Spatial-temporal architecture
From Collectivate Course Wikis
ArchitectureOfInteraction
Reading:
Jones, Peter Blundell. Petrescu, Doina. Till Jeremy. Architecture and Participation. Spoon Press. New York 2005.
Giancarlo De Carlo Architecture's Public
While human activities multiply, becoming diversified and omnipresent, decision about where and how they should take place are increasingly concentrated in the spheres of economic, bureaucratic and technological power. The role of architecture could be to contribute to the freezing or thawing out of this paradox, according tot he stand it chooses to take - on the side of the power structure, or on the side of those overwhelmed and excluded by it. While it is also certain this choice can never be made by what for 'architects' and 'architecture'. (Giancarlo De Carlo pg. 13)
Therfore the intrinsic aggressiveness of architecture and forced passivity of the user must dissolve in a condition of creative and decisional equivalence where each - with a different specific impact - is the architect, and every architectural event regardless of who conceives it and carries it out - is considered architecture. The metamorphosis, in other words, must coincide with the subversion of the present condition, where to be an architect is the result of power delegates in a repressive fashion, and to be architecture is the result of a reference to class codes which legitimate only the exception, with an emphasis proportional to the degree to which it is cut off from its context. The expedient of 'not reading the surroundings'(used so well by official criticism through through the technique of uninhabited, edited or even trick photographs; or through linguistic analysis excluding all judgement on the use and consumption of the event under analysis) corresponds, in fact, to an ideological, political, social and cultural falsification with no counterpart in other disciplines." (Giancarlo De Carlo pg. 13-14)
Participation and scientific method
"Unlike all proposals for stylistic renewal formulated up to now, to change the whole range of objects and subjects would open a process in architecture which has no prescribed itinerary and no final solutions. Collective participation introduces a plurality of objectives and actions whose outcomes cannot be foreseen. Initially it is possible only to prefigure a line of behaviors and tendencies to set the process on its way. The evolution of society toward abolition of classes, the population explosion, and the continuing development of technology, pose enormous problems in the organization of the physical environment, and to preserve its role, architecture must clarify its ideological position respecting these issues. The discipline and its ideology are connected by a reciprocal necessity, for just as the vagueness of exploration based on inspiration and taste reflected dependence on the clients whimsical power, so the rigor of the scientific method corresponds to an identification of users' real needs. But identifying with the users' needs does not mean planning 'for' them, but planning 'with' them. In other words it means enlarging the field of participation through the definition and use of the plan, introducing the into the system a whole set of complex variables which could never be composed into balanced situations except with procedural systems based on continual alternation of observations, propositions, and evaluations; i.e. the use of the scientific method. On this point we must be clear. Therefore we must star by clarifying the basic differences between planning 'for' users and planning 'with' them.
If we people, consensus remains permanently open; it is renewed by conformation with the planned event along the whole arc of its existence and, reciprocally, it renews the planned event by adapting it to the demands of a supporting apparatus which keeps redefining itself. In the case of planning 'for', the act of planning remains forever authoritarian and repressive, however liberal the initial intentions. In the case of planning 'with', the act becomes liberating and democratic, stimulating a multiple and continuous participation. This not only gives the planned event a political legitimation: it also makes it resistant to the wear and tear of adverse circumstances and changing times.(Giancarlo De Carlo pg.15)
The discovery of users needs
The discovery of users needs is not the only the prerequisite of the process but also a matter of focusing basic choices. We can opt for an abstract idea of the user: the universal human being, with different symbolic connotations that the purposes and tastes of the dominant cultures of every epoch may attribute to him. An alternative is to opt for a concrete condition of society identifying a particular type of user, for example belonging to a social underclass, and in this case discovery becomes a political operation. A classification of needs calculated in relation to imagery 'average man' opens up no prospect of substantial renewal because it does not take into account the fact that work dwelling, traffic and leisure, which are completely different activities and in many ways opposed, can be of primary or secondary importance depending on wether they are considered from the point of of view of those with power or those without. In fact, those excluded from the use of power - and therefore from what is officially recognized as culture, art, architecture, are not larvae waiting to for a metamorphosis which will permit them to benefit form legitimate values of the power structure. They are bearers of new values which already exist potentially, manifested sporadically in the margins not already controlled by institutional power. ( Giancarlo De Carlo pg.17-19)
The formulation of the hypotheses
THe formulating the hypotheses corresponds technically to what is called in authoritarian planning 'the project'. But in authoritarian planning this means translating into organizational and morphological structures, functional and expressive objectives that have been designed once and for all - or which are easily frozen because they follow an institutional, and therefore predictable, logic of behavior and representation. In process planning , by contrast the objectives find their definition in the course of the process itself: they are defined through continual interaction between the pressure of the real needs and and images of spatial configurations. perfected until the reach an equilibrium, even if some instability remains due to the innate mobility of the process. Thus the function of planning is not to block further interpretation of reality a permanent and immobile form but, on the contrary, to open up a dialectical process in which reality expands continuously, solicited by images, which in turn become increasingly diversified through new expansion of reality. In other words, unlike authoritarian planning, which imposes final solutions from the start, process planning formulates a sequence of hypotheses aiming at (and launched by) participation. Each hypothesis enlarges the field of forces already created by the preceding hypotheses aiming at (and launched by) participation. Each hypothesis enlarges the field of forces already created by the preceding hypothesis, and therfore brings about its own replacement by a successive and yet more appropriate hypothesis. The sequence is suspended when a point of equilibrium is reached which permits the putting into effect - the materialization in physical space - of the the last hypothesis considered satisfactory. Afterwards it stars up again, along a further line of experience in the phase of use.
Administration and use
For the relationship to dialectical, it is necessary for each side to posses a[titiudes for change through a continuous alternation of reciprocal identification and disassociation. --This phase which adjusts, subtracts, ads to, or modifies the design is still part of the project: it continues until the point of physical and technical obsolescence, which occurs when the building's tissue are exhausted and have lost there regenerative capacity. Through process planning the teleological assumptions which have diverted architecture from its most concrete material causes are exposed. --Following the movement of these relationships, it continues both to modify and be modified by the user; integrating itself in this way with nature and producing history, becoming itself, through the use that is made of it, apart of nature and history. Architectural organisms are subjected today because of the change in the circumstances which dictated their initial programs, an effort has been made to find a solution by contriving their morphological and organizational systems to permit additions and adaptations. Growth and flexibility in an architectural organism are not really possible except under a new conception of architectural quality. This new conception cannot be formulated except through a more attentive exploration of those phenomena of creative participation currently dismissed as 'disorder'. ( Giancarlo De Carlo pg.20-22)
Jeremy Till The Negotiation of Hope
Placatory Participation
Participation as an unchallenged generic term disguises the fact that in all participatory processes there are degrees of involvement ranging from token participation to full control of the process by citizen participants. As a result of participation the decision of the collective is more readily accepted by the individual and (importantly) it increases the feeling among individual citizens that they belong in their community. If participation acts as a palliative to ensure that stability, then that is acceptable. If participation acts as an agent in the transformation of the values of the state, then it is not acceptable. In this light, Pateman argues that 'participation', as far as the majority is concerned, is participation in the choice of the decision makers. Thus the function of participation is solely a proactive one. Protecting, placating, participation is really no more than a placebo. --Full participation is described as 'where each individual member of a decision-making body has equal power to determine the outcome of decisions. '-Carole Pateman Full participation is an ideal, but an impossible one to achieve in architecture. It depends on each party being in possession of the requisite knowledge and in there being transparent channels of communication, Neither of these pertain in architecture where the expert knowledge of the architect and the tacit knowledge of the participant user remains on different levels, and where the lines of communication are compromised by codes, conventions and authority. --What is needed, therfore, is another form of participation hat is realistic enough to acknowledge the imbalances of power and knowledge, but at the same time works with imbalances in a way that transforms the expectations and futures of the participants. Let us call this type of participation "transformative participation as an active signal of its opposition to the passive nature of placatory participation. (Till pg.27)
Transformative Participation
Till quoted from Nigel Cross: By making the design process more open and explicit, computers also open the way for a wider range of participants to contribute to the process..in particular the users of the buildings, who have traditionally been allowed no participation in the design process, could become involved in a computer aided process.
The expert-citizen/citizen-expert
The participatory process brings the limits of architectural knowledge into sharp focus; in its specialist pursuit of techniques and aesthetics, architectural discourse detaches itself from everyday desires and needs of the social life-world. Participation thus presents architects with a double bind - the need to reassess what constitutes their knowledge but also the worry that in so doing one may no longer be seen as an architect. As Lars Lerup says:'Our old exercise of staring at objects...fixing them in our professional gaze, may be challenged by simply taking the position of the object and seeing how people react to it.'
Urban Storytelling
What is suggested is the appropriateness of conversation tot he architectural participatory process. First, conversation moves the architect from being a detached observer into an engaged participant, enabling him or her to see from to see from within a given situation. Second, it anticipates the future spatial possibilities in terms of time and occupation rather than seeing them as fixed and empty forms. Third, conversations bring into social relationships because a Ron Harre notes.
Reading:
Bouman, Ole. Time Based Architecture. Contents Archis #2 2003.
Ole Bouman Time Based Architecture
"What happens when we approach architecture not from a longing for perfection, but from the viewpoint of the ravages of time? Often, all too often, architecture denies time. It challenges eternity and aspires to permanence. It poses for the photographer as a frozen tableau, unsullied by mortality. It pretends moreover to be a long-term investment, immune to wear, misappropriation or declining cultural relevance. The discourse on architecture, finally, is almost entirely about that one, breathless moment when time seems to stand still: the delivery. Neither the arduous genesis of the concept, nor the refinement of the sketch, nor the battle for quality of execution, nor even unforeseen uses, those mutations of real life, provoke as much reflection as that one pure moment when the world seems perfect. The question I wish to raise in this article is what happens when we approach architecture from the opposite direction - not from a longing for perfection, but from the viewpoint of the ravages of time. A culture of many times
Time, it is said, is nature's way of making sure not everything happens at once. Nowadays, however, it can no longer be relied on to do so effectively. The British physicist Julian Barbour, in seeking a 'theory of everything' to unite quantum mechanics and relativity, argues that the universe is just 'one big bunch of nows'. Several articles in the September 2002 special edition of Scientific American postulate that the relativity of time is a human construct. In the transition from a humanist world view (in which the unfolding of the inner self prevails) to one in which the central issue is the processing of information, time becomes increasingly defined as a social contract rather than an actual fact. Some speak, in a fine oxymoron, of The End of Time. Still, we need neither theoretical physics nor philosophy to realize the extent to which time has become ever more compressed into an everlasting here and now. We live in a culture of perpetual now-ness where what matters is the updating, rather than the creation, of information. Our days are spent checking for news: the doormat, the newspaper, the mailbox, the answering machine, voice mail, SMS alerts, teletext, stock prices, the diary, electronic newsletters, ICQ messages... it is an incessant bombardment. There is always something new to check. What typifies all these forms of communication, however up to date, is their asynchronicity. Nobody is hanging on at the other end of the line or sitting opposite you waiting to receive your answer. To respond, you in turn leave a message. This disconnection of communication from real contact is a crucial factor in the progressive subjectivization of time. Every message is stamped with its time of arrival. Your personal universe turns into a realm of time management, system maintenance and the meeting of deadlines.
There may however be an even more significant factor behind the triumph of the here and now. That factor is the simultaneity of different life styles. For adherents of the 'flex' way of life, everything is simultaneous. Whereas production and reproduction once inhabited quite separate realms, now work, relaxation and private life are everywhere at once. You take your work home with you, you structure your own day at the office and fire off an e-mail to a friend, to the real estate agent or to the tax consultant whenever you feel like it. Everyone has his or her personal To Do list. How else can you survive in a world where you have to think of everything at the same time, while you are continually bombarded with distractions?
And, just as individual life has become a concatenation of what were once strictly distinct levels of experience, society too has become a patchwork of different time experiences. Even in suburbia, renowned from the start for its monoculture, we see an emerging mosaic of black and white schools, full and empty parking spaces, fading children's playgrounds, moribund churches and flourishing mosques. It is the result of a clouding of the collective sense of time in the multicultural society. Conflicts flare over the organization of time. Pungent cooking smells in the early morning. Five times a day to the house of prayer during Ramadan. Anger over Santa no longer paying his customary visit to the 'black school'. Sentimental thoughts of combining the Islamic fast-breaking with Christmas. Everyone is more wide awake than ever, but nobody knows what time it is for someone else. What we learn from the situation is either that time is the fundamental order that binds everything together, or that it isn't. An unquestioned acceptance of the clock, the diary and the calendar is making way for a system of temporary and arbitrary agreements which are made on purely pragmatic grounds and which only remain valid as long as it suits people. This is the culture that fosters the dissatisfaction that has erupted so virulently in recent times. This too is the heart of the matter of integration. Far more than a shared language, it is a shared time that enables people to live in harmony and to respect one another. Some biologists hold that an empathy with another individual's use of time is what makes the real difference between the human and the animal. And although the perception of time scarcely rates a mention in the current fierce debates on integration, it is an area that can only be understood in terms of a wide diversity of social attitudes.
What reaction patterns can we detect in the current discourse on society? It is no longer a discussion about Left or Right, Socialist or Conservative. Although it is certainly possible to treat time as a divisive issue, choosing a position is not so much a matter of striking a balance between social justice and individual freedom. More and more, people are adopting positions in a (usually unconscious) reaction to today's fragmented temporal order. As such, these are not ethical or material reaction patterns, but temporal ones. On the one hand, there is the progressive approach in which the right to self-determination with regard to time is central and the tendency towards further atomization of time is not really disputed. According to this way of thinking, it is up to those who think differently to become just as liberal, enlightened and individualistic. On the other hand, there is a powerful conservative tendency which expresses itself primarily in terms of the preservation of values and standards. But its real aim is to counter the further fragmentation of time with a desperate appeal to the needs of society. This mentality betrays a latent jealousy towards those groups who still display the social cohesion inherent in a strongly shared sense of time. After all, the only family that could still be termed the 'cornerstone of society' is the average immigrant family. The conservative tendency would dearly like to see greater 'family reunification' among native-born Netherlanders.
Besides these two conceptual assessments of what is going on in society, there is also the limit of tolerance that can be reached. How much loss of time can we still put up with - on public transport, in traffic jams, on the telephone, listening to muzak and repeated 'Please hold the line' messages? How much incomprehension can one tolerate about the breakdown of old customs such as shopping hours and public holidays, or the breakdown of the arbitrary borders of human existence by in-vitro fertilization and euthanasia?
All things considered, the whole cultural discourse is about the question of how far we can go in personalizing time towards a regime of total arbitrariness. Is there anything that still binds us together? Absolutely, and not infrequently such things are experienced as a foregone conclusion, as a tyranny of cliches: the obligatory networking via Christmas and New Year's cards, the commercial enterprises of Mother's Day, Father's Day and Valentine's Day, the annual mega-events of the Oscar awards and the Eurovision Song Festival. The elections. The Tour de France. And, of course, the constantly updated 'Breaking News'. Criticism is frequently heard of the gratuitous significance of a news channel that does not serve truth but is driven by viewer statistics. But the hidden significance of this journalistic circus might just be the daily synchronization of society. The passive news consumer can observe daily how his fellow citizens remain equally passive in the face of the same news reports. It is a rarely analyzed yet vital function of the press. The volatility of the media is the ultimate indicator of a nation's durability.
This brings us to the concept of synchronically, the extent to which each person's clock can keep the same time as another's. It is not long since all humanity shared such a moment. I refer to the Millennium, of course, and in particular to the Bug scare. The First of January 2000 was first supposed to be a universal party, followed by a universal catastrophe. It turned out, however, to be a moment like any other, a gigantic flop, the ultimate rude awakening, leaving ruins in its wake such as the Millennium Dome in London. The New Economy slammed into a brick wall. Now, in the anonymous year 2003, there is nothing on the calendar (apart from the threat of war, of course) to bring us together. We shall have to do it ourselves. For a society, the daily ration of news, celebrities and commercial violence can never be enough. Time is not held together by vague sentiments but by concrete actions. Interventions at a wider level than the individual are needed to promote the rediscovery of shared time. I could describe it as a 'Delta Plan' to halt the further disintegration of time, if that didn't sound so parochially Dutch. So let's call it a Grand Project, a project to heal time.
Synchro system
The battle for time leaves us orphaned. If it is true that every form of society is ultimately founded on a shared time, then the question arises whether continued submission to a divisive time might not eventually lead to the impossibility of society, at any rate, as something that rises above the immediate pragmatics of controlling and coordinating, and gains a life-motivating, identity-imparting significance. This brings us to the ethical significance of shared time. Technically speaking it is quite conceivable that an entirely atomized and rationalized time might produce a perfectly functional society. It is not unimaginable that a continued commercialization of time into a system of asynchronous transactions might lead to a peaceful, or perhaps sedated, world. Such a system might run smoothly enough if its control mechanisms were perfected. But the question is of course whether that is desirable. Whether it is nice. And whether there aren't other alternatives.
The tenet of this pamphlet is that it would be better not to carry out this sinister social experiment but to investigate how to repair the synchronically that forms the foundation of social cohesion. That's what matters: the synchronization of the experience of time to a level where you can recognize yourself in another; in his or her world view, life rhythm and ideals. For what starts as tolerance towards someone else's lifestyle may end in indifference towards that other person's time. The emancipation of time from the chains of faith and ideology has had a liberating effect on the individual's right to self-determination, but has produced a society in which people have become their own time units, shut up in their time capsules and communicating with one another only in protocols. Indeed, extremely precise clocks are needed for those protocols. But sharing a clock is not the same as sharing a sense of time. A clock only helps you share clock time, not the duration, the experience, the sensation of existence. The clock only facilitates communication, not participation in another's life. People will soon be asking what time something happened rather than how it felt. Nobody will know what the time is for someone else. Perhaps this is the true reason for the increased concern for the need for integration. The problem isn't language. It is not the sharing of values and standards. It is primarily the failure to share time. Thus poor integration is not a problem of the other and the others, but a problem of ourselves. Nobody is able to say clearly what people are supposed to be integrating into, because we no longer know. It wouldn't be the first time that a conversation ostensibly about the faults of the other has in fact been a conversation about ourselves. The accusation leveled most fiercely at present concerns the avoidance behavior of some people. Yet avoidance is precisely the consequence of disintegrating time, and thus applies to us all.
It must be admitted, however, that the situation sketched above is far from being a fate to which humanity is meekly letting itself be led. Besides all the protests against globalization and excessive submission to market forces, which contain an implicit critique of the prevailing time perspective, there are countless forms of resistance where time is an explicit issue. It is the resistance of self-imposed slowness. In art, film and architecture, we can point to countless examples of works that consciously aim to decelerate movement and the viewer's experience. Deceleration is meant to lead to contemplation, reflection, tactility and value. In the political arena, too, voices are regularly heard in favor of countermanding the devastating pace of life and opting for deceleration. It is a concept that is invariably linked to the 'quality of life', with the implication that haste impairs that quality. Even some businesses have now discovered slowness; not as a critique of capitalism, but as a commodity with good prospects of success in certain market segments. Fashion, body care, interior design, Slow Food: many different areas are profiting from the sense of unease by offering SlowTM. Even slowness can become a brand.
But slowness is not the same as shared time. Slowness can just as easily become a consumer product, a question of style and status; something you use to express your individuality, and hence a function of atomization. Slowness can also, in true Dutch style, be turned into a highly intensive project. Slowness is a way of flaunting your privileges. It has nothing to do with community formation. That can only be fostered by the reinstatement of chronomunitas, a community of time which is stronger than chronocracy, the dominance of time. In a community of time, time is not necessarily slower but it gains more significance due to the shared experience. This makes it fuller and more intense; it gains a historical and future perspective. A community of time does not fret about the waste of time because it continually generates time.
The question now is whether this vision of a community of time could lead to a real turning point in the current process of temporal fragmentation. Can time become public again? Will it be necessary to appoint a protector of public time, in the same way as for the public domain? Should that protector be the State, from whom we have the highest expectations in the case of public space? Must it also take responsibility for saving public time? At what levels could such a community of time be created? At the psychological level, where time is experienced? At policy level, where time is organized? Or at design level, where the creation of time also acquires shape? Below are some considerations with respect to the last of these three directions.
Designing shared time
You can try to change the way people think about time and thus cultivate a new mentality based on the necessity of shared time. You can also try to organize society at various levels in such a way that the time factor becomes a theme of politics and administration and due weight is given to the importance of social synchronically. But is it also possible to give the time factor visual form? Can the abstraction on which the whole of the above argument has been based be a source of inspiration for those shaping the look of the world, for the representations of values that we encounter daily? Can time be made visible in our environment, and can it be used in the design of clothing, interiors, buildings, cities and landscapes? And is such design capable of bringing people closer together? Can the conceptual counterpart of time - the order of space, material and form - make time?
Sure it can. In the case of our second skin, fashion, that is immediately clear. Few cultural expressions make such a potent contribution to a group identity as clothing. In the right gear, you're part of the scene. Appearances are not only an expression of individual personality but are also a coded signal for various kinds of desired contact. There is still much that could be achieved in this area by means of color, shape, difference, logos and all that. It would be a start. The most elementary form of synchronically is a date.
And what about the third skin? Architecture is not without experience in this domain. I need only mention a few properties that architecture has always possessed to clarify this. If one interprets time as heritage, there are countless examples of the immortalization of values in stone and ornament. Memories were evoked, as it were, by form. The future, too, has a rich tradition of built imagery. The architects who designed as a way of proclaiming the future literally fabricated time. It must be said, however, that architecture has almost entirely lost this function, knowing neither which memories are worth petrifying nor which future is worth the effort of proclaiming. All that remains is the engineering of consent by way of neoclassicism, of community spirit by traditionalists, of the calming perspective by the Disney Corporation; or, at the other end of the spectrum, a vague fascination with the new, strange and far-off - the megastructures, the blobs and the deconstructivism. Architecture has largely abandoned its functions of commemoration and midwifery, and thus reflects the poverty of the historical consciousness. How can you build for tomorrow if you live purely in the here and now? The same applies to art in public spaces, which lost its memento mori function half a century ago. History and the future used to make time into a collective good, but the present day privatizes time.
Here's another angle. If time is seen as a coefficient of efficiency, then architecture is a brilliant metaphor for this. There can be few fields where the struggle for time, the hunt for speed and the respect for haste have been so strikingly expressed. A professional field currently on the rise in the Netherlands sports the name 'mobility aesthetics'. This discipline aims to give standing and visual form to a culture of motion, and offers a sequel to the non-aesthetic of mobility that prevails at high-visibility motorway locations, where two principles apply: the speed of access to and from the transport network, and the size of the logo on the cornice. The mobility aesthetic does not make time, but aspires to a more pleasant way of spending it.
Then there is the architecture that works on the basis that everything is fluid and will forever remain so. It is the architecture of the flex office and the drive-through restaurant. Its repertoire includes sliding walls, snap-on modules, system ceilings, tidal traffic flow schemes, multifunctional buildings and programmatic intensification. In fact, it is an architecture that has no intention of representing anything, but aims only to serve the evanescence of every idea, every program and every life.
Digging a level deeper than the outward form, we may discern time as an organizational principle of our existence. Actually, the built environment is always a reflection of that. Indeed, it bolsters that organization. Just as time gradually spread by way of mechanical clocks and watches, so sources of heat and water have spread. Where people once huddled around an open fire or the village pump, and shared their joys and woes at the first signs of spring or of winter drawing on, now everyone can bask in a private mental universe at his or her own radiator or washbasin. The impact of technological advances on the individualization and hence the desyncrhonization of time cannot be overestimated. Scarcity makes time into a collective good, while abundance privatizes time. In that respect, architecture has less and less capacity to create collective time. But enormous quantities of private time are being produced.
One thing is clear, time has long been present in architecture and it will remain so as long as architecture is accommodating, aspires to cultural significance or is ambitious. Indeed, there is still much to be achieved in this area with a greater awareness of the temporal dimension. But the real question is this: is it possible to conceive of an environment that not only calms, accelerates, accommodates or privatizes time, but which also makes 'public time' by explicitly taking the necessity of doing so as its point of departure? Is it possible to conceive of an architecture that does not separate by setting boundaries, but which unites people by telling stories relevant to these times? An architecture that synchronizes? An architecture that is not finished when the design has been translated into material form and handed over, but just begins at that point? This would be a Time-Based Architecture, an architecture in which process and duration is just as important as form. This architecture would adopt the process of becoming as part of its meaning. It would be programmable and reprogrammable, and would employ reusable technology to that end: monitor screens, polymers, projection techniques, sensory systems or electromagnetic fields. But much more is possible than this widespread introduction of new media. It would admittedly permit a mobile and interactive image, but that in itself says nothing about the content of the image. At that level, too, use could be made of the time factor.
The main thing is not to see time as 'clock time' (producing an architecture of effectiveness) but as experienced time. The latter implies the necessity of telling stories - architecture as a form of cinematography. To increase the opportunities for telling stories and thereby for the creation of synchronizing collective experiences, we shall have to abandon the whole idea that accommodating functions is the chief aim of the design, and instead consider the significance of time for our world. For example, it could turn out that waiting time, hitherto always viewed as time wasted, suddenly becomes a necessary phase, a core element of creativity - of an immobility aesthetic. At last, a source of synchronization! Railway platforms, bottlenecks in the traffic network, lifts, 'transferia', car parks, red lights and intersections: a vast region lies unexploited as long as it is seen as a mere transition. If, however, one could regard mobility as an alternative form of staying in place, and at the same time see that staying put as the last remaining collective experience at the scale of the masses, room opens up for the telling of new stories. They no longer have to be stories that are true for all time. Nor do they have to be stories that can only tell of power. It must be possible to democratize the form of time and leave it to the possibilities of Time Sharing. This would not be architecture as the art of making place, but architecture as the art of spatial creativity in public time. It would be an environment in which the colorful diversity of the world is not merely an abstract principle but a daily reality. It will make possible a world in which the unity of place does not necessarily have to be the unity of time or action. The culture of multiple times needs depth. Design and art could help to create collective experiences that are just as meaningful as gothic portals or classical domes used to be. The world must learn to be eloquent again. Only then will the culture of change no longer appear as a permanent state of transition but as a destination. That would create time, indeed. Who would have thought that the discipline that once liberated space is now capable of giving people their time back? "
Software for Skyscrapers
Infrastructure: if social software is used to involve residents in managing shared facilities, there are two risks:
–A culture of complaint –reduced social capital.
–Mob rule –if social software genuinely empowers a residential community, it could create a very unpleasant type of social software.
Culture: if social software aims specifically at creating more social links, more reputations, as ends-in-themselves, parallel risks arise:
–Apathy –“I know who my friends are”.
–Virtual curtain-twitching –‘official’ social software would be an invasion of privacy.
•Models such as Friendster & Meetuppursue and explore social capital directly, rather than obliquely.This is fine, because they have no ‘official’ status, and their communities are self-selecting.
•‘Generic’ social software requires people to have some interest in social networks, reputation-formation, and (probably) social software itself. Very often, linkage precedes activity as the goal.
•This limits their broader applicability, and means that they probably don’t have specific practical functions for (for instance) an architect or a housing manager. They are best when bottom-up.
•However, in something like Skyhouse, there would be unambiguous benefits to creating ‘top-down’ social software that is task-oriented. Why?
–Because social capital is best pursued obliquely.<br.
–Because this is an area of F2F that resembles CMC anyhow: it is codified and reputation-based. Squash-players or baby-sitters need rating anyway, its just that social software can do it even better (people ‘in general’ do not need rating).
–Because this is a field of social software in which top-down provision will increase trust, rather than potentially reduce it.
•In future, as more people use it, social software developers will increasingly face the question –but is that actually yourresponsibility? E.g. BBC iCan.
•We need to work out which types of social software should remain just ‘out there’ and which types need formalising in various ways.
•In the case of Skyhouse, we’d suggest that only mainstream, task-based activities should become a concern for management
http://www.mix-m.org/artist.asp?ref=1
Herman Hertzberger 1959-1990. a+u Architecture + Urbanism. 1991 April extra Edition Publisher: Yoshio Yoshida. Editor Toshio Nakamura
Herman Hertzberger - The Public Realm
"The more responsibly users have for an area and consequently the more influence they can exert on it- the more care and love they will be prepared to invest in it. And the mores suitable the area is for their own specific uses the more they will be prepared to invest in it. And the more suitable the area is for their own specific uses the more they will appropriate it. Thus users become inhabitants.
Strong affective relationships may thus arise, which help to turn a space into a more friendly environment.
The translation of the concept 'public' and 'private' in terms of differentiated responsibilities thus make it easier for the architect decide in which areas user-participation in the design of the environment should be provided and where it is less relevant.
The point is to give public spaces form in such a way that the local community will feel personally responsible for them, so that each member of the community will contribute in his or her own way to an environment that he or she can relate to and can identify with.
It is a great paradox of the collective welfare concept as it has developed hand in hand with ideals of socialism, that it actually makes people subordinate tot the very system that has been setup to liberate them.the services rendered by the Municipal Public Works departments are felt, by those for whose benefit those departments were created, as an overwhelming abstraction; it is as if the activities of Public Works are an imposition from above, the man in the street feels that they 'have nothing to do with him' and so the system produces a widespread feeling of alienation.
...
The reason why city dwellers become outsiders in their own living environment is either that the potential of collective initiative has to ensure true participation and involvement have been underestimated. The occupants of a house are not really concerned with the space outside their homes, but nor can they really ignore it. This opposition leads to an alienation from your environment and in environment - also to alienation from your fellow residents.
This mounting degree of control imposed from above is making the world around us increasingly inexorable: and this elicits aggression, which in turn leads to further tightening of the web of regulations. A vicious cycle is the result, the lack of commitment and the exaggerated fear of chaos have a mutually escalating effect.
The incredible destruction of public property-which is on the rise in the world's major cities - can probably only partly be blamed on alienation form the living environment. The fact that public transport shelters and public telephones are completely completely destroyed week in and week out is a truly alarming indictment of our society as a whole. What is almost as alarming, however is the trend -and its escalation -is dealt with as if it where a problem of organization: by undertaking periodical repairs as if they where a question of routine maintenance, and by applying extra reinforcements('vandal-proofing') the situation appears to accepted as just one of those things.
The whole suppressive system of the established order is geared to avoid conflict; to protect the individual members of the community from the incursions by the other members of the same community, without the direct involvement of the individuals concerned. This explains why there is such a deep fear of of disorder, chaos and the unexpected, and why impersonal, 'objective 'regulations are always preferred to personal involvement. It seems as if everything must be regulated and quantifiable, so as to permit total control; to create conditions in which the suppressive system can make us all into lesses instead of co-owners, into subroutines instead of into participants. Thus the system itself creates the alienation and by calming to represent the people, obstructs the development of conditions that could lead to a more hospitable environment. (13-14)
Herman Hertzberger
Herman Hertzberger, more than any other architect of his generation dealt with issues which have determined his architecture since the beginning: form, function and freedom. Forum was for Hertzberger a second training school, where he became aquatinted with themes which would be central to his future architecture. He developed an attention to the way people interacted and to the extent which the built environment contributed to an intensification of communication. Since the beginning of his career, Hertzberger has been a social thinker. For Hertzberger, architecture-did not serve society in the sense that it only fulfilled primary needs, but it is the space where members of society encounter each other. Its role in architecture being pragmatic, was above all creative and active. He conceived of his buildings not only as the images of changing a society, but also as the agents which were destined to bring that society about. Hertzberger was led by thought that public and administrators had to visit each other on mutual ground. THe building had to represent this democratic principle.
"One goes to the town hall not merely to request a particular service, but to be served. In this respect, the town hall must be essentially anti monumental. The building dose not try to stand apart from the city, but on the contrary, to fit in as much as possible into the urban environment."
The idea was not to create so much a working space but a space which could be transformed by the user and which "invited" communication. 7-23
Mikellides, Byron. Architecture for People: Explorations in a New Humane Enviroment. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1989.
Herman Hertzberger: Shpaing the Enviroment.
It would be something if everything we made encouraged people to become more closely acquainted with their surroundings, with each other and themselves.
This implies arranging things differently so that the world, in so far as it amendable to our influence, becomes less alien, less hard to abstract, a warmer, friendlier, more welcoming and appropriate place; in short a world that is relevant to its inhabitants.
It is hardly possible for a more human architecture to concern itself with other than ordinary things. Things apparently too unimportant to have far reaching consequences, but which are in any case practicable and above all comprehensive.
We must combat the barrenness of the ever-expanding no man’s land around us, by providing people with an appropriate environment with scope for everyone.
The more influence a person is able to exert on his surroundings, the more committed she becomes.
One becomes attached to things only when one is able to relate to them, when so much of one’s own effort and feeling has gone into them they become ones own, incorporated into one’s own world of experience.
Architects can provide the basis for such a relationship by stimulating each person to make his own efforts to do something with his own surroundings, according to his own point of view.
Let us try and contribute to an environment which gives people more chance to impress it with their own individual charcheteristics. It must also be responsive to loving attention, thus enabling it to be taken over by each person as an essentially familiar place.
This care and solicitude creates a situation in which each person appears to be needed by his surroundings. Not only does he have some control over them, but they in turn are a reflection of him and have some control over him too.
In this way, form and user interpret and adapt to each other, each enhancing the other in process of mutual submission. Put like this the relationship between the built up environment and its users is analogous to that between instrument and its player.
In principle the instrument contains many possibilities as can be drawn from it while being played. It is up to the player to draw as much out of the instrument as he can, within its range. So both instrument and player continually reveal their ability to complement and fulfill each other.
Therefore it is essential; ‘form’ has to contain the incentive that provokes each person into making the choice most appropriate in his current circumstances. This unusual kind of hospitality is the felling for people, their values and their dignity which should be inherent in everything we make
…
‘Form must improve conditions, or rather, must lend a helping hand to people inciting them to make their own improvements.’
‘Architecture is able to help to improve living conditions, by clarifying the responsibilities and relationships of those involved with it and brining to light the amount of scope each person has for freedom of action, as well as showing where, by whom, and in what ways she is oppressed.’
‘What we can do is to open up the scope of form, so that revaluation becomes easier, thus enabling established ideas and values to be phased out and replaced, in order to make way for better relationships.’