsible for making such spaces livable throughout as inert massings, but as energies released through
the course of a year, that Banham sees as the facilita- water and fire, simultaneously delineating boundaries
tors of spatial configuration – not the skin or shell that and emitting qualities such as sound, light and heat.
constructs an envelope. Architects have continued to Found generally in the confines of gallery and spectator
question and re-inform the role of architecture beyond settings, these examples project the potentials of what
the classical world view, often searching to represent has yet to fully infiltrate and interact with our daily
the ever-evolving trends in our universal order or tech- activities. As Fredrick Kiesler’s Endless House (1961)
nological advancements to facilitate its realization. is to the formally smooth and spatially continuous that
Softspace instead follows Banham’s lead, searching not would influence architectural research born from the
to question our world views or even the tools that order availability of a tool set in the early 1990s, so Klein and
them, but rather the stuff they’re made of – the energies others can be seen as an impetus to research that has re-
and matter of space.1 mained stunted in its pursuit of generating spatial and
Architects can look to the work of many artists (with organizational implications within architecture.
the occasional architect in tow) to find a lineage of invest- These projects represent a field of research spanning
igations that incorporate qualitative effects and energies the last half century, making it clear that the intentions
as ‘buildable’ materials for design, including Hans raised within Softspace aren’t novel. These are projects
Haacke’s Condensation Cube of 1963, EAT’s (Experi- that question and stretch our imaginations as to how
ments in Art and Technology) Pepsi-Cola Pavilion at we engage another realm of materiality in the spaces we
Expo ’70 in Osaka, Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project construct and occupy. As we question the materials we
in 2001 or Yves Klein with architect Claude Parent’s use to define and construct the territories we inhabit, we

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 Energies, Matter & the Gradients of Space 3

1.3: The Optimization of Form

– Gehry Partners’ Case Western
Reserve University building in
Cleveland, Ohio, 2002.

must also look to tools and technologies of today that per- investigations within an ingrained bandwidth of what
mit us to visualize and operate upon them. Architects constitutes boundary and edge. As Robin Evans points
have yet to fully engage the opportunities available today out, the techniques architects deploy are never ‘neu-
or speculate upon the implications that such research tral’ in the information they convey. These techniques,
will have on our spatial, formal and social constructs, whether hand sketches, orthographic projects (plans
let alone question how we live. With the imaginations and sections), or 3-D modeling and animation, require
of what could come, and the availability of tools and the suppression of some kinds of information in order
technologies that permit us to operate upon these ‘ma- to highlight and communicate others. As we continue to
terials’, architects are now in a position to engage such use graphic techniques and tools focused on geometry
opportunities with generative and projective research. and form as our primary means for delineating territo-
ries, architects have essentially suppressed spatial and
Technology transfer material qualities as design strategies, reverting instead
One of the greatest strengths of the architectural disci- to tools and graphic representations that calibrate spa-
pline has been its ability to siphon the techniques and tial organization as a capturing of space through form.
tools from adjacent and seemingly distant disciplines. In The Developed Surface, Robin Evans brings to our
One recent example of this appropriation has been the attention the extent to which architectural techniques
relationship between software and the ubiquitous avail- can have repercussions not only on formal but on spatial
ability and dissemination of CAD/CAM technologies and organizational constructs, through an eighteenth-
that integrate techniques of visualization with tools for century graphic technique originally intended for the
fabrication. This combination has opened doors for purpose of depicting exterior elevations of streets and
advancements within architecture; however, this col- town squares. The technique splayed the elevations flat as
lusion has also managed to fixate our explorations and a means of depicting façade adjacencies along the street
subsequent discussions of spatial and organizational or square. However, as the technique’s use shifted from

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 1.4: The Generative Form
– Greg Lynn Form’s Port
Authority of New York and New
Jersey, 1995.

depiction of external elevations to showing the build- integration of software packages from the automotive,
ing’s interior spaces, the subject matter of the drawings aeronautical and naval industries and the animation
became the four walls of the individual room unfolded studios of Hollywood, and the more recent use of script-
into discrete surfaces on a single plane. The technique ing logics of computer science. However, it’s worth
of unfolding the room planes not only suppressed wall reiterating an apparent schism that’s developed within
thickness and structure, producing a fixation on surface the architectural profession pertaining to how these
treatments that flattened materiality against these wall tools are applied. There is one trajectory in which the
planes, but had larger ramifications in terms of how harnessing of such tools is applied for the optimiza-
the rooms could be occupied and organized within the tion and refinement of preconceived intentions and
building, as the drawings appeared to create a ‘hermetic’ geometries, while another is concerned with tools for
condition by suppressing connectivity of adjoining their generative strengths. The integration of these tools
rooms.2 Given this, the question we must ask today is from the aeronautical and naval industries has made it
this: With the advancements in technologies for how feasible, both financially and logistically, to advance a
we visualize and operate upon information, what are trajectory that originated in hand sketches and physi-
we choosing to highlight and what have we managed to cal models previously so geometrically complex as to
suppress? leave one questioning their feasibility. These tools were
engaged as a means to optimize what was essentially a
Optimization vs the generative predefined formal and organizational strategy, in which
The last ten to fifteen years have been crucial in terms of cues from adjacent disciplines were integrated to make
the techniques and operations architects have harnessed preconceived visions viable and logistically efficient.
from other fields in the pursuit of design intentions. This can be most clearly illustrated in the work of Gehry
During this time there has been no shortage of writings Partners. Originating as hand sketches and physical
documenting such technology transfers, including the models, programs such as CATIA, which originated

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 Energies, Matter & the Gradients of Space 5

1.5: Optimization of Energies

– Foster and Partners’ City Hall
in London, 2003.

within the aeronautical industry, permit architects to organizational conditions in search of the most efficient
visualize the geometries of the project for their struc- and optimal 72-degree interior temperature.
tural analysis, cost feasibility and logistical organization Larger architectural offices, including Foster and
during the construction process. The integration of Partners and Grimshaw, incorporate specialist model-
the software at the terminus of the design phase limits ing groups that often partner engineers to document
the role of the tool to that of ‘fine-tuning’ preconceived and analyze a project’s energy performance. In the case
geometries and formal strategies. of London’s City Hall by Foster and Partners, the design
This differs rather significantly from the orches- was envisioned during the competition stage as a ‘peb-
tration of animation software, scripted for generative ble’ with a large lens overlooking the river. From its
potentials of design innovation. Here the inherent logics earliest stages the project was intended to be energy-
and proclivities of software packages and algorithmic efficient, and having won the competition Foster’s Spe-
operations are exploited in the pursuit of questioning cialist Modelling Group, along with Arup’s engineers,
organizational and aesthetic constructs through form. produced solar studies and analysis of the project’s
The integration of techniques originating in the anima- energy performance. With the ability to visualize the
tion industries furthered existing explorations in formal building’s energy performance throughout the course
organizational logics in which the tools’ ‘Dynamic’ and of the year, they now had the responsibility of harness-
‘Animation’ packages were exploited. Such an integra- ing this information and making viable the original
tion provided design tools for generating, questioning intentions of the project’s formal scheme, while meet-
and informing a discussion of topology and form. While ing the goals for energy efficiency.
architects have advanced formal and geometric logics The use of such tools within the architectural profes-
and organizations, similarly imaginative pursuits through sion often occurs only later, during the project’s develop-
qualitative and material energies have remained relegat- ment, as a means to optimize preconceived formal and
ed mostly to optimizing certain preconceived spatial and organizational strategies while meeting the needs of

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 1.6: Softspace looks to practic-
es using these material energies
and generative techniques to ex-
plore spatial boundaries and the
implications these approaches
have on broader organizational
and social constructs.

energy efficiency.3 Under the slogan of ‘sustainable operations in exploring and defining spatial, organiza-
design’ and through various energy crises, architects tional and social occupancies. Techniques we deploy as
and engineers have seen some of the greatest techno- architects are never neutral. Architects need to acknowl-
logical advancements in how we operate upon and edge that investigations that question something as
make decisions related to environmental information rudimentary as what constitutes a boundary or edge
that might otherwise have been dismissed. Yet the use condition on a local moment can have repercussions
of such information as a generative method and design on much larger organizational and social behaviors.
tool has been largely overlooked in favor of its use as a Therefore, architects interested in pursuing and advanc-
tool for optimization. Softspace marks a shift from the ing the profession cannot shy away from opportunities
use of digital tools to represent form to the simulation of that give them the ability to visualize and operate upon
spatial material behaviors. a selection of information and criteria – air, gas, fire,
The intention of the Softspace publication isn’t to sound, odors, magnetic forces, electricity and electron-
herald yet another ‘new’ within the architectural disci- ics – that were previously labeled as simply qualitative
pline, but instead to acknowledge and identify the ‘now’ or ephemeral effects. Today, as architects continue to
that affords us opportunities to both operate upon and appropriate the tools of adjacent disciplines (from mate-
question the methods and criteria we use to define and rial engineers, software engineers and meteorologists),
explore the boundaries of our surroundings. The unique opportunities exist to quantify and manipulate such
position that architects find themselves in today is not information through generative techniques, making it
one lacking in precedents for the imagination, nor is it vital for projective research, practice and discourse.
defined solely by the technological advancements of the
past twenty-five years. Opportunities exist to visualize
and operate upon information that questions what con-
stitutes the material of architectural knowledge and its

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 Energies, Matter & the Gradients of Space 7

GEOMETRIES & FORM QUALITIES & SPACE

Kiesler’s Endless House Klein’s Fire Fountain

OPTIMIZATION

Gehry’s Case Western Reserve Building Foster’s London City Hall

GENERATIVE

SOFTSPACE
Lynn’s Port Authority

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 18 10/9/06 11:01:23 AM
Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 19 10/9/06 11:01:23 AM
 2.1: Brush fire, Northern Australia.

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 11

Putting out the fire with gasoline:

Parables of entropy and homeostasis from the
second machine age to the information age
Christopher Hight

Reyner Banham’s The Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment is often understood as one
of the inspirations for British High-Tech and certain aspects of ‘green’ architectural discourse,
and is frequently referenced as historical material in technical courses on building systems.1 It
is far less frequently placed in relation to the genealogies of theories of material practices and
responsive environments, which is where it belongs, for what is at stake in the book is not simply
a supplementary history but a projective theory of architecture that treats its technical aspects
not as supporting representations of abstract concepts (such as Giedion’s space-time or Rowe’s
phenomenal transparency) but as the conceptual material itself.
Accompanying any proposition of new territories for practice are the potentials for re-territorial-
izing the discipline’s past. This is not because the present is some repetition of a given past or
because the past can teach us something; rather, it is because these are virtual archaeologies of
our present. Banham attempted to construct a history of modern architecture’s relationship to the
electro-mechanical systems that pervade the creation and existence of modern constructions but
have been regularly ignored, or treated themselves as supplement to the crucial part of archi-
tecture: its form, its spaces and its ideologies. In that regard, the Well Tempered Environment
remains an important precedent for all those interested in developing theories of architecture

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 that derive from its material conditions and practices Indeed, Giedion sees the two as distinct and perhaps
rather than from critical theoretical emphasis upon antagonistic fields, as his conclusion suggests in essen-
signification. tially arguing for aestheticizing technology through the
In many ways Banham’s The Architecture of the Well- imposition of design rules to align mechanization with
Tempered Environment was a response to the criticism human needs. This, he argues, would establish a new
he had laid at the feet of modern architecture and its ‘equipoise’ between technology, nature and humanity,
historians in Theory and Design in the First Machine a term that combines the thermodynamic understand-
Age. In the latter’s conclusion, he criticized architects ing of dynamic equilibrium with classical aesthetics of
for appropriating technology as representation rather the human figure of proportional harmony and balance
than fully integrating technological processes into the over the processes of technology, reversing the techno-
practices of design and fabrication. The moderns had logical enframing of humanity so that it is machines that
merely adapted classical representations of order with become framed, tamed, and domesticated to the needs
different referents.2 of the human subject. Like Le Corbusier’s Modulor,
He more implicitly criticized those who had chroni- Giedion’s concept sought to impose a transcendental
cled modern architecture as failing to recognize this and humanist ordering upon technology, channeling the
perpetuating the aporia. Siegfried Giedion comes under forces that seem to disrupt into supposedly timeless
special scrutiny for Mechanization Takes Command. Ban- forms. Thus, Giedion’s criticisms of technology are
ham mentions that many architects believed that after entirely comforting to architects’ predilections and com-
Giedion there was little to add to the history of technol- mon sense rather than challenging, placing architecture
ogy and architecture, which he argues is itself symbolic once more as a potential savior.
of architects’ naiveté. Giedion’s text, while wide-ranging, The Well-Tempered Environment provided part of
almost entirely avoided discussing the architecture of the history Banham argued had been entirely ignored,
the modern canon – one he of course had been crucial in presenting a themed but roughly chronological analysis
determining. Instead, analyses are limited to industrial of projects in regard to the infrastructures of modern
vernaculars and to a few second-rate propositions (which buildings – air conditioning and ventilation, plumbing,
Giedion roundly dismisses). By presenting technology as and so forth. For Banham, these were more than mere
having an anonymous history, and thus being at once au- building services; they were motors to rethink prac-
tonomous and deterministic of human agency, modern tice, the architectural object and its subjects and social
architects were at least partially absolved of responsibility spaces. Indeed, he suggests that modern architecture is
for what he saw as its dire effects, including –after the conditioned upon their possibility in every sense, from
Holocaust and the atomic bomb – the imminent end of the most conceptual to the pragmatic. Extending these
human history itself. implications, he proposes, leads to a fundamental ques-

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 13

2.2: Two Diagrams of “primitive of a tent depicts what Banham

huts” from Reyner Banham’s argued remains the dominant
The Architecture of the Well- “structure-based solution.”
Tempered Environment. The top Each, he argues, depends upon
diagram depicts the nomad’s complex social and spatial or-
campfire as the prototypical ganizations, which they in turn
“power-based solution” to shel- enforce as a feedback loop.
ter, while the bottom schematic

tioning of the privileging of form, circulation and dis-

crete program in favor of the performative modulation
of occupation. Banham’s more optimistic assessment of
technology and his skepticism of Giedion’s Modernism
(and that of Banham’s former master, Pevsner) offers an
inverted proposition: rather than domestic technology
Environmental conditions around a campfire.
for the human figure, architects needed to develop an
1. Zone of radiant heat and light.
aesthetics of thermodynamic processes for a different
2. Downwind trail of warmed air and smoke.
sort of body, architectural or otherwise.3

Origin of the well-tempered environment

As with so many theories of architecture that are pre-
sented as a history of the discipline, Banham’s opening
pages offer a ‘parable’ of origin.4 First he tells a story
about the transformation of the human animal into a
human subject:
Mankind can exist, unassisted, on practically all
those parts of the earth that are at present inhab-
ited, except for the most arid and the most cold.
The operative word is ‘exist’ … in order to flour-
ish … mankind needs more ease and leisure … .
A large part of that ease and leisure comes from
the deployment of technical resources and social
organizations, in order to control the immediate
environment.5
Here is a familiar doubled origin: the conversion of the
animal Homo-sapiens into a human subject through Environmental behaviour of a tent.
the invention of the means for doing so via prosthetic 1. Tent membrane deflects wind and excludes rain.
technologies that transform nature into a constructed 2. Reflects most radiation, retaining internal heat,
environment. It is important that Banham withholds excluding solar heat, maintaining privacy.
the terms of architecture or the city from this transfor-
mative moment. Unlike Aristotle’s origin, which places

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 the city as the necessary condition for ‘culture’ as such, miliar examples of cold being used as a tool of torture),
or Heidegger’s emphasis upon dwelling, Banham sug- replacing the image of the campfire and hut with that
gests architecture and cities as merely manifestations of of ‘space suits, with air-conditioners’ that imply tran-
more general social-technical infrastructures. scendence of the current human condition.8 Dwelling in
Banham then offers two different paradigms for the Nature is not only impossible; it is heat-death, maximum
development of such technologies: entropy.
A savage tribe (of the sort that exists only in para-
bles) arrives at the evening camp-site and finds it Entropic horizons of humanity
well supplied with fallen timber. Two basic meth- This parable thus offers a thermodynamic explanation of
ods of exploiting the environmental potential [en- life and the rise of civilization as the reverse of entropy.
ergy] of the timber exist: either it may be used to Entropy was figured by the second law of thermodynam-
construct a wind-break or rain-shed – the structur- ics, derived from Carnot’s studies of heat engines in the
al solution – or it may be used to build a fire – the early nineteenth century. It states that in a closed system
power-operated solution.6 energy will flow (in the nineteenth-century understand-
In his tale, humans use energy to maintain their biologi- ing of heat as a type of fluid) from hot to colder regions.
cal equilibrium in the face of environmental change; This differential is what allows engines (such as the
they need, above all, to convert their labor into food to steam engines of the Industrial Revolution) to produce
live. At the core, this means maintaining a regular body work. Eventually equilibrium is reached; no more work
temperature even while the climate and other energy can be extracted because heat is evenly distributed. This
sources (i.e. food, temperature) fluctuate.7 In the animal is the state of maximum entropy, a term invented in
pre-history of humanity, humans are fully embedded 1850 by Rudolf Clausius, who generalized it to any
within Nature, a part of its delicate processes, but unable closed system. As physics shifted from a fluid model
to do more than maintain their bodily system within the of heat to the statistical-energetic models of quantum
larger ecologies of which they are a part because they mechanics and thermodynamics, maximum entropy
expend all their energy just to maintain homeostasis. It came to be understood as that point at which highly
is only by the creation of technologies that the potential energized and low-energy particles are evenly distrib-
energy of wood was released and instrumentalized to uted. A popular analogy is the dispersion of an ink drop
stabilize environmental conditions and allow humans through a glass of water: at first there is clear water and
to pursue non-subsistence activities. Banham returns the turbulent whirls of the ink, but given some time
to this theme at the end of the text, discussing how the and without any movement of the water, the glass will
body regulates its internal temperature and the cultural become an even shade of grey because of the Brownian
relativity of environmental comfort (citing all too fa- motion, or vibration, of the ink and water molecules.

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 15

Left on their own (i.e. without external energy), the ink of entropy and its apparent beguiling reversal was devel-
and water will not separate because they have found oped as a way to understand the creation of higher levels
their equilibrium, or average distribution throughout of order and complexity. For example, Schrödinger had
space. Rather than ‘disorder’, entropy is more correctly argued in his popular book What is Life? that ‘It is by
understood as the most probable state, or least orga- avoiding the rapid decay into the inert state of “equilib-
nized condition. The second law states that because any rium” that an organism appears so enigmatic ... What
closed system requires ever more energy to maintain its an organism feeds upon is negative entropy.’9 Negative
work or its organization, it will always tend towards this entropy was understood as the free energy in the overall
state. system of the organism and its environment. By the late
Immediately, questions arose about phenomena twentieth century, Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers
that seem to stave off or even reverse entropy to produce employed informational frameworks and Schrödinger’s
greater order or organization. In 1867 James Maxwell negentropy to suggest how in non-linear dissipative sys-
constructed a thought experiment called Maxwell’s tems more complex ordering could arise from simpler
Demon, in which an intelligent agent (the eponymous conditions instead of their leading to less ordered states,
Demon) acts as a gatekeeper between two domains within as the second law of thermodynamics dictates for closed
a thermodynamic system; this Demon controls the flow systems. An example of such negentropic informational
between the two domains by sorting more energetic par- processes includes life itself. In this work, energy that
ticles from lesser ones. In such a scenario, entropy could is stored within existing organizations can be released
be arrested or even reversed (for example, by having and used to create higher levels of organization and
two similar domains sorted into hot and cold regions). differentiation, such as that found in any organism or
This presented a paradox: it seemed logically possible, system. They defined this moment of the origin of order
but also to defy the second law. Like many paradoxes as follows:
of science or mathematics, it was a motor of further When the thermodynamic forces acting on a sys-
research and has since been explained in various ways. tem become such that the linear region is exceeded
For example, it was crucial in the transferal of entropy … [s]tability is no longer the consequence of the
theory into cybernetic frameworks, which treated all general laws of physics. We must examine the way
these systems as information; Leo Slizard argued that a stationary state reacts to the different types of
the Demons required information about the particles fluctuations produced by the system or its environ-
they sorted, thus opening the system at some level. In ment. In some cases, the analysis leads to the con-
this way, information became more important to phys- clusion that a state is ‘unstable’ – in such a state,
ics and biological frameworks. certain fluctuations, instead of regressing, may be
By the middle of the twentieth century, the problem amplified and invade the entire system, compelling

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 it to evolve toward a new regime that may be quali- In Banham’s tale, as in a heat engine, the excess en-
tatively quite different from the stationary states ergy released by the extension of the human body across
corresponding to minimum entropy production.10 its technologies neither disappears nor is lost; rather,
This is the basis for theories of the ‘thermodynamics of it finds other outlets, for example what Banham calls
organized complexity’ in which higher levels of organi- ‘leisure’ – out of which higher cultural, social and politi-
zation, for example forms of life or patterns of forma- cal organizations emerge. These new social organs then
tion, emerge.11 act as capacitors to store more energy and thus allow
Banham’s Well-Tempered Environment depends on ever-higher levels of human order to emerge in nested
these general principles of entropy and thermodynam- feedback loops. In short, human history is a thermo-
ics in two senses. First, of course, the technology for dynamic process of neg-entropy as ‘stored mobilizable
regulating the environment within buildings employs energy in a space-time structured (organized) system’.12
them as technical principles. Air conditioners and natu- Banham’s threshold between Homo-sapiens and human
ral ventilation systems work because of heat differential subjects is not singular but a thermodynamic process of
across spaces and surfaces. Second, and what I am con- becoming ever more human through the release of po-
cerned with here, is how these are used as existential tential energy. The ‘well-tempered environment’ is not
explanations of human existence and, in turn, the social a well-designed architecture to ensure the comfort of its
orders that such technologies of environmental modula- occupants so much as the existential infrastructure that
tion promote. allows the space of humanity to emerge from animal
Moreover, as we have seen, in the opening passages existence. Dwelling in Nature is not only impossible – it
of the book, society is presented as a vast heat engine. is the heat-death of Culture and the human subject.
While prehistoric humans were in equilibrium with
their environment, the creation of the higher-level or- The knowledge of power
ders of human subjectivity and culture come at the price Banham, as we have seen, offers two different paths for
of being in far-from-equilibrium with the environment. this evolution: ‘the structural solution’ and the ‘power-
Transformation from animal existence to human society operated solution’. These originate as different paths
and subjectivity is enabled by the conversion of the po- for the liberation of the energy stored as ‘wood’. For
tential energy within natural materials into technologies Banham, the selection of either structural or power-
that serve as supplemental bodies. By regulating the based engines prescribes the sort of societies that
environment into a more steady state (food is constant, emerge from the neg-entropic energy that the chosen
cold kept outside), these prosthetic organs liberate ener- technological solution liberates. Because any closed
gy humans previously expended merely to maintain a system will eventually ‘run down’ – that is, will lose
sustenance level of existence. capacity to perform work – and increase entropy, both

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 17

choices require continual input of new energy through produced no cultures that have ‘shaped world architec-
the expansion of their supplemental organs. ture’,16 since they must always be in flight or they will
The structural solution requires a stable and massive deplete the energies of any one locale and die off.17 This
orchestration and division of labor, producing a seden- leads to the extensive vector of nomadic cultures. The
tary and striated social order of ever greater complexity. lack of calcification also produces more supple social-
Also, once energy is stored into structures, they require spatial mapping, Banham tells us. The iconic campfire
ancillary organs for maintenance, lest they fall into of the power-solution produces a heat and light gradi-
entropically inevitable despair. This intensive amplifica- ent that interacts with the social order of the tribe (with
tion of available energy within the environment leads to the chief and elders at the center, and others arrayed
increasing complexity of supplemental organs – from according to rank).18 Moreover, the heat gradient of
huts, to houses that are then assembled into neighbor- the fire interacts with wind patterns to produce second-
hoods, and these administrated by institutions and order effects. This leads to social ordering based on
ordered into cities, and ultimately the nation-state.13 habit rather than territory, one that is performative and
Architecture’s relation to social order as well as to the must be continually reinscribed through ritual, rites
life of citizens was figured through this model as a sort and ceremonies: in other words, institutionalized event
of calcification of energy into monuments, fostering a structures.
discipline of architecture as the static containment of
space, of subjects and of society: ‘Cultures whose mem- The house of humanity or a house of cards?
bers organize their environment by means of massive We can now understand the broader implications of the
structures tend to visualize space as they have lived in it, Well-Tempered Environment. Banham proposes that this
that is, bounded and contained, limited by walls, floors bifurcated path of human history reached a new state by
and ceilings.’14 Design concerned the proper massing the dawn of the second machine age. The structural so-
of these objects, their symmetries and balance as an im- lution no longer quite matched the technological condi-
age of equilibrium. This produces an ethical-aesthetic tions of modernity. Implicitly, the social and economic
imperative of architectural permanence delineating upheavals catalyzed by the technological revolutions of
bounded contours of political and social space, such successive machine ages have effectively de-territorialized
as defined territories of the public and private.15 As cultural, political and even epistemological boundaries.
a result, Banham suggests, the structural solution has The structural solution no longer worked since the world
dominated European culture and architecture, whether had more to do with the temporary, ambient fields of the
Classical, Gothic or Modern (and here, we might want campfire. This was experienced as existential ‘homeless-
to add, Blobby). ness’, or as solidity melting into the air. Implicitly, such
The power-based solution, on the other hand, has expressions were only symptoms of being locked in the

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 cave of the structural solution that could no longer ef- edition of the book, Banham goes so far as to associate
fectively maintain homeostasis. Even as more and more the development of automatically regulating architectur-
energy was poured into maintaining ever more elabo- al environments with feminist liberation movements.20
rate layers of the structural solution, the entire edifice In the first edition, he recounts the transformation of
began to teeter. The modern experiences of anomie and ‘women-work’ and the changing roles of the housewife
alienation are simply the subjective experience of the in reference to Catherine Beecher’s essays on domestic
entropic mismatch of technological economies and architecture and women. Banham was very critical of so-
social order. lar technology of the time that required frequent mainte-
Banham was writing as the 1960s were drawing to a nance, warning that it would represent a step backwards
close, just as the dream of an unending supply of cheap for the bourgeois housewife because it would become
energy was begining to be replaced by an economic a new kind of ‘women’s work’.21 The incorporation
scarcity that would reconfigure the social and political of heating and washing apparatus into the household
landscape of the 1970s and beyond. Thus, the ‘power- proper in the nineteenth century was, he emphasized,
operated solution’ became paramount at the historical made possible largely though their miniaturization and
moment when the ‘heat-death’ of western civilization safety regulation, but these also removed from archi-
seemed at hand, both because the wealth of energy (as tecture a great deal of the work it needed to perform in
fossil fuels) available from the earth (the ultimate closed terms of environmental modulation and energy storage.
system) suddenly seemed finite and because the scope This leads to a detachment of architectural design from
of human-made environmental disaster was beginning its functioning as a calcification of thermodynamically
to be made apparent. As oil production in the United produced social order.
States was (correctly) predicted to peak by 1970, it With little left to do, except to protect the tempered
seemed that human culture was reaching its homeostatic atmosphere within from blowing away, the outer
horizon. shell of the American house, both in Catherine
Yet, the built environment and social order were Beecher’s early vision, and in later built fact from
both increasing determined by ‘power-based’ technolo- coast to coast, lost most of its detailed relationship
gies rather than the structural solution. For Banham, one to the internal economy and layout of the house
of the defining transformations from the first to second and thus became susceptible to any stylistic diver-
machine ages was the shift from large top-down indus- sification … that came along.22
tries of mass-production to consumer-based economies Architectural form, at least as understood under the
characterized by the proliferation of electric and elec- ‘structural solution’, has lost its role within the thermo-
tronic appliances that, he argued, were reshaping the dynamic expression of social and political order and has
social and cultural landscape.19 At the end of the second become a vestigial organ. Banham suggested abandon-

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 19

ing the formal ethics of the structural solution in favor While Bunshaft’s solution of hanging masonry at Lever
of the performative space of the fire. House is, as he notes, more elegant, both are used, along
with suspended ceilings, to conceal the vast mechanical
Badly-tempered architecture systems that make these architectures possible, in favor
Banham was characteristically critical of modern archi- of representational effects: ‘the aim was to present a
tects’ response to this condition. Air conditioning and smooth rectangular envelope, mechanistic in its stylistic
lighting was reshaping architecture’s relationship to the pretensions, but not mechanical in its expressed con-
environment, and indeed was making entirely new sorts tent’.25 Like Beecher’s American House, the envelope of
of space and occupation possible.23 Most of these spaces the building only needed to contain the ‘well-tempered
were not the remit of ‘high’ architectural design, and environment within’, like a soap bubble, and was de-
the text is poised upon the tension between the develop- tached from the technical-social ordering that it housed.
ment of low-brow environments that seem to exploit the Thus, from his point of view, the corporate architects of
energy-solution to maximum effect – for example, Las the second machine age were repeating with mechanical
Vegas’s light shows and speculative office building’s systems the mistakes many pre-war architectural heroes
generic open plans play a key role in the text. These made in the first by representing technology rather than
structures depend on ‘power-operated’ solutions and incorporating it.26 The curtain wall becomes a stylistic
downplay structural specificity. Indeed, the open office fancy, not a real basis for an ordered architecture. Ac-
is presented as the modern equivalent of the campfire, cording to the thermodynamics paradigm of the text,
constructed around a gradient of vertical circulation architects attempted to conserve architecture against
access at the core, natural light at the perimeter and entropic dissolution, rather than pursue its implications
even temperatures throughout. These fields, of course, in earnest.
configure office rank, the organization of furniture as a Banham also disagreed with Louis Kahn’s dissimu-
map of corporate organization and even economic re- lations of service, which he quoted:
gimes.24 All this led to the a de-emphasis of structural I do not like ducts, I do not like pipes. I hate them
solutions, for example with the development of curtain really thoroughly, but because I hate them so thor-
wall systems, and suggested a more flexible ordering of oughly I feel that they have to be given their place.
interior space and thus a less specific plan organization If I just hated them and took no care, I think that
of architectural form. they would invade the building and complexly de-
This led to strange contortions of architectural ex- stroy it.27
pression. For example, Banham critiques the fire-preven- Besides sounding like a page from Dr Seuss, the force of
tion upstands and spandrel glass in SOM’s Lever House revulsion here is quite palpable. The ‘power solution’ is
and Harrison’s curtain walls at the United Nations tower. an anathema to Architecture. One must, Kahn declares,

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 domesticate the fire, by containing it in its proper place Environment to suggest a revised notion of architecture
as service. Otherwise, it would, as a representation of and its relationship to social ordering. Charted through
the energy solution, consume not just a discrete build- the case studies Banham provided, there are three im-
ing, but the entire edifice of architectural discipline plicit trajectories for the development of electronic and
as the incarnation of the structural solution. In turn, mechanical systems as a figure of a new social order.
it threatens the end of the human subject and social The first implication was the sort of architecture
order as figured by the structural solution. Entropy was manifested in Rogers and Piano’s Pompidou Centre (it-
to be resisted by constructing ever stronger bulkheads, self an adaptation of Cedric Price’s unbuilt Fun-Palace).
repetition of bounded spaces, and rigid geometries.28 Banham celebrated both in the second edition of the
book as more sanguine responses than either Kahn’s or
The architectures of soft space SOM’s structures. He argued that Rogers and Piano did
Finally, I want to explore the implications for architec- not sublimate the energy systems into an image of struc-
ture of the power-operated solution Banham proffered ture but instead re-cast the structure as delivery system of
for our nomadic modernity. Within the text, Banham services, operated by its users to produce fleeting social
suggests a revised relationship between humans and organizations and spatial conditions (the Fun-Palace and
their environment: indeed, that the choice lies between the Pompidou were supposed to have mobile partitions
entropic decay of our structural-solutions culture, or the and floors).30 It is largely because of this that Banham’s
embrace of a ‘power-based’ solution to refashion our text is seen as the foundation of the British High-Tech
world. We are no longer bending olive branches upon movement.
some European peninsula to make an edifice, but gath- However, one can also extend it to Constant’s use
ering sticks upon a futuristic African or Mesopotamian of similar architectural languages of scaffolds, space-
expanse, or perhaps across the gridded expanse of a frames and mobile platforms for his Situationist New
Superstudio photo collage. Babylon projects, which were, after all, urban constructs
To this end, Banham advocated a different relation- and artificial and responsive environments for a post-
ship between aesthetic organization and technological revolutionary society, freed from the social ordering of
function mediated through the corporeal perception. bourgeois society and labor. Here Banham’s thermo-
Elsewhere, he had argued that the biological function dynamic parable about the elevation of humanity from
of architecture was to create a world of forms that syn- an equilibrium state and the liberation of bodily heat
chronize the human experience with the technological as leisure is replayed and manifested as an architecture
environment in which this subject continually trans- designed to induce purely ludic ‘zones’ of subjective
forms.29 This informational homeostasis is coupled intensity. The New Babylons were articulations of urban-
to the thermodynamic ontology of the Well-Tempered ism as fields of energy, not unlike the intensity of heat,

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 21

smoke and wind in the original campfire, or for that Architecture, it was argued, needed to acquire the
matter the Paris of ‘momentary intensity’ mapped by fleeting existence of the soap bubble, and its sheen of
Debord on his famous dérives. Within this energy field, scientific veracity. Steiner argues that architects rarely
unencumbered subjects would exists in an endlessly understood the distinction between programming and
nomadic dérive made possible by the technological hardware, and thereby conflated the aesthetics of soft-
landscapes that stretch across national boundaries and ness with transformability and feedback loops between
environmental features. Higher orders would emerge users and their environment. She notes that Banham
from this negentropic liberation of energy from the contrasted the inflatable environments of Barbarella
calcified ruins of the structural solution. If the camp- with the computer-encrusted sets of 2001: A Space
fire mapped a stable social order for Banham’s mythic Odyssey. He preferred, or as he put it, was ‘turned onto’,
nomads, in modernity the ‘energy solution’ seemed the former because it offered a ‘responsive environment’
aligned with the de-territorializations of space, the de- that would adapt to its user’s desires rather than serve
stratification of social order. Inhabitable space frames the mad logic of HAL the computer.31
are a cloud-like infrastructure for such gradient distribu- In the thermodynamic paradigm of the Well-Tem-
tions of power. pered Environment, the distinction between software and
A second path lay in the development of a surface hardware becomes less important than architecture’s
architecture: a soft and responsive membrane of a tech- role as a secondary osmotic membrane of informa-
nological organism. This option is less emphasized in tion / energy, one that creates the opportunity for new
the Well-Tempered Environment, perhaps because its spatial-social organizations.32 Claude Shannon had by
moment seemingly had passed by the time of writing. that time developed a cybernetic use of entropy, where
Yet it is implicated in the privileged place at the end of the term was used to measure the amount of information
the text given to the egg-shaped inflatable portable the- in a system. In cybernetics, all organisms are simply sys-
ater design by Victor Lundy and Walter Bird for the tems interacting with other systems and sub-systems as
United States Energy Commission, as well as the second homeostatic informational feedback loops that measure
edition’s large reproduction of Apollo-program space- differentiation. Following Gregory Bateson’s maxim
suits alongside orthographic drawings of an igloo. Under ‘information is the difference that makes a difference’,
Banham’s dichotomy of structure or energy solutions, the greater the degree of differentiation in a system – in
the igloo is a hybrid, at once structural and dynamically other words its deviation from equilibrium – the more
responsive in terms of its modulation of light. information the system contained.
Hadas Steiner has described how the 1960s dis- Life itself had shifted from mechanistic and struc-
courses on inflatable and mobile architectures offered tural explanations to informatic processes.33 And to
soft structures as an antidote to architecture’s hardware. close the loop from outer space to air-conditioned space,

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 by Banham’s time the ubiquitous air-conditioning ure architecture into a model of industrial design that
thermostat was often used by cyberneticists to explain promised ever greater leisure time, and thus the pos-
the concept of negative feedback and equilibrium to sibility of more energy spent on developing new social
a general audience. The spacesuit, for which the term and cultural formations. Unlike those scaffolds, which
cyborg was invented, was nothing other than a exter- always premised a social order, the bubble emphasized
nalization and amplification of the body’s regulation a hyper-individualism. For Banham, this provided for
of temperature and other critical parameters through an implicitly molecular body-politic more suited to
complex feedback systems design to ‘maintain the hu- post-war societies’ social transformations and ‘liber-
man user’s homeostasis under extreme environmental ated’ practices of the self. Thus, the pneumatic bubble
conditions’. This homeostatic second skin is a model for was not a primitive hut but an appliance for this new
the new sort of responsive information architecture that subject in a cybernetic garden of Eden – the anti-oikos
could catalyze new and higher forms of social organiza- for the anti-Oedipus.
tion and subjectivities. The third and most implicit trajectory lay in further
Thus, the detached skin that Banham located in intensification of the membrane as a taut skin of infor-
Beecher’s American House or in the corporate office mation and media. This is represented in the text via the
curtain wall is converted, in the inflatable, responsive illuminated and animated landscapes of Las Vegas, in
and bubble architecture, from a vestigial organ of the Banham’s discourses of electric light, and in his refer-
structural solution into an osmotic cybernetic mem- ences to Sheerbart’s celebrated paeans to colored glass
brane for the power-based solution. This was most fully atmospheric architectures, and to media theater produc-
visualized in Webb’s Archigram project, the Suitaloon, a tions in the early Bauhaus. Its trajectory comes to rest
hybrid of spacesuit and bubble-tent. The subject would on an unlikely project, Philip Johnson’s Glass House in
operate his architecture, expanding or contracting New Canaan, Connecticut, a house that dispenses with
its envelope, and even zipping into that of other users complex expression of mechanical systems and instead
to produce temporary spatializations of social rela- depends upon the shading of the trees and the topogra-
tions.34 Often these pods and bubbles were rendered phy of the site to provide a normalized climate. At night,
as giant organs. This was an image of a deterritorial- Banham notes, the trees are illuminated, further blur-
ized architecture, organs without the hierarchal body ring any distinction between architecture and environ-
of structural-solution societies. Its territories were not ment. The architecture in effect is a hybrid between a
defined by geometries of social and political boundar- scaffold, a pod and an illuminated screen.
ies but by mobile affiliations and networking of nodes.
Moreover, like the scaffolds of the Fun-Palace, bubble
architecture was in many ways an attempt to reconfig-

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 Putting out the Fire with Gasoline 23

2.3: The igloo, at once struc-

tural and dynamically respon-
sive in terms of its modulation
of light.

Conclusion: history and theory of the well- our present, and of the future suggested by the projects
tempered environment in this current volume, to the unfolding histories of the
That Reyner Banham’s The Architecture of the Well- discipline’s modernity. Moreover, it is interesting to
Tempered Environment remains a relatively overlooked note how each of the three implicit trajectories of the
text within the histories of modern architecture and its ‘power-based solution’ charted in his text are being ex-
discourses may prove that Banham’s central criticism plored within contemporary architecture, though many
of modern architecture is correct, at least in relation to would send a shiver down Banham’s humanist spine.
the socio-technical orderings of modern culture: that Others seem to extend the fantasy of transcendental
is to say, contemporary architecture and its histories liberation.
continue to neglect exactly the same dimensions and Ultimately, however, the usefulness of the text may
realities of our subject of study that Banham argued lie in its attempt to confound the banal divisions of archi-
the so-called Modernists repressed within their work.35 tectural knowledge that are limiting the field. In spite of
In our accounts of the built environment, historical a plea at the end of the second edition, his text continues
and projective alike, architecture continues to favor the to be filed under the Library of Congress categorization
static and the enclosed spaces of representation over with technical manuals. A search reveals its occasional
the performative fields and their infrastructures. Just place within technical course bibliographies, but scarcely
think of how circulation, flow and program continue to any sustained analysis within the histories and theories
dominate the production of form. This is true even with of architecture. With his thermodynamic ontology, the
the advent of ‘digitally based design’ in the 1990s and text challenges, above all, the simple dichotomies of the-
concepts of space such as animation and field-spaces, ory and technique, space and service, that still configure
for what has been at stake in these discourses remains a architectural knowledge. The proposition that technical
conversation about the representation of these forces as opportunities and problems can be the theoretical basis
a way to generate architectural form. This is more than of architecture remains important, and potentially more
amusing, since contemporary criticism of architecture productive and challenging to our conventions than criti-
depends a great deal on the supposed sophistication of cal theoretical, phenomenological or deconstructionist-
critical theory and histories over the Modernists’ naiveté derived approaches of semiotics and representation that
and technological romanticism. continue to dominate the discourse. This is all the more
Whether Banham was correct in the particulars of pressing today, when architects need to convert ecology
his argument therefore becomes less important than and environmental issues from technical problems with
the certain repetition of erasure of an entire dimension engineering solutions into engines for innovating and
of the modern built environment. His text becomes opening the discipline.
useful in attempting to determine the relationship of

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 3.1: Detail of “Amplification’ Installation.

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 Potential Energies 25

Potential energies
Sean Lally (Weathers)
In Animate Form, Greg Lynn looks to the ‘performative envelope’ as a means of engaging the
environment through forces that architecture and its surface are situated within. As an example
in which this is clearly expressed he points to the construction of the boat hull, which is based
on an understanding of the external forces applied to the form as it moves through the water
(flow, turbulence, viscosity and drag) and its necessity for accommodating multiple ‘vectors of
motion’ simultaneously within its shape. The focus of the ‘performative envelope’ is its ability to
hold within its shape multiple and latent responses to various external forces that have yet to be
applied. Based on the knowledge of the forces that will exist within the waters, the hull of the
boat is prepared to accommodate a range of external forces exerted upon it. However, a boat
designed for the shallow waters of the Mediterranean would be ill-prepared for the open waters
of the Atlantic, and neither of these boat hulls in dry dock would be anything more than a car-
cass. As Lynn states, ‘form is therefore shaped by collaboration between the envelope and the
active context in which it is situated’.1
Today architects have the resources to operate and design not solely on the basis of the
needs of form as they pertain to structure, force and envelope, but instead on the environmen-
tal criteria and conditions that facilitate organizations and actions within the places we inhabit.
Investigations today are no longer representations of forces that inform geometry and envelope,
but simulations of the broader ecosystems and interconnected variables that make up the ‘ac-
tive context’. The design process focuses not only on the instrumentality of ‘envelopes’ as they
pertain to the boat hull and the forces they index but on the ‘active context’ itself that architec-
ture finds itself situated within and around.

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 The SIM Residence. RIGHT,
3.2: Reflected ceiling plan.
BELOW, 3.3: Physical model.

Variability: energies over form

There is a lineage within architecture committed to un-
dermining an ingrained understanding of architecture
as a discipline focused on the static. It’s not necessary
to look as far back as the Baroque, or to the Futurists’
attempts to capture speed and movement, to recognize
such attempts, as more recently architects have turned
to techniques of ‘the trace’ or the ‘self-similar multiple’
as a means for indexing difference and variability. Ex-
treme examples exist that employ the literal movement
of form to accommodate and produce a multiplicity of
conditions and responses, but it’s precisely this type of
approach to generating variability through form itself
that’s the ‘red herring’ in this discussion. As architects
continue their long-standing history of borrowing
and misappropriating the tools of parallel disciplines,
including today’s advancements in the visualization of
atmospheric behaviors (developed by meteorologists and
material engineers), there are more and more opportu-
nities in how we visualize and operate upon our built
environment that provide methods beyond the manipu-
lation of geometries and formal logics for questioning
and subverting architectural stasis. Previous attempts
at achieving variability and adaptiveness have stemmed
primarily from tools and techniques of representation
focused on articulation and definition of envelopes and
surfaces. Today’s opportunities permit architects to
engage a broader spectrum of environmental design,
to engage a wider range of variables and to operate as
designers on a thicker territorial context.
With the ‘performative envelope’ as the point of de-
parture, this discussion will move from ‘the kinetic’–
relying on forces, vectors, and motion associated with
form and geometry – and look towards ‘the potential

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 Potential Energies 27

Project: THE SIM RESIDENCE

The SIM Residence Rigid in form, yet dynamic in its increase its capacity to support and diversify activities
responsiveness to various scenarios of living, the SIM in time. These discrete systems and variations of dis-
Residence displays a shift in energy from the kinetic play, illumination, and air temperature and movement
to the potential. This is a shift in which form has the network across local conditions to facilitate dynamic
ability to become imbued with performative variation and responsive conditions, which define a house that
derived from multiple scenarios of configuration and is interested less in its form or massing within a site:
position. These scenarios of living look to elastic and the SIM Residence focuses on the internal conditions
networked structures of organization (systems of dis- of living, the ‘conditioned space’ of the domestic.
play, illumination, and air flow and temperature) as a
method to develop configurations that, while dormant,
exist simultaneously within form until activated. In do-
ing so, the SIM Residence develops a system of latent
spatial conditions (scenarios) available to be called on
for the varied needs of domestic living. The intent is to

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 energies of the latent, simultaneous and multiple that commonly with spatial qualities (lighting, air flow, and
currently operate within our environment, yet remain moisture and heat transfer). Architects tend to assume
under-utilized as generative spatial tools. Today’s ubiq- that within buildings it’s solely the solid surfaces that de-
uitous use of the term ‘performativity’ has been largely lineate and define boundaries.2 However, advancements
relegated to the surfaces of architecture, which act to in the 1960s and 1970s that looked to building simu-
mediate boundaries. A discussion of performance must lation as a means to operate upon a building’s energy
therefore encompass a larger bandwidth of responsibil- performance make it clear that we have developed other
ity within approaches to environmental design. The in- means for visualizing and defining such boundaries in
tention is to shift the focus to the ‘active context’, and the architecture. Architecture and our inhabitable spaces
variables of energies and material flows associated most are informed by more than envelopes and surfaces, and
must begin to engage with ecosystems that incorporate
a broader array of variables for the generation of our
surroundings. These materials (energies and matter) are
inherently not static but are instead variable, allowing
us as designers to work within a broader bandwidth of
spatial potentials.

Integrating variables and visualizing potentials

One of the most variable and least predictable common
environmental behaviors belongs to the meteorologist
to interpret and predict. In the late 1980s Dr. Robert
Wilhelmson from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign began to identify atmospheric conditions
that resulted in the shift from common thunderstorms
3.4: Initial investigations of Dr. Robert Wilhelmson focused on to tornados, using animation software. Though general
indexing forms and shapes of a tornado configuration that repre- organizational patterns of meteorology permit us a win-
sented understood tornado behavior (funnels etc). With increased dow into potential climatic conditions days in advance,
processor speed and data, the ability existed for the model to not scientists know less about the predictability of and
simply index previously understood formal conditions that repre- relationships between severe weather systems and the
sented convection behavior but to simulate the tornado’s behavior conditions that permit their formations. The impetus
through an integration of independent variables, such as tempera- for the research was the meteorologist’s uncertainty as to
ture, wind speed, pressure, etc. why some storms produce tornados while others do not.

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 Potential Energies 29

The SIM Residence. BELOW,

3.5: Soft-living scenarios. BOT-
TOM, 3.6: Physical model.

Morning Glory Power Save Formal Wear Lounge Space

Territorializing space through light The SIM Resi- configurations are not required to stay pure in their
dence looks specifically to qualities of light and air organization but can be tweened or blurred to meet
temperature as a point of departure to illustrate an the specific needs of an individual or activity within
ability to territorially define space through what might the residence.
otherwise be dismissed simply as a quality. The dom-
inant formal strategy is a reflected ceiling plan that
consists of a network of nearly 300 interconnected
points, which are a combination of lighting devices
and air handlers. Lighting is used as a design strategy
and material, incorporating a half-dozen scenarios for
domestic living. These are configured to accommo-
date varied and multiple needs during the course of a
day through light intensity, color and location. These

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 Vertices
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62,
The SIM Residence. RIGHT, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92,
93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116,
3.7: Simulations conducted 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139,
140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162,
in software packages that 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170

can visualize fluid dynam-

ics, including temperature
and air movement, help to
broaden the bandwidth of
what constitutes a material for
defining boundaries and edges
in architecture.

Wilhelmson wanted to investigate atmospheric condi-

tions to understand what triggered such formations and
behaviors and whether it would be possible to predict
their formation through advancements in simulation
software.3
The initial approaches focused on the animation
of the storm’s general structure and resultant formal
conditions using available software. Much of this was
based on the limited information available as attempts
focused on the formal indexing of perceived behav-
iors, notating, for example, the resultant geometries
and shapes of a storm as they pertained to understood
behaviors indicative of a tornado. As the investigations
and research continued for an additional ten years that
included the availability of more processor speed (pro-
vided by the NCSA – National Center for Supercomput-
er Applications), scientists gained the ability to develop
models that didn’t simply index formal conditions, but
attempted to simulate the tornado’s behavior. This pro-
cess sought to move beyond a formal representation of
an understood condition within the storm, and instead
build a database of variables (atmospheric temperatures,
wind speeds, atmospheric pressure, humidity, etc.) as Potential energies > 4170 These then are potential
a means for interpreting the potential conditions and energies: an exponential number of possible spatial
organizations that could arise. The geometry and exter- and territorial constructs based on a network of in-
nal form of both the earlier and most recent approaches formation vertices and the static form that negotiates
remain similar, but it was this shift from using graphic these relationships to the territories beyond. They are
notations to represent formal logics to simulating envi- defined and refined through simulations and scenarios
ronmental behaviors as a means for understanding the of desired needs for living. The examples included are
resultant formal configurations that was crucial. intended to illustrate the availability of difference and
The investigations of Dr Wilhelmson and the NCSA the sheer magnitude of potentials that exist within a
demonstrate an approach to articulating form based on system of limited variables. The gradient colors above
don’t represent formal configurations, but instead
spatial organizations and gradients suitable and mal-
leable for varied activities and actions of individuals.

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 Potential Energies 31

4170 Permutations
> 170 Vertices
> 4 conditions

433 Permutations
> 33 Vertices
> 4 conditions

Territorializing space through air quality and temper- that emit the air and light and the territories beyond.
ature Even though form isn’t the impetus for design It is a collaboration between its formal configuration
decisions, it’s never understood to be neutral in terms and the desired spatial qualities and conditions it me-
of its performance within space. The network of 300 diates between.
interconnected points, which include air handlers,
requires airflow and its gradient temperature to pass
from the handler, through varied formal configurations
and into the space beyond. Criteria for material and
formal configuration is provided through simulations
that provide feedback as to how that air moves and
behaves with various possible formal configurations
and spatial dimensions. The formal configurations are
therefore a negotiation between the vertices or points

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 what many architects would quickly jump to dismiss as simulate the behavior and interaction of these variables
unusable, qualitative environmental conditions. Such as latent and viable design scenarios. Unlike meteorolo-
investigations highlight the instrumentality of spatial gists, who have the unpredictability of climatic condi-
qualities and effects as a means for articulating and tions to deal with, architects have the ability to control the
constructing space and territory. These are implications stimulation of variables for spatial and design needs. If
that therefore have the potential to extend beyond the information including the behaviors of such energies can
environmental needs associated with the conditioning be quantified and visualized, then that information has
of an interior space and into investigations focused on the means for being made operative in the definition and
the understanding and instrumentality of the ‘active qualification of the territories we construct and inhabit.
context’. Dr. Wilhelmson’s earlier visualizations and
research relied on a geometric definition to represent
an environmental condition – the use of form as a
crutch to represent what was essentially definable not
by borders and edges, geometries and solids, but by
gradients and magnitudes, energies and variables. The
simulations that permitted a diagnosis of the tornado’s
organizational system point towards an approach that
provides architects with decision-making tools, enabling
intensities, gradients and magnitudes of qualities to be-
gin to play a role in the organization of resultant spaces
and territories.
The research of Dr. Wilhelmson and the NCSA also
highlights the potential design tools and methodolo-
gies available to architects for design exploration. Such
investigations require the architect to have a means
for choreographing relationships and interactions
that might otherwise be understood as simply discrete
qualitative effects. As a generative tool for questioning
and researching the potentials of what constitutes spatial 3.8: Enabling researchers to engage information in ways previously
boundaries and organizations, the architect must be unavailable, the Cave provides an immersive virtual-reality room
able to operate upon and visualize such information, for visualizing and engaging spatial environments as they play out
and not simply represent a desired singular stasis but scenarios in front of you. See http://cave.ncsa.uiuc.edu

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 Potential Energies 33

3.9: Site model, ‘Amplification’

Installation, Schindler’s Kings
Road House, East Courtyard.

Project: AMPLIFICATION INSTALLATION

‘Amplification’ Installation, Fall 2006, Schindler
House, Los Angeles Shifting from a focus on form-
finding and composition to an investigation of spatial
performance and behavior requires a progression in
how one defines desired and obtainable goals. Looking
to the courtyard and garden of the Schindler House,
the intention is to refrain from constructing or intro-
ducing a new system within the space but simply to
‘amplify’ and heighten existing domestic qualities of
living that characterize and define its locale. Vegeta-
tion offers a range of opportunities in its abilities
to introduce and provide spatial qualities, such as
variability in bloom, growth size, color, scent, and
filtration of light, as well as the micro-climates that

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 Vegetation Facilitators Climatic Zones Space as Form

TOP, 3.10: Materials including

vegetation and the accompany-
ing qualities of temperature, are required for varied plant types. The project is an
light and scent are controlled amplification device in which ‘form’ acts to mediate
and amplified through facilita- between these quantified qualities and the spaces
tors such as heating devices, they define and reside within. The project is an inter-
fans and lighting which produce vention that works to heighten and manipulate these
resultant micro-climates of heat, qualities and performances as a means to instrumen-
water vapor, condensation and talize them. Qualitative aspects of the garden, includ-
air particulates, creating spatial ing micro-climates of temperature, humidity, scent,
boundaries and edges. ABOVE, color and light, are identified through the physiology
3.11: Section, ‘Amplification’ of the plants and ecological systems responsible as a
Installation, Schindler’s Kings means to amplify and operate upon these conditions.
Road House, East Courtyard. The materials and operational strategies in this archi-
tecture and space are the physiology of the ecological
systems that encompass us.

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 Potential Energies 35

3.12: Site model, ‘Amplification’

Installation, Schindler’s Kings
Vegetation, Climate and Facilitators Vegetation Road House, East Courtyard.
is chosen from a range of climatic zones ranging
from humid, moist conditions to those of temperate,
shaded ones. These existing climatic conditions are
used as initial states from which they are ‘amplified’
and ‘altered’ as design materials in the construc-
tion of new spatial territories and zones. Facilitators
– including heat sources in the water located below,
cooling agents in the top, air particulates introduced
between, lighting, and fans that control the velocity
of air movement – are quantifiable and controlled
to act upon the initial climatic conditions to create
varying and unique environments and internal spatial
boundaries. Each of these variables interacts and is
used to control and instrumentalize a range of criteria
generally dismissed as simply qualitative.

Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 45 10/9/06 11:02:07 AM

 A B C D

200.59

185.031

A 169.473

153.914

138.356
B
122.797

107.239

C
91.68

76.1214

60.5629
D
45.0043

Temperature (˚F) Fluid Temperature Material Temperature

Isosurface:
Pressure (lbf/in’2)

ABOVE, 3.13: Simulations in energies and fluid dynamics as

COSMOS permit each of the design materials, rather than
six “units” that make up the through the use solely of struc-
‘Amplification’ Installation to ture and geometry. OPPOSITE,
appear identical in shape and 3.14: The elements of a typical
form, yet unique and variable “unit.”
in terms of the interior spatial
behaviors. This occurs through
an understanding of material

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 Potential Energies 37

Tracer Humidity
Tracer colors are added to
water and subsequent con-
densation, creating visual
and spatial boundaries.

Fans
The fans control the move-
ment and circulation of air
for plant growth, including
formations of micro-climates
and air-flows visualized
through colored dyes and
humidity.

Acrylic Container
The container is engraved to
trap water condensation on
the interior in various sizes
and patterns, trapping the
water for recirculation.

Vegetation
Plant material grown in
containers facilitates the
varying climatic zones and
systems.

Lighting
Fluorescent bulbs for plant
growth, including the visual-
ization and fluorescent dyes
in vegetation and tracers in
air and water.

Plant Containers
For the hydroponic growth
of plant materials.

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 4.1: Photographed by a crew most dense portion of the
member on board the Inter- Earth’s atmosphere. The tro-
national Space Station, this posphere ends abruptly at the
image shows the limb of the tropopause, which appears in
Earth (at the bottom) transi- the image as the sharp bound-
tioning into the orange-colored ary between the orange- and
troposphere, the lowest and blue-colored atmosphere.

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 39

The phenomena of the non-visual

Michelle Addington

Orthographic projection produces the objectified surface – fixed in Cartesian space and end-
lessly reproducible. What cannot be easily reproduced is the perception or experience of the
environment that is always transient, always unique. Defining the surface does not define the
environment. We traditionally design to create an image or sequence of images rather than a
visual response; we design to replicate interior conditions rather than for a thermal experience.
Perception becomes incidental, and yet we presume to design experience through the avatar
of the surface. A discussion about light in an architectural work will focus on the materials and
their placement. Any discussion about heat will revolve around the façade. When phenomena
are foregrounded, they are described as the preternatural results of carefully designed architec-
tural artifacts. Essentially, we have assigned environmental causality to an image on a picture
plane.
This objectification of the surface as both the progenitor and the representative frame of envi-
ronmental phenomena keeps us tautologically bound to a Renaissance definition of space even
while our surface forms have become progressively articulated and non-orthogonal. Escaping
this bind requires that we subordinate the hegemony of the picture-plane representation, and
begin to understand the surface as fluid and contingent rather than fixed and constituent. Only
then can we begin to apply the unprecedented array of tools now available, which allows for the
representation of phenomenological behavior.

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 Perceptual environments – those that determine a discontinuity between adjacent entities. Inside and
what we feel, hear and see – are all thermodynamic in outside exist on opposite sides of the line in a plan, as
that they are fundamentally about the motion of energy. do first floor and second floor in a section. Extruded,
Furthermore, as energy is not visible, thermodynamic the line becomes our orthographic surface, and thus not
systems are not legible. As such, our normative mode only the limits of an environment but also its container.
of spatial representation has left us ill-equipped to de- This boundary is static and defined, and its legibility for
sign for perception. The tools do exist, the knowledge marking the limits is traditionally relegated to the visual
is available, but we must shift our contexts through artifact. In physics, however, the boundary is not a thing
which we define the body’s environment in a building. or a place, but an action that cannot be fixed or even de-
The contexts in question are those that are premised signated in our conventional framing of space.
on formal determinism. The concept of boundary, the The boundary as action is the zone of thermodynam-
use of scale, and the choice of the reference frame seem ic energy exchange between two quiescent environments
pro forma to us, but the presumption that the building, or energy fields. Collapsed into this zone of activity are a
particularly its form, serves as the point of origin for de- series of behaviors that serve as the means for transfer-
fining these is antithetical to the description of energy ring energy from one of these fields to another. We
systems. In these systems, boundaries are behaviors, not might be tempted to loosely describe it as a zone of tran-
walls, and scale relates to the phenomenon and not to sition or mediation, and thus presume that it can be
the size of the building. More difficult to untangle is the equated to a threshold, perhaps as a region of ambiguity
issue of the reference frame, being shifted from one in in which both fields co-exist, or even as a blurring where
which the building is the objective determinant to one the edges may be indefinite. Transfer, however, is not
in which the subject operates as the center. The follow- the same as transition.
ing essay steps away from our normative representation Our dependence on orthographic projection inher-
of the perceptual environment, and begins to ask how ently privileges a spatial transition from one entity to
we might reconfigure these contexts in order to produce another – regardless of whether that transition is scalar,
architecture as a construction of subjective effects rather linear or algebraic. A transition in direct sunlight can
than an assembly of objective artifacts. readily be plotted if the two-dimensional geometries are
defined; a transition in the plane of view can similarly
Boundary as behavior be constructed from perspectival projections. Notwith-
The term ‘boundary’ in architecture traditionally standing the current preoccupation with descriptive
connotes limits – the boundary as a property line, as geometry, in which extraordinarily complex geometric
a building envelope, as the walls of a room. Its two- operations can negotiate between dissimilar and incon-
dimensional representation is a line that demarcates gruous forms, the operations are still rooted in objective

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 41

4.2: Profiles of air temperature and velocity in two common types

of boundary layers: Boundary layer
(A) the boundary layer that develops between a heated surface thickness

and cooler surroundings;

(B) the boundary layer that forms in open space above a heated
source (designated by the point).

Temperature profile

Cartesian dimensions. Energy transfer, however, cannot

be determined from geometries, and therefore we can-
not neatly map these exchanges in relation to dimen-
Velocity profile
sioned entities. Heat, defined as the energy transferred
as the result of a temperature difference, is transferred
by motion, even though the temperature difference may
be between two stationary entities. The boundary, then,
is an active region of negotiation rather than a transi-
tional space. As an illustration (see fig. 4.2), we can
see that a velocity field will emerge and then disappear
in the boundary between the static wall and adjacent,
unmoving air. More importantly, the boundary of inter-
est is not the wall as a discontinuity, but the moving
layer that emerges between the wall and the adjacent
A B
environment.
The boundary layer comes into being only when there
is an energy difference. This energy difference can be to the surroundings (fig. 4.2B). The pervasive image of
due to temperature, pressure, density, phase, height, mo- environments as being relatively homogeneous belies
mentum or concentration, and a unique boundary layer not only the existence of these boundaries, but their
will appear for each difference and each magnitude of importance in determining the body’s perception of its
difference, and disappear when equilibrium is reached. surroundings. Essentially, the operative ‘surfaces’ in a
Much more common than the boundary that appears building are these fleeting boundaries – not the fixed
next to a wall are those that develop in open space, known artifacts of walls, floors and ceilings. For the human
as free field boundaries. Among the most obvious of body, then, the thermal environment is defined by the
these are weather fronts, and we fully recognize that a behavior of the boundary layer immediately adjacent to
cloud bank serves as the boundary layer in which two the body (see fig. 4.3). In spite of our incredibly bloated
different-pressure air masses are negotiated. Not so easy HVAC systems that condition huge volumes of air to
for us to visualize are the free field boundaries that are maintain the building’s environment at prescribed con-
continuously popping up and disappearing in our in- ditions, the effective surfaces of the body’s thermal en-
terior environments. All heat-producing entities – from vironment –that is, what the body ‘reads’ as its thermal
computers, to lighting, to human bodies – produce a environment – are all contained within the surrounding
narrow boundary layer in which the energy is transferred few centimeters of its boundary layer.

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 4.3: Schlieren image of the
thermal boundary layer sur-
rounding a girl.

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 43

Macro-scale Meter 4.4: The scales at which

Convection (sound) thermodynamic phenomena are
Meso-scale Centimeter
governed.
Micro-scale Micron Radiation (light)

Nano-scale Nanometer
Conduction (diffusion-heat)
Pico-scale Picometer

Scale Light, as a tiny subset of the electromagnetic spec-

Perhaps even more difficult to conceptualize in regard trum, is wholly determined by features that are sized
to energy boundaries is just how little they have to do from 0.4 to 0.75 microns. When we design for light,
with the artifacts of design. Regardless of the complex- we tend to design at the scale of a building – we think
ity of a formal design, all the resulting artifacts can be in terms of surfaces and their orientation. If south light
described in geometric relationship to one another. As is desired in a space, the building might be reoriented
such, we can say that architectural form-making follows to face south, or an elaborate sunlight-directing system
the rules of geometric similitude. Energy behaviors, with roof-mounted heliostats might be used. But these
and particularly thermodynamic behaviors, follow the strategies, even though typical, are exaggerated moves
rules of dynamic similitude. The magnitude of the that indirectly produce the desired light conditions, and
forces determines how the relationship from one entity do so with substantial over-engineering. A thin film
is negotiated. This is true even for boundary layers that with a carefully designed ‘texture’ on any façade could
are adjacent to a fixed wall – doubling the height of the easily deliver the desired light quality – an economy of
wall will not affect the behavior of the layer, whereas scale matched to an economy of means. Herein lies one
a tiny change in temperature may instigate a radically of the non-intuitive paradoxes of design: the artifacts
different behavior. that we see are not the determinants of their own vis-
Geometric dimensions are not inconsequential, but ibility. Instead, what we recognize as a formal object,
the dimensions of interest for energy boundaries are such as a wall, is tangible only coincidentally in that the
at scales that are several orders of magnitude smaller surfaces of an object are generally the carriers of the mi-
than those we associate with the built environment. In cron-sized features. Indeed, when artists such as James
architecture, we use the terms micro- and macro-scale Turrell operate intentionally at the level of light behavior
analogously in relation to built objects – micro-scale to cause solid walls to seemingly disappear or make walls
might represent for us a room or a building, macro- appear in thin air, we often describe the images as illu-
scale might represent a site or an urban area. When sions or gestalt rather than as the fundamental manifes-
we discuss the scale of energy behaviors, however, we tations of physics at its most basic level.
use the dimensional scales quite literally – micro-scale Among the energy behaviors of interest to the de-
describes those phenomena that are determined by signer of human environments, only the convection of
micron-sized features. The behaviors that determine our sound operates at dimensions similar to building scale.
perception of light, heat and sound are all produced by The wavelengths of audible sound vary from a centime-
the basic mechanisms that drive heat transfer, and these ter to about 20 meters, and therefore the specific con-
mechanisms have a characteristic scale at which they are struction of wall sections and the volumetric positioning
governed (see fig. 4.4). of surfaces become the primary determinants of sound

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 4.5: Receptor field of the human eye. The receptor field ‘zeros
out’ areas in which luminance levels do not change – the center
of the field reads positive for photon interactions and the periphery
reads negative for the same quantity of photon interactions. As
long as levels are continuous, the neural response of the eye is un-
changed, regardless of what the absolute luminous levels are. High
luminance and low luminance produce identical neural responses.
Only when difference is encountered ‘within’ the receptor field is
there any change in response.

Luminance

Neural Response

reception. Any wavelength of audible sound more than ference at this scale, or if the gradient of the difference
twice as large as the cross-sectional dimensions of the is gradual, then the eye is incapable of distinguishing
wall section will interact with the surfaces by rules of between black and white even insofar as there may be
geometric optics. As such, this is the one exception in several orders of magnitude difference in the measured
which the orthographic projection of picture planes luminance levels at room scale (see fig. 4.5). Many as-
can be translated directly into mapping the movement pects that we assign to a surface through its dimensions,
of sound in a space. Nevertheless, the orthographic such as position and distance, are ‘read’ wholly through
projections of interest extend beyond simply the wall microscopic rifts in luminance within the field of view.
surfaces: about half of the audible range is small enough Just as light can best be controlled at the micron level,
that the wall section dimensions will dominate. Rather perception is also best activated at the micron level. One
than sound directly reflecting off the visible surface of a can design a room of surfaces at particular locations and
wall, different frequencies in the same bounce will ‘see’ orientations to indirectly create a desired visual reading
different surfaces inside the wall, almost as if there were of a space or one can take any arbitrary collection of sur-
a simultaneity of many walls rather than only one. faces and script tiny luminance shifts within the field of
The understanding of scale is important not only for view to directly create the same effect.
the characterization of phenomena, but also for the de- Although less is known about the body’s thermo-
termination of the appropriate means for manipulating receptors (heat) and mechanoreceptors (sound), there
those phenomena. The scales that govern the physical does exist a similar specificity in these receptor fields
phenomena match directly with the scales of the human at the scales of the relevant phenomena. Indeed, rather
neurobiological system. Our perception of the visual do- than immersing the body in a large surround of ambi-
main is determined completely by a difference in photon ent air at a controlled temperature, one could selectively
activations in adjacent receptor cells. If there is no dif- manage homeothermy (for example, using conductive

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 45

4.6: Frames of reference (t0 is initial time, t1 is some future time):

(A) Eulerian frame with objective coordinates for tracking motion;
(B) Lagrangian frame of reference – the present and future loca-
tion can be one of many possibilities. t1

t0

t0
t1
B

heat transfer near the carotid artery) while simultane- a variable to a Cartesian system, the resulting frame of
ously articulating the perception of thermal events by reference is said to be Eulerian. The spatial relationship
selectively activating different receptor fields on different between object and viewer may change, but for each
parts of the body. If we can operate directly at the scale moment of time there can only be one relationship. As
of the phenomena to design receptor responses, then the a result, defining the location predetermines and thus
surface, rather than being the primary determinant of its fixes the ‘view.’
subjective reading, becomes almost incidental. Eulerian frames of reference are used extensively to
objectify complex physical phenomena – by plucking
Lagrangian and Eulerian frames of reference out certain moments, one can develop a series of still
At the heart of subjectivity lies the concept of simultane- ‘pictures’, and since every picture refers back to the same
ity. Although much of current architecture regards itself coordinate system, one can track a behavior (see fig.
as posing conundrums, the objectification wrought by 4.6A). Tracking, however, is not substantively predictive,
its translation into static forms, no matter how complex, and more importantly, it is not explanatory. Further-
privileges only the multiple, not the simultaneous. To more, the fixity of the frame encourages the association
be clear, simultaneity does not require movement of of the artifact with the point of origin. As an example, a
the forms – kinetic architecture is still represented by a particular corner in a building will establish the locus for
sequence of multiples. It does require, however, a shift in all other objects. The Eulerian frame is thus an idealized
the frame of reference. frame – pure geometries lead to closed mathematical
In a Cartesian system, defining the coordinates relationships. As such, fields in which uncertainty plays
of an object fixes the object in space, as defining the a major role, particularly quantum mechanics and fluid
coordinates of a viewer fixes the viewer’s place in the dynamics, require an additional frame of reference that
same space at any given time. When time is added as allows for the messiness of an intractable problem.

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 4.7: Comparison of stress–strain curves for conventional material
(A), and for a shape memory alloy such as nitinol (B). Depending
STRESS

upon the starting temperature, the material will deform either in

the martensite phase (low temperature) or the austenite phase
(high temperature).

A
STRAIN

austenite nitinol have two possible paths depending upon what

stage of phase transformation the material is currently
STRESS

undergoing (see fig. 4.7B). Only by knowing where the

material has been is it possible to know whether it is the
martensite martensitic path or the austenitic path.
Decoupling phenomena from form and foreground-
B ing the subjective environment may yield unprecedented
STRAIN opportunities to design for perception. The understand-
ing of human perception has typically been genericized
in architecture, and described in relationship as qualities
Lagrangian frames of reference, rather than being that belong to, and are therefore determined by, a
idealized, are premised on uncertainty and variability. building – the temperature of the ambient air, the foot-
The coordinate system has its origin not at a point fixed candles on a surface. Perception, however, is active, and
in space, but at the center of the subject (see fig. 4.6B). in Lagrangian terms wholly dependent upon the body’s
The frame is thus always subjective, and the artifactual recent experiences – what one sees is determined not
objects are then viewed as fleeting entities of varying only by what is in the field of view at any one time but
size and aspect, even insofar as they are invariant and by what was in the field of view the moment before, as
stationary. Defining the positional coordinates no longer well as by which direction the eyes may be turning in:
defines the artifact, and the subject must know where it ‘identical’ images will be perceived differently if the eyes
has been, as well as where it is going, in order to know are moving from left to right rather than from right to
what it is seeing at any given moment. Lagrangian left, and similarly so with up and down motions. Current
frames embed time as presenting simultaneous pos- research is demonstrating that even a tiny shift in the
sibilities instead of as a linear march in which there can spectral distribution of light entering from the periphery
only be one position for each moment of time. of the eye rather than the center can completely reset the
Perhaps the clearest example demonstrating the body’s circadian rhythm. The thermal sensations of the
difference between a Lagrangian and a Eulerian frame body are due to changes in the rate of heat transfer on
involves stress-strain relationships in materials. Con- the surface of the skin and are perceivable only when the
ventional materials fundamentally obey Hooke’s law rate of change is changing from the moment before. The
during elastic deformation. If the amount of stress on a ambient temperature of the room is almost insignificant
material is known, then its position (as a result of defor- in determining sensation.
mation) is also known – there is only one possible path There has been an explosion in the amount of know-
(see fig. 4.7A). In contrast, shape memory alloys such as ledge available regarding the functioning of the body

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 47

in relation to its perceptual environments, and yet the layers against or around non-equilibrium conditions.
architectural approach to perception remains wedded Even the computational grids used for discretization are
to assumption and anecdote. It is difficult for us to produced in the building’s image as a container – boxes
design what we can’t see in order to determine what of conservative volumes that are several orders of mag-
we do see, or to design for a tactility that is completely nitude larger than the phenomena supposedly being
disconnected from an object. Regardless of how innova- studied. In no other field that uses CFD would there be
tive our representational methods and building forms an a priori decision that the only energy boundaries of
have become, we still address perception incidentally interest must belong to the largest solid surfaces.
and statically. What would we make, as architects, if we Much of the difficulty we have in overcoming our in-
could design for subjective experience? nate prejudice that these tools should analyze building
systems, and not thermal behavior, cycles back to issues
Designing for perception of representation. In the other fields that use CFD,
There is a wide array of computational tools that could orthographic projection was never a common means of
allow us to make a small foray into this non-intuitive representation; indeed, most of these fields only use or-
world. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), originally thographic projection in association with the visualiza-
developed in 1973 by NASA to replace wind-tunnel tion of CFD data. As a result, there is no misunderstand-
testing, has revolutionized many fields, from nuclear ing that the visualization is anything other than a means
cooling to micro-electronics, because of its ability to of simplifying the presentation of data. In the field of
characterize the transient behavior of air movement architecture, however, the automatic assignation of
and heat transfer. Although its entry into the field of geometric form to an orthographic projection presumes
architecture didn’t come until twenty years later, there that the representation and the object are one and the
already is a large body of experience with this tool, par- same. We are not able to extricate the visualization of an
ticularly in the major consulting firms. Indeed, very few object from the visualization of behavior. The abstract
large projects move forward without at least one CFD representation of discretized data becomes instead a sur-
study that explores issues of wind or ventilation. Never- rogate for our assumptions regarding the environment
theless, the application is heavily constrained by extant that surrounds us.
technologies – particularly HVAC systems – that produce Our assumptions regarding the phenomena in our
stable, ambient conditions within the building volume. physical surroundings have been surprisingly resistant
This assumption, that the thermal environment belongs to reconfiguration, and this may well be due to the
to the building, prevents any substantive examination hegemony of the visual avatar. Phenomena, which are
of individual behaviors, as the only boundaries in these discrete and transient, are appropriated by the body’s
models are the surfaces of the walls, not the numerous neurological system in an equally discrete and transient

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 manner, such that all sensory experience is unique for how air moves in a room that dates from 1844 (see fig.
each individual. There has been a long-standing effort 4.8A), drawn long before the physics of air movement
to objectify sensory experience, particularly the thermal was fully understood, is little different from the visual-
experience, and this is manifest through the various ization produced by a CFD package 150 years later (see
‘performance’ measures that mandate the ideal interior fig. 4.8B), even though the CFD package represents the
conditions in a building. Indeed, much of today’s cur- state-of-the-art understanding of heat transfer and fluid
rent attention to the design of interior thermal environ- mechanics. In a similar vein, many of the tools that sim-
ments refers to the PMV, or predicted mean vote, which ulate light privilege photorealism – the image – over,
attempts to quantity an ambient temperature that the ironically, vision. Photorealism is precisely what the
majority of occupants will find neutral – that is, they term implies: the resulting image looks just like a pho-
will not notice their ambient surroundings. Sensation, tograph. We are fully aware that photographs represent
however, does not provide a picture of the surrounding what the camera sees, not what or how the eye sees, but
environment, nor does it necessarily serve as a means to we tend to abandon that distinction when we collapse
communicate the construction of that environment. Our photorealism into our orthographic projections. There
sensory systems activate only in the presence of change, has been some effort, however, directed toward using
and our cognitive awareness of heat, light or sound these tools to understand the construction of the visual
is not of the environment at all, but of the manner in field. The photorealistic images are still popular, but
which our own bodies are reacting to the environment. many architects are now investigating light via contour-
We directly sense ourselves, and only indirectly sense level plotting, as it is the contours that determine what
our environment. we see and not the surfaces (see fig. 4.9). Nevertheless,
The visual avatar becomes the language, and the even these contours are generally plotted at building
only language, through which we can communicate that scale, and not at the scale of either light or vision.
which is ostensibly private and personal. But we cannot The most advanced digital tools have been tauto-
draw what is perceptually present through the means logically bound to reproduce that which we believe
of orthographic projection any more than we can draw we know, rather than investigate that which we do not
what is physically present (with ‘physical’ referring to know. Escaping this constraint demands that we oper-
the phenomena and not to the artifact). As such, our rep- ate supra to the artifact rather than subordinate to it.
resentations of interior environments remain stunningly Indeed, if we could use our digital tools to characterize
simplistic. As an example, the architecture field tends physical behaviors, and not just to visualize them, the
to ‘validate’ CFD simulations of room environments by surface as both architecture and its representation might
comparing the results to reality, but this is a reality that lose its hegemonic dominion. Instead of articulating
has been determined by image, not physics. An image of the surfaces and filling the container with ambient (and

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 49

<20 21.5 >23

Temperature / ˚C

A B
ABOVE, 4.8: Our image of how air moves is relatively unchanged
over the last 160 years: (A) was produced by D.B. Reid in 1844
to illustrate how air circulates in a room with only one window; (B)
is a sample image produced by Flomerics Corporation to illustrate
their CFD package FLOWVENT™ and its simulation of air flow in a
room with one window.

BELOW, 4.9: Nasser Albuhasan’s and Joaquin Goicoechea’s

competition entry for the Tomihiro Museum used studies of light
contours with the ray-tracing software Radiance to manipulate
translucent surfaces within the field of view so that watercolor im-
ages would still be foregrounded.

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 4.10: CFD ‘experiments’ in producing discrete thermal environ-
ments. The images on the left are sectional temperature profiles,
demonstrating how the careful placement of a tiny heat source
such as a halogen lamp (red dot in center of the left side) can
produce distinct thermal zones within a larger space. The images
on the opposite page are sectional velocity profiles, demonstrat-
ing how the use of multiple tiny heat sources (in centers of both
sides) can cause the emergence of a highly active zone within a
quiescent environment.

neutral) environments, the environments could become

articulated and the surfaces would only be a neutral ar-
mature. A simple white cubic space could be read as an
infinite number of spaces if we designed for perception
by acting directly on the phenomena.
The actual sequence from objective phenomena to
subjective perception can be understood as four distinct
areas of knowledge, with two of these as operative:
1. Physical Phenomena – laws of heat transfer, mass
transfer, electromagnetic radiation;
2. Inducement of Phenomenological Behaviors –
selective technological or environmental manipu-
lation;
3. Human Physiology – thermo-regulation, neuro-
biology;
4. Human Perception – receptor fields (zero-
crossing), somatic sensations.
Figure 4.10 illustrates how one might begin to ‘in-
duce’ phenomenological behaviors through very selective
actions. The temperature profiles represented on the left
part of the figure show how one might manipulate the
surrounding environmental conditions to begin to differ-
entiate thermal spaces within a larger space. The velocity
profiles on the right part of the image demonstrate how
tiny and discrete technologies can be manipulated to
create different behaviors. These discrete zones and be-
haviors, and not the larger ambient environment, are
what produce the conditions that determine the human
response. The perceptions that ultimately emerge from
the phenomena that surround us, then, are created through
the design of an environment that bridges areas two
and three, from phenomenological behaviors to human

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 The Phenomena of the Non-Visual 51

physiology. It is in this region that architecture, not as an

artifact but as an action, resides.
The advent of the digital era promised a revolution
in the production of architecture, and it delivered on
that promise. The proliferation of highly articulated
forms enabled by CAD/CAM are clear manifestations
of the role that digital representation has played in the
making of buildings. In regard to the experience of
architecture, however, the switch from analog to digital
representation is insignificant unless one can challenge
the implicit privileging of surface that is embedded in
orthographic projection. That challenge demands that
we strip causality away from form. The boundary be-
longs to the phenomenon and not to the formal surface,
and the phenomena that shape our perception of our
surroundings operate by rules that have no grounding
in our normative modes of spatial representation. The
discrete phenomena of the physical environment are
what directly determine the perceptual environment
– as such, we would ideally design physical behaviors to
create the perceptual response. The effect is decoupled
from the surface; the surface becomes incidental. The
building is no longer the incidental determinant of its
environment, but the armature for its perception.

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 5.1: Jyväskylä Music and Art
Center concept rendering.

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 Nested Capacities 53

Nested capacities, gradient thresh-

olds and modulated environments:
Towards differentiated and multi-performative
architectures
Michael Hensel and Achim Menges
(OCEAN NORTH)

Contemporary architectural design characteristically deploys hard material thresholds to define

spatial arrangements and areas for predetermined use of space. Within this context building
performance is seen to relate to structural and environmental conditions, an area thought to
be characteristic of engineering and thus largely seen and treated as some kind of post-design
optimization. There is, however, an alternative approach to performance-driven architectural
design based on a spatial paradigm that correlates material and gradient environmental thresh-
olds and their capacity for mutual modulation. In this context notions of both ‘structure’ and
‘environment’ need to be understood in a wider sense, beyond the singular function of load-
bearing and mechanical ventilation, air conditioning and heating. ‘Structure’ is here defined as
the interrelation or arrangement of parts in a complex entity with particular spatial, formal and
behavioral attributes and characteristics, the latter of which are indivisible from environmental
performance. ‘Environmental performance’ is defined as the multitude of interactions between
interrelated material and climatic constituents of the human habitat.

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 Based on this understanding, this article seeks to ham posits ‘might prove to be of fundamental relevance
propose an architecture that actively differentiates en- for power-operated environments’ by suggesting a more
vironmental conditions by means of its morphological sustainable approach to architecture. This article intro-
and material articulation. It does so by linking behav- duces a take on architectural design that incorporates
ioral tendencies and performative capacities of material Banham’s varied and temporal spatiality into substantial
systems with environmental modulation and the result- yet equally varied structures, by shifting away from the
ing provisions and opportunities for inhabitation. In homogeneous and largely mono-functional material sys-
doing so, this approach engenders emergent and inten- tems that make up the built environment today towards
sively choice-driven patterns of inhabitation and social heterogeneous and multi-performative systems. The
formation, and approaches a new paradigm for social aim is to show how these systems can modulate and, in
and environmental sustainability relative to the built turn, be modulated by environmental conditions and to
environment. This is, however, a call not for kinetically suggest alternative spatial strategies based on gradient
enhanced architectures, but instead for an intelligent threshold conditions.
dynamic relation between a static yet highly differenti- Modernist discourse postulated universal space as
ated morphology and a changing environment. the key paradigm for democratic space. The open plan,
While contemporary architecture defines space ideally extended to an infinite homogeneous grid, for
through hard material thresholds, this has not always instance, was meant to deliver equal opportunity for
and everywhere been so. In his seminal work The Arch- inhabitation, while the ribbon window and glass curtain
itecture of the Well-Tempered Environment,1 Reyner wall façade, were meant to replace privileged framed
Banham describes two traditions of architecture: one views. The preference for universal space brought with it
with substantial structures and one without. ‘Societies the modularization of building elements and systems, as
who do not build substantial structures inhabit a space well as a homogenization of entire climates. In order to
whose external boundaries are vague, adjustable and achieve universal space and intended uniformity, each
rarely regular,’ wrote Banham, referring to the example building element or system was required to perform one
of a campfire that provides a gradient of temperature principal function (primary structure, secondary struc-
and light that is at the same time dynamically affected ture, sun-shading, rain cover, climate envelope, to name
by extrinsic influences, such as airflow and other envi- a few) and was thus optimized towards that particular
ronmental conditions. These dynamically differentiated singular function.
spaces provide for individual preferences of inhabitants. This single-objective approach to optimization is
Differentiation is thus expressed in gradient threshold based on an understanding of efficiency that entails
conditions rather than a hard division between inside the minimum use of material and energy to fulfill one
and outside, warm and cold, and so forth, which Ban- single task. Single-objective optimization gave rise to

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 Nested Capacities 55

LEFT, 5.2 and BELOW, 5.3: View

of the 1/75 model showing the
primary, secondary and tertiary
lattice systems without the
building envelope. RIGHT, 5.4:
View of the 1/75 model with the
building envelope.

Project: JYVÄSKYLÄ MUSIC AND ART CENTER

Jyväskylä Music and Art Center by OCEAN NORTH The
Music and Arts Center proposed by OCEAN NORTH
aims for an extension of the Jyväskylä’s landscaped
town square into a rich, acoustically animated and
climatically differentiated interior landscape that ca-
ters for formal symphonic and orchestral events and
art exhibitions, as well as for informal cultural events
and activities. The lattice structures, trellis-work and
surfaces articulating the interior space provide for ad
hoc stages and seating and exhibition areas, while
creating a dynamically articulated space of acoustic
and visual intensities, with the struts that make up
the lattices being locally sound-active. This extends
acoustic experience beyond the interior of the music

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 5.5: Diagrams showing the stra- window constraints to regions
tegic constraints of the growth within the building envelope
process, including the local (opposite page).
search windows that determine
the angles of each strut of the
lattice in relation to the connec-
tion with the neighboring struts
r1
(this page), as well as the gradi- r2
ent maps that allocate search

r1 = 12.5 m
r2 = 7.5 m

the notion of lightweight structures with minimum α = 30 α = 40 α = 50 α = 60

use of material to achieve projected structural capacity
and performance. With a desired decrease in the use of
β=0
material, questions of liability appeared that led to an
added percentage of performance capacity to guarantee
functionality and safety. Redundancy thus was and still
is largely understood as an unfortunate necessity. A β = 15
critical view raises the question whether an alternative
understanding of optimization, efficiency and redun-
dancy in relation to multi-performative material systems
can facilitate a very different take on spatial organization β = 30
and environmental modulation.
Recent architectural discourse has largely moved
away from universal space and declared a preference for
heterogeneous architectures. This preference is evident β = 45
in two distinct strategies The first strategy entails a two-
step approach to varied space, commencing with generic
shells that are subsequently tailor-fitted to the needs of
β = 60
their eventual inhabitants. The second strategy compris-
es the design of exotically shaped buildings that are right
from the onset varied in expression and spatiality. The
first strategy embraces modularized building systems,
β=0 α = 30
while the second operates from the differentiation of
established building elements (individually articulated
β = 15 α = 40
frame and tile elements, for instance). Both strategies
concur, however, in embracing standardized require-
ments for interior environments, such as statistically β = 30 α = 50
determined homogeneous interior climates for public or
office buildings, as well as a limited range of building β = 45 α = 60
systems. The latter is evident in recently developed para-
metric software that is bound to established engineer- β = 60
ing and manufacturing protocols relative to material

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 Nested Capacities 57

Cone Angle Map [α]

Definition Points Vertical Angle Map [β] Vectors

Horizontal Angle Map

hall and rehearsal rooms into the interior landscape rules pertaining to (1) the location, orientation and
of the building volume. The directionality, density density of the struts that make up the lattice sys-
and layering of the lattices, and the trellis surfaces tems; (2) structural, sonic and luminous performance
and volumes that evolve from it, result in the percep- requirements; and (3) spatial design guidelines. The
tion of a locally differentiated yet vast space that is resulting lattice systems inform the geometries of
animated by gradient intensities of sonic experiences. the terrain, structure and envelopes of primary and
The layered, transparent and reflective envelope secondary spaces and surface areas, the circulation
continuously modulates gradients of reflection and pattern and the sound-active system. The deployed
transparency resulting from exterior and interior light morphogenetic growth process commenced from the
conditions, which contribute to the perception of a definition and distribution of virtual volumes informed
boundless deep space. by the programmatic requirements of the competition
In order to achieve such a high degree of mor- brief within the bounding box of the project site.
phological – and thus performative – differentiation, A series of gradient maps organised along the x,
OCEAN NORTH deployed an iterative, digital growth y and z planes, which delimit the growth area for the
process that articulates the lattices, informed by various lattice systems, informs the growth process

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 5.6: Chart outlining the rules
and spatial constraints result-
ing from the required volumes
and circulation that underlie
and inform the growth process
and the respective geomet-
ric articulation of the lattice
systems.

and machining technologies. Herein lies the problem.

While plan organization, the form of the envelope,
or the fittings and finishes might have become more
varied, material and building systems are not being
critically reviewed with respect to established types
and their mono-functionality, as well as building-type-
dependent interior climate requirements and uniform-
condition zoning.
The homogenization of interior environments had
its absolute peak with the advent of the office landscape
approach of the late 1950s through the work of the
Quickborner Team für Planung und Organisation, a
German management consulting group that proposed
vast open plan arrangements in which the anticipated
workflow is manifested in the furnishing of working
clusters arranged according to workflow.2 Applying a
large number of rules to the furnished organization of
office space, circulation and workflow, it was argued
that a homogeneous interior environment would imply
the least visual, aural and tactile distraction that needed
to be removed. Subsequently this form of spatial-envi- with performative requirements according to the re-
ronmental homogenization migrated to other building lation between and specific to the assigned zones.
types, from public to private spaces. Ironically, it was These zones guide the morphogenetic development
the deep open plan of the office landscape as the pre- by constraining the local search space for each strut
decessor of the ‘scapes’ of the 1990s, which operated of the lattice system to be digitally grown in terms
on a reduction of material threshold, that also sought of size and search angle, resulting in morphologi-
to fundamentally homogenize interior climates within cal regions with varying system capacities. For this
‘sealed box’ buildings. Space, according to this dogma, project the gradient maps are based on structural
becomes both deep and undefined, and environmen- performance, as well as the modulation of the lumi-
tally universal through its erasure of difference. The nous and sonic micro-environments of the interstitial
ultra-modernist dream came to its climax and architec- space between the outer envelope of the building and
ture became largely ‘neufertised’: appropriate values the envelopes of the various interior volumes not to
be intersected by the lattice system. Once the overall
volume is established through different growth mi-
lieus, a first set of definition points and search rules

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 PHASE 1
Circulation Concept Program Volumes Site Concept

MAPS
Horizontal Angle Map Vertical Angle Map Cone Angle Map

POINTS / VECTORS
Vectors Definition Points

LANDSCAPE
Tertiary Ground Lattic Secondary Ground Lattice Primary Ground Lattice

VOLUME

Tertiary Volume Lattice Secondary Volume Lattice Primary Volume Lattice

COMPOSITE

Composite Exterior Surface

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 BELOW, 5.7: Three stages of OPPOSITE PAGE, 5.8:
the iterative growth process Structural analysis of the digit-
showing the distribution of ally grown lattice showing dis-
geometric definition points placement vectors (top) and
and primary, secondary and rotation vectors (bottom) for
tertiary lattice (left to right), the deformation resulting from
which subsequently inform the the self-weight of the structure,
articulation of structure and mapped onto the un-deformed
surfaces of the project. geometry of the primary lattice
(red indicates highest deforma-
tion, blue indicates lowest
deformation).

for each purpose, program and type were once and for
all statistically established and listed in useful books.
However, the combination of optimized mono-func-
tional elements or sub-systems together with homog-
enized comfort zones often requires an abundance of
heating, cooling, air conditioning, ventilation, light-
ing, and servicing equipment. While capital energy,
embodied in the materials and building processes, can
be kept relatively low, operational energy required for the
running of a building is extremely high, and is mainly
invested in the erasure of climatic differences to facilitate
a stable, ‘ideal’ interior environment. Environmental
design and engineering unfortunately remains a ques-
tion of post-design optimization rather than informing
the design process from a very early stage as a strategic
and instrumental aspect that is central to the design ap-
proach. Moreover, a homogenized interior environment
can simply not satisfy the multiple and contrasting needs
of inhabitants.
An alternative understanding of architecture as ecol-
ogy involves dynamic and varied relations and mutual
modulation between material systems, macro- and are defined that distribute and orientate the struts
micro-environmental conditions, and individual and that make up the primary lattice system in response.
collective inhabitation. The proposed approach to From the primary system, a second set of virtual sur-
architectural design is based on the deliberate differen- faces are derived on which a new set of definition
tiation of material systems and assemblies beyond the points are defined. In further digital growth iterations,
established catalogue of types, making them dissimilar secondary and tertiary lattice systems are evolved that
or distinct in degree and across ranges. Varied ranges of define mesh-like enclosures for the required internal
material systems can provide for diverse spatial arrange- volumes, circulation and sound-active systems.
ments together with climatic intensities. This involves While the iterative growth process is informed by
the deployment of the inherent behavioral character- performance requirements, the synergetic impact of
istics and modulation capacities of building elements the various systems working together needs never-
theless to be analyzed in stages. Digital structural,
luminous and sonic performance analysis was con-
ducted repeatedly in order to evaluate the emerging

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 Nested Capacities 61

conditions and synergies between the various micro-

systems that make up the overall project. Through the
differential density, altering depth and angular varia-
tion of the lattice systems and the varied distribution
of sound-active elements, evolves a heterogeneous
space in which augmented spatial, ambient and cli-
matic differentiation provide for choices between a
wide range of micro-environmental conditions that
can provide for time-specific, individual and collec-
tive needs and desires of the visitors, and an intense
cultural experience that conveys a contemporary and
synergetic spatial and musical sensuality and sensibil-
ity, and points towards the emergence of a new and
richly differentiated cultural institution.

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 A B

and systems, rather than a retrospective optimization to micro-fibrils (up to nanometer range, 10-9 m) and
process towards mono-functional efficiency. From this macro-fibrils (up to micrometer range, 10-6 m), to dif-
arises an understanding of efficiency as a dynamic char- ferentiated cells with equally differentiated cell walls
acteristic of the effective, based on utilizing redundancy (up to millimeter range), to the various features, such as
predominantly as latent capacity to perform a series of leaves, roots, branches and the overall tree (in the meter
different tasks, rather than as a safety measure. range).3 Whether the various regions of the timber of
Instrumentalizing multiple-performance capacity the branches perform better in tension (tension-wood)
requires an understanding of material elements and sys- or in compression (compression-wood) depends mainly
tems in a synergetic and integral manner. It considers on an alteration of the cell wall, which serves to show an
these systems in terms of their behavioral characteristics example of how differentiation on one scale will affect
and capacities with respect to the purpose they serve the performative capacity of the various larger scales of
locally and within the behavioral economy of larger magnitude.
systems. Today’s so-called sustainable design claims this Performative capacities embedded within the ma-
understanding but operates on it mainly as a question terial make-up and morphological articulation of the
of energy consumption, material life cycles and waste systems that comprise the built environment entail
production. An instrumental approach to relational therefore the interrelation of performative constituents
behavioral characteristics as a way of modulating spaces across a wide range of system scales. This realization
and environments, however, requires operative retool- suggests a radical shift from mono-functional modular-
ing for architects with respect to analytical and genera- ized building elements, based on linear task-solution
tive methods and techniques and their relation and concepts, to integral systems with non-linear, complex
phasing within the design process. Such an approach behavior and properties.
can learn from living nature, particularly the fact that In addition, architects can learn from connections
most biological systems are articulated through higher- and transitions between systems and sub-systems of
level multi-functional integration across at least eight biological entities. In the building sector connections
scales of magnitude. This enables both scale-dependent between parts and elements are almost always discon-
and scale-interdependent hierarchical relations that tinuous and articulated as dividing seams, instead of
result in higher-level functionality. smoother transitions in materiality and thus functional-
Take, for instance, the make-up of a tree: its hierar- ity (such as is seen in the way tendon and bone connect,
chical make-up from nano- to macro-structure ranges deploying the same fiber material yet across a transition
from glucose chains (in the angstrom range, 10-10 m), of mineralization that affects the elasticity or rigidity of

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 Nested Capacities 63

C D

ABOVE, 5.9: Morphogenetic RIGHT, 5.10: Digital daylight

growth process, left to right: analysis (red indicates high-
(A) distribution of seed and est intensity, blue indicates
definition points for the struts lowest intensity): top, midday
of the primary lattice system; 21 June; bottom, midday 21
(B) first growth step of the December.
primary lattice system; (C)
growth step defining the
secondary lattice system in
accordance with the primary
system; (D) model view of the
same location.

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 A B

the material). The understanding and deployment of built environment and, in extension, promotes choice-
gradient thresholds in materiality and environmental based social formations and inhabitational patterns. The
conditions can yield the potential for complex perform- latter are of great consequence for a built environment
ance capacities of material systems. This will require a that becomes increasingly dense and begins to preclude
detailed understanding of the relation between material common strategies of spatial transitions to provide for
make-up and resultant behavioral characteristics. environmental diversity. For human dignity, health,
Instrumentalizing the design of material systems as a choice and excitement to be preserved and provided for,
way of deploying behavioral characteristics and tenden- differentiated multi-performative architectures may
cies requires analytical methods, skills and tools with well be the most promising intervention. One begins to
respect to the performative capacity of the overall system image Robin Evans’s matrix of interconnected spaces
under investigation, and the narrower capacities of local animated by Banham’s gradient thresholds and enabled
elements that enable the global system to unfold its and articulated by the differentiated performance-
wider capacities.4 The aim is to develop an approach to oriented material systems that could make up the built
design that integrates analytical and generative methods. environment, pushing towards an architecture that is
Analysis is of central importance to the entire generative ecological in its endeavor of addressing the relation
process, not only in revealing behavioral and self-organi- between environment and organisms, habitat and
zational tendencies, but also for assessing and design- inhabitants.
ing spatial-environmental modulation capacity. In this
way, feedback between stimuli and responses and the
conditioning relation between constraint and capacity
will become the operative elements of heterogeneous
spatial organization. This suggests an architecture that
modulates specified ranges and gradient conditions
across space and over time, and that is based on strategi-
cally nested capacities within the material systems that
make up the built environment.
Such an approach to architectural design consoli-
dates and merges the tradition of substantial structures
with the one of ephemeral spaces and gradient thresh-
olds towards an enhanced performance capacity of the

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 Nested Capacities 65

5.11: Digital structural analysis

(red indicates highest deforma-
tion, blue indicates lowest
deformation), left to right: (A)
vertical displacement contours
for deformation produced by
gravity loading; (B) and (C)
vertical displacement vector
plots for deformation produced
by gravity loading; (D) plot
showing the deformed shape
of the structure produced by
gravity loading.

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 76 10/9/06 11:02:40 AM
Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 77 10/9/06 11:02:40 AM
 6.1: Ecoscape physical model, 2002.

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 Dissipative Procedures 69

Dissipative procedures:
Optimization through ‘phenomenonization’
Open Source Architecture
Chandler Ahrens, Eran Neuman and Aaron Sprecher

The Baroque world, in fact, may be characterized as a great theatre where everybody
was assigned a particular role. Such participation, however, presupposes imagination,
a faculty that is educated by the means of art. Art, therefore, was a central importance
in the Baroque Age … the art of the Baroque concentrates on vivid images of situa-
tions, real and surreal, rather than on ‘history’ and absolute form. Descartes says: ‘The
charm of fables awakens the mind.’ The integral aim was a way of life in conformity
with the system … the character of Baroque art brought forth a ‘phenomenization’ of
experience, which made man more conscious of his own existence. Baroque participa-
tion, which had secured the system, in the end therefore brought about its disintegra-
tion.1

In the last century, form-finding procedures in computer-based-design architecture focused on

both optimization and generative design. Capitalizing on new tools as means to interpret design
and production, methods of optimization sought ways to efficiently correlate formal and func-
tional aspects of the architectural project while considering organizational systems, and spatial
division and distribution. Procedures of generative design were based on form evolution as a
consequence of evolutionary design. Nevertheless, even when integrated these procedures
were centered mainly on relatively limited parameters. In this essay we return to an analogous
historical case in order to examine the possibility of including more parameters both in opti-
mized and generative designs.

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 LEFT, 6.2 Ecoscape model,
elevation view, 2002.
OPPOSITE TOP, 6.3: Ecoscape
Project Protocol. BOTTOM, 6.4:
Surface displacement sequence
on 21/09 between 6 a.m. and
2 p.m.

In the early 1970s, while analyzing the Baroque that brought about the different architectures, but also
period, the Scandinavian architectural theoretician because of the technological means that assist in the ar-
Christian Norberg-Schulz returned to an examination of ticulation of the respective ideas. With digitization and
central architectural typologies, concentrating on their computation, contemporary Baroque is considered to be
tactile, spatial, material and visual properties. Norberg- an empirical praxis that evolves out of and goes beyond
Schulz’s interpretation addressed these properties as visual manipulation into the optimization of form, func-
part of his arguments about the inclusiveness that char- tion and matter based in information streams. As such,
acterized the period. As a phenomenologist, Norberg- contemporary Baroque refers to and integrates Modern-
Schulz did not accept the interpretations that viewed ist ideas in its discourse.
the period solely as a time of visual manipulations, As a historical causality, the Baroque and the digital
deviating from the Renaissance linear perspective; for Baroque are compared for their similar mode of opera-
him, the Baroque was a matter of creating a totalizing tions. Like Baroque architecture, contemporary architec-
greater system. In that respect, Norberg-Schulz’s model tural manifestations are claimed to implement geometry
of the Baroque conceptualization can, in many ways, and morphology that criticize previous practices: the
function as the foundation for the interpretation of Baroque reacted against Renaissance spatial idealism,
recent considerations of the Baroque, or what has been while contemporary twisted morphology refers to Mod-
termed ‘digital Baroque’.2 ernist idealism as expressed most evidently in the early
When returning to the Baroque today, many archi- Corbusian Euclidean geometry and space. Nevertheless,
tectural historians and theoreticians find similarities digital Baroque, it is argued, does not run counter to
between the seventeenth-century period and contem- this Modernist perception of architecture, but tries to
porary architectural manifestations, and also indicate advance the early twentieth-century preoccupations
the differences between the two. Those historians and with more sophisticated technological tools by referring
theoreticians rely mostly on visual and historiographi- to Baroque formalism. The digital Baroque is perceived
cal claims to argue that contemporary architecture is through Modernism in such a way that the Baroque
an advanced interpretation of the Baroque period. This contributes the formal articulation, while Modernism
view considers the visual effect created by the convo- suggests the technological discourse.
luted, folded and twisted morphology, the formalistic Thinking of the Baroque as a neo-Modernist practice
approaches and the geometrical articulations expressed through optimization and efficiency raises some dif-
in architecture since the 1990s to be links to the Ba- ficulties. Indeed, parts of the contemporary architectural
roque. On the other hand, the two periods are perceived discourse on digital and computational articulations try
as different interpretations of similar ideas, not only to go beyond the question of the image as the carrier of
because of the transformations in the cultural conditions architectural significance by referring to the architecture’s

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 Dissipative Procedures 71

X position1
Y position1
mesh 1 Z position1 orbital position
X position2
mesh 2 Y position2 intensity
influence field Z position2
quadpatch sun
shading latitude
longitude
X positionn orbital scale
mesh n Y positionn angle of incidence
Z positionn

06:00 am 07:00 am 08:00 am

09:00 am 10:00 am 11:00 am

12:00 am 01:00 pm 02:00 pm

Project: ECOSCAPE
Phenomenon 1: Optimization of natural architecture Customized according to the principles of non-Eu-
In a hyper-technological and cultivated world, Eco- clidean geometry, the structure is a contemporary sys-
scape proposes a structure that would be located dis- tem led by a technological convergence of properties
cursively midway between culture and nature. It does that generates its own natural paradigm. Its hypothe-
not propose to distinguish architecture from nature, sis seeks a modality that would engender architecture
nor does it suggest implementing post-Modernist op- as nature by the use of cladding that generates both
erations of imitating nature by creating it artificially. internal climatic and external architectural condi-
Instead, Ecoscape proposes to treat the project as a tions such as skin and landscape. Consequently, the
phenomenon that integrates nature and architecture, structure does not concentrate on the performance of
and to create architecture as nature, based on natu- the architectural entity as only a matter of climatic
ralistic mechanisms, methodologies and processes. conditions, but asks to treat the environment as an
That is accomplished by treating the extreme condi- inclusive situation in which climate, surface and
tions of the site as the means for the formal and con- landscape are integrated to propose the evolution
ceptual evolution of the project. of events. Applying this methodology, the structure

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 RIGHT, 6.5: Differential
intensive surface formation.
OPPOSITE, 6.6: Ecoscape
optimized surface.
06:00 am > 0 lx 10:00 am > 92623 lx 02:00 pm > 94848 lx

06:15 am > 1765 lx 10:15 am > 93698 lx 02:15 pm > 93988 lx

06:30 am > 15082 lx 10:30 am > 94605 lx 02:30 pm > 92966 lx

06:45 am > 30609 lx 10:45 am > 95360 lx 02:45 pm > 91748 lx

07:00 am > 43499 lx 11:00 am > 95980 lx 03:00 pm > 90336 lx

functional part as a means of liberation from the con-
straints of the image; yet at the same time, this reference
07:15 am > 53631 lx 11:15 am > 96475 lx 03:15 pm > 88665 lx
converts the discourse mainly into techno-scientific con-
siderations, much like the Modernist one. This discourse
deals with production in a similar fashion to Modernist 07:30 am > 61595 lx 11:30 am > 96855 lx 03:30 pm > 86699 lx
accounts of functionalism and expands it into the infor-
mation technology era as a matter of optimized articula- 07:45 am > 67935 lx 11:45 am > 97126 lx 03:45 pm > 84379 lx
tions and performance architecture. Similar to cases
executed at the beginning of the twentieth century, con- 08:00 am > 73054 lx 12:00 pm > 97293 lx 04:00 pm > 81628 lx
temporary production refers to the Modernist paradigm
and tries to overcome its flaws, revealed in concepts such
08:15 am > 77243 lx 12:15 pm > 97358 lx 04:15 pm > 78342 lx
as standardization and universal architecture.
The difficulties in such a discourse and references are
that, much as in Modernism, contemporary architecture 08:30 am > 80710 lx 12:30 pm > 97323 lx 04:30 pm > 74383 lx
is at risk of ending up the architectural act by concen-
trating on the activation of information as a matter of 08:45 am > 83607 lx 12:45 pm > 97187 lx 04:45 pm > 69561 lx
functional articulation of efficiency without addressing
architecture as a phenomenon of inclusiveness. Much
09:00 am > 86045 lx 01:00 pm > 96948 lx 05:00 pm > 63613 lx
as in Modernism, the concentration on production
by new tools – digital and others – may result in the
employment of technological procedures for their own 09:15 am > 88109 lx 01:15 pm > 96602 lx 05:15 pm > 46727 lx
sake and as a mechanism for investigating the tools’
performance. This process would not necessarily lead to 09:30 am > 89862 lx 01:30 pm > 96142 lx 05:30 pm > 34678 lx
the development of another type of evaluation mecha-
nism as part of the design procedure. Consequently, 09:45 am > 91354 lx 01:45 pm > 95561 lx 05:45 pm > 19752 lx
the instrumentalization of the techne would result in an
autonomous condition in which the evaluation of the
06:00 pm > 4633 lx
architectural product would address only the fulfill-
ment of the technological procedure as a self-referential
condition.3
The difficulties in this condition arise not as a result
of a lack of signification other than the technological

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 Dissipative Procedures 73

advances the architectural discourse concerning ar- ments of its geometry (vertex), a parametric algorithm
chitecture and nature a step further. It functions as links each vertex with data related to the sun’s posi-
an interface between architecture and nature, both tion over the course of a year. Each parameter (the
literally and conceptually. sun’s intensity [lux], orbital positioning and angles of
Prioritizing the reaction as a means of acquiring incidence) is registered on the surface, which deforms
environmental data in a responsive manner above accordingly while assuring a consistent exposure to
merely informing the environment, Ecoscape is based solar energy. The resulting model is exemplified by
in a single unit (photovoltaic cell), which follows a geometry that integrates all movements of the ver-
biotechnological methodologies and genetic codifica- texes registered by the algorithm at work. Because
tion growing out of the phenomenology of the site. It Ecoscape’s skin is made out of in-print photovoltaic
evolves into an autonomous structure according to an cells, the computational parametric interface (CPI)
exponential serial development. assures stability of the ratio between the PV-cells’
Ecoscape, based on a horizontal meshed surface, energy reception and the sun’s intensity. Beyond its
is a dynamic engine that develops a phototactic bio-mimetic topology, Ecoscape acts as an integrated
behavioral pattern. By considering the intricate ele- engine intimately linked to the ecological system.

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 6.7: Ecoscape Ecological frame of the glazing system. pond; contingent on feasibility heat pump to be utilized. (13)
System. Legend: (01) Building (04) North façade: formed in- study of utilizing existing pond; Existing septic tank with added
integrated photovoltaic panel sulated metal panel on 15 cm substitute: vertical closed loop filtration and oil separator.
(BIPV)-PV cells laminated metal stud; with batt insulation exchange. (09) Hydronic radi-
between fluoroplastic film. in cavity; operable windows ant heating tubes in unitized
(02) South façade: operable in aperature extensions. (05) floor panels. (10) Waste
unitized structural silicone; 2.5 Existing potable water well. water plumbing. (11) Supply
cm insulated low-E glazing on (06) Existing 50kW hydro- water plumbing. (12) Electric
aluminum frame. (03) Fresh electric plant. (07) Pond. (08) water heater for kitchen and
air heating element integrated Geothermal heat pump with bathroom facilities; excess
into the sill of the aluminum closed loop exchange coil in heat from the geothermal

in contemporary digital architecture, but as a result trary, digital processes allow the specification of func-
of the intentionality in the tools’ implementation in tions’ definitions in each individual case, facilitating
design methodologies and their consideration as solely the production of particularized forms that are precisely
scientific instruments. When addressing the question of suited to specific needs. That is achieved by treating
tools, some contemporary scholars refer to the Baroque the functional aspect of the architectural project as an
period and its scientific attributes, criticizing the ways informational matter. In that respect, the contemporary
in which it was implemented as a mode, resulting in a architectural discourse on digital design refers, yet does
visual manipulation of the human subject that did not not subscribe, to the Modernist paradigm. It also at-
fully consider the specific operation’s scientific aspects. tempts to invigorate aspects of architectural production;
While employing mathematical processes to determine the nature of production in terms of logic and design is
the oval forms and sculpted surfaces, for example, the pushed into specification of the produced object.
Baroque architectural occupation concluded in visual The implementation of tools as a means of reaching
and ornamental representations, which were not about optimized production, indeed, gives rise to new defini-
the scientific procedure but rather about the image. tions of the relations between form, function, informa-
Today, with the introduction of new tools based on tion and production. Through parametric design, the
digital and computational processes, design consider- application of genetic algorithms and performative
ations based on performance and parametric procedures design, new formal manifestations are mostly optimized
go beyond the consideration of form, space and matter in relation to their predefined use. Nevertheless, and
as the articulation of visual regimes. This is due to similar to Norberg-Schulz’s criticism of the interpre-
scientific procedure that yields visual and ornamental tations of the Baroque as a solely visual practice of
effects by introducing an empirical scientification of the deception, it seems that contemporary digital processes
architectural act. Form is considered a matter of evolu- employ the architectural tool – digital or otherwise – as
tionary processes, simulating those in nature. Following a means of speculating about form without addressing
the evolution of complex morphologies, the evolution broad aspects of architectural design. The optimization
of contemporary architectural form is achieved through of the architectural tool as a means of informational
digital articulation and computational configurations. configuration of differentiated functions reduces the
Almost identical to Modernist precepts, contemporary architectural procedure to an isolated scientific process
digital form-making seeks form that will follow func- based on rationalization of the performing object. It
tion, or more precisely function as a matter of informa- optimizes through science, without articulating broader
tional systems.4 aspects of architecture.
Yet, unlike in Modernist architecture, the definitions Furthermore, the extent to which the scientific
of the desired functions are not universal. On the con- procedures consider architectural aspects other than

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 Dissipative Procedures 75

01

05
02

03 06

09
04

10 12

11

08

07
13

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 OPPOSITE TOP, 6.8: Iso-Morph
Project Protocol. BELOW, 6.9:
CNC milling of five iterated
isomorphic polysurfaces.

the technological reflects a self-referential condition. a rigid essentialist approach that tries to expose a sup-
Indeed, the predetermination of the scientific process posed inner truth that exists in the scientific procedure.
conducted by a human agency already includes deci- The reciprocal reconsideration and the process that
sions other than the scientific considerations in and of evaluates the digital procedure and the significance of
themselves. The choice of a scientific procedure, the the inserted data will conclude in the evolution of new
definition of an experiment or the selection of tools, for tools suitable to the architectural task at hand. The tools
example, does not exist in an isolated condition outside will dynamically evolve as the means to articulate the
of human agency. As such, the scientific procedure is architectural procedure. As such, the specifications of
conditioned by cultural, social and even political as- the tools and their dynamic reconstitution will optimize
pects. Nevertheless, the architectural-scientific process the architectural processes as a critical procedure relying
is conducted as an autonomous process and becomes on data.
self-referential, in such a way that it applies the scien- The reciprocal procedure would almost inevitably
tific procedure to prove its validity without addressing result in the rejection of the dichotomies between
the ethical nature of the process itself. Consequently, in science and culture, object and subject, computer and
these cases other architectural aspects are only by-prod- man, matter and space, environment and architecture.
ucts of the architectural act and do not evolve as internal It would lead to the consideration of multi-layered
properties. aspects of the architectural entity, beyond the features
As a counter-model, the phenomenization of the of production that determine form as a consequence of
scientific procedure, or what can be termed scientific function or information. And it would insert into the
phenomenology, requires the consideration of meth- process of morphogenesis neglected parameters of the
ods of optimization that negotiate between form and explored phenomena by rejecting an idealist approach
information as a politicized procedure. Throughout and by incorporating as many vertexes and aspects as
the design process, the politics of information as the possible in the evolutionary process.6
parameter that determines the potentialities of the end As a result, the design processes would embody an
product should be considered in order to achieve what approach that initially examines the phenomenological
Gilles Deleuze referred to as multiplicity resulting from traits of the design problem. While considering the pro-
dynamic essentialism.5 The significance of the data that grammatic and functional aspects of a certain architec-
determines the content of the process has to be consid- tural project, the design process would integrate several
ered in conjunction with the digital procedure as the parameters through processes of negotiation between
structure that brings about the evolution of the archi- information systems that generate the project and the
tectural entity. Together, they should be reconsidered architectural features, and through the introduction of
constantly and dynamically. This is necessary to avoid event-based temporal structures that are not derived

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 Dissipative Procedures 77

relative influence field1

isomorphic polysurface 1 meshed volume1
integral isomorphic polysurface 2 relative influence field2
meshed volume2
isomorphic programmatic definition
relative positioning
polysurface
volumetric exposure
relative influence fieldn
isomorphic polysurface n meshed volumen

Project: ISO-MORPH
Phenomenon 2: Optimization of the singular The grate data derived from the immediate surroundings
Iso-Morph fiberglass structures were developed for into the programmatic component of the evolutionary
an invited competition sponsored by the Israel Gas procedure. As such, referring to the observation of
Company. As the country shifts from coal- to gas-fired the macro-phenomenon in its vital form, the proposal
power stations, the company is building a gas pipe- employed the processes of an evolution of gas com-
line from Egypt to the north of Israel. The competition posites as a reference for creating the booth’s skin.
sought prototypes of small structures, or booths, to be Accordingly, its form was determined by following a
built along the pipeline to serve as maintenance, gas calculation procedure presented in the evolution of
delivery and inspection sites. the structure of metaclay.
Given that the booths were not required to address The outer skin was conceived as an inclusive sys-
issues of program, space or function, the OSA entry tem enfolding and creating a monolithic structure;
proposed to develop a ‘smart skin’ structure. The thus, the design process stemmed from scripting
booth was conceived as a phenomenon of singular methodologies in which the different parts of the
reaction resulting in complex structure. It applied a booth were converged into a singular entity. Accord-
diachronic process of emergence, attempting to inte- ingly, the structure sought means by which one

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 LEFT, 6.10: From top to bottom:
Iso-Morph delivery station, valve
station, delivery station. OPPO-
SITE, 6.11: Morphological track-
ing of isomorphic polysurfaces.

from the architectural object as an efficient entity. Treat-

ing the design process as a phenomenon would require
finding common ground among the different aspects of
the design problem. This is done to avoid creating a sin-
gle feature that would lead the design process, because
the phenomenology of optimization does not prioritize
one architectural aspect over another. On the contrary, it
seeks to activate as many aspects of the design problem
as possible, while maintaining specific features of each
individual aspect. In this way, this methodology avoids
distinguishing between the several aspects, which would
lead to the creation of a hierarchal structure.
At the end, the optimal means of performance is ach-
ieved by the engagement of the phenomenon throughout
the design process itself. The design process becomes a
reflective process enabling a greater level of accuracy, yet
it stays open-ended. Optimization through phenomeni-
zation thus results in a higher performance of architec-
ture, not only as an object but also as an event.

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 Dissipative Procedures 79

time > 1 sec time > 2 sec time > 3 sec time > 4 sec time > 5 sec
influence field > 0.00 influence field > 0.03 influence field > 0.06 influence field > 0.09 influence field > 0.12

time > 6 sec time > 7 sec time > 8 sec time > 9 sec time > 10 sec
influence field > 0.15 influence field > 0.18 influence field > 0.21 influence field > 0.24 influence field > 0.27

time > 11 sec time > 12 sec time > 13 sec time > 14 sec time > 15 sec
influence field > 0.30 influence field > 0.33 influence field > 0.36 influence field > 0.39 influence field > 0.42

time > 16 sec time > 17 sec time > 18 sec time > 19 sec time > 20 sec
influence field > 0.45 influence field > 0.48 influence field > 0.51 influence field > 0.54 influence field > 0.57

time > 21 sec time > 22 sec time > 23 sec time > 24 sec time > 25 sec
influence field > 0.60 influence field > 0.63 influence field > 0.66 influence field > 0.69 influence field > 0.72

time > 26 sec time > 27 sec time > 28 sec time > 29 sec time > 30 sec
influence field > 0.75 influence field > 0.78 influence field > 0.81 influence field > 0.84 influence field > 0.87

time > 31 sec time > 32 sec time > 33 sec time > 34 sec time > 35 sec
influence field > 0.90 influence field > 0.93 influence field > 0.96 influence field > 0.99 influence field > 1.02

time > 36 sec time > 37 sec time > 38 sec time > 39 sec time > 40 sec
influence field > 1.05 influence field > 1.08 influence field > 1.11 influence field > 1.14 influence field > 1.17

time > 41 sec time > 42 sec time > 43 sec time > 44 sec time > 45 sec
influence field > 1.20 influence field > 1.23 influence field > 1.26 influence field > 1.29 influence field > 1.32

time > 46 sec time > 47 sec time > 48 sec time > 49 sec time > 50 sec
influence field > 1.35 influence field > 1.38 influence field > 1.41 influence field > 1.44 influence field > 1.47

Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 89 10/9/06 11:02:51 AM

 BELOW, 6.12: Iso-Morph insulation. (06) Operable filter OPPOSITE TOP, 6.13: Perpetu-
GRP profile detail. (01) Glass door. (07) Steel reinforcing. ating Particles Project Protocol.
reinforced plastic (GRP) panel; (08) GRP structural panel BOTTOM, 6.14: Perpetuating
polyester resin with fire-re- overlapping plate. (09) GRP Particles stereolithography
tardant. (02) GRP structural panel overlapping plate at model.
panel. (03) Slip-joint bolted panel joint.
connection. (04) Ventilation
hole in panel. (05) 1.5 cm rigid

01
09
05

01

04 01
05

06
07

02
08
06
07
02
03

procedure or gesture would result in a differentiated cate element with neighboring geometries in order to
entity. This would maximize the single procedure into react to their presence, and their forces of repulsion
an optimal performance of a skin that is simultane- and attraction. Iso-Morph’s singular surface results
ously a structure, a cladding, a sign, and an envelope. from a registration of external forces carried by each
Given the opportunity to create a single and continu- programmatic component rather than the empirical
ous skin, the assigned programmatic entities are mod- appropriation of a more specific arrangement set.
eled as a singular isomorphic polysurface bearing an The isomorphic polysurfacing model is comparable
influence field parameter. Following this configured to Leibniz’s monadic system: each geometry includes
system, a proportional increase of each surface’s in- a set of parameters that is dynamically animated by
fluential force ultimately produces a single continuous external forces – literally networked with surrounding
surface that is striated in order to create a series of influence fields of environment – to act upon itself
GRP composite ribs based on a single extrusion profile. and the others by means of geometrical deformations,
Whereas each isomorphic polysurface is formed volumetric transformations and topological mutations.
by non-differentiated yet singular entities (vertex), the
influence field has the ability to connect each intri-

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 Dissipative Procedures 81

(particle position+deflector)1

(particle position+deflector)2 particle system 1

bezier curve at time T
(particle position+deflector)n
bezier curve at time T1
surface
definition
colliding condition

(particle position+deflector)1
bezier curve at time Tn
(particle position+deflector)2 particle system 2

(particle position+deflector)n

Project: PERPETUATING PARTICLES

Phenomenon 3: Phenomenal commemorations Re-
flecting on how to represent the Holocaust in order to
advance the discourse on this topic to its next stage,
Perpetuating Particles suggested individualizing
commemoration while maintaining a continuous and
comprehensive systematic discourse. Addressing the
question of the inability of representing commemora-
tion in a phenomenological fashion, the form-making
and architectural conceptualization proposed blurring
the differences between life and commemoration,
knowledge and experience, and architecture and na-
ture. Hence, the project is determined by endless tra-
jectories that create the final intricate structure and
form, which initially remain indeterminate. A number
of particles were injected into the open space, where

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 Particle Stream [plan view]
Perpetuating Particles.
6.15: Sequence of surfaces
generated out of two colliding time > 12 sec
particle systems.

time > 18 sec

time > 24 sec

time > 30 sec

time > 36 sec

time > 42 sec

they traveled freely and created a holistic phenome-

non. The direction of their release was controlled; nev-
ertheless, their collision was chaotic. The negotiation time > 48 sec
between the various particles created a crystallization
of a continuous surface. In that way, each individual
contributed to the development of comprehensive nar-
rative.
While particle systems are increasingly the sub-
ject of studies on behavioral patterns (among others, time > 54 sec
numerous studies on swarm behavior as a means of
interpreting natural systems), one limitation lies in the
calculation ability to implement a set of parameters
identified with each particle. Such a condition is es-
sential to the achievement of a far-reaching simulation
time > 60 sec
of phenomena present in nature. Consequently, the

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 Particle Stream [elevation view]

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Surface Generated with Particle Stream

Splines Stream [elevation view]

10/9/06 11:02:56 AM
 produced surface of Perpetuating Particles is gener- a network strategy that ‘forces’ each particle to be
ated by tracking the movement of two sets of ten conscious of its surrounding influences. Rather than
particles navigating along two force vectors identified navigating on a set of two continuous trajectories, the
on the operating field. The collision point disrupts the particles possess a level of autonomy (internal data)
continuous movement where each particle reacts to its that is activated by an external, logarithmic yet cha-
neighboring entities while being diverted to an alter- otic set of forces, producing an event-surface.
nate navigation path. Applying this specific methodology, the evolution
Based on the logic of a movement from particle of the event-surface positions the human subject out-
to path to field, Perpetuating Particles employs a set side systems of significations. It suggests an infinite
of logarithmic space warps applied to each entity evolution of events in terms of the creation of form
while embedding all data information concerning the and use of platform. And if for Deleuze the event is a
presence and the prescribed reaction to a collision pre-verbal condition, then Perpetuating Particles is a
condition. The resulting surface embodies the special pre-formal evolution. It sets the formation of matter
positioning of each particle during the experiment’s at a point when it still remains undecided, just a mo-
sixty-second time lapse. This surface results from ment before it evolves from information to matter.

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 Dissipative Procedures 85

Perpetuating Particles. OPPO-

SITE, 6.16 and BELOW, 6.17:
Two versions of cloud surfaces.

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 96 10/9/06 11:02:59 AM
Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 97 10/9/06 11:03:00 AM
 7.1: Wen-Ying Tsai –
Cybernetic Sculpture, 1968.

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 Cybernetic Anything 89

Cybernetic anything...
Marcelyn Gow (servo)
[W]hat is also ultimately disturbing and fascinating about the whole cybernation scene
when you get down to its nitty gritty, is precisely that it isn’t ‘neutral’ and safe, but
that it constantly poses threatening opportunities that invite us to do some basic hu-
man thinking, and not make culturally automated yes/no binary responses.1
– Reyner Banham

From an architectural perspective, the work of the Art and Technology practices, notable for their
integration of cybernetic principles, electronics, and computational technology into artistic prac-
tice during the 1960s, is informative for a broader understanding of the cultural role that technol-
ogy played in the shift from a mechanized to a mediatized society and the ramifications this has
for contemporary obsessions with responsivity in architectural practice and discourse. The ‘proto-
interactive’ environments that emerged from this art and technology nexus operated in many
instances as performing media rather than iconic representations of technological processes.

Low-definition effects
Dynamic systems were the order of the day in London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in August
of 1968. The seminal exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity: The Computer and the Arts had just
opened. Curated by Jasia Reichardt, it was one of the first exhibitions to bring together an exten-
sive résumé of developments in computational technology and electronically motivated projects
in the context of an art venue. It included a myriad of contributions from such diverse disciplines
as music, engineering, computer science, medicine, and philosophy, and was instrumental in
establishing the category of ‘cybernetic art’.

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 Cybernetic Serendipity was also notable for the steel elements, arrayed in a hexagonal matrix, appeared
direct involvement of corporate contributors in the to dissolve into a fluid, undulating field of light as they
exhibition. The Boeing Computer Graphics organiza- moved. Ambient sound levels in the gallery were used
tion included a display on pilot visibility simulation, as inputs that modulated the frequency of the strobe
General Motors research laboratories included a section flash through a voltage control system. In this way the
on computer diagnostic graphics and Bell Laboratories actions of people in the surrounding space would have
contributed a series of computer-animated films. The a direct effect on the frequency of the pulsing strobe
optimistic pitch of the show was hard to miss. Its title illuminating the vibrating steel rods. The oscillation of
was suggestive; the definition of ‘serendipity’ as ‘the the light was varied a-periodically against the constant
faculty of making happy chance discoveries’ featured rhythm of the vibrating rods and interference between
prominently next to the definition of ‘cybernetics’ as ‘a the two frequencies generated variegated effects ranging
science of control and communication in complex elec- from stasis to undulation. Tsai and Turner’s work was
tronic machines like computers and the human nervous also awarded a prize that year in a competition for artists
system’ in the catalogue’s table of contents.2 and engineers sponsored by the Experiments in Art and
Serendipity was organized in three sections: one was Technology organization, gaining it inclusion in Pontus
dedicated to computer-generated material including Hultén’s seminal exhibition The Machine as Seen at the
graphics, film, electronic music, and poetry; the second End of the Mechanical Age, which opened at New York’s
featured interactive or cybernetic installations including Museum of Modern Art in November of 1968.
robotic devices and drawing machines; while the third The Cybernetic Sculpture was pertinent to the artistic
acted as a kind of educational section with demonstra- debate at the time, and to contemporary architectural
tions of various applications of computers and informa- discourse, as it strove to generate a relational environ-
tion on the development and history of cybernetics. The ment through connections between a series of objects, as
Machines and Environments section, which fell into the opposed to reifying objects in and of themselves as con-
second category, included the work of Wen-Ying Tsai in tent. The tendency for objects to elude their materiality
collaboration with Frank Turner, one of a then emerg- or corporeality through literal motion was characteristic
ing category of engineer/artist practices. of the majority of kinetic projects but Cybernetic Sculp-
Their aptly titled Cybernetic Sculpture combined ture was also responsive. The piece absorbed inputs from
the low-inertia qualities of oscillating servomotors with external stimuli in the environment and was affected
high-frequency strobe lighting to produce an ‘electroni- by them, changing the environment in turn through
cally activated environment’ in which a cluster of vibrat- the effects that it generated. This system of inputs and
ing steel rods traced luminous patterns that ranged from outputs acted as a self-regulating phenomenon that
linear bands to fluid sinusoidal curves.3 The individual incorporated feedback into its logic of development

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 Cybernetic Anything 91

and adaptation. This phenomenon of self-regulation is missed opportunity in the exhibition. This shortcoming
tied to the cybernetic theories of Norbert Wiener who is, in all probability, tied to the failure of many of the
defined it in the following terms: exhibited devices to generate spatial effects that would
The control of a machine on the basis of its actual have the potency to subsume their conventional roles in
performance rather than its expected performance the context of industrial production, their ‘proscribed ap-
is known as feedback, and involves sensory mem- plications’. The devices in Cybernetic Serendipity were
bers which are actuated by motor members and largely ‘on display’, calling attention to themselves as
perform the function of tell-tales or monitors – that machines rather than eroding their conventional identi-
is, of elements which indicate a performance.4 ties through the production of more extensive spatial and
Cybernetic Sculpture connected physical presence, sound environmental qualities. Tsai and Turner’s contribution
emission, and vibration and light frequencies, enabling was one of the few to approach the territory where the
these variables to produce an environment that was not machine itself was secondary to the effects it generated.
in stasis and to generate low-definition effects of oscil- The machine in a sense became ambient.
lating matter. Cybernetic Serendipity was hailed in the popular
press as a nearly undisputed success. The event’s detrac-
When the machine becomes ambient… tors were few in number, but notably they included
Outlining some of the discursive dilemmas of Art and Reyner Banham, whose skeptical review appeared in the
Technology practices of the 1960s, Edward Shanken, in journal New Society shortly after the show had opened.
his dissertation ‘Art in the Information Age: Cybernetics, Banham critiqued the array of ‘electronic gismology’
Software, Telematics, and the Conceptual Contributions assembled in Nash House for a lack of artistic concepts:
of Art and Technology to Art History and Theory’, pro- cybernation is all too often being used as a front
poses that there have historically been three approaches ... The general lack of aesthetic originality or cre-
to Art and Technology: the ativity that paralyses so much of the show is neatly
aesthetic examination of the visual forms of sci- (and inadvertently) underlined by a statement on
ence and technology, the application of science and the wall in the cybernetic music section which says
technology in order to create visual forms, and the (and I quote verbatim) where ideas are relevant
use of scientific concepts and technological media to the development of computer-generated music,
both to question their proscribed applications and material is included which antedates cybernetic
to create new aesthetic models.5 music. That just about sums it up; most of the ideas
Cybernetic Sculpture exemplifies the last approach around antedate cybernetic anything.6
– creating a more nuanced form of performance or It is revealing that Banham’s critique centers on what
responsiveness, which seems to have otherwise been a he refers to as the ‘lack of ideas’ that characterized the

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 work shown at the ICA. This points to a central theme 1970; and Information at the Museum of Modern Art
that was being played out at the time (quite advertently in New York in 1970 had obvious ramifications for the
in many instances) where the relations between things status of the object in artistic practice, and was played
were deemed more important as phenomena than out somewhat differently in Conceptual Art and Art and
the content of the things themselves or the capacity of Technology practices. This phenomenon coincided with
something to express an idea. Banham’s reservations are the tendency towards the machinic mass production of
symptomatic of a larger issue at stake in the art of the articles, using newly available industrial techniques for
time, and to some extent in contemporary architectural proliferating objects in a serial fashion, thereby raising
practice, notably the concern with foregrounding rela- questions of value, authorship, and ownership. Equip-
tions instead of objects. In many Art and Technology ment that had previously been the exclusive purview of
projects, aleatory processes were embraced; eschewing industrial fabricators for commercial applications or
an overt message behind the work, significance emerged was being developed in the context of defense-related
instead in the connections between various entities. research – including infrared lasers, electronic telecom-
John Cage’s performance Variations VII at the interme- munications devices, and computer and holographic
dia event 9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering in 1966 equipment – was increasingly becoming integrated into
is a good example of this approach, where the artist the production of art. As evidenced by the Experiments
appropriated a number of telephone lines as a sound in Art and Technology (EAT) organization and the Art
detection system to pick up ambient sounds from out- and Technology initiative – a corporate artist residency
side of the performance space and import them into the program established by the Los Angeles County Mu-
arena’s loudspeakers. Banham’s skepticism regarding seum of Art (LACMA) between 1966 and 1970, which
Cybernetic Serendipity permeates his closing remarks in placed artists in close collaboration with industrial
the article, where he asserts that there can be no binary firms – the appropriation of high-end technology for
response to technology: technology is multifaceted and artistic ends was not always possible without the inter-
nuanced. His critique centers on the failure of the artists vention of a cultural institution. The absorption of these
to address the complex nature of the medium. A more technologies was due not only to reduced costs and
considered approach to technological performance increased availability but perhaps more significantly to
would possibly have produced the ‘new aesthetic mod- a shift in attitudes toward the production of ‘high art’,
els’ to which Shanken alludes. which made the precision and efficiency of industrial
The integration of electronic and digital media into processes attractive.
a popular cultural context addressed by exhibitions Art and Technology projects, among them earlier
like Cybernetic Serendipity; the Software, Information events like the EAT organization’s 9 Evenings: Theater
Technology show at the Jewish Museum in New York in and Engineering from 1966, usually took a literal

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 Cybernetic Anything 93

approach (as opposed to Conceptual Art’s more semi- Relational materialities

otic approach) to ‘dematerializing’ the object by creat- A copy of Banham’s Cybernetic Serendipity review
ing responsive ‘environments’ with programmed light, eventually found its way into the archives of LACMA’s
sound, and kinetic systems in which various sensory then Senior Curator of Modern Art, Maurice Tuchman,
stimuli would be connected, as opposed to producing which is hardly surprising given Tuchman’s own inter-
physical objects.7 Marshall McLuhan, in his 1967 book est in the integration of contemporary art and technol-
The Medium is the Massage, defines environments as ogy. Tuchman, who had launched his ambitious Art and
‘invisible. Their ground rules, pervasive structure, and Technology program two years earlier than Cybernetic
overall patterns elude easy perception.’8 These practices Serendipity, was susceptible to the same critique that
went beyond the literal use of devices with which to Banham had leveled at the ICA exhibition. His initia-
communicate between diverse inputs and outputs inter- tive, which was ongoing at the time and would culmi-
nal to the artwork, and often performed such communi- nate in a 1970 exhibition at LACMA, included a series
cation in the form of collaborative working processes. of projects ultimately concerned with foregrounding
For example, 9 Evenings was a collaborative attempt relations between various entities, in some cases connec-
among ten artists and thirty scientists and engineers tions internal to the work and the viewer and in others
from Bell Laboratories to harness the latent performa- establishing meta-connections between institutions,
tive qualities of technology in the interest of cultural corporations and the individual artist.
production rather than for commercial consumption or By the time Cybernetic Serendipity had been ex-
defense-oriented military applications. Collaboration posed to thousands of visitors and Tuchman was well
was required in the production as well as in the recep- under way with his Art and Technology program, at-
tion of the work. The viewer’s participation, advertently titudes towards the role of technology in artistic practice
or inadvertently, was often used as a trigger to motivate were becoming increasingly polarized. In contrast to the
these kinetic pieces: staging connections between the proponents of technological art like Reichardt, Tuch-
motion of bodies and the oscillation of objects, for man, and the EAT organization, the shared interests of
instance. These projects relied heavily on technologi- hi-tech corporate sponsors and the US defense industry
cal processes to act as transducers between the inputs had generated substantial skepticism in other sectors
and outputs that they connected, causing detractors to of the art world regarding the use of new technologies
dismiss the work as simply reifying the technological in art. It is significant that the alliance between art
apparatus. and technology was promoted through these corporate
sponsors and given public exposure by governmental
institutions like the United States Information Agency,
who managed the US pavilion for the Osaka World Expo

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 in 1970. The war in Vietnam had clearly demonstrated most part, fell short of producing the more nuanced
the destructive capabilities of technology and the under- forms of performance that Banham had alluded to in
writing of technological developments by corporations his review of Cybernetic Serendipity. One exception
involved in hi-tech defense contracts. In the Osaka Expo was Robert Rauschenberg’s contribution, Mud-Muse,
technologies being developed for the space program designed in collaboration with the Teledyne Corporation
were displayed prominently in a section of the US for display at Osaka but not realized until the LACMA
pavilion dedicated to the Apollo 11 moon landing while exhibition in 1971.9 Mud-Muse, in its final instan-
other technologies with potential military, aerospace, tiation, comprised a 9 ft × 12 ft glass tank filled with
scientific, medical, and broadcasting applications were high-viscosity driller’s mud. Some thirty-six compressed-
integrated more discreetly into a section on LACMA’s air inlets, maintained at three different pressure levels,
Art and Technology program. were placed on the sides and bottom of the tank. These
The Art and Technology program is ultimately of inlets could be electronically activated to produce
significance for the collaborations it enacted through various intensities of disturbance in a distributed and
one-year artist residencies in industrial manufacturing constantly changing pattern as the compressed air trav-
firms and research facilities, producing a contact point eled through the mud. An electronic selector system that
between commercial, political and cultural interests, controlled the pneumatic valves was activated by sound
and for the agents that it engaged in a dialogue. The signals picked up from microphones in the surrounding
interaction between industry and artists under the aegis exhibition space. These audio inputs were processed to
of these collaborations led to a new form of multiple both influence the eruption of the mud and relay the
authorship, emphasizing developmental processes selection of additional soundtracks to be emitted from
and exposing the intricate systems of negotiation and underneath the tank.
communication that operate in the production of an art Mud-Muse as a system of inputs and outputs that
work. LACMA’s collaborators included forty industrial incorporated local feedback could be understood as a
partners and sponsors ranging from specialists in elec- responsive ‘software’ in which mechanical ‘hardware’ was
tronics, radar, and aerospace, such as Hewlett-Packard, used to produce atmospheric effects. Mud-Muse in some
IBM, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and NASA, to a ways epitomized the merging of ‘the mechanical and
government-contracted strategic-planning agency – The organic in a world of undulating forms’, which for McLu-
Rand Corporation. The entertainment industry was rep- han characterized the movie as a medium, but through
resented by Universal City Studios, Inc., and Twentieth its real-time pervasiveness and irreversibility the piece
Century Fox Film Corporation, and the Bank of America extended outside of the linear movement that character-
was also a major sponsor. izes film.10 Instrumentalizing this real-time potential in
The art produced in the LACMA program, for the a dynamic system was crucial to Rauschenberg and the

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 Cybernetic Anything 95

7.2: Robert Rauschenberg

– Mud-Muse, 1968–1971.
Art © Robert Rauschenberg /
Licensed by VAGA, New York,
NY. Photo: Moderna Museet,
Stockholm.

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 Teledyne team, as indicated in documents summariz- and reaction … we have been tending towards …
ing brainstorming sessions between the artist and the increasing the number of structural elements; for
Teledyne engineers. Lewis Ellmore, then Director of example, the number of phenomena sensed, the so-
Special Programs at Teledyne and Rauschenberg’s pri- phistication of the processing, etc., utilizing the ele-
mary collaborator, reflected on the potentials of specific ments where possible as components of the work;
technologies as an impetus in defining the viewer’s for example, the use of fluid computational devices
experience of the piece: which would visually form part of the work, direct-
We considered many types of three-dimensional ing the response to trigger known psychological
displays … closed loop machining systems where and physiological characteristics in the observer
the output of the machine was subsequently modi- and perhaps, to the extent possible, using the reac-
fied and fed back into the input … We thought tion of the observer to further modify the composi-
about the types and forms of energy, which could tion of the art.12
be sensed and used to activate and regulate the dy- It becomes clear in Ellmore’s detailing of the technical
namics of the work. Again, everything from delib- possibilities how the piece could be conceived as an
erate and direct observer control to purely random operating system in which the hardware could be sub-
processes. We included sound, light, motion, odor, sumed by the atmospheric effects of the software:
etc. … We went on to explore ways of stimulating We have, first, the input or motivating influence …
the observer, not only visually, but with both audi- The output of these sensing devices may be … com-
ble and non-audible sounds, pressure differentials bined or used to modify one another in many ways
and so on.11 … The processing, that is altering the form and/or
In a letter to Rauschenberg from 1968, Ellmore nature of the sensor output signals, can be a direct
outlines some of the specific potentials for Mud-Muse modulation of one signal with another, or the use
in reference to an earlier interactive piece by Rauschen- of computational techniques, or the use of a signal
berg, Soundings. to operate upon itself, or the selective distortion of
It seems to me that what you and I have been a signal according to some external functions, or
discussing is essentially a way of creating a bilat- any combination of these … There is also the in-
eral interaction between art and an observer as teresting possibility of not only causing the signal
opposed to the predominantly unilateral reaction processing to be in itself sensed by the observer, but
one currently finds. Soundings is revolutionary (or also to derive the nature of the processing through
perhaps evolutionary is a more appropriate term) the observer’s behavior.13
in that there does exist this bilateral relationship,
using three basic elements: sensing, processing,

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 Cybernetic Anything 97

Low-definition effects on hi-tech time ment’.16 McLuhan’s understanding of media as ‘any and
If we look at Cybernetic Sculpture and Mud-Muse as me- all technological extensions of body and mind’ suggests
dia, their decorporealizing effects align with McLuhan’s that electronic media are inseparable from the people
description of low-resolution or ‘cool’ media like TV, who engage with them. In low-definition technology,
which encourage increased involvement on the part of these ‘proto-interactive’ environments can be understood
the viewer who has to work to fill in the gaps that are as performing media rather than iconic representations
not presented.14 In Cybernetic Sculpture the substance of technological processes. Cybernetic Sculpture and
of the piece itself ultimately dissolved into a barrage Mud-Muse performed as ambient machines – antici-
of pure media, turned into electrostatic by the pulsat- pating, perhaps, contemporary ideas of architectural
ing strobe, implicating its viewers in real time through operating systems in which hardware is subsumed by
connections between sounds they emitted and emergent the atmospheric effects of software, and materiality de-
light patterns that issued from the piece. The substance instantiates itself into responsive networks.
of the hardware was evacuated, creating an overriding
‘mosaic mesh’, demanding the viewer’s involvement
and subsuming content. In Mud-Muse, the audience
was also implicated in a feedback loop in which gaps
between observer influence and spatial effects were
intended. In Rauschenberg’s words:
Mud-Muse starts from sound. An impulse is turned
into electrical signal and then spreads out into
three other breakdowns, depending on its dynam-
ics. Then each one of those splits off in three ways.
I don’t want it to have a one-to-one relationship to
the spectator.15
The audience’s immersion into a cycle of captured sound
and emitted sound was implied; they were simultane-
ously being recorded and receiving recorded information
in a feedback loop.
Feedback, according to McLuhan, is the end of lin-
eality that came into the western world with the alphabet
and the continuous forms of Euclidean space: ‘feedback
[is a] dialogue between the mechanism and its environ-

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 8.1: Detail, Vestigii Ticker Chair.

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 The Archoid Chimera 99

The archoid chimera:

Electric space as social machine
Tobi Schneidler (maoworks)

Networked and pervasive technologies are increasingly designed to talk to each other, to take
decisions for people, citizens and individuals. Technical systems are becoming increasingly
autonomous and ‘artificially intelligent’; they start to act, behave, and occasionally misbehave.
But where do these new conditions leave human identity and the way we expect to interact
with our physical environs? The question is not if, but how, they affect our space, and how we
as architects can tackle these issues as a new aspect to include in design strategies. Design-
ing emotional affordance into our built environments has the potential to create an entirely new
quality of dialogue between the building and its occupant, creating relationships with buildings
that feel and respond.
The border between natural and artificial is rapidly dissolving, not least with the introduction
of bionic research that merges natural body and mind with man-made technology in a new sym-
biosis. It is proposed here that space is becoming a form of artificial life, a bionic hybrid of sorts
that can take on new roles and qualities that have not been possible in architecture previously
through the creation of a spatial chimera – a hybrid between physical architecture and artifi-
cial life forms – involving physical spaces, people and emotional interaction. The investigations
discussed here are thought of as scaled-down prototypes of a new type of space that emotes,
converses and responds: the feeling building is instrumentalizing emotions to connect to the
soul, not just the intellect, of its master.

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 The archoid chimera: taming the beast called
technology
Architecture has a tradition for absorbing and reapply-
ing new technologies, but rarely have architects been
able to allow their buildings a degree of autonomy in
the sense of artificial intelligence, robotic behavior and
emotional responsiveness.
We are living in a time of cultural and technological
convergence. This process of rapid evolution, adaptation
and rejection of ideas is also helped by the fast dissemi-
nation of knowledge and memes around the planet. Our
habitat as human and social beings has been extended
into a previously unknown domain, where space, time
and synchronicity are to be redefined and redesigned.
Crucially, emerging technologies are introducing new
relational qualities that are connecting people in new
ways to one another through inanimate or artificial sur-
roundings. Fellow humans and tame animals have until
recently been the only responsive creatures that people
can interact or converse with. This is all changing now
that machines start filling certain roles, such as utility,
entertainment and emotional comfort.

The emotional affordance of bionic hybrids

The architectural utopia I want to propose here is one of
space becoming a form of artificial life, a bionic hybrid
of sorts that can take on new roles and qualities that have
not been possible in architecture before. An assistive
space, equipped with artificial intelligence and modali-
ties for multi-sensual expression, would be an example
in the scope of this proposal. Squeezing the interaction
and relational qualities between man, machine and

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 The Archoid Chimera 101

8.2: Playing with the digital

agents to cause variation in the
interactive architectural scale
model.

The three projects discussed here are architectural

in their intention, probing interaction modalities that
could be scaled up to become larger projects or parts
of architectural schemes: the Responsive Fields is a
scale model for a reactive space of digital agents; Re-
mote Home is a full-scale prototype for an apartment
that exists in two cities at the same time; and the Ves-
tigii Ticker Chair is projective furniture that forms part
of a converged internet and real-world experience.

Project 1: RESPONSIVE FIELDS

Responsive Fields, the digital beehive The Respon- to occupy its responsive space. It is demonstrating a
sive Fields provide a space in which people can play new kind of typology of representation, between the
with an artificial ‘livestock’ of 5,000 digital agents. classic architectural model and the full-scale, interac-
The idea behind this project is to test a degree of tive, functional prototype. This should give the emerg-
autonomy and self-rule within a digital system that ex- ing notion of interactive architecture an expression,
emplifies an abstracted architectural space. Respon- before it is realized in full scale.
sive Fields was produced together with Pablo Miranda The Responsive Fields are acting like a digital fish
and the Smart Studio at the Interactive Institute. tank, a sensual void. Visitors are finding their reflec-
The piece was commissioned by Peter Weibel, for the tions in the animated surface beneath their hands, as
Algorithmic Revolutions show at ZKM in Germany in they are reaching inside the model space. It senses
2004, a show that traced the history of digital proj- and interprets the occupation of its inhabitants and
ects in art and architecture. the users of this scaled three-dimensional space. A
The project was scaled down to become a fully semi-autonomous algorithm is continuously fed by an
interactive architectural model that invites observers embedded sensory field, which influences the

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 8.3: Reaching inside the data-
cloud.

space through the experiential bottleneck of handheld About sociable machines and electric affections
computers or clip-on microphones will not help to cre- Nature is unpredictable, and that seems to be the core
ate engaging examples within this area of thought. It to our interaction with fellow humans: moments of the
will be necessary to hybridize the sensual qualities that unexpected, uncertainty and surprise would need to be
people demand from other living creatures with those of designed into our artificially alive buildings to make
buildings and technical systems that can engage users them emotionally acceptable to people. Researchers at
on a human level. Achieving these new qualities is about MIT have already started dedicated groups that are deal-
learning from successful interaction design, and evolv- ing with questions of sociable machines. One of their
ing new concepts of interfaces that reach beyond the most prominent results has been Kismet. Kismet is a ro-
audio-visual paradigm of the media industry. bot, designed by the MIT Media Lab, which physically
A key term in interaction design is the notion of mimics facial expressions – similar to ‘infant-caretaker
affordance, the visual clue to the function of an object. interaction’ – as well as using voice and hearing to fa-
Digital and interactive technologies have brought for- cilitate a ‘social’ contact. It shows how robots can move
ward many new application scenarios of use, but many from the purely functional to more personal domains.
concepts failed to break through because the design of There would be many reasons to attempt creating
the interactive product did not make its benefit or at- such a spatial chimera, a hybrid between physical arch-
traction explicit. This is mainly a question of designing itecture and artificial life forms. This could produce
successful affordance into a project. Affordance in inter- totally new concepts about relationships through mediat-
active design is as much a key ingredient as the thinking ing spaces and artifacts, between people as well as be-
about circulation and guidance is in architecture. But tween people and information. Changing the character
eventually it provokes a much deeper emotional level of of a building could soon mean something very different.
engagement. Ubiquitous computing, social networking sites and arti-
I would argue that the moment of truth has come, ficial intelligence, to name the most prominent concepts
when some of these new relational qualities are merging in the contemporary technology debate, have concrete
into built space and smart furniture, creating hybrid effects on our ‘meat world’, the physical environments
entities that are absorbing some of the spirit previously that we inhabit. The question is not if, but how, they af-
reserved for living beings. Affordance will be to interac- fect our space, and how we as designers can take part in
tive architecture what attitude is to human beings – a shaping the future. Since the design space (engineering
mental gateway to new types of relationships. lingo) is largely undefined, designers of all kinds are cur-
rently writing their own briefs, and inventing their own
projects in collaboration with engineers and scientists.
Now is the time to conceive these hybrid spaces, which

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 The Archoid Chimera 103

behavior of 5,000 red agents roaming the digital the environment, when space is in flux and the sur-
space. The process is irreversible, but ephemeral. The rounding is reacting in a way that can have unexpected
visualization shows a continuous reference to recent outcomes, just like playing with a pet or wild animal.
events, but the current is in ongoing flux. The visible Imagining this idea scaled up to building level could
memory is programmed to decay over time. An invis- very much transform buildings into a truly living ar-
ible sediment of recent digital impressions is stored, chitecture: a utopia not of artificial intelligence but of
and influences future behavior in this responsive behavior.
space. The space learns over time, building sediments Robotic pets are already in the shops, emulating
of sensed experiences that are casually surfacing at the real-life species in an astonishing way. Could these
idle times of low activity. qualities be translated into the larger and more dis-
The space thus develops an autonomous behavior tributed scale of architectural organizations?
that depends on the context and location, and the
kind of interest it receives from ‘visitors’. A new kind
of mental relationship could therefore be formed with

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 8.4: The Remote Home, one
home in two cities.

occupy the physical domain as we do as humans, but of everyday life; it is where networked systems start to
also stretch into the ephemeral, yet real, universe of have autonomous character and, crucially, talk to each
digital potentials. other. Examples include cars that instantly commu-
nicate icy roads over mobile mesh networks, warning
Man meets machine meets mind other cars in the vicinity or even telling these cars to hit
Buildings that think? Spaces having feelings, environ- the brake without the intervention of the driver.
ments that talk aloud and rooms that respond? These Is this about overriding human instincts or aug-
ideas have been around for a while, from Archigram’s menting human potentials? We all seem to be increas-
walking cities to Kubrick’s HAL in 2001. While science ingly surrendering autonomy and decision-making to
fiction and architecture have concluded their earlier complex and highly abstract systems. But far from feel-
liaison, reality has caught up fast. In a very clandestine ing victimized, most people seem to be accepting these
way, technologies, networks and digital services have new relationships almost as a second nature. The next
infiltrated in a manner our parents could not even have level of development will be that of evolving emotional
dreamt about. Many of these effects aren’t visible, but affordance in visual, audible and haptic interactive
are hiding within the ubiquitous, world-spanning laby- engagements with such systems, a design space that will
rinth called the internet, facilitating communication be quite alien to architecture but will require initiative
protocols, controlling postal logistics and monitoring and collaboration from many other disciplines such as
innumerable sensors, listening out for secret nuclear game designers, sociologists and psychologists.
tests and whale songs. The brutalist vision of a gigantic Two other areas that have greatly influenced how we
city turning into an animal of sorts has today become a share social spaces are the internet and mobile phones.
ridiculous technological dino-vision. HAL, on the other Those spaces are hard to express in the traditional lan-
hand, is a much more familiar concept, as the pervasive guage of built architecture, but they are hardly virtual.
voice of clever cars and smart phones that invites us In fact, technologies like internet dating sites, social
to converse – albeit this is usually still limited to less networks and instant messaging have collapsed space
emotional and engaging issues, concerned with control and time, to provide synchronous social experiences
and functionality. that were unthinkable before. Interaction with friends,
But the next step in development is something much peers, individuals and groups are taking place through
more sinister, and yet fascinating: pervasive comput- numerous modalities now, defining new conversa-
ing. This area is so comprehensive and lacking in clear tion etiquettes and happening on different levels of
borders that even seasoned computer scientists have synchronicity. And the human consciousness seems to
trouble explaining it coherently. Pervasive computing is be adapting at a blazing speed – or does it? While as
the possibility for computers to dissolve into the fabric recently as fifteen years ago personal messages could

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 The Archoid Chimera 105

Project 2: THE REMOTE HOME

The Remote Home, mediating space as a social proxy tactile sensibility and visual alternations relating to
Architecure’s most potent motive is that of a social the physicality of the place, rather than a projection
space, a hull filled with life and exchange. The Re- or screen interface. While most technological ad-
mote Home was started with the observation that peo- vances are functionality and engineering driven, the
ple are increasingly traveling, sharing friendship over Remote Home is introducing emotions as a driver for
distance or working in a different country from the development. ‘Softspace’ in this case relates more to
one they are living in. This also happened to be the social values than to computational software.
author’s very personal situation at the time. The brief Reactive furniture and spatial elements provide
was to design an environment that could play a role a physical setting, to relay presence over distance.
in encouraging togetherness between close friends Bodily actions are translated into TCP/IP data pack-
or couples over distance, to create one shared space ets, and sent on their 30 millisecond journey to the
that exists in two different cities, without resorting to connected home. The original exhibition demon-
typical communication tools like video conferencing. strated the prototypes between London’s Science
Instead, the apartment should be experienced with Museum and the Raumlabor Gallery in Berlin. Visitors

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 ABOVE, 8.5: System diagram
of the trans-locational spatial
entity. BELOW, 8.6: The two
spaces, in two cities.

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 The Archoid Chimera 107

ABOVE, 8.7 and BELOW,

8.8: The Lonley Home bench
and lamp are part domestic
furniture and part robotic pet,
coming alive unexpectedly.

were encouraged to get into contact with their remote random wood fire. When the objects are in use, their
counterparts. Spoken language and generation gaps physicality becomes a place holder, a mediating proxy
faded into the background when people felt the digi- in the social interaction between the two friends shar-
tally mediated, physical touch through the tangible ing the space remotely.
environment. However, the individual qualities of those physical-
Two of several elements are presented here: the ly animated pieces only became apparent as objects of
Busy Bench and the Lonely Lamp. These furniture simulated autonomy when the prototype was ready to
installations are reactive to the occupant through em- use. The quality of engaging people on a similar level
bedded sensors that sense movement and presence to to the Responsive Fields positively surprised the team
report them to a central server, which is continuously and led to a set of relatives being created – called the
mediating the experience between the spaces that Lonely Home. The ability to induce curiosity and af-
make up the Remote Home. The Bench is dealing with fection in the visitors actually exceeded the original
issues of personal territory in a shared space, while design intention and led to a new strain of thought
the Lamp is mediating remote presence in a more am- that is more about behavioral aspects themselves in
bient form through locative gesturing and dimmable relation to the user.
light levels, which give it the lively appearance of a

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 OPPOSITE, 8.9: Variations on
the Vestigii Chair’s interactive
mirror. BELOW, 8.10: Detail of
the electromechanical charac-
ter set projection device.

only be transported via phone, fax or snail mail, people going through the filmic, time-based phase and arriving
are suddenly inhabiting the ubiquitous information at the relational narrative of interactivity and emotional
universe. One number connects to (almost) any place engagement. Interactive installations are often associ-
on the planet; instant messaging, at the workplace, at ated with effect and spectacle, but in the end they may
home and on the move, is blurring private and work have much greater value in driving the emotional quali-
time, personal and public space. Social networking ties of a space to facilitate dialogue between a sentient
and dating sites are redefining the concept of meeting building and its master.
people. Our flesh-and-blood reality seems to be increas-
ingly extending into the virtual, non-locational realm.
So do we accept these conditions as a secondary given,
or can we as designers propose objects and spaces that
are occupying a threshold position between the physical
and the digital worlds?
Another field of growing maturity is that of android
robots, especially in Japan. The latest generation is occu-
pying an interesting field between practical utility and
emerging social intelligence. Those creatures are already
blessed with limited autonomy to navigating nursing
homes with food trays, patrol after-hours industrial sites
or comfort home-alone children (the AIBO robo-dog,
for example). Emotions have already become a design
material, in a very active way. Automated call centers are
not just artificially intelligent, but increasingly become
artificially emotional, just to make us mortals feel more
natural and understood. We are increasingly entering
into subtle relationship with systems, as well as systems
with us.
If buildings are becoming more intelligent, con-
nected and connecting, how could those spaces appear
and behave? And could we afford a degree of affection to
our designed spaces? One could see the shift in archi-
tectural design paradigms coming from the sculptural,

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 The Archoid Chimera 109

Project 3: THE VESTIGII TICKER CHAIR

The Vestigii Ticker Chair, an interactive spatial modifier them condensate on the creative environment.
The Vestigii Ticker Chair is an object that derives its In reference to physical reality, the projection is
behavior from human activity on a global scale: world using electromechanical character sets that project
events, communicated through internet news feeds, words and short sentences onto a special mirror. The
are provoking this installation to initiate its projective immaterial information bits are transformed into the
spectacle. It is being developed as a living tool for very physical rotation of eight metal drums that act as
the Vestigiii fashion studio in Berlin. It is not just be- electromechanical projection devices. Each drum can
ing placed in the centre of the designer’s activity, but project one letter at a time onto a special screen-mir-
also inhabits an ephemeral and invisible information ror, so a word of eight characters can be displayed at
space that continuously streams information, news once. As a side effect, an ambient, randomized data-
and data through the airwaves and copper cables of veil is thrown around the surrounding interior, giving
our modern cities. The chair is designed to catch animated reference to its constant flux.
those ephemeral digital fragments, derived from on- The piece is designed less as a digital instru-
going world affairs and events, and relay them back ment and more as a spatial modifier, to be inserted
into the physical space of the designer’s studio to let into the creative space of the studio and to become a

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 LEFT, 8.11: The Vestigii Chair
and projection device.
OPPOSITE, 8.12: Detail of the
projection device.

familiar part in the life of the designer. The news in- ing into one project. In fact the Ticker Chair acts as a
formation is thrown onto the back of a mirror that is responsive environmental attributor – a reactive ele-
a semi-transparent projection surface; hence people ment that can be inserted into an architectural space
can mirror themselves in the live world events as they and change its entire presence.
unfold. The news fragments become body language.
This mirror transforms the light spectacle again into
an intangible image, which magically overlays with
the image of the observer. The rhythm of the incoming
data packets can be influenced by visitors resting on
the chair. The project receives its input from a special
‘news spider’, which also works towards the fashion
company’s website, designed by Marcus Kirsch.
The project converges public information space,
internal inspiration tool and part of the studio furnish-

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 The Archoid Chimera 111

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 122 10/9/06 11:03:21 AM
Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 123 10/9/06 11:03:21 AM
 9.1: Olafur Eliasson – Weather
Project, 2001, Tate Modern.
In the simplest terms, the radicalization of
matter requires three recognitions: that mat-
ter is from the beginning irreducibly sensate
and responsive; that at every scale sensate,
responsive matter organizes itself hierarchi-
cally into discrete, irreproducible configura-
tions with specific emergent behaviors; and
that all discrete material configurations at
any and every moment and any and every
scale further arrange into complex ecologies.
– Jeffrey Kipnis, ‘On the Wild Side’ (1999)

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 Eco_logics 115

Eco_logics Helene Furján

Deleuze and Guattari, in their explanation of the ‘abstract machine’, proclaim the operation of the
‘diagrammatic’ as pure ‘Matter-Function’ – a performativity that implies function over form, matter
over substance, effects over meaning. Diagrammatic techniques do not map or represent existing
objects, systems and data sets so much as project or speculate – they are central to the para-
digm of architecture-as-research, a practice in which graphic strategies, techniques and technol-
ogies are integral not only to the mapping of the contemporary world, but to its generation. In ar-
chitecture such ‘diagrammatic’ thinking is involved as much in the structuring of the process, the
tools, the experiment or the research parameters, as in that of a ‘product’. As Manuel De Landa
notes: ‘true thinking consists in problem-posing, that is, in framing the right problems rather than
solving them. It is only through skillful problem-posing that we can begin to think diagrammati-
cally’.1 Architecture becomes a process of tooling the design as well as the instrumentalization of
highly specific tools. In diagrammatics, nonlinearity – the emergence of unpredictable effects or
orders – and dynamics – behavior over time, flow and flux – are operationalized.
This essay will track the influence of a ‘diagrammatic’ logic in architecture in two differing but
related directions, equally dependent on advanced visualization techniques and simulation mod-
eling: the development in contemporary architecture of an interest in architecture-as-environment
leading towards a science of effects on the one hand, and towards architecture understood in
ecological terms – architecture as ecosystem – on the other.

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 A science of effects could be understood as the lib-
eration of atmospherics, ‘a transition from imagining
space as an abstract thing, which is framed, to imagin-
ing space as matter itself’,2 a shift in which atmosphere
becomes the very matter of architecture. Banham’s
science of effects, posited all those decades ago in The
Architecture of the Well-Tempered Environment, saw a 9.2: EAT (Experiments in Art Institute, Los Angeles, Califor-
shift from architecture as building system (cladding, and Technology) – Pepsi-Cola nia. Photo: Moderna Museet,
structure, program, form) to architecture as conditioner- Pavilion, World Expo, Osaka, Stockholm.
of-effects (heat, light, moisture, color). In this concep- 1970. Courtesy of: Research
tion, architecture is no longer confined to surfaces, Library, The Getty Research
whether thick or thin, but opens to a notion of ‘matter’
in which the air itself is latent with design potential, in
which architecture is able to script and modulate a ‘thick
atmosphere’.
[Effects] do not operate in a pure and undi-
The corollary of effects is behaviors. If architecture
today is finally beginning to draw the realm of the luted form, but, at best, take part in a kaleido-
ambient into its territory, no longer through a phenom-
scope of enactments, in which the vividness
enological interest in the perception of environments,
that territory was already marked out in the possibilities of each individual effect is moderated by the
Banham saw for the environment: as a system of control
simultaneous presence of other effects. Ef-
that modifies, conditions, and regulates. In this sense,
‘building’ gives way to ‘ecosystem’, to a built organiza- fects are actions and they emanate from rela-
tion that operates at the level of vivisystems – dynamic
tions. The best effects that architecture can
and complex systems that learn, adapt, evolve, and
mutate in response to the feedback of environmental produce in the contemporary world are those
conditions. Architecture today is no longer interested in
that are proliferating and moving, effects
the primacy of shelter, or even the dominance of form-
generation, but in researching smart materials, adaptive that are anticipatory, unexpected, climactic,
envelopes, and responsive environments.
cinematic, time-related, non-linear, surprising,
mysterious, compelling and engaging.
– Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, ‘Effects: Radiant
Synthetic’ (1992)

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 Eco_logics 117

Thick atmospheres – lifting free of the surface in projects like Servo’s

In the last decade or so the proliferation of digital media Lattice Archipelogics to produce a diffusion of effects
has had an explosive impact on the pervasiveness of through a thickened region of space. This configura-
what Debord termed ‘the society of the spectacle’. tion of environment could be understood as a ‘smooth
Within this culture of spectacle, the dominance of oc- mixture’, an emulsion of atmospherics, matter, form,
cularity and image, recent architectural discourse has technology, event.
begun to map out a resistance, shifting the question The return of a sensory understanding of architec-
of visual culture away from spectatorship (questions ture has its links to the interest in ‘effect’ and sensation
of the gaze, of the primacy of viewing, and so on), and manifested in Baroque and Enlightenment architecture
towards an immersive, interactive engagement that and architectural theory (and belatedly rediscovered in
breaks down the authority of the viewing subject and Gothic cathedrals), from mysterious lights and atmo-
engages other senses – an experiential understanding spheres to the kinetic effects of light and shade on three-
of space interested in atmosphere and effect. As a result, dimensionalized surfaces – effects tied both to temporal
significant shifts are opening in the relation of the object changes and the mobility of the spectator. The primary
to its wider environment; the boundary between build- theories of mood and atmosphere remain Edmund
ing and its environment blurs. This occurs at two levels Burke’s essay on the sublime (1757), Le Camus de
at least: architecture-as-object giving way to architec- Mézière’s treatise on sensation (1780), and Richard
ture-as-environment; and the thickening of the skin to Payne-Knight’s essay on the associational and affective
include a ‘sandwich’ of envelope and air (including heat, properties of the picturesque (1806). Phenomenologi-
light, moisture), or of different forms of matter. Both cal readings of space, from Hilderband and Fielder
paradigms might be understood as a ‘thick atmosphere’ to Merlot-Ponty or Bachelard, must also be counted as
– architecture as a system of control that modifies, condi- important precursors.
tions and regulates.3 But perhaps the most direct genealogical linkage
Architecture-as-environment exploits technology lies between contemporary experimentations with im-
to develop new vibes and atmospherics – what I have mersive sensory space and the interactive and immersive
elsewhere called ‘hyper-lounge’.4 The spaces that result artworks (the ‘happenings’, multimedia pavilions or
are ambient and moody, wrapping the visitor (who is shows, and so on) of the post-war period. In particular,
no longer strictly speaking an observer, and therefore the vibrating color fields of Verner Panton’s interiors or
no longer passive) in the affective and interactive pos- the flux of affectively charged atmospheres of Constant’s
sibilities of special effects. Jeff Kipnis has developed unrealized New Babylon stand out, as do the many in-
the concept of ‘cosmetics’, which operates as a field teractive multimedia environments designed for expos
condition – diffuse, ephemeral, atmospheric thinness5 – Saarinen and the Eames’s IBM pavilion at the New

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 York World’s Fair, Le Corbusier’s Poème Électronique tonic elements. Space becomes luminescent, colorized,
for the Philips Company pavilion at the Brussels World iridescent, saturated, dense, intense, emulsified. Central
Expo, or EAT’s Pepsi-Cola pavilion at the Osaka World’s to this conception is the participation of the user:
Fair. The ambiance of an environment possessing cer-
The Pepsi-Cola pavilion, for instance, was ‘an early tain specific plastic and acoustic characteristics de-
and important example of research on the integration pends on the individuals who find themselves there
of an electronic, programmable environment into … The quality of the environment and its ambiance
a habitable structure’: cloud machine, multimedia no longer depends on material factors alone, but
performance space, simulation generator, responsive on the manner in which they will have been per-
environment, interactive and immersive.6 No longer a ceived, appreciated and used – on the ‘new way of
static object, it was a protocol that generated an adap- looking’ at them.8
tive environment through feedback mechanisms, one Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos describe a par-
allowing visitors to be fully participatory – to construct ticular category of architectural effect that they liken
their own experiences, to merge with the environment, to walking through a painting: ‘your gaze swerves and
to become protagonists in a laboratory of creation and orients you through color, shininess, light, figuration,
experimentation – rather than the passive recipients and sensation’.9 Taken from Gilles Deleuze, this effect is
of a pre-programmed narrative. In this project lies the derived from ‘a haptic vision of color, as opposed to the
concept of environment we have been tracking – archi- optical vision of light’. Such a ‘sense’ of color is tactile-
tecture as conditioner-of-effects, as ecology. For EAT, optical: it ‘implies a type of seeing that is distinct from
the concept of environment provided a means to allow the optical, a close-up viewing in which ‘the sense of
programming to mediate ‘human interaction with tech- sight behaves just like touch’.10 This tactile-optical ex-
nology’.7 Contemporary with Marhsall McLuhan, the periencing of space is one in which the real and virtual
pavilion invokes his ‘acoustic man’, the multi-directed collapse – a space in which imagination, fantasy, hallu-
immersiveness of sound, light and color scapes creat- cination, effect mingle with the material, the visual, the
ing an acoustic-optical simulation that challenges the sensory; like the club or rave, an environment in which
primacy of the purely optical. the synaesthetic merging of light, sound, motion, and
The Pepsi-Cola pavilion neatly captures the twin in- chemicals combine with the propriosensory processes of
terests in contemporary atmospherics: affect/effect, and the body as it turns and moves. The world opened up for
technology. As an affective space, it generated a kind of the participant is one of flux and flows, a dynamic field
‘delirious immersion’ by activating air, media technolo- of provisional, contingent and distractive effects.
gies, light and color (a color that becomes light and a light Atmosphere as environment, effect (with a concomi-
that becomes color) alongside more traditional architec- tant interest in ‘materials’, such as light, shade, or sound,

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 Eco_logics 119

9.3: Francois Roche / R&Sie

Architects – Lausanne Gallery,
competition entry, 2004.

that might enhance the construction of sensory atmo- Also critical, of course, is the role of technolgy. Immer-
spheres), and vibe (affect or mood) posit a resistance sive and interactive architectures require sophisticated
to the dominance of ocularity in Modernism. Working digital control systems to conjure their effects. These
either to remap vision within a bodily, fully sensory algorithmic controls, or rather regulators and genera-
terrain, or to obfuscate it, filling the air with special tors, transform the logic of built space into a dynamic
effects (glooms, mists, colors) that prevent a totalizing network organization – an ecosystem – sensing and
gaze, atmospheric architecture (or architectures of responding to the feedback of visitors’ movements. The
atmosphere) return the ‘spectator’ to a bodily awareness, ‘thick atmosphere’ is produced by the complex interac-
and to a kinetic, tactile field in which they are fully im- tion between visitor, architectonics, a bundle of sensors,
mersed. The question here is no longer one of spectacle, computers, and light and sound emitters. Co-evolving
the understanding of contemporary culture through a components are networked into a dynamic assemblage,
privileging both of spectatorship and of visuality, nor is the clustering relations formed by interacting behaviors.
it a problem of the registration of visual culture and its New clusters form and dissolve as the network learns,
impact upon architecture. In the blurring and dissolu- remembers, and evolves. Thick atmospheres today
tion of both the matter of building and the notion of generate their effects from a hybrid emulsion of digital
‘spectacle’ itself (here the view, intended to be occluded and physical constructions, smoothly admixed into new
by the very immaterial ‘matter’ of the building’s fabric), interactive and immersive systems, new fields of intoxi-
the reign of visuality is resisted, submerged by the ambi- cation and sensation.
ent effects.

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 9.4: Winka Dubbeldam /
Archi-tectonics – Sound-
scapes, installation at the
National Building Museum,
2004.

For complex adaptive systems to maintain

themselves, they must remain open to their
environment and change when conditions
require it. Complex adaptive systems, there-
fore, inevitably evolve, or, more accurately,
coevolve.
– Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerg-
ing Network Culture (2001)

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 Eco_logics 121

Responsive environments systems, largely because they were easily modeled, while
‘Thick atmosphere’ also refers to the redefinition of ‘skin’ environmental systems engineering preferred buildings
to include not just layers of matter and structure but also as closed systems, maintaining their internal environ-
the air that abuts and permeates these layers. Added to ments in steady equilibrium condition. But linear
this new sensitivity to ambience and its operationaliza- systems rarely exist in the world, just as it is virtually
tion is a question of performance – the instrumentaliza- impossible to prevent energy exchange between a build-
tion of this thickened atmosphere as a means of tooling ing and its environment. Nonlinear systems are open
the envelope in response to shifting parameters of heat, systems that can exchange work, heat, and matter with
light, moisture, sound, the structural properties of mate- their exterior, and they are complex – that is, more than
rials, and so on. This ‘smart’ envelope is reconfigured as the sum of their parts.
an ‘environment’ in its own right. The modern city is today understood as a complex,
In Out of Control, Kevin Kelly contrasts two morphol- self-organizing system akin to an ecosystem. It is a
ogies of organization: the ‘linear’ structure of sequential messy assemblage of networks, systems, ecologies, all
operations that governs top-down hierarchical systems competing with, and contaminating, each other. It is
like factory assembly lines or traditional corporate struc- inherently nonlinear: a site of expansions; tactical and
tures, and the ‘nonlinear’ structure of assemblies of strategic interventions; confrontations between local-
parallel operations that governs networks. As he writes, ization and globalization (including shifting cultural
‘action in these systems proceeds in a messy cascade identities based on migration patterns); a terrain of con-
of interdependent events’. Complex organizations are structed space (architectonic and urbanistic); and a map
collectivities of ‘autonomous members’, which means a of flows, networks, transfers, and transits (the immate-
bottom-up system of highly connected agents who are rial images, messages, and vectors of communications
not individually responding to centralized commands and transportations). As Mike Weinstock notes,
but independently and individually reacting to ‘internal We are within the horizon of a systemic change,
rules and the state of their local environment’.11 Charac- from the design and production of individual “sig-
teristic of networks, swarms and vivisystems alike, ‘what nature” buildings to an ecology in which evolution-
emerges from the collective is not a series of critical in- ary designs have sufficient intelligence to adopt
dividual actions but a multitude of simultaneous actions and to communicate, and from which intelligent
whose collective pattern is far more important’.12 cities will emerge.13
Linear systems are closed systems – they can only Ecosystems are characterized by bottom-up logics
exchange work and heat with their exterior – and are and networked flexible organizations. Structure and
characterized by a single global stable state – equilib- evolution are linked, both a function of environmental
rium. Until relatively recently, science focused on closed pressure and ‘fitness’: adaptive feedback loops that are

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 not simply reactive but a combination of learning and Waddington (developmental biology), fitness land-
creativity, processing information about the environ- scapes are models of coadaptation, since each ecology
ment into a model that uses interpolation and extrapola- or even organism will have its own competing fitness
tion to make predictions and develop modifications. landscape.
Evolution relies on a combination of order, flexibility Formal or infrastructural development, in such a
or dynamics, and unpredictability; in other words, on a model, is always contingent, and always evolving. Prac-
process of replication and mutation as much as design tices at the leading edge of architectural research today
and control.13 Such systems generate ‘stable instability’ are increasingly turning to the use of sophisticated
through the interplay of noise and information gener- digital visualization and generation tools – borrowed
ated by environmental feedback mechanisms.14 Ecosys- from the sciences of weather simulation, materials and
tems are coevolutionary, coadaptive, codependent: ‘since systems research, and from the multiple engineering
all organisms adapt that means all organisms in an disciplines – to push architectural generation simultane-
ecosystem partake in a continuum of coevolution, from ously into the micro-scale of matter and the macro-scale
direct symbiosis to indirect mutual influence’.15 The de- of the environment. Such design practices search for
velopment of such systems is dependent less on degrees adaptation and variation, scripting simulation modeling
of complexity or noise than on the pattern – the topolo- to genetically breed envelopes as enhanced environmen-
gies – of interrelations that characterizes the system. tal systems. Parametrics here couples form-finding and
Crucial, then, to an ecosystems approach to archi- energy systems into advanced processing systems, link-
tecture is the blurring of boundaries between building ing the changing intensity and directionality of variables
and environment – both merge into one continuous such as sunlight or rainfall to handle inundation as a lo-
ecology – and the generative capacity of that environ- calized flood response as well as a hedge against drought
ment – an instrumental engagement with the dynamic or heat, modifying the skin to reflect or maximize heat
forces and flows that condition the environment: the absorption, or to optimize the ability of photovoltaics to
flows of matter, air, heat, light, moisture (geological, generate energy, for instance, all with profound morpho-
seismic, geothermal, climatic), but also infrastructural logical implications.
flows of energy, information, capital, transportation, and Responsiveness reformulates digital production in
so on. In order to achieve these levels of feedback, the the direction of contextuality – no longer the old mean-
architectural system must model its ‘fitness landscape’, ing-laden form but one in which feedback mechanisms
a mapping of the internal constraints of the system with are not simply internal to the algorithms generating the
the parameters of its external environment, to produce project but linked to specific environmental param-
potential pathways of development. Used by René eters that the architectural project is now able to fully
Thom (biology), Stuart Kauffman (physics) and Conrad instrumentalize. Looped into ecosystems, architecture

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 Eco_logics 123

9.5: Future Cities Lab: Jason

Johnson / Nataly Gattegno
– Seoul Opera House, competi-
tion entry, 2005. Top: Sectional
perspective view of hanging
opera house. Bottom: Interior
perspective.

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 in this model becomes ecosystemic itself. The building Félix Guattari identifies three ecologies, in an essay
envelope becomes part of a ‘thick 2-D’ in which environ- of the same title, as the environment, social relations
mental control gives way to environmental modulation and human subjectivity. He argues for the need for an
– dynamic modulations of territories and micro-climates ethico-political relation between the three, which must
– creating a building responsive to both its internal and be at once global and molecular, and which he terms
its external environments, through a control system based ‘ecosophy’.17 ‘Eco-logics’ is a generalized ecology that
on the centrality of variation in behavior rather than does not strive for resolution and that moves between
an optimized and statically maintained condition. The collective action and individual creativity. In other words,
building in this model is a cybernetic system, capable of it allows for emergent orders and practices: the drift or
self-regulation – an integrated, complex system possess- bifurcation of a project from its initial path by the intro-
ing its own intelligence – and is stable in the non-linear, duction of an unpredicted ‘event-incident’. ‘Eco-logics’
disequilibrium manner in which vivisystems are ‘stable’: is therefore a practice and a process; it is applied and
a ‘stable instability’. theoretical, ethico-political and aesthetic; it is a process
We might understand the tight coupling of building of ‘continuous resingularization’ – continual mutation,
and environment though Lynne Margulis’s model of reinvention, becoming.18
‘fused assemblages’: micro-organisms evolve their own Nonlinear dynamic processes have been central to
complexity by incorporating simpler organisms into the development of digital practices for some time, as
larger multiplicities that become capable of reproduction indeed have advanced computational logics that allow
as a singularity. A single body and an ecology of organ- the generation of form to become ‘genetic’, a process of
isms are similar – both exploit one another’s functions growth and evolution that breeds prototypical solu-
and machinic behaviors through feedback and exchange. tions. Less so has been the question of responsiveness.
A body is the fused assemblage of an ecosystem operating The work collected together in this volume – and that
with a high degree of continuity and stability. Ecosystems, of other key emergent digital innovators – is moving
however, are generally less tightly coupled – not so much in an important direction, adding to the genetic mix
superorganisms as loose ‘federations’. Organisms are a concept of performativity rigorously tied to material
tightly bound and strict, ecosystems are loosely bound dynamics, climactic and environmental parameters,
and lax; evolution is a tight web, ecology a loose one. The urban and social organizations (as infrastructural pa-
fused assemblage of building – environment is such a rameters rather than socio-political representations),
loose network, a ‘soft system’. Soft systems are ‘fluid, pli- and ambient conditions.
ant, adaptive fields that are responsive and evolving’, and
that have ‘the capacity to absorb, transform, and exchange
information with [their] surroundings’.16

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 Eco_logics 125

9.6: Olafur Eliasson – Weather

Project, 2001, Tate Modern.

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 10.1: Man-O-War detail.

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 Matter and Sense 127

Matter and sense

Jason Payne and Heather Roberge
(Gnuform)
‘Matter’ is the new ‘space’.
– Sanford Kwinter, 2005

What matters
Manuel De Landa has suggested that built form exists as the highest level of geological articula-
tion of the earth’s crust. Assuming this to be the case, the continually shifting methodological
terrains of architectural practice are enmeshed within the much slower but no less inexorable
flows of soil, rocks, water, biomass, and all of the various other ‘natural’ elements. This suggests
that these elements in their most primordial states may not be so foreign to architecture as is
typically assumed. This is to say that matter as it is understood within the disciplines of biology
and the natural sciences is relevant for architecture as well.
Historically, the role of matter in architecture has been secondary to that of organization. This
is true at both the methodological and the morphological levels. Matter, more conventionally
termed ‘material’ or ‘building material’, typically did not enter into the design process until an
organization had been generated to which it could then respond. An organization existed on the
higher plane of ideas, disengaged from the base condition of matter. This relationship between
matter and the organizations it expresses holds true for most approaches to the generation of ar-
chitectural form, including various modes of classical, modernist, and postmodern composition.
Recently we have begun to see a shift away from this model, toward one in which matter is
liberated. This new model results from the co-mingling of three separate areas of thought. The

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 10.2: Detail of Man-O-War’s
weighted points and mono-
filament.

first comes from the realm of the natural sciences, in Matter senses
which complexity is increasingly understood as the This model for architectural composition requires a dif-
engine of creation. Here, matter and the flows of energy ferent mindset of the designer. Instead of understand-
it regulates is the foundation for larger organizations ing the basic ingredients of architectural composition
that, prior to their emergence in actual time and space, – points, lines, and planes – as empty vessels for ex-
did not exist in some prior space of ideation. The second trinsic values, affiliations, and meanings, this material
comes from the realm of philosophy, as an apprecia- is conceptually reframed as intrinsically motivated and
tion for the post-structuralist challenge to signification full. Points, lines, and planes come laden with distinct
increasingly dismantles architecture’s reliance upon qualities in measurable quantities such as density, pull,
signs and references. The third comes from the realm of drag, tension, compression, acceleration, and poros-
technology, in which the expanding role of computation ity. These qualities and quantities, or properties, allow
in all phases of design inevitably changes the way we geometry to become behavioral and active rather than
conceive and construct architecture. Advanced model- representational and passive. In this alternative practice
ing and visualization applications allow for increasingly the designer no longer develops geometry for what it
realistic simulation and exploration of the dynamics of draws but for what it does.
material behavior. It is now possible to create entirely This kind of geometry is intimately tied to the mate-
new materialities no longer confined by the limited set rial it forms.1 Vector geometry is a well-known example.
of behavioral characteristics embodied in traditional Vector and other similar geometries are designed to car-
building materials. The pace quickens as new develop- ry certain techniques within them. They describe flows,
ments in fabrication feed back into software design in effects, and atmospheres that are close to their own con-
an accelerating process of evolution. Matter becomes stitution. These geometries are actually like what they
increasingly informed. describe, and because of this they move beyond passive
This new model posits matter as organizer: matter description toward a condition that is partially real.
first, organization second. Interestingly, it is within Further, they are literally tied to the body they describe
the discipline of architecture that this model has taken in both space and time, moving as it moves. These more
shape. Perhaps this is due to our discipline’s capacity dynamic, material geometries allow us to work in the
for the incorporation and re-organization of the exter- elusive zone between diagram and building. As a result,
nal, or perhaps we are simply in the right place at the the methodological gulf between where a diagram ends
right time. Whatever the case, a methodological model and a building begins is narrowed.
in which material dynamics generates architectural This geometry is only useful for the description, for-
form promises an age of proliferation and abundance, mation, and manipulation of matter that senses. Indeed,
for the organizations of matter never cease to unfold. sensate matter inevitably requires such geometry, unlike

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 Matter and Sense 129

Sensing matter Project: MAN-O-WAR

We present the end-game: the sensing of matter. The Man-O-War (2004): Tactility Named for the sea crea-
sensations created by this work cannot be adequately ture it resembles, the Man-O-War is a gallery instal-
conveyed through the format of a written essay. There- lation meant to produce a thickened atmosphere of
fore we invite you to examine the accompanying im- matter and light. Designed for a show of architectural
ages and their associated captions. They describe design and research involving hirsute (hairy) morphol-
some of the operative properties in recent Gnuform ogy, the piece hovers midway between floor and ceil-
projects in direct terms so that you may get a sense of ing like a heavy storm front. Its global shape emerges
how they feel. from the accumulated material dynamics of 15,300
green, yellow, and blue monofilament lines of vari-
ous weights, lengths, and curl parameters suspended
from 1,352 weighted points. Construction of the
Man-O-War follows from a research article we wrote
entitled ‘On The Uses and Advantages of Hirsutery for

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 10.3: View of Man-O-War in-
stalled at UCLA’s Perloff Gallery
in exhibition entitled Gnuform:
Hairstyle.

more conventional architectural material formations shape, it still involves description. As such, the shift to
mentioned above that require types of geometry more the representation of behavior evidenced in indexical
suited to pictorial representation. These geometries practice is not, in his view, a move away from a represen-
have come to be known by the general term ‘indexical’ tational project.
in contemporary architectural discourse and practice. He characterizes these geometries and their meth-
Masses of sensate matter respond to one another through odological deployment as ‘hot’ and ‘difficult’, adjectives
mechanisms embedded within their constituent proper- meant to convey a kind of hyper-articulation that, because
ties. Designers working with this material access these it cannot escape being representational, is needlessly
mechanisms through the sensitive, indexical geometries overworked.3 Also implied is a kind of pointlessness akin
designed for their description and manipulation. to navel-gazing: why, after all, would one pursue rela-
Again, imagine the vector geometries commonly used tively difficult, often obscure methods for the production
to describe weather systems. While far simpler than of form and argue for their generative potential when in
the material system itself, vector notation does con- fact they are simply a different sort of representational
tain the rudimentary controls, or ‘senses’, required to practice? Are they really generative at all?
manipulate properties. Direction, magnitude, speed, To answer this question we must first dispel an as-
acceleration, and time are all modeled into the geometry sumption and then distinguish between two approaches
at both the local and global scales. This makes possible to indexing in contemporary practice, for, as it turns
the manipulation and prediction of the material system out, Somol’s argument illustrates a divide between two
through simulation. kinds of indexical practice and is thus an important ba-
rometer for their distinction. But first the assumption:
Sensing and indexing geometry should be non-representational to be properly
Theorist and designer Robert Somol has argued that generative.4 This is not true, as no geometry could at-
practices using these kinds of geometries are actually tain such a rarified status. Even intensively behavioral
only pursuing a different kind of representation and are geometrical systems used in artificial life in some sense
not nearly as projective as the arguments above would ‘represent’ the rules driving their disposition in space
suggest. This argument resides within his larger critique and time. A more nuanced view of representation ac-
of indexical practice,2 a critique that bears addressing in cepts its inevitability while promoting a tendency away
this context. Somol observes that as these geometries in- from its more static, conventional manifestations (e.g.
dex some underlying condition, they simply represent pictorial) toward more invigorated, sensate models. This
that condition despite their non-pictorial approach. assumption is in fact a straw man, not set up by Somol
For example, while a vector map of a weather system but resulting from the problematic conceptual ether
may describe the behavior of the clouds rather than their surrounding indexical practice itself. Constant repetition

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 Matter and Sense 131

Architecture’, involving the materialization of linework Man-O-War: Opticality From afar the Man-O-War of-
in architectural representation. ten appears to congeal into a gently swaying, gel-like
Moving within the Man-O-War produces a gentle mass. It stirs at the slightest disturbance in the sur-
tickling sensation all over your body, especially on rounding air. Usually its glowing greens and yellows
exposed skin. This sensation is most intense in the predominate, though in some direct sunlighted condi-
‘curly zone’, an approximately six-inch band of mate- tions it reflects a bright golden-white color. In dim
rial at the bottom of the overall mass. Within this indirect light it can nearly disappear. The proportion
region the monofilament strands curl the most and of green, yellow, and blue monofilament shifts across
cling to each other, creating a more dense layer. The its body to create a great variety of colors that change
curly zone moves up and down your body as you move continually with movement.
because it has a convex section. At the same time the
motion of the strands around your face creates differ-
entially shifting optical effects: quick moves close up,
with slower undulations further away.

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 LEFT, 10.4: View of Man-O-
War installed at The Ohio State
University’s Knowlton Hall.
OPPOSITE, 10.5: Glowing
Man-O-War at Knowlton Hall.

of the term ‘generative’ in concert with geometries and with top-down awareness to carefully modulate the de-
projects more concerned with process than product has gree of unpredictability and control at play at any given
created this false premise – easy fodder for a critic with time during the design process. This kind of directorial
an alternative agenda. insight demands wide-ranging knowledge of a variety of
This then leads to the distinction between two types compositional approaches and leads to more heteroge-
of indexical practice: those whose interest lies in the neous mixtures of systems.
process as an end unto itself and those whose inter- In fact, perhaps the easiest way to distinguish be
est in process is as a means to an end. The first type tween the first and second tendency (assuming the two
Somol effectively dismantles. Practices of this kind are practices being compared are equally facile in the
characterized by a heavy emphasis on ‘hot’ process in modulation of matter and geometry) is to look for the
both argument and methodology, the latter usually number of systems at play in a given design problem.
being more ingenious than the former. These are highly Practitioners in the first group usually work with a
technical practices and their number has multiplied in single, dominant geometrical system and attempt to
recent years as younger, digitally expert designers engage draw the inevitable host of other systems involved in
this material. While much can be said in favor of the the project into alignment with the ‘mother system’. In
proliferation of the expert techniques this group gener- the best cases invention occurs through the rethinking
ates, their seeming lack of awareness of or interest in of conventions that this way of working demands. Less
higher-level control over the end product threatens their positive results occur when the inherently reductive na-
long-term survival. Further, their general myopia alien- ture of the approach produces ill-formed parts and fea-
ates various larger contexts and discourses they might tures or when, in the worst case, elements are ignored
otherwise engage (from the polemical to the technical) altogether and removed from the project. In contrast,
and exposes them to the poaching of their ‘trade secrets’ designers working within the second tendency generally
by practitioners in the second camp. deploy several systems at once. Coherence and cohesion
The second tendency is characterized by a more spar- are understood to rely more upon multiple, interwoven
ing and directed use of indexing in which the geometries economies than on the differentiated modulation of a
and techniques are always immersed in a larger agenda. singular geometry. Sometimes the number and variety
Such practices combine bottom-up generative methods of agencies involved creates difficulty. Such conditions

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 Matter and Sense 133

Man-O-War: Structure and form The Man-O-War Man-O-War: Temporality and motion The monofila-
takes its shape largely from its upper catenary surface ment lines are not bottom-weighted, allowing their
formed of monofilament netting and a grid of lead curl and cling to reshape the lower region of the over-
weights. The curvature of this surface can be adjusted all mass. The shape of this zone changes over time as
to create any number of natural forms. Thus, this sur- these two properties respond to temperature, humid-
face and its manipulation is no different from classic ity, and surrounding air movement.
catenary structural models (though its grid of weights
is much more dense than usual). From this surface
down, however, the Man-O-War swerves from the norm
through the increasing internal dynamics of the free-
hanging monofilament strands. Their light weight, nat-
ural curl, and tendency to cling to one another frees
the lower region from gravity and, consequently, the
logic, mechanics, and history of catenary modeling.

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 RIGHT, 10.6: Front elevation
of bar. BELOW, 10.7: Plan
of reception bar at (from top
to bottom) +48”, +36”, and
+24”. OPPOSITE, 10.8: View
of entire bar.

are not only understood as inevitable but in fact are

sought out for their potential productivity. However,
their successful exploitation demands of the designer a
certain amount of agility and courage: discontinuities
of surface, orthogonal interruptions of curves, conven-
tional pressures on the exotic, and, most importantly,
material restrictions on geometry must be handled with
discipline and grace. It is the willingness to accept these
difficult realities that separates the latter group from
the former and makes their work, refined as it is, more
rough than smooth.
Ultimately indexing is a subset of sensing, a way
to describe matter as sensate – and one particularly
well-suited to architectural notation. It will likely
soon become clear that the present rise in criticism of
indexical practice targets only one form of indexicality:
that which delights in the overt expression of the index
for its own sake. Whether the force of the critique slows
the development of this kind of work or not is of no
import here, for the tendency is not really involved in an
increasingly matter-oriented field anyway. That mode of
practice is immaterial.

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 Matter and Sense 135

Project: NO GOOD TELEVISION RECEPTION

BAR AND FILM SET
No Good Television™ reception bar and film set De-
signed as part of a larger project for the new No Good
Television™ Headquarters in Beverly Hills, the private
bar is the heart of a heavy, sensual atmosphere cre-
ated throughout the building using rich color and
light. Materials, effects, and techniques used more
sparingly in other areas of the project come together
in the bar to form an enriched core. The bar is used
as a reception area for guests, a set for celebrity in-
terviews, and as a standard bar for frequent company
parties. It works well because everyone is drawn to
it: atmosphere as infrastructure. In fact, the strik-
ingly voluptuous bar exudes the risqué sensuality that

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 Drainage gutter

Candy bowl underlit with red LED

lights
Ridge and valley seam

Armrest ridge

Palming mounds backlit with red

LED lights

Crimson fur

Front curvature conforms to body

Structural ridges

Deep groove at seam between

panels

forms the core image of NGTV™, with the result that Topographical stimulation Our growing commitment
the channel has since relocated most of its interviews to an ever more direct appeal to the senses combined
from the green room to this space. with NGTV’s erotic content provides us the oppor-
Our earlier work involving hirsute (hairy) morphol- tunity to explore more literal exchanges of form and
ogy led to, among other things, an interest in the feel. While the smaller ridges in each front panel pro-
construction of fuzzy edges between and within indi- vide structural integrity, their ribbed repetition across
vidual panels and between the bar and the curtains a larger bulge engages the torso of the bar patron.
beyond. Hazy edges are produced within a panel The user’s intimacy with the form increases with the
when light passes through acutely curved surfaces. passing of time and consumption of drink. Palming
Because of intense curvatures, the light falls off mounds surrounded by soft, red fur at each panel’s
before it illuminates the actual edge of the material. intersection facilitate the gentle pulling of the body
This falloff is shaped by the surfaces in such a way into the bar and stir the sensitive nerve endings of the
that the light appears more coherent than ambient hands and fingers. Of course, each of these features
illumination yet less defined than the plastic edges is also visually provocative, creating a heady mixture
themselves. of sensory stimulation.

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 Matter and Sense 137

LEFT, 10.9: Topographical

stimulation. BELOW, 10.10:
1. Vis Typical fur tufting details.
ual s
timulu
s OPPOSITE, 10.11: Top and
front panel features.
2. Physical stimulus

Black neoprene

Crimson fur

Stainless steel hardware

1/4” padding
3/4” plywood
No Bloom

Neoprene

Crimson fur

Stainless steel hardware

1/4” padding
3/4” plywood
Half Bloom

Crimson fur

Neoprene

1/4” padding
3/4” plywood
Full Bloom

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 RIGHT, 10.12: Detail photo-
graph of front panel. BELOW,
10.13: Detail section through
top and front panel seam.

Backlit palming mound

4 red LED lights

Top panel “petal” overlap

3/4” plywood

1/8” neoprene

Wood structural post

Back panel

Mirror to amplify lighting effects

3/32” tension cable with 1/4” stainless bead

Red nylon fur

1/8” PETG front panel

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 Matter and Sense 139

10.14: Detail photograph of top

and front panel seam.

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Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 150 10/9/06 11:03:49 AM
 A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS

We shall not cease from exploring. And at the

end of exploration we will return to where we
started and know the place for the first time.
– T.S. Elliot.

To assume innovation exists only through developing

the new is almost as naive as questioning the validity
of such innovation when it begins with appropriating
and advancing the work of our predecessors. As archi-
tects, designers and writers, I can only imagine that
one would strive to engage the nuances of the present
that make our contributions unique while simultane-
ously projecting through our imagination the possible
futures of tomorrow. Anything less wouldn’t be so much
irresponsible as it would be just a missed opportunity.

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 POSTSCRIPT

This pipe is not a

pipe dream
Lars Lerup

Architects notorious for their straying off the field Guggenheim Museum Bilbao where at first the build-
(Gehry in paintings, Eisenman in deep structure, the ing shone like a lamp, but somehow lost its glow once
blobbers in biology and generative mathematics) have I was inside, when I encountered for the first time
recently stumbled back into Umberto Eco’s semiotic the original drawings of Klein’s air-architecture. Was
cave only to find a roaring fire. Klein’s conceptual art keeping Gerhy’s cave inflated?)
The prospects are tantalizing: imagine an archi- With this mind-bender I turn back to the pipe, be-
tecture where the bricks and mortar have been cause there is a cautionary tale in Magritte’s painting
replaced by the very heat that helped them both to that although a painted pipe is not a-smoking (gun)
petrify. Ephemeralization has been on my radar since it is in our days of intense streams of images close
Karl Popper wrote ‘Of Clouds and Clocks’ published enough, in turn making Klein’s airflow house a house
in 1972. But the leap across the chasm between the – the truth here is that all the money has been put
built and the living (in this case the burning fire) ap- into the heating system, turning the architect into a
pears to be a more radical departure from the ancient heating–cooling engineer. So in the end, I suggest that
stability. it is not wise to blow out the briar with the smoke.
I suggested in my book Building the Unfinished: Not entirely for contrarian reasons, I will suggest
Architecture and Human Action (1977) that archi- that my pipe dreams are of some relevance in the cur-
tects have available a menu of walls ranging from rent climate of ephemeralization and Kleinian replace-
the behavioral to the built, using the Japanese Hand ment therapies. It is not that I don’t like the soft, or
Wall as an example of the former. Here a Japanese the warm for that matter, and that the architects in
person can cross a space unnoticed by holding up a pursuit of the fire will eventually replace the smoker,
hand shielding the eyes. But again this ‘wall’ remains but I don’t think that we have quite yet exhausted
within the built field, since the hand serves as the to- the enigmatic firmness of the distinctly visible that
ken. The fire emanating comforting heat and center- in its otherness is also olfactory and haptic – aside
ing behavior is a different matter. Here we may have from keeping out the chill. One of my favorite poets,
to take another tack. Joseph Brodsky, puts my concern like this in ‘Axiom’
When Sean Lally reminded me of Yves Klein’s (1990):
idea for a house sporting a blast of hot air as its roof, … space itself, alias the backdrop of life, ren-
blown from what looks a bit like Magritte’s pipe, it dered blind by a surfeit of plots, heads towards
struck me – that it was. (This was made more clear in pure time, where no one applauds.
the confusion resulting from a recent visit to Gehry’s

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 Postscript: This Pipe is Not a Pipe Dream 143

And let’s admit it, the roaring fire is much closer to

time and stim (as in stimulation, always bound inti-
mately to duration) than the stability and ever-lasting
quality of the cave – the mere dross in the deer-in-
the-headlight pursuit of our everyday plots. I cannot
help but have a suspicion that architects in pursuit of
the fire are also in the pursuit of fame – as a profes-
sion, we have not only been pursuing the ‘backdrop
of life’ but have simultaneously become the back-
drop in an ever-changing building industry that still
produces 8 percent of the GNP. Don’t get me wrong, I
understand the sentiment, and I am all in favor of the
pursuit. Having spent, in my youth, many winter days
ice-fishing with a roaring fire next to me ready to cook
the ‘pin-bread’ and the trout, while the sun rolls on the
horizon, I love the heat too, but I can’t help that I am
not willing to abandon the hunt for the most ephem-
eral surface between the hot and cold that you feel on
your face and neck – respectively and simultaneously
– that most fickle of walls waving like a sloppy organ
in the winter light.
In the end we cannot abandoned the pipe for the
smoke – the alchemist’s errand is also the fool’s – the
road to a perpetuum mobile is forever broken. Klein’s
pipe-cum-hairdryer will not blow without its furnace,
without its oil. In building as in life, everything is
circular.

Lars Lerup is the Dean and William Ward Watkin Professor at the
Rice School of Architecture in Houston, Texas.

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 POSTSCRIPT

I, the scent cube and CSI; or,

the controlled soft interior
Bart Lootsma

Beginning a new job and waiting for my own spaces phenomena described in this book are already omni-
to be renovated, I was offered by my university a present and completely normal – so normal that we
temporary room. Filled with bookshelves containing hardly notice them any longer. It is the secret longing
old books and students’ theses, it smelled terribly. of architecture to produce an environment that speaks
Some good friends pitied me – and rightly so – and to all senses; I wrote once, ‘secret because it is pur-
after a few days they brought me a Scent Cube. That sued only surreptitiously, for commercial purposes like
is, a handsomely designed black box, which, after one shopping malls and theme parks, or for underground
connects it to electricity, produces wonderful scents, happenings like techno-parties’.1 These are what Lars
depending on the kind of wax one fills it with. The Lerup once called ‘stims’, places that largely depend
amount of scent the cube produces is adjustable with on infrastructure like air conditioning, refrigerators
two sliders, so that one can just cover up other smells and media to attract crowds of people.2
while hardly noticing the new one. Now I could work As a restrained position, we find the emphasis on
without being distracted. With the help of loudspeak- producing spaces rather than the enveloping walls
ers on my laptop I could listen to music, and oc- already with Adolf Loos in his essay ‘Das Prinzip der
casionally even immerse into a movie – completely Bekleidung’, in which he takes us back to the textile
forgetting about my surroundings, in the evening origins of architecture – and thereby to Gottfried Sem-
forming my own space in the dark. After that, I left for per who, just like Reyner Banham more than a century
the small guestroom the university had offered me as later, lets architecture originate from the campfire.3
well for the time being, and watched all the different And at least over the last century, and probably much
versions of CSI and other forensics series that domi- longer than that, it has also been the outspoken desire
nate television these days on the small TV next to my of ambitious architects to create such a sensuous
bed. After a while I even got used to the stiff acting, architecture. Think of the Expressionists with their
nerdiness, showing-off and almost complete lack of extensive use of colored glass, allowing the light of
humor and emotions, realizing that these series are sun, moon and stars to penetrate deep into the interior
about something else, something new that is almost of the architecture. In some drawings of the Gläserne
there. They breathe the desire and prepare us for a Kette, we can see people dancing around a fire in
culture to come. the middle of these strange cathedrals. Think of Theo
Reading Softspace, I was reminded of this epi- van Doesburg‘s ‘Aubette’, where colored walls, film
sode in my life. Because before anything else, the production and dance music created a new, artificial

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 Postscript: I, the Scent Cube and CSI 145

atmosphere in which no visitor could remain unmoved. the Netherlands from 1997. They seem to avoid any
And think of the experiments by such diverse talents of these ambitious theme park attractions. Instead,
as Konstantin Melnikov or Samuel ‘Roxy’ Rothafel in their preface, Sean Lally and Jessica Young ask
of Radio City Music Hall in New York, who wanted to whether emotions, sensations, temperature, humidity
produce an accelerated experience of day and night and scent, for example, can be quantified, simulated
in their buildings by blowing additional ozone into and deployed as definitively as structural forces and
the air. It is architecture of the kind realized by Coop descriptive architectural geometries.5 So, the interest
Himmel(b)lau in the 1960s, with the ‘Flammenflügel’, in ‘softspace’ seems to be an interest in controlling
‘Hard Space’ and ‘Soft Space’, as well as a series of and disciplining all these factors.
helmets, glasses, boxes and inflatable constructions. Again, this fits in a long tradition that started with
For Coop Himmelb(l)au, it was not just the campfire Modern architecture. The Expressionists were just as
but the whole architecture that must burn. The 1960s interested as Le Corbusier in scientific experiments
was also the period of Haus Rucker Co.’s experiments with the components, for example. Already in the first
with similar multimedia environments, experiments issue of Esprit Nouveau, Le Corbusier and Ozenfant
that culminated in Hans Hollein’s manifesto ‘Every- confess they believe in scientific research. ‘We are
thing is Architecture’ and his (provisional) all-surpass- aesthetes who believe art has laws, just as psychology
ing architecture pill.4 and physics ... We want to apply the same methods to
It is, however, not necessarily this kind of halluci- aesthetics that are used for experimental psychology.’6
natory excess that the authors of Softspace are looking In the same issue, Victor Basch, the founder of experi-
for. They seem convinced that today an architecture mental aesthetics, explained what he understood as
that addresses all senses can be achieved with, among ‘New Aesthetics and the Science of Art’. He distin-
other things, the help of the computer. But they do guished three different factors in the appreciation of a
not, as far as I am concerned, refer to the only two work of art: direct factors, formal factors and associa-
buildings that successfully created completely im- tive factors. According to Basch, traditional aesthetics
mersive environments with the help of computers: the had neglected the direct factors whereas these were
‘Poème Électronique’ by Le Corbusier, Iannis Xenakis very well suited to experimental study because of their
and Edgard Varese on the 1958 Brussels Expo (char- psychophysical influences. The aesthetic experience
acterized by Le Corbusier as ‘Entirely an interior job’) should therefore be separated into its elementary
and the H20 Pavilion by NOX and Kas Oosterhuis in parts; color, form, rhythm and tone should each be

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 analyzed individually.7 Naturally, he was also persuad- putting both the work of the artists and architects
ed of the converse, that works of art could be created and that of the architectural theoreticians in a larger
through the use of ‘scientific’ data. scientific, methodological and philosophical context
The theories of Victor Basch exerted a great influ- – but not to use it literally. The goal of the book seems
ence on Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. Under the title rather to produce a cosmological context that would
‘Discipline of the Arts and Sight’, the latter wrote: justify or legitimate that the way of dealing with space
‘We do not know exactly how the eye works (but what and architecture in the way the authors propose is cul-
do we know exactly?). Yet it is evident, that indepen- turally correct and important. It is a rhetoric that has
dent of each comprehensible treatment or evaluation, become increasingly dominant in architectural theory
forms and colors are intense enough to influence our over the last decades. Philosophy and science seem to
primary feelings.’ Using a series of examples, he goes have replaced religion in this constellation, but their
on to show how color produces reactions in humans legitimizing role is exactly the same. The language
and animals that are intense enough to influence used may not be Latin, but therefore often mimics the
behavior, as for example in the bullfight. Or again: ‘In language used in scientific articles.
the Lumière factories in Lyon, the laboratories where It is this procedure that seems essential in (re)-
photographic plates were produced were lit ruby red: appropriating a field that already exists in many ways
the result was that the male workers were constantly on a more (or even less) banal level to the level of
in a state of arousal, and became importunate. As for high art or architecture with a big A. This elitist level
the female workers, they began having more chil- is small and therefore the amount of examples is rath-
dren, as many as possible. Horrible! A calming green er small in relation to the interpretative text. Architec-
replaced the red and suddenly their birthing rate ture here seems no longer the production of buildings
dropped to around average.’8 According to Ozenfant, or spaces or phenomena themselves, but to be about
people were machines requiring care and ‘special the conscious reflection on and interpretation of some
instructions for use’.9 of them. Architectural theory becomes like forensics:
Still, remarkably, Softspace does not contain any the traces are minimal, but if we take the cotton tab
empirical research or even examples of it, or quotes to a laboratory and put it into one of those wonderfully
similar to those Ozenfant used. It contains work of mysterious machines, we may construct the Truth. And
different artists and architects; art and architec- we can only construct the Truth if we know a multitude
ture history; and particularly theoretical reflections, of the most unbelievable stories and miracles. Then

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 Postscript: I, the Scent Cube and CSI 147

we have authority. But whereas the truth in criminol-

ogy is a more or less clear goal to achieve, what is the
truth in architecture?
As Greg Lynn likes to demonstrate, Pete Townsend’s
guitar playing in the1970s anticipated synthesizer mu-
sic. It prepared us, so to say, for a new culture. There
is something similar with CSI that not coincidentally
opens with ‘Who are you?’ by The Who. CSI prepares
us for the next series of movies and television series in
which actors have been replaced by virtual characters.
The fantastic simulations of bullets, knives, poisons,
insects, electricity and other stuff that does not belong
there penetrating human bodies and showing from the
inside how they come to an end can only work because
we look at these bodies already as machines. The mean-
est torture is reduced to a malfunctioning and thus the
culprit accepts his unmasking, resigned and without
complaining.
In the future, CSI and the Controlled Soft Interior
will merge into one thing: a kind of stim – but that real-
ly of the William Gibson kind, in Mona Lisa Overdrive,
and virtual-reality soaps, in which we will completely
immerse, play our role and forget about anything else.
I am almost ready to resign. ‘Who wants to be human
anyway? Only machines do.’

Bart Lootsma is an architectural historian, critic and curator. He

has published numerous articles on architecture, design and the
visual arts, and was the curator of Archilab 2004 (The Naked City).

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 Introduction: Energies, Matter & the Gradients materialists’ such as Manuel De Landa or, in a rather
of Space, pages 1-7 different register, Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and
1 Ole Bouman, ‘Architecture, Liquid, Gas’, Architec- Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
tural Design, 75(1): 14–22. 13 Again, this is of more than historical interest; it
2 Robin Evans, ‘Translations from Drawing to Build- is echoed in the story of the emergence of cities that
ing’, in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Manuel Delanda provided in A Thousand Years of Non-
Essays (London: MIT Press, 1997), 156. Linear History and which today is a touchstone within
3 Hugh Whitehead, ‘Laws of Form’, in Architecture in contemporary architectural discourses of complexity.
the Digital Age, Design and Manufacturing, ed. Branko 14 Banham (1969), 19–20.
Kolarevic (London: Spon Press, 2003). 15 Arendt’s reading of the Greek polis and oikois
would be useful in analyzing the implicit political spac-
Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline, pages 10-23 ing within Banham’s text: Hanna Arendt, The Human
1 This would presumably amuse Banham, who re- Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998
marked in the second edition that the book often fell [1958]), 28–78.
through the categorical cracks of the discipline, finding 16 Banham (1969), 19.
its home in libraries next to technical manuals. He add- 17 The seeming similarity of Banham’s material
ed a final sentence pleading that it no longer be housed thermodynamics of wood’s energy-to-artifact transfor-
there, but to little avail. mation to Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of material
2 Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Ma- singularities and their varied assemblages to produce
chine Age (London: The Architectural Press, 1960). different actualizations as technologies deserves some
3 Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tem- examination, which I lack the space for here. See ‘Trea-
pered Environment (London: The Architectural Press, tise on Nomadology: A War Machine’, in A Thousand
1969), 14–16. Plateaus (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
4 Foucault’s explanation for the importance of a distant 1987).
origin in the discourses of modernity is still useful in 18 Banham (1969), 20.
understanding such tales; Michel Foucault, The Order 19 For an extended analysis of the historicity and
of Things (New York: Random House, 1970). nature of Banham’s concept of ‘machine age’, refer to
5 Banham (1969), 18. Panayotis Tournikiotis, The Historiography of Modern
6 Banham (1969), 19. Architecture (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999),
7 Banham (1969), 277–8. 154–62: PN.
8 Banham (1969), 227. 20 Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-Tem-
9 Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? (Cambridge: Cam- pered Environment, 2nd edn. (London and Chicago:
bridge University Press, 1944). The Architectural Press and The University of Chicago,
10 Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of 1984), 287–8.
Chaos (New York: Bantam,1984),140. 21 Banham does not seem to recall that this under-
11 Mae-Wan Ho, ‘What is (Schrödinger’s) Negent- standing of the post-war suburban housewife was, in
ropy?’, Modern Trends in BioThermoKinetics 3 (1994), part, produced through the same social and technical
50–61. regimes that were responsible for these appliances.
12 Ho (1994), 60. If all this sounds a bit quaint, one 22 Banham (1969), 100.
should recall the interest in hypotheses mooted by ‘new 23 Indeed, in cities like Houston, air conditioning

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 Notes 149

allowed small populations to become vast interior sub- 29 Tournikiotis (1999), 165.
urban conglomerations in the way sewage systems had 30 It is important to note that one can employ Ban-
allowed cities like Paris to become nineteenth-century ham’s theses to investigate why the post-modern criti-
metropolises. cisms of ‘Beaubourg-Effect’ seemed to utterly misap-
24 Banham (1969), 209–28. prehend what is at stake in the work; they claim the civil
25 Banham (1969), 228. society made possible by the ‘structural solution’ has
26 As Brett Steele has argued, in Lever House the entered maximum entropy but criticize the architecture
technologies of cleaning are presented as brand for the as failing to provide a civic infrastructure, when in fact
company’s cleaning products, a spectacle of taut soap- it is attempting to engage and project a social organiza-
film-like glazing, which gleams transparently and is tion as detestable to the French cultural establishment
itself endlessly cleaned. as ducts seemed to be to Louis Kahn.
27 As quoted in Banham (1969), 249; originally in 31 Hadas Steiner, ‘The Forces of Matter’, Journal of
World Architecture I (London, 1964), 35. Architecture, 10(1): 101.
28 In a strange way, the anxiety of building services’ 32 Indeed, as Kittler argues, the distinction between
overwhelming structure may anticipate our current con- software and hardware is rather more complex than con-
dition, when modern office towers and research build- ventionally understood. Kittler, ‘There is no software’,
ings use the same percentage of the total construction CTheory, October 1995.
budget on various IT cablings as on foundations and 33 Georges Canguilhem, ‘The Knowledge and the
structures. Even the all-important FAR can be made less Living’, in A Vital Rationalist (New York: Zone Books,
efficient if it increases IT infrastructure permeability. 1994).
An example occurred in Pelli Associates’ Enron Tower 34 Steiner: 104–6. I have also discussed the Suitaloon
in Houston, Texas, where a second IT riser punches in reference to televisual production of domesticity and
through the middle of the leasable typical office floors subjects: Christopher Hight, ‘Inertia and interiority: 24
of the entire tower simply because not all the neces- as a case study of the televisual metropolis’, Journal of
sary wire could fit into the already massive central core. Architecture, 9(3) (Aug 2004): 369–84.
Indeed, the entire building is fed with redundant IT, 35 Banham notes that even a masterpiece of environ-
electrical and plumbing systems, and gated with nested mental design, Wright’s Robie House, has been so
levels of smart-card-regulated access and surveillance neglected in regard to this aspect of its architecture, that
fields to resist any disruption to its operations. Though no historical document existed that described that es-
made out of mercury-like shimmering glass curtain sential aspect of the architecture, so he had to commis-
wall, as if it were pure electricity, the Enron Tower sion one. Banham (1969), 11.
complex is at once a fortress and an organism detached
from its immediate locale and instead existing in the de- Potential Energies, pages 24-37
territorialized nomadism of global energy economies, 1 Greg Lynn, Animate Form (New York: Princeton
offshore companies and non-existent entities. Architec- Architectural Press, 1999), 10.
ture is not conserved, and nor is the civic social order 2 Michelle Addington, ‘New Perspectives on CFD
that it requires via the structural solution maintained. Simulation’, in Advanced Building Simulation, eds Ali
In fact, Kahn’s domestication here becomes a cynical M. Malkawi and Godfried Augenbroe (London: Spon
desublimation of the sort that the megastructualists and Press, 2003), 147.
Brutalism sought to resist.

Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 159 10/9/06 11:03:50 AM

 3 NCSA <http://access.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Stories/super- of tools, he argues, not as techniques of replication and
twister/index.htm> 12 March, 2005. simulation but as instruments of techne, would result
in a poetic revelation that would go beyond the signifi-
Nested Capacities, Gradient Thresholds and cance of the technological application into the essence
Modulated Environments, pages 52-65 of the artistic action. Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question
1 Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well- Concerning Technology’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic
Tempered Environment (University of Chicago Press, Writings, ed. David Farrell Kerll (San Francisco: Harper
1973). Publications, 1993), 307–42 (first published in Ger-
2 John Pile, Open Office Planning (London: The man in 1962).
Architectural Press, 1978); see also Brandon Hook- 4 In his two recently published books, Branko Kolarevic
way, Pandemonium: The Rise of Predatory Locales in elaborated on this condition: Branko Kolarevic, ed. Ar-
the Postwar World (New York: Princeton Architectural chitecture in the Digital Age: Design and Manufacturing
Press, 1999). (New York: Spon Press, 2003); Branko Kolarevic and
3 Werner Nachtigall, Bionik – Grundlagen und Ali M. Malkawi, eds. Performative Architecture: Beyond
Beispiele für Ingenieure und Naturwissenschaftler, 2nd Instrumentality (New York: Spon Press, 2005).
edn (Berlin: Springer, 2002). 5 Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition (New York:
4 Evolutionary biology can provide some useful Columbia University Press, 1994), 182–4.
analytical methods for this purpose. See Robert Cum- 6 For reference see Manuel Delanda, ‘Deleuze and the
mings, ‘Functional Analysis’, Journal of Philosophy, 72 Use of the Genetic Algorithm in Architecture’, in AD:
(1975): 741–65. Contemporary Techniques in Architecture, ed. Helen
Castle (London: Wiley-Academy, 2002), 9–12.
Dissipative Procedures, pages 68-85
1 Christian Norberg-Schulz, ‘The Baroque Age’, in Ba- Cybernetic Anything... pages 88-97
roque Architecture (Milan: Electra Architecture, 1971), 1 Reyner Banham, ‘Arts in Society: Cap’n Kustow’s
10. Toolshed’, New Society, 22 August 1968: 275–6.
2 Among others, Francesco Dal Co, Kurt Forster and 2 Jasia Reichardt, ‘Cybernetic Serendipity: The Com-
Antione Picon claimed that contemporary digital puter and the Arts’, special issue, Studio International
architecture is a praxis that refers to the Baroque. Kurt 1968: 3.
W. Forster, ‘Architectural Choreography’, in Frank O. 3 Catalogue description of Cybernetic Sculpture in
Gehry: The Complete Work (New York: The Monacelli Reichardt, ‘Cybernetic Serendipity’, 41.
Press, 1988), 9–38; Francesco Dal Co, ‘The World 4 Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings:
Turned Upside-down: The Tortoise Flies and the Hare Cybernetics and Society (London: Eyre and Spottis-
Threatens the Lion’, in Frank O. Gehry: The Complete woode, 1950), 12.
Work (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1988): 39–61; 5 Edward Shanken, ‘Art in the Information Age:
Antoine Picon, ‘Digital Architecture and the Poetics of Cybernetics, Software, Telematics, and the Conceptual
Computation’, in Metamorph (Fondazione La Biennale Contributions of Art and Technology to Art History and
di Venezia, Italy, 2004), 58–69. Theory’, Ph.D. Dissertation (Duke University, Durham,
3 In one of his seminal essays, ‘Die Technik und die 2001), 126.
Kehre’, Martin Heidegger connects the poetic action to 6 Banham, ‘Arts in Society’, 275.
the application of instruments. The instrumentalization 7 For examples of Conceptual Art and dematerializa-

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 Notes 151

tion see Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization 3 See Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well-
of the Art Object from 1966–1972 (Berkeley: Univer- Tempered Environment (University of Chicago Press,
sity of California, 1973). 1984).
8 Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium 4 See Furján, ‘Lounge Core’, Los Angeles Forum for
is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (New York: Ban- Architecture and Urban Design, Forum Annual, Fall
tam Books, 1967), 84–5. 2004: 41–6.
9 The 9 ft x 12 ft dimensions of the glass tank were 5 Jeffrey Kipnis, ‘The Cunning of Cosmetics’, El Cro-
ultimately reduced from 16 ft x 21 ft in order to match quis 84 (1997): 26.
the capacity of an aircraft cargo hold in anticipation of 6 Marcelyn Gow, ‘Soft- and Hard-Wires: EAT’s
the piece being shipped to Osaka. See exhibition cata- Environmental Feedback’, SITE, 12 (2004): 10–11.
logue: Maurice Tuchman, Art and Technology: A Report The pavilion, the first to use fog technology, was in
on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles part a water vapor cloud sculpture, designed by Fujiko
County Museum of Art 1967–71 (New York: Viking, Nakaya, that could generate as much as a six-foot-thick
1971), 282. cloud that responded to the existing weather conditions.
10 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Ex- Diller and Scofidio’s 2002 Blur Pavilion was, of course,
tensions of Man (Corte Madera: Gingko Press, 2003), a direct descendant of this pavilion. The Blur dispersed
383 (original edition New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964). the ‘matter’ envelope into a suspension of particulates,
11 Comments by Lewis Ellmore, Director of Special an ambient field in the purest sense. ‘Feeling’ the space
Programs at Teledyne, in Tuchman, Art and Technology, (the mist hitting the surface of the skin) and ‘feeling
280. one’s way’ collide in a haze of atmospherics and effect,
12 Letter from Lewis Ellmore, Director of Special Pro- the edifice of architecture dissolving into an aerosolized
grams at Teledyne, to Robert Rauschenberg, dated 20 matter, and in turn into the flow of media technolo-
December 1968. Rauschenberg file, LACMA Archives. gies to which it is wired. In the Blur’s dissolution, the
13 Ellmore, letter, 1968. dominance of visuality was resisted, submerged by the
14 In contrast to the more high-resolution medium ambient effects of swirling mists or pulsing colors, a
of film, McLuhan says, ‘The TV image is now a mosaic blinding, disorienting immersion in which the very
mesh of light and dark spots which a movie shot never is status of the object dissolves, dematerializing into a
...’; McLuhan, Understanding Media, 418. shifting, indeterminate ‘environment’.
15 From original typescript of an interview between 7 Gow (2004).
Maurice Tuchman, Robert Rauschenberg, and Gail 8 Constant, ‘New Babylon: Outline of a Culture’, exhi-
Scott, LACMA Archives, 2 October 1970, pp. 11–12; bition catalogue (1965).
published in Tuchman, Art and Technology, 287. 9 Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, ‘Effects: Radiant
16 McLuhan (2003), 468. Synthetic’, Move, 3 (UN Studio/Goose, 1992): 27.
Recent architectural experiments with affective and
Eco_logics, pages 114-125 ambient micro-environments are linked to the projects
1 Manuel De Landa, ‘Deleuze, Diagrams, and the Gen- of artists like Olafur Eliasson or the responsive simu-
esis of Form’, in ‘Diagram Work’, ANY 23 (1998): 34. lated environments of Char Davies. Eliasson’s Weather
2 Jesse Reiser, in Crib Sheets: Notes on the Contempo- Project, an immersive installation for Tate Modern
rary Architectural Conversation (New York: The Mona- that utilized fog as the medium for an intensive yellow
celli Press, 2005), 18. light, generates not just aerial effects but a tactile-opti-

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 cal space that is pure sensation – J. M. W. Turner’s Angeles, 20 October 2003.
‘mustards’ mutated through twentieth-century technol- 3 Somol contrasts these with certain ‘cooler, easier’
ogy. Turner’s paintings, redolent with atmosphere, were practices not involved in indexing. While these latter
attempts to materialize sensation. tendencies lie outside the scope of this essay, they are
10 See translator’s introduction, Gilles Deleuze, Fran- important to mention as they strengthen his argument
cis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, trans. Daniel Smith through contrast.
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, YR), 4 It is unclear whether Somol himself goes this far with
p. xxvi; quotation from Henri Maldiney, Regard Parole his argument.
Espace (1973).
11 Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The New Biology of Postscript: I, the Scent Cube and CSI, pages
Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (New 144-147
York: Basic Books, 1994), 22. 1 Bart Lootsma, ‘Auf dem Weg zu einer neuen
12 Kelly (1994), 21. Tektonik’[En Route to a New Tectonics], Daidalos 68,
13 Michael Weinstock, ‘Morphogenesis and the Math- June 1998.
ematics of Emergence’, in Emergence: Morphogenetic 2 Lars Lerup, ‘Stim and Dross: Rethinking the Metrop-
Design Strategies (Architectural Design Profile 169, olis’, in After the City (Cambridge, MA, and London:
2004), 11. MIT Press, 2000).
14 See Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: 3 Adolf Loos, ‘Das Prinzip der Bekleidung’, in Ins Leere
Emerging Network Culture (University of Chicago Press, gesprochen, 1897–1900 (Unveränderter Neudruck
2001), 146. der Erstausgabe, 1921; Vienna: Georg Prachner Verlag,
15 ‘Noise’ – unexpected or unpredictable events or 1981).
choices – ‘simultaneously disrupts order and creates the 4 Hans Hollein, ‘Alles ist Architektur’, Bau, 1968:
condition of the possibility of the emergence of a new 1–2.
and more complex order’ (Taylor (2001), 135). 5 Sean Lally, Jessica Young, ‘Preface’, in Softspace.
16 Kelly (1994), 76–7. 6 Le Corbusier, Amédée Ozenfant, ‘Domaine de
17 See Félix Guattari, The Three Ecologies (London/ l’Esprit Nouveau’, Esprit Nouveau 1 (Paris, 1920).
New Brunswick: Athlone Press, 2000). 7 Victor Basch, ‘l’Esthétique nouvelle et la science de
18 James Corner, ‘Landscape Urbanism’, in Landscape l’Art, Lettre au directeur de l’Esprit Nouveau’, Esprit
Urbanism: A Manual for the Machinic Landscape (Lon- Nouveau 1 (Paris, 1920).
don: AA Publications, 2003), 63. 8 Amédée Ozenfant, Foundations of Modern Art, (Lon-
don, 1931; London, 1952).
Matter and Senses, pages 126-139 9 Ozenfant (1931/1952).
1 In a recent lecture Sanford Kwinter describes this
condition in more Deleuzian terms: ‘The abstract dia-
gram has a very high degree of correspondence with its
form.’ Kwinter, ‘Beat Science’, lecture delivered at the
Department of Digital Media Arts at the University of
California Los Angeles, 9 May 2005.
2 Lecture delivered at the Department of Architecture
and Urban Design at the University of California Los

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 Notes 153

Softspace-FINALlayoutEDITS.indd 163 10/9/06 11:03:51 AM

 pages iii-iv and 163-4 Potential Energies, pages 24-37
Photo by John Gunn, Earth & Space Research. Melting 3.4 Image reprinted by permission, Edward R. Tufte,
ice field in the Chukchi Sea, NW of Alaska, summer Visual Explanations (Cheshire, Connecticut, Graphics
2002. Shot with a Canon S30 digital camera dur- Press LLC, 1997).
ing the Western Arctic Shelf-Bason Interactions Study 3.8 Image courtesy of the National Center for Super-
from aboard the USCG Healy, funded under a National computing Applications and the Board of Trustees of
Science Foundation grant (OPP-0125252) to Earth & the University of Illinois.
Space Research. Project Credits
> SIM Residence, 2004 (3.2, 3.3, 3.5, 3.6, 3.7): All
Introduction: Energies, Matter & the Gradients images, models and photography by Sean Lally.
of Space, pages 1-7 > ‘Amplification’ Installation, Gen(h)ome Exhibition,
1.1 Image courtesy of the Yves Klein Archives, Paris. 2005-06 (3.1, 3.9-3.14): Simulations, site model and
1.2 Images courtesy of Mrs. Janet Evans. prototype by Sean Lally. Assisted by Chad Loucks, An-
1.3 From Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and drew Corrigan, and Maria Gabriela Flores. Photography
Manufacturing, Branko Kolarevic, © 2003, Spon Press/ in 3.9 and 3.12 by Chad Loucks, ©2005. Photography
Taylor and Francis. Reproduced by permission of Taylor in 3.10, far right, by Helene Furján.
& Francis Books UK.
1.4 From Greg Lynn, Animate Form, Princeton The Phenomena of the Non-Visual, pages 38-51
Architectural Press, 1999. Reprinted by permission of 4.1 Image courtesy of NASA.
Princeton Architectural Press. 4.3 Image courtesy of Gary Settles, Penn State Univer-
1.5 From Architecture in the Digital Age: Design and sity.
Manufacturing, Branko Kolarevic, © 2003, Spon Press/ 4.5 Image courtesy of Ken Nakayama.
Taylor and Francis. Reproduced by permission of Taylor 4.8B Image courtesy of Flomerics Corporation.
& Francis Books UK. 4.9 Image courtesy of Nasser Albuhasan and Joaquin
1.6 (top left) From Performative Architecture: Beyond Goicoechea.
Instrumentality, Branko Kolarevic and Ali Malakawi, ©
2005, Spon Press/Taylor and Francis. Reproduced by Nested Capacities, pages 52-65
permission of Taylor & Francis Books UK. All images and photos are the property of OCEAN
NORTH.
Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline, pages 10-23 Project Credits
2.1 Image courtesy of Nigel Dickinson, > Jyväskylä Music and Art Center by OCEAN NORTH
www.nigeldickinson.com Phase 01 - 1997: Kim Bauman Larsen, Johan Bettum,
2.2 From Reyner Banham, The Architecture of the Well- Markus Holmsten and Kivi Sotamaa with Lasse Wager,
Tempered Environment, 2nd edn., University of Chicago Vesa Oiva and Hein van Dam.
Press, 1984. All rights reserved. First edition published Phase 02 - 2004: Michael Hensel, Achim Menges and
1969. Kivi Sotamaa with Hani Fallaha, Shireen Han, Andrew
2.3 Image courtesy of B. & C. Alexander/Arcticphoto. Kudless, Neri Oxman, Nazaneen Roxanne Shafaie,
Nikolaos Stathopoulos, Mark Tynan and Muchuan Xu.
Phase 03 - 2005-06: Michael Hensel and Achim
Menges with Nikolaos Stathopoulos.

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 Credits 155

Dissipative Prcedures, pages 68-85 Project Credits

6.1 & 6.2 Courtesy FRAC Centre Collection. > Responsive Fields, 2004 / Client: ZKM Karlsruhe /
Project Credits Location: Karlsruhe, Germany / Team: Tobi Schneidler,
> Ecoscape, 2002 / Location: Sierra Nevada Moun- Pablo Miranda, Loove Broms and Smart Studio.
tains, California (6.1-6.7): Design concept by Open > Remote Home, 2005 / Client: Victoria and Albert
Source Architecture / Aaron Sprecher, Chandler Ahrens Museum / Location: London / Team: Tobi Schneidler,
and Eran Neuman; Computational algorithm by Aaron Loove Broms and Milo Lavén.
Sprecher, OSA; Ecological system by Chandler Ahrens, > Vestigii Ticker Chair, 2005 / Client: Vestigii Fash-
OSA; Laser cutting and vacuum forming model by ion / Location: Berlin / Team: Tobi Schneidler, Loove
Chandler Ahrens, OSA with UCLA Model Technology Broms and Milo Lavén.
Laboratory; Text by Eran Neuman and Aaron Sprecher,
OSA. Eco_logics, pages 114-125
> IsoMorph, 2003 / Client: Israel Gas Company / 9.1 Photograph by Helene Furján.
Location: Israel (6.8-6.12): Design concept by Open 9.2 Art © EAT / Courtesy of: Research Library, The
Source Architecture / Aaron Sprecher, Chandler Ahrens Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, California. Image
and Eran Neuman; Computational algorithm by Aaron courtesy of Moderna Museet, Stockholm.
Sprecher, OSA; Structural engineer, M. March, Tel 9.3 Images courtesy of Francois Roche / R&Sie.
Aviv; New material consultant, Dr. Daniel Neumann, 9.4 Images courtesy of Winka Dubbeldam / Archi-
Tel Aviv; CNC milling model by Chandler Ahrens, OSA tectonics, New York.
with UCLA Model Technology Laboratory; Text by Eran 9.5 Images courtesy of Future Cities Lab: Jason John-
Neuman and Aaron Sprecher, OSA. son and Nataly Gattegno.
> Perpetuating Particles, 2004 / Location: Maine 9.6 Photograph by Helene Furján.
(6.13-6.17 ): Design concept by Open Source Archi-
tecture; Particle system and computational scripting Matter and Sense, pages 126-139
by Aaron Sprecher, OSA; Stereolithographic model by All images by Gnuform except as noted.
Chandler Ahrens, OSA with UCLA Model Technology 10.3 Image by Benny Chan.
Laboratory; Text by Eran Neuman and Aaron Sprecher, 10.6 Image by Deborah Bird.
OSA. 10.8 Image by Deborah Bird.
10.14 Image by Deborah Bird.
Cybernetic Anything... pages 88-97 Project Credits:
7.1 Courtesy Wen-Ying Tsai / Tsai Studio. > Man-O-War (10.1-10.5):
7.2 Art © Robert Rauschenberg / Licensed by VAGA, Principals: Jason Payne, Heather Roberge
New York, NY. Image courtesy of Moderna Museet, Assistants: Sven Neumann, Katie Fallat with UCLA
Stockholm. students.
> NGTV (10.6-10.14)
The Archoid Chimera, pages 98-111 Principals: Jason Payne, Heather Roberge
All images and photos are the property of Tobi Assistants: Timothy Gorter, Adam Fure, Katie Fallat,
Schneidler / maoworks. Kelly Bair.

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 Michelle Addington Helene Furján
Michelle Addington, whose teaching and research ex- Helene Furján is an Assistant Professor at the Uni-
plore the re-conceptualization of the human thermal versity of Pennsylvania. She held an Assistant Profes-
environment, is trained both as an architect and as sorship at Rice University from 2004–2005, and has
an engineer. Originally educated as a nuclear and me- taught at UCLA, SCI-Arc (the Southern California In-
chanical engineer, she began her career with NASA, stitute for Architecture), the Architectural Association
where she was a structural analyst designing compo- School of Architecture in London, the Bartlett School
nents for satellites and rockets, and she later worked at University College London, the Faculty of Archi-
in the chemical industry for many years as a thermal tecture at the University of Auckland, and Princeton
process designer, power plant engineer, and, eventu- University. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton
ally, a manufacturing manager. University in 2001, and her professional degree from
After a decade in industry she studied architecture Auckland University in 1990, where she graduated
and joined a small Philadelphia firm as an associate with Honors, magna cum laude.
while simultaneously teaching design studio, build- Helene has received fellowships and grants for her
ing technology and building mechanical systems at scholarly work from numerous institutions, includ-
Temple University. To further investigate the potential ing the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art,
for architecture afforded by new scientific theories in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, and the
heat transfer and fluid mechanics coupled with emerg- Fulbright Commission. A book tracking contemporary
ing technologies, she returned to Harvard to earn a discourse and co-edited with Sylvia Lavin – Cribsheets:
doctorate. Notes on the Contemporary Architectural Conversation
She joined the faculty of Harvard University’s – was published by Monacelli Press in 2005. Helene
Graduate School of Design in 1996, where she is an has had essays and reviews published in journals in-
Associate Professor of Architecture teaching courses cluding Grey Room, AAFiles, Assemblage, Casabella,
in energy, environment, advanced technologies and Journal of Architecture, Hunch9, and the Los Angeles
new materials. She recently co-authored a book titled Forum for Architecture and Urban Design Annual. She
Smart Materials and Technologies for the Architec- has essays forthcoming in 2006/07, including two es-
ture and Design Professions. says on Soane to be published in Intimate Metropolis:
Constructing Public and Private in the Modern City
(Routledge) and Interstices, as well as essay contribu-
tions to the Gen(H)ome exhibition catalogue (MAK
Center/Open Source Architects, 2006), and a DD
monograph on servo (DD, Korea). She is currently work-
ing on a book on John Soane’s house-museum, and
researches the impact of atmospherics, networks, and
models of complexity on contemporary architecture.

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 Biographies 157

Gnuform: Jason Payne and Heather Roberge Marcelyn Gow (servo: Los Angeles–Zurich)
Jason Payne and Heather Roberge established their Marcelyn Gow is a partner and founding member in
practice in 1999 to pursue both built and speculative the architecture and design collaborative servo. She
projects. Their work is informed by intensive research received a Master of Science in Advanced Architec-
and an experimental approach primarily involving the tural Design from Columbia University and an AADipl.
application of material dynamics to the organization and RIBA II from the Architectural Association School
of form. They promote a new materialism – one that of Architecture, and was an MFA Program Fellow at
exploits the organizational and spatial potentials of Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She is cur-
the flows of matter and energy that constitute our rently conducting doctoral research at the ETH-Swiss
environment. Federal Institute of Technology.
Payne and Roberge consider their work part of an Gow has taught at the Royal Institute of Technol-
emerging ‘vitalist-materialist’ model for architectural ogy School of Architecture in Stockholm and the
production that privileges the role of matter in the ETH-Swiss Institute of Technology in Zurich, and is
design process. Traditionally matter in architecture currently teaching design studios at the UCLA Depart-
has been understood as secondary to organization, its ment of Architecture and Urban Design.
shape beholden to underlying and essential diagrams.
For them there is no pre-existing diagrammatic condi-
tion. Diagrams and their progeny, organizations, are
secondary and emergent, culled from the play of mat-
ter and energy in space and time. Matter first, organi-
zation second.
Ultimately this way of thinking leads to an archi-
tecture of effective atmospheres. We are ever more a
species that thrives on immediate, sensual stimulation
and material fact. It is not what it is so much as how
it feels, and one of the things we feel most potently in
buildings is their atmosphere. Therefore maintaining
and extending the public role of buildings demands
more than that they be merely looked at; they must
produce a saturated experience so that they cling to
the skin of the people moving through them.

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 Christopher Hight Sean Lally
Christopher Hight is an assistant professor at the Sean Lally founded the office Weathers (www.w-e-
Rice School of Architecture, where he is pursuing a-t-h-e-r-s.com) in 2004 with a focus on exploring
design research on emerging electronic and mate- the implications for our spatial and organizational
rial urbanisms. He has been a Fulbright Scholar constructs as architects continue to engage advance-
and obtained a masters degree in the histories and ments in the tools and techniques available today. He
theories of architecture from the Architectural As- received his bachelor’s degree in landscape architec-
sociation, and a Ph.D. from the London Consortium at ture from the University of Massachusetts in 1996
the University of London. Previously he taught at the before practicing with Raymond Irrera + Associates.
Architectural Association’s Design Research Labora- He received his Masters in architecture from the Uni-
tory, and has worked for the Renzo Piano Building versity of California in Los Angeles, was appointed
Workshop. He is currently writing a book on cybernet- the Wortham Fellow at the Rice School of Architec-
ics, formalism and post-World War II architectural ture in 2002, and is currently the Caudill Visiting
design (Routledge, 2006) and is co-editing an issue Assistant Professor at Rice. Sean Lally / Weathers’
of AD on network design practices. He has published recent projects include an installation at the upcom-
over thirty articles and lectured internationally. At ing Gen(H)ome project at the Schindler house (Fall
Rice he is the editor of the Architecture at Rice book 2006), the SIV House (2004), the SIM Residence
series and organized the fourth Kennon Symposium, (2004), and the Cushioning of Space (2003). Sean’s
‘Modulations’. work has been featured in exhibitions at Rice Univer-
sity and the University of Minnesota, The Past/Pres-
ent/Future Exhibition in Los Angeles, and the 2003
Possible Futures Exhibition for the Bienal Miami.
Recent lectures and conferences include the Kennon
Symposium and the Form D conference at the Tech-
nion in Israel.

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 Biographies 159

OCEAN NORTH Open Source Architecture (OSA)

OCEAN NORTH is an experimental and multidisci- OSA is an international research practice dedicated
plinary design collective, which undertakes design to the production of dynamic and fluid architectural
research, projects, and consultancy in the intersection systems based on inclusive processes of data treat-
between urban design, architecture, industrial de- ment and technological operators. Its explorative team
sign, and cultural production. Michael Hensel, Achim – founded by Aaron Sprecher, Chandler Ahrens and
Menges and Birger Sevaldson organize the think tank. Eran Neuman – undertakes experimental design with
OCEAN NORTH’s work has been widely published and the aim of establishing synergetic relations between
exhibited in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Recent architectural theory and history, design methods, and
projects include the World Center for Human Affairs, technological research and design (R&D). Since OSA
exhibited in the A New World Trade Center exhibition was established in 2003, founders have taught and
at the Max Protetch Gallery in New York, the Venice lectured throughout the world in leading schools and
Architecture Biennale in 2002 and the Blobjects ex- conferences such as at Princeton University, Rice Uni-
hibition at San Jose Museum of Art in 2005, as well versity, Syracuse University, Ohio State University, and
as the Jyväskylä Music and Art Center, exhibited at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. OSA’s
the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2004. For further work has already been presented in many exhibitions,
information see: www.ocean-north.net including AIA ACADIA’s Fabrication (2004), Softspace
at Rice University (2004) and Past, Present, Future at
UCLA (2003). Currently, OSA is curating an exhibition
at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, in Los
Angeles, titled The Gen[H]ome Project: Genetic and
Domesticity, to be opened in Fall 2006.

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 Tobi Schneidler / maoworks Jessica Young
maoworks is a design strategy company, inventing Jessica Young is a designer living in Houston, Texas.
intriguing new types of environments that combine She is the Director of Publications at Rice School
service, interactivity and emotional qualities to en- of Architecture, where she is also the managing edi-
courage communication and play. maoworks collabo- tor for the Architecture at Rice book series, and has
rates with commercial, research, and cultural clients taught with Mark Wamble. She received her Master’s
to connect people, places, and information through in architecture from Rice, and her Bachelor of Arts
situated interactive experiences. maoworks stands for from Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. She has col-
the Office for Mediating Architecture and Objects. It laborated on various types of projects with Lars Lerup,
was founded in London in 2004. Interloop Architecture and Design, David Guthrie Stu-
maoworks is currently involved in a British govern- dio and Workshop, Thumb Projects and Philip Lee,
ment-funded innovation project on the use of Smart among others. At present, she is working with Lars
Dust in Knowledge Workplaces and the design of a Lerup on his current book, Stim and Dross, and on an
creative meeting place for the Swedish Design Coun- ongoing urban landscape project.
cil, as well as the in-house development of interactive
interior design products. maoworks also facilitates
innovation workshops with companies and public or-
ganizations.
maoworks founder Tobi Schneidler graduated as
an architect from the Architectural Association in
London. He then initiated various applied research
projects within tangible media and interactive archi-
tecture as well as pursuing independent design con-
sultancy work on an international level. Tobi has also
been teaching and lecturing at various design and
architecture universities in Europe, the US and Asia,
such as the Royal College of Art in London and the
Royal institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm. His
installation work has been shown at venues such as
the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) and the Victo-
ria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

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 Biographies 161

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 Preceding pages: Melting ice
field in the Chukchi Sea, north-
west of Alaska, 2002.

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