beyond imitating nature
biomaker
click
detournement
imagination
interactionism
memes
spacetime continuum
urbi et orbi |
SPACETIME CONTINUUM
m2h - a unit of habitation
"The Columbia University Rotunda has been a library, it has been used as a banquet hall, it is often the site of university lectures; someday it could fulfill the needs for an athletic facility at the University. What a wonderful swimming pool the Rotunda would be!"1
"In realizing that all of our intentions are anti-entropic, it becomes apparent that these intentions can be fulfilled either by physical movement or by movement of information. Obviously the movement of information requires far less energy than the movement of people or physical goods."2
Tactics
Living inexpensively in the city centre involves following one or several of fallowing tactics, each having its positive and negative outcomes.
Filling space - involves building up, or other forms of occupying, empty spaces in between/over buildings, reducing the cost of buying or renting space by increasing its supply, but also reducing access to sunlight, open and fresh air. Shrinking living space - cutting on/sharing m2 of occupied space, obviously resulting in reducing freedom of movement
Increasing occupancy - occupying/subletting vacant spaces, resulting in problems of sharing. Mobilizing architecture - reducing production cost or taking advantage of free public space by escaping control, resulting in lower quality and instability. Eliminating architecture by redefining other conditions like climate, cultural norms, virtual/real relations, medication. Eliminating centre - reducing it importance by means of communication and transport, negative side being lack of physical contact.
Time dimension
Majority of tactics focus on spatial dimension of living, while the greatest uncovered potential is unused space hidden in occupancy cycles. Plotting the used footprint (m2) on a timescale (h) lets us locate vacant time-space both in existing structures and combined with each of spatial tactics. The power of this tactic takes advantage of city centre's massive built floor area, proximity, its 24h life-cycle and statistical smoothing of cycle anomalies among many inhabitants.
Basic forms of this approach involve platforms like Couchsurfing or AirBnB, a much more comprehensive (speculative) system called Megahouse3 proposes a business model that integrates unoccupied space into single super-building. It introduces the category of "sponsors" responsible for "filling" spaces with function. It's main technology is ZapDoor - a biometric access control system integrated with online user database. Other than that the concept is very general leaving many of the questions unanswered: who owns the fillings? how are they manipulated? how are personal objects handled? how is privacy and safety respected? what is the attitude and experience of inhabitants? and finally what is the new architecture made for Megahouse?
Timescale
The key to understanding how time-sharing might work is understanding the various time scales of occupancy cycles.
Ultra long time scale (centuries) is a result of major developments in technology and changes in population. Very long (decades) is associated with long-term trends like deindustrialization resulting in closing down factories and turning them into lofts. Long (several years) results in socio-economical changes manifested within the city, like economic downturns producing vacant office spaces. Medium (months) involves changing jobs, apartments etc. This is the scale at which time-sharing mostly operates nowadays. Short (days) concerns (often unplanned) travels, holidays, temporary jobs, sick leaves, festivals, events. It was open up by internet platforms mentioned earlier. Very short (hours) is the scale of our daily routine: waking up, going to work, coming back, going out, sleeping and so on. Ultra short (minutes) happens when we walk in and out of particular rooms and buildings.
The character of function change varies considerably across timescales. While in the long ones the process of transition from one to another use is negligible in short ones it becomes equal to the time span of the actual use. Also the long processes are linear while the short tend to be reversible or cyclical. Short cycles must take into account changes in external conditions like seasons or day and night.
Among different timescales short and ultra-short cycles remain least utilized, while containing the most square meter hours - probably more than a half of the whole indoor space.
Warm bed (alternating users)
The simplest way to make use of temporally vacant space is by simply changing the user without changing function. Common toilets, kitchens are the most common examples, but it could be extended to every kind of personal space - office, bedroom etc. The hard part is switching to sleeping during the day and working at night. The difference between traditional sharing and time-sharing consists in smart access control. Thanks to position tracking the users might never meet, a database of their profiles provides date for access filter, making sharing the space with more users safer. Allowing more people turns the inside the building into a semi-public space, but not to a fixed group but to a "kind" of people matching the profile.
Alternating users increases space use, but creates a new kind of intimate relationship with a "ghost" mediated by space and raises issues of privacy, property and trust.
Tornado (the cloud of things)
One part of the solution would be changing the relationship with objects. Usually we own our personal objects. But just as our applications and files they could be outsourced to a third party provider, who would maintain them in perfect condition, replacing with new when necessary. It would mean that we wouldn't buy furniture from IKEA, we would rent it, and since so many have the same things, whether from IKEA, Apple, H&M or other brand we wouldn't have to sacrifice the freedom of choice.
Berkeley's Imp (rearrangment machine)
The second part is our intimate, personal objects, the "mess" as well as the "invisible": the smell, rubbed off epidermis in the dust etc. How would it be recreated? Would it require CSI team, an artist or a robotic arm to efficiently and precisely collecting it and recreating again? It would be certainly a kind of "Berkeley's Imp", named after a British philosopher, George Berkeley, who would be mocked to have said that only what we see exists and when we look away it disappears. Similarly this machine would record the layout of objects in space, collect it and recreate it later.
Onion (layering objects)
Aside from the "invisible layer" it's useful to split objects and architecture into layers. Similarly to structuralists (like Hertzberger) we should consider different time-cycles for each layer: longer for the structural core, then the body, shorter for the skin and shortest for the invisible coat, in order to reduces the amount of matter that would have to be replaced every time the user or function changes.
Spacetime continuum (topology of architectural space-time)
Each timescale differently informs new architecture, that would be suited for it. Very long term function change calls for large open plan with a durable skin that could divided into bigger or smaller rooms or that could be dismantled altogether and reused elsewhere. Long term change requires minor subdivision, redecoration and refurnishing. Medium term might need access control (passing keys) and only cosmetic changes if function stays the same or simple rearrangement of furniture and mobile partitions, but there is no time for traditional repartitioning. Short term change might involve as much as changing a login on the computer and clearing up desk or changing bed sheets, but might also involve mechanized mobile and convertible furniture, changing lighting, floor and wall covers, in general set changing techniques borrowed from theatre, illusionist shows or hidden camera pranks4.
Therefore instead of proposing one solution a set of interchangeable solutions might be selectively applied to time-sensitive architecture:
a) increasing accessibility, by smart access control technologies like ZapDoor coupled with online databases of user profiles, by physical connections (skybridges) on various level turning corridors into streets (as in Le Corbusiers habitation unit), by providing independent corridor access to every room
b) pre-partitioning, by designing individual rooms instead of open plan, especially in offices, that could easily serve other purposes
c) lockable doors between rooms, allowing for various clusters of rooms
d) dismountable construction, allowing for rapid building relocation and re-partitioning
e) artificial sunlight, reducing negative effects of reversing day/night cycle for alternate users
f) mobilizing facade, using it as a transport system, not only for moving people and "fills", but also for moving auxiliary rooms (toilets, kitchens) to where thay are needed at the moment
g) mix use floor plan based on sunlight access
h) surplus installation, providing multiple outlets and access points, designing for increased consumption from public networks
i) splitting functional nodes (e.g. sanitary facilities) into separated units allowing for private use
j) tricking the building code, by designing building to resemble least regulation-demanding function
k) focusing on esthetics and forgetting the function, as only the esthetic quality of form creates value, a functional hybrid can never be as efficient as monofunctional typology
l) perfecting typology and adjusting behavior in order to minimize the cost of moving matter
New Babylon or Auschwitz
There are two opposite extreme consequences of applying these solutions. One is a ever shifting landscape of chaotic assemblage of people and objects fueled by the spirit of adventure and the unexpected, allowing non-perfection as part of its philosophy. The other is obsessed with order and organization, efficiency and perfection of movement within a rationalized grid of possibilities. One is Constant's New Babylon superstructure or Price's Fun Palace, the other a concentration camp or Superstudio's continuous monument. One is finding possibilities within complex relationships the other providing a system of functional elements. One is an event-structure, the other a structure-before-event5. One puts forward materiality and phenomenological experience of architecture, the other functionality of conceptual structure grammar.
These extremes define a range of real life space-time architecture.
Nolli.maps.com (new paradigm of public space)
A common aspect of all the solutions is redefining the concept of public space by introducing the time dimension. Spacetime is not a private space, not semi-public and not completely public in traditional sense. It's open to anyone matching dynamically changing specific conditions, not based on location, affiliation or apperance, but on specific qualities like cleanliness, trustworthiness, mindset and so on. It also creates new relations among people, indirect intimacies and proximities mediated by objects across different time. A basic tool to represent it would require an updated dynamic and interactive version of Nolli's map showing realitime changes in occupancy not only of "public" buildings but of all of city's indoor space, a Nolli's verions of Google Maps. Street View would become Indoor View as street would become indistinguishable from corridor. As in military tactics6 stripping architecture of function by turning buildings into ruins abolishes the separation of space into interior from exterior, but instead of making it uninhabitable, exposing it to inhabitation.
References:
1 Bernard Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction, 1996, MIT Press
2 John Lobell, The Chip Replaces Palladio, 2013
3 Hitoshi Abe, in Open House: Intelligent Living by Design, 2006, Vitra Design Museum
4 Toilet to Star Wars Prank, TLTV
5 Based on distinction proposed by Sou Fujimoto, Primitive Futures, 2008, Inax
6 Eyal Weizman, Walking Through Walls, 2007
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