Contemporary Architecture: Real and Virtual Narratives Zélia Simões Researcher of Colour Lab and Portuguese Colour Association (APCOR) FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, LISBON TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
[email protected]
Maria João Durão Professor of Department of Architecture, Head of the Colour Lab FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE, LISBON TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
[email protected]
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
FIGURE: (1) (2). Pavilion H20 Expo, Neeltje Jans, The Netherlands; (3) (4) Thermal Bath, Vals, Switzerland; (5) (6). Eco-Cathedral, Mildam, The Netherlands (Photos: Zélia Simões)
Time, space and individual
Spatial narratives are a new expression form whose transformation depends on the share of information, construction of memories and other activities involving one or a group of users of a space. These narratives form a new paradigm of architecture in terms of interaction and expression with developments that range relationships of production and sensitive representation. ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
In this context, the connections among the real and virtual, structure the reflection of the relational and communicative dimension that composes the visual language of space. Space, a fundamental element of architecture, produces symbols and images or emblematic situations that influence the users´ experience. Architecture, in sum, is where connections between time, space and the individual occur. This place is linked through atmospheres that create narratives where the vast spectrum of the concept of materiality is central.
Quality of space and matter encompass textural surfaces, transparencies, geometries and organicities “where the ambivalent relationships are defined between line and marks that grasp our look in search of a sensitive and mutable form” (1).
From an anthropological point of view, space becomes a developing instrument of a new architecture: the architecture of appearances, metamorphoses and mutations, where what seems to be doesn’t necessary match reality in a complex relation of dream and reality, i. e. a lived simulated space. The desire for a representational and symbolic existence generates a reverence to image that is promoted by contemporary society and extends to the individual and collective society.
The planning of spaces reflects intentions associated to cultural, economical, social and political structures. These values influence the discourse and the representation of spaces through their symbols and images or referential situations and these values impact the imagination of the user. The space image helps to delineate the nature of narratives as well as the function of actions and atmospheres. In a representational system, a space uses several resources to underline represented reality: light, shadow, colour, forms, and other artifices incorporated in the process of narrative building.
Any sense that we attribute to a space is within the one who experiences it. An existence that may be material or imaginary is defined by relationships of object systems and of actions with fixed and changeable elements, as stated by Norberg-Schulz (2). Therefore, narratives are an increment of temporary dimension, that takes a space experience and allows for a mental appropriation that is more interactive and realist. It is certainly the combination of time and space that guarantees the impression of reality and stands out as an essential element of the visual language.
Material and immaterial / real and virtual
Jean Nouvel (3) states that the architect, in similarity with a cinema director, should capture the light, the movement, producing through their projects a choreography of rhythms, gestures, images, plans and ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
fantasy. To know and carry out, finally, the synthesis between the real and virtual universe. Although the space existence supported by the real or virtual language could be decontextualized, conceptualized and ideologically built, the appropriation of it is open to the imagination and experience of the observer. Therefore, this represented existence is really capable of changing our perception of reality.
Our apprehension of a space implies the use of our most commonly identified five senses, where different systems of signs mix and separate. These dialogues between languages are made through interfaces that, as suggested by Zielinki (4), should not be understood as contiguous epidermis among the specificities of each universe (the objects/phenomena and their signs) but, as instruments and conceptual models with which it is possible to operate through universes of differentiated languages.
These instruments and concepts involve technology, art, architecture and science as knowledge bodies that act between the material and the informative territory requalified mutually. Therefore they result from the construction of interactive technological atmospheres, centred the relationships between users and atmospheres measured and assessed by intelligent machines such as computers and other electronic devices. The users actions are reflected in the atmosphere, and the modifications of the atmosphere modifies the user's apprehension of space. This space language is according to Bergson (5), an intellectual web phenomenon dislocated from nature and from materiality to an extent. Nevertheless, it creates thought structures that open up research and knowledge.
This mediation (where different language forms also enter) is intimately linked to our capacity to apprehend space, and can transform our ways of feeling and understanding space. The technological instruments are used for creative measurements between individual and atmosphere. Implications reflect a new understanding of temporality, identity and movement of the conception of space, through the transformation and realignment of the relationships of identities, intentions, individuals or groups. This opening represents a challenge for the humanities and the arts.
Visionary space narrative
The new technologies and vocabularies introduced in a space represent an intellectual and cognitive process in constant transformation. This conceptualization defined as transarchitecture or liquid architecture by Novak (6) challenges conventions and opens a path for approaches and innovative solutions, that combine expressive freedom with order, and relates to the experience and scientific testability of new materials, forms and functions.
ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
Virtual reality and multi-dimensionality of the cyberspace whose main characteristics are immateriality, liquidity, changeability and interactivity initiate a dimension of space and time that change our perception relationship with space anticipated by Merleau-Ponty (7) and Lefèbvre (8). Space assumes a physical and tactile relationship requesting a new incorporation form of the user with the atmosphere, including the spiritual and the artificial, the cosmic and the cultural, the old and the modern. Technology offers an opportunity for the expression of non-Euclidian structures or non-perspectival, whose system is dynamic and algorithmic created from music or natural sources.
In this context, Lars Spuybroek & Kas Oosterhuis establish positions in the architectural discourse through a development of plans and innovative forms, an experimentation with light and shadow effects, with colour and invented or available materials, whose process involves the introduction of poetic qualities and musical or rhythmic elements. According to Steele (9), these virtual realities or artificial atmospheres, revolutionize our perception of reality, expanding and assuming the form of a flow continually variable. The immaterial and the telematic spaces exist, spaces that interpenetrate or overlap creating graphically visible, perceptible and sensitive nets as energy flows of the space media or the incorporeal space of art. This recreation and structural force that rises as frontier with the unknown, as a new limit, transports us to a kind of space experimentation as immersion and whose language is intimately related with the body (Figure: 1, 2). Therefore, the space narratives represent a theoretical progress and project practice that establishes the interconnectivity of the body, the physical reality and the imagination
Utopian space narrative
The tendency of which Mies van der Rohe (10) was partially the precursor, “architecture is always the space expression of an intellectual decision” aims to achieve the maximum expressiveness with the least expression, and became more of an option that a limitation. An order based on spiritual principles that establishes a relationship between fact and meaning, between object and subject. In search of a fundamental order whose idea of interior essence transcends the external form and gives a true sense to the work, an analogy is established between rational thought and the built work under the influence of the neoplasticism of Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian, with the undertones of modernism and the revisions of Adolf Loos and Le Corbusier.
Considering these principles, Peter Zumthor adopts the formal paradigm of an architecture directly related with the specificity of place in terms of volume, light, colour, scale, proportion, rhythm relationships. Reconsideration is given to place materiality, energy, presence, memory, nature, atmosphere, ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
permanence and concentration concepts, whose path leads back to the perception principles of Merleau-Ponty (11).
Space narratives are materialized in the built work, whose priority is the direct experience and the materials (Figure: 3, 4). The space without visual obstacles and excessive ornamentation is condensed in the essence of the material, form, colour or volume and in the naturalness of this union. It is the subtle place of emptiness or apparently distant motivations as the Zen conception of beauty or Thoreau attitude of truth and nakedness, that results from the contact with the essentiality of existence or the Japanese notion of Wabi-sabi that means simple, without artifice, non sophisticated.
Spatial visual dematerialization can echo other sociological reactions or inform other arts as music or cinema, as refers Toyo Ito (12). Of this mixture result versatile spaces with the permanence of a style or identity with mutants and complex intangible characteristics.
Dream space narrative
This space narrative is correlated to the art conception defined by Kastner (13) in terms of Land and Environment Art. In this context, the object of art is the fusion with nature. A space of complex relationships is produced and balanced between the past and the present, the memory and the event. A form of expression that aims to create a work that is completed after its destruction through time, but is eternalized through films, pictures, maps or written documents.
Colour, texture, weight, density and plasticity are explored and materials are allowed to acquire a final form from the changes and alterations provoked by the natural processes or mechanical operations, chemical and incident reactions programmed by the authors. That may take advantage of all forms of energy applied, may they be structural forces, wind, heat and water currents, earth energies, electric and magnetic fields, as well as the subtle human energies of the body, mind and spirit. On the other hand, it deals with ecological principles, growth processes and change, bionics or a concept of holism where the human being is integral to Nature.
According to these principles, Louis Le Roy challenges the concept of place and contributes to unexpected solutions where the sensitive, creative, multifaceted relationships are inspired by the organic reveals the visually poetic compositions that pertain to the harmony of place, of people and of materials. The sense of reality and the imaginary symbols is questioned and a new expression form is the new proposal that underpins an experimental and innovative trend (Figure: 5, 6). The emptiness, dynamics, ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
chaos, time, speed, transposing of sound layers, light, heat, capture of energies, among other components are dynamic and used as expressive elements. An interaction that emphasizes poetic matter conveys specific qualities to these space narratives.
Final remarks
With the anticipation of a new century, we come across different attitudes that assume critical, accidental, multiple, or casual ways of projecting space that are distant from an unidirectional vision, limited and limitative. The perspectives addressed in this paper are eclectic and dynamic, structural and ornamental, democratic and varied, complex and contradictory in their influences. Consequently, they raise continuous alteration of language by the juxtaposition of elements known with new and different combinations.
Although an author does not have the capacity to radically alter society his interventions intend to operate as a means of transformation of the real. A need for fantasy or a metaphysical possibility originates probabilities and visions of matter that create transformation and readaptation to circumstances and atmospheres. In this context, architecture works with the interpretation of the place aimed at the discovery of a poetics of space. The capacity to reconcile these principles has variable specific weight and is interpreted in different manners. However, that which we value most is the understanding of architecture as the quality of a space that is materialized in form, texture, colour, shadow, objects and symbolic values. In a time influenced by principles of ecology and information, the built cultural and historical heritage together with natural heritage adopt a fundamental role in thinking and creating architecture.
NOTES
(1) Free translation of the authors Rui Duarte, Luz e cor, signos de representação, Fabrikart – Arte, Tecnología, Industria, Sociedad. N.º 5, 2005, p. 27. (2) Christian Norberg–Shulz, Existencia, Espaço y Arquitectura. Nuevos caminos de la arquitectura, Blume, Barcelona, 1975. (3) Free translation of the authors Jean Nouvel, Entreview, AU – Arquitectura e Urbanismo. Ano 12 Out/Nov, 1997. (4) Siegfried Zielinki, Paris revue virtuelle, Forum Membrane, Paris, 1995. Available online . Accessed May, 2008. ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
(5) In Elisabeth Grosz, Architecture from the Outside – Essays on Virtual and Real Space, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massachusetts, 2001, p. 170. (6) Marcos Novak Liquid Architectures in cyberspace. Ciberspace: First Steps, United States, New York, 1991. Available online http://www.zarcos.com/liquidarchitecture/ liquidarchitecture.html. Accessed May, 2008. (7) Maurice Merleau–Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Rutledge Commercial, London, 1978. (8) Henri Lefèbvre, The production of space, Blackwell, Oxford, 1991. (9) James Steele, Architecture and computers – action and reaction in digital design revolution. Laurance King, London, 2001, p. 54. (10) In Anatxu Zabalbeascoa & Javier Marcos, Minimalismos, Editorial Gustavo Gili, SA, Barcelona, 2001, p. 62. (11) Ibidem, Rutledge Commercial, London, 1978. (12) Ibidem, Editorial Gustavo Gili, SA, Barcelona, 2001, p. 92. (13) Jeffrey Kastner & Brian Wallis, Land and Environmental Art, Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1998, p. 12.
ICDHS. 6th Conference of Design History and Design Studies in Osaka October 24-28, 2008 Conference Theme: Another Name for Design – Words for Creation
