Quasi Objects and Design Education in Architecture

DIMITRIS PAPALEXOPOULOS

ARCHITECT

ASS. PROF. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE

NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS

42, PATISSION STR. 10682 ATHENS, GREECE

Abstract:

Design education is motivated, “powered” we could say, by design problems and, much more, by the design’s problematic situation as it changes through Information Technologies. In such a context, Architecture must reconciliate with the idea of continuous redefinition of her identity and boundaries. She has to accept a changing reality and house a tension leading to new ways of perceiving, thinking and designing space. With no reference to a "flexible" architecture, trying to form a predefined system responding to all possible future changes, architecture has to accept her continuous transformation, her future actualization towards spaces not included in a priori design schemes.  Accordingly, design has to deal with spaces that have an identity related to the topos and the activities of a given moment, but also disposed to be transformed.  The construction of the “quasi-object” concept appears to be useful in order to think and practice architecture in movement, not without any identity, but with an ever-changing identity. It permits to see design as transformation of the existing towards the not yet conceived. Design education refers though to the destabilization of the existing, teaching how to react to an ever changing context. Towards that direction, ubiquitous computing environments offer multiple research and practice directions, not only because they see artefacts as “quasi-objects”, but also because they operate in space in a way calling us to rethink architectural design.

Keywords: Quasi-object, design, architecture, diagrams, linking space, mobility, translocality.

 

 

 

 

 

Quasi Crystal:

“…also called Quasi-periodic Crystal,  matter formed atomically in a manner somewhere between the amorphous solids of glasses (special forms of metals and other minerals, as well as common glass) and the precise pattern of crystals. Like crystals, quasi-crystals contain an ordered structure, but the patterns are subtle and do not recur at precisely regular intervals.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica).

 

Architecture  must reconciliate with the idea of continuous redefinition of her identity 
and boundaries. She has to accept a changing reality and house a tension leading to new ways of perceiving, thinking and designing space. With no reference to a "flexible" architecture, trying to form a predefined system responding to all possible changes, architecture has to accept her continuous transformation, her future actualization towards spaces not includes in a priori design schemes. Spaces that have an identity related to the topos, but also disposed to be transformed.

At the same time a changing and transforming digital reality operates in this contradictory urban tissue, by a ceaseless virtualization of the existing, by the continuous formation of building and urban hybrids.

Through them, locality and identity are redefined, or call for a critical redefinition, assume new roles, do not dissolve themselves in global operational networks. Locality becomes density, interface and event, between the building and the city.

We tried the last 5 years, in a postgraduate course of the School of Architecture of N.T.U.A.[1], to deal with this changing reality of the architect’s mental space. At the course  “Architecture and Information Technology, from Total to Global Design”  (www.ntua.gr/archtech), the design of Libraries (1998-1999), Museums (1999-2000) and Universities (2000-2001) was seen in the perspective of integration of IT technologies. Mobility / Immobility (2001-2002) and Transolacality (2002-2003) have followed, traversing the whole field of possible architectural programs. The aim was to seek ways of reaction (through architectural theory and design) to a continuously changing context.

The course’s protocol proposes:

·          An opening towards an interdisciplinary approach.

·          The use of web to extend the course and the communication between participants beyond the hours dedicated in the University.

·          The formation of a small scientific community between the students, as they work towards a common goal, keeping the identity of their own work, linking to each other through the web but also linking to other Scientifics, Architects, Theorists.

·          The obligation of having a group and individual result in the form of a final web site.

·          The communication of the course results outside the School of architecture, in order to be exposed to critics.

·          The active reference to recent theories and initiatives of IT implications to Architecture (as it was the reference to Peter Anders’ “cybrid” through the Libraries and to the DC initiative through Translocality).

An open approach using the “quasi-object” point of view was elaborated and proposed in order to define the design’s target in a changing, through IT, context.

Design education has to deal not only with the destabilization of the architectural object but also with the destabilization of its own process and content. As Antoine Picon[2] pointed out, to quasi-objects correspond quasi-engineers, as digital technologies became the common denominator to a large number of artefacts, negating the clustering of existing design education and design practices.

The “quasi-object”, is found  as a concept in Michel Serres[3], Bruno Latour[4] and Brian Massumi[5], the latter promoting the idea of the “quasi-subject” (“presque sujet”). Michel Serres relates it to the “thirdness”[6], the space between two entities, the space where relationships are constituted, the medium through which an identity is formatted through its relation to another. There is a hint that the “evading-object” or “quasi-object”, that we have tried to define elsewhere, in relation to space and architecture, is related to "ambient intelligence" as collections of artefacts that interact digitally[7], where the digital “in-between” plays a crucial role.

In that direction, we could mention a number of issues as they had appeared through the course and wich are open-ended questions for architectural design and design education.

Hybrids, diagrams and abstract machines

Figure 1: ACADIA competition entry, Libraries in the Information Age

From the first year, on Libraries, we have the reference to the balance between virtual and actual, physical and cyber, i.e. hybrid, (or cybrid according to Anders) as a not a stable condition that, once conceived, is translated in terms of space. The boundaries between the functions, activities or events supported by physical space and those supported by the digital one, are constantly changing position, defining an undetermined region. That same movement transforms the identity and contours of the activities or events involved. Thinking thus the hybrid as a partage between physical and cyber, calls for a virtual/actual abstract machine, a new understanding of the unfolding of multiple events that differ in their interrelations. But to what degree does space of the information age requires a physical or cyber presence? Transformation through time is the new parameter in design. Technology has already established a transitional phase, where physical and cyber coexist to insure the broadening of its potentials. Designers need to create the environments for the evolution to occur. A library is already a hybrid organism with permeable boundaries and superimposition of elements. Such interrelations between the two poles enter an abstract machine that constantly organizes different performances in distinct plateaux. The library is then materialized into a hybrid organism that forms a new bipolar system, represented by the sociable “worm” and the introvert “cells”.

Linking space

Figure 2: Athina Stavridou, Temporary Fields

From the course on Universities, we have the reference to the linking space design problem. Negating the dissolution of Universities to a virtual space and accepting as an a priori to start from the interconnection of existing institutions / public spaces, the architectural implications of digitally shared activities were examined. The nature of the tele-education space was examined. Reference was made to three major themes, the virtual classroom, the linking space of tele-education and the global info-space of tele-education.

Figure 3: Elsa Cryssohoides, Linking spaces and hybrid zones.

Space disposes, through the digital, some special characteristics as: synchronous- asynchronous, spatial-antispatial (hyperspatial or trans-spatial), corporeal-incorporeal. The question is how, by taking advantage of these special characteristics, the linking space could function as a model space in architecture, a space in-between, representing the structure of information, as the works made at ETH had shown[8]. Yet, it works through a number of artefacts, at different levels, student – classroom – university, assuming a multiplicity of scenarios interconnecting them.

Figure 4: Sonia Tzimopoulou, n-dimension narrative

Mobility / Immobility

Related to the a2b architectural symposium at Basel[9], the 2001-2002 course had opened the question on “Move without moving and moving but immobile”. Mobile and connected constantly to one place, or immobile and connected to a multiplicity of places. Connected places and mobile nodes. Activities delocalized and mobile activities. Mobility and immobility of people, ideas, theories and practices, in networks and places, through networks of places. Being local - being global - being mobile. Moving into physical and the digital space. Moving towards networked places and networked mobile subjects.

Figure 5: Diagrams of mobility

The space of mobility and mobile spaces: define an existing mobility issue, outline its space, follow the changes through information technology, was the theme treated by the students.

In a more specific context, and through the mobility / immobility dichotomy we had to question networked activities and ambient intelligence, for the changes they promote at a city and building level and for the corresponding figure of the architect constructed through different scenarios. The networked architect or transarchitect could be:

·          An architect in new relations with the other building specialists and the construction industry.

·          An architect conciliating the physical and the digital.

·          An architect of nomadic activities or localized nodes.

·          An architect facing the changes to the urban, by the information society.

·          A bottom- up urban planner integrating new technology issues.

·          An architect creator of physical artifacts to access the virtual, architect inventing web embedded objects and spaces.

·          An architect of the surface and of the screen.

·          An architect expert on fluidity.

·          An architect of the ”human” and the ”constructed” body.

·          An architect of mobility and immobility.

Translocalism

Between the historical centre, blocked by the continuous reference to the past and the periphery of the city, exploded through its generic and open character, the rest of the city assumes the role of a laboratory of the continuously changing cityscape. The propositions sketching and treating of this city in-between are always defined by the, in situ, coexistence of contradictions and dichotomies. Past and future, physical and digital, virtual and actual, renovation and totally new, local and global. morphing rather than collage (or the reference to a Form) describe this territory of continuously transformed and instable identities. A changing and transforming digital reality operates in this contradictory urban tissue, by a ceaseless virtualization of the existing, by the continuous formation of urban hybrids.

Through them, locality is redefined, or calls for a critical redefinition, assumes a new role, does not dissolve herself in global operational networks. Locality is density, interface and event, between the building and the city. The fact is, that the digital is real and localized. It could be fluid, non linear, non hierarchical, not attached to a place, with no stable identity, but not without identity and certainly not out of place. Urban hybrids, promote the coexistence of the physical and the digital and with the same movement, the coexistence of the local and the global. Urban hybrids are public in a local and global sense.

A reference to Derick de Kerckhove[10] with “trans-localism”, bur also to Hans Vogelaar and Elizabeth Sikiaridi with “idensity”[11], supports the idea of the necessity to work towards the establishment of “connected localisms”. Locality could be defined as a tension between the necessity of an open city and the search for an (instable) urban identity. Connected localism works with and within the existing urban fabric. Hybrid urban public and private spaces could escape from the logic of global operational strategies and promote tactical, ephemeral links for creation-oriented events.

As if we could clearly put down the characteristics of these new connected local spaces, that deny traditionalism, we could note that:

·          They are always interface and through that they dissolve in the global

·          They support a multiplicity of functions, permitting the global to be locally present.

·          They are in a continuously evolving  condition related to the changes of activities that take place.

·          They are always in tension because they provoque a continuous circle of deritorialization and reteritorialization of events.

Opening (conclusions)

We could continue to face / surround / examine / apply the “quasi-object” point of view, see it as an abstract machine that  “…does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality… There is a diagram whenever a singular abstract machine functions directly in a matter”[12]. There are also conditions (translocality), events (the linking space) and tensions (the mobility / immobility bipolon).

As architectural design and architectural design education pass through a period of destabilisation, having to deal with conditions of sheltering fluid activities rather than creating stable objects, we have to re-think our design tools, concepts and educational methods to face this new reality. An openness towards theoretical constructions as the “quasi-object” point of view is necessary, for it permits to think unstable design objects. Under that, we need tools such as diagrams and abstract machines, to replace the old “architectural parti” approach.  Those tools have to integrate design requirements in a perspective of activities’ translocality and refer more to “events” that evolve than to stable “functions”. Design and design education could then be seen more as a field of “tensions” than the search of the ultimate Form.

Towards that direction, ubiquitous computing environments offer multiple research and practice directions, not only because they see artefacts as “quasi-objects”, but also because they operate in space in a way calling us to rethink architectural design.

 

References:

1.Postgraduate course “Architecture and Information Technology, from Total to Global Design” : www.ntua.gr/archtech . Collaborating Athina Stavridou, Elsa Cryssohoides, Sonia Tzimopoulou, Eleni Levanti. Visiting prof. Apostolos Chatzimanikatis, Yiorgos Papacostantinou, Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos, Eleni Kalafati.

2. A.Picon, La ville, territoire des cyborgs, Les Editions de l’Imprimeur, Paris, 1998.

3. Michel Serres, Le parasite, ed. Grasset, Paris, 1981.

4. Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais etes modernes,  La Decouverte, paris, 1991.

5. Brian Massumi, “L’economie politique de l’appartenance et la logique de la relation”, Gilles Deleuze, ed. Vrin, Paris, 1998, p.119-140

6. Steven Brown, Geoff Lightfoot, “Quasi-objects, quasi-subjects: Circulation in the Virtual Society”, Paper presented at 'Sociality/Materiality: The status of the object in social science' at Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK, 9-11th September, 1999.

7. The Disappearing Computer initiative: http://www.disappearing-computer.net/

8. Maia Engeli, ed., Bits and Spaces, Birkhauser, 2001.

9. A2B symposium on Architecture: http://www.a-2-b.ch/

10. Derrick de Kerckhove, The architecture of Intelligence, Birkhauser, 2001.

11. Hans Vogelaar, Elizabeth Sikiaridi, The use of space in the information communication age, processing the unplannable:

12. Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, Univ of Minnesota Pr; 1987, p. 141-142.