Design Strategies (Time based strategies and flexible organizations), by Diego del Castillo

Image from Infosthetics

Until modernism, time and space were conceived as static, linear, but nowadays, time and space are differentiated, subjected to interpretation and continuous revision by the user. Organizational forces act as a force field that models the space “containing” it. Thus new forms of organization that relate to our contemporary condition have to be researched.

Architects find relevance in organizational structures such as the school of fish or the swarm or the flock, which are specific forms of order but allow flexibility; this allows fast transformations within a explicit array. These different ordering systems relate to how rapid changes occur in our society, but why society has to be referred? why not use it as an organizational feature? One can surely talk about a swarm of human beings (ever been to a rock concert?). So one must question this decision to choose a system that represents our sociological condition while our society is full with examples of new forms of time based organizations. Not only society itself is interestingly enough but also the different forces that shape it are filled with interesting relations. By making a diagram of an economic analysis or a sociological one, one will undoubtedly find new and hybrid relations. Our society does not need external referentials to be analyzed. In a way this is what Jon Jerdi does, he analyses human and urban relations.

According to UN Studio, the new contemporary method of organization consists of a “seamless organization of disconnected parts”. He relies on computer methods, specially the morphing technique to produce hybrid forms that generate from diagrammatic analysis of programmatic relations. The diagram has replaced the plan as a condition that generates architecture.

“The diagram becomes the architecture. ”

The object is not relevant in itself, it has to carry in itself this analytical data. In fact one of the programs is used to generate forms according to a certain data input (literally).

The architect in this case is the researcher that recollects the data and decides which data to input. The architects (according to this philosophy) have to disengage themselves from any iconographic or subjective ideal. But then, what are the design decisions one is allowed to take, without undermining this experimental data input approach? Then with this tendency, the role of the architect is redefined, transforming us in mere investigators or data collectors. Architecture in the end is about materiality, the way it is conceived is irrelevant as the final product, that is why one must balance a subjective approach (aesthetic) with a scientific approach.

Architecture weather we like it or not is aesthetic.  As designers we have to take some control over aesthetics, it is unavoidable.

Architecture as Cultural Collage, by Diego del Castillo

Seiichi Shirai - Hiroshima Peace Memorial 1955, Image : Unknown

Critical architecture's purpose is to reevaluate how the built form affects the environment (artificial and natural) and to reexamine the way we live. It allows you and others to rethink the role of architecture and its relation to history (the static). But critical architecture always needs the “other” in order to be critical. To be heard you need an audience…. Critical architecture has the least reach of all architectural approaches, because of its experimental attitude, because laymen find comfort in nostalgia(1).

Architectural nostalgia is embedded in mass culture. Previous attempts to challenge architectural nostalgia, developed into merely graphic and interpretations seeing tradition in terms of iconic elements but still being modern. This architecture developed into a parody of tradition expressed in a contemporary language A question to ask is whether an approach can be rethought so that the dynamics of re-invention and the static nature of tradition can be understood NOT in terms of modernism (or aesthetics) but by themselves as individual entities co-existing and in cooperation (not denying each other but helping us to understand them).

Sie’ichi Shirai’s architecture referred to a cultural universal (not through icons) thus appealing to the layman while still being about overcoming. This apparent contradiction is what made his architecture interesting. His approach though blurred the boundary between the two thus creating a new paradox. Today, mass culture is characterized for being explicit graphically thus its iconic presence is evident. But, could architecture refer today to mass culture and mass society (thus unavoidably touching upon the concept of tradition) without being explicitly iconic?

I think that to create a “laymen-approachable critical architecture”, the boundary between nostalgia and avant-garde needs to be rethought... The collage needs to be reinvented. Through a type of collage, (computer mediated) an architecture as appealing to the layman as it is appealing to the scientist and the intellectual, may be possible (collage uses what is already there, Architectural collage has to use the static). This collage will also reflect our contemporary mediated condition.

(1) TSCHUMI, Bernard, “Six Concepts”