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Supermodern.

Architecture for a culture without boundaries.

Adam Montandon

May 2003

This paper is provided for academic and educational use only.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or would like to use this paper please e-mail: adam@hmc.uk.net

Abstract

As access to global communications technologies such as the internet increases, so too does speculation about life inside of electronic volume. Free from the constraints and boundaries of physicality, many provisional attempts have been made to create spaces without boundaries. However the entanglement of the mind within the body has created a culture that has chiefly experienced only partial immersion in virtual reality, the mind goes where the body cannot follow. This in turn leads to a new architectural sensibility based on reducing physicality in architecture, in order to give the body the same freedom in physical space as the mind has enjoyed in virtual space.

A new architecture of the physical is born from experience in the electronic. An architecture that encompasses a digital, networked, global, transient and virtual mindset. It appears that we are not, as one may expect, building virtual architecture inside computers, but instead are creating cyberspace on earth. This new architecture is the inverse of Postmodernism. This is Supermodern.

Introduction

The discipline of architecture is constantly influenced by the surrounding culture of the times and in turn has itself influenced that culture. As information and communication technologies expand across Western culture the impact that digital technologies have on architectural form cannot be denied. Digital technologies are no longer merely a tool used by the architect to create form; they now fundamentally impact the forms and environments that architects create. Research into digital technologies within architecture is largely focused on the tools and methods used to create, design and visualise form. This dissertation addresses the current gap in research into the feedback loop between new technology, cultural experience and architecture.

This dissertation will focus on the oscillating feedback loop between physical volume and electronic volume. Physical volume can be described as a space or area that has the capacity to be bound by the laws of physics. Our everyday world that we inhabit can be described as physical volume. Electronic volume can be described as space perceived as such by an observer but generated or existing within an electronic system (such as a computer) and having no existence outside of electricity. A number of examples that come to mind include Stephen Perrella's ‘media space' (2002), Marcos Novak's ‘liquid architecture' (2001) O.B. Hardison's ‘horizon of invisibility' (2001), Bill Viola's ‘data space' (2001) and William Gibson's ‘cyberspace' (2001) these could all potentially be realised within electronic volume.

These two volumes have been considered by many to run in parallel, acting as each other's counterpart, but never truly intersect. Engeli solidly describes these separations as ‘boundaries' (2001:117) and Perrella claims there is ‘a dangerous gap' (2002) between the physical and the electronic. This dissertation will form a conceptual bridge between the solid architecture of physical volume and the transient architecture of the electronic, seeking to argue that this bridge is an intriguing new architecture that is emerging to fill the void between physical volume and electronic volume, an architecture that can no longer be understood in terms of Postmodernism.

Discourse surrounding this interdisciplinary void is considered of paramount importance by architects and digital practitioners alike. Architect Hani Rashid comments;

Today the field is undoubtedly in a state of radical flux...I fear that the architect is becoming a strange, almost pathetic character unable to grasp the changes that are taking place.

(2003:90)

Kathy Rea Huffman writes in a paper published by Ars Electronica that;

Unrestricted exploration of multimedia artists is of real value to... architects who are socially concerned with the numerous electronic augmentations and configurations of natural space.

(1999:136)

The first chapter will establish architecture and its relationship to the body throughout history. This dissertation will discuss issues surrounding the intertwining but diverse realms of architecture of the real and architecture of the virtual. It will present definitions and explorations of the terms used to define real and virtual architecture. The chapter will focus on issues of the body as physicality, as truth in geometry and the body's restrictive nature in direct contrast to the freedom and lack of physicality experienced through virtual architecture.

The second chapter will examine the effect that digital technologies have on the creation of new architecture and the re-configuration of existing architecture. This chapter will establish the phenomena of increased momentum of modernity through architecture, and will argue that digital technologies act as a catalyst for the reduction of Postmodern architecture.

CHAPTER 1

1.1 Defining Architecture: Real and Virtual

Deleuze tells us that impossible ideas from one medium often translate to another (1992:628-633). This is certainly true for the mediums (if they can be described as such) of Architecture of the real and architecture of the virtual. Architecture can be defined as both the art and the science of designing or constructing. Because of its very nature architecture can provide a common ground ideal for exploration into the diverse realms of real and virtual.

It can be problematical to draw a distinction between real and virtual, but it is nevertheless crucial. As Hardison beautifully articulates;

A horizon of invisibility cuts across the geography of modern culture. Those who have passed through it cannot put their experience into familiar words and images because the languages they have inherited are inadequate to the new worlds they inhabit. They therefore express themselves in metaphors, paradoxes contradictions, and abstractions rather than languages that "mean" in the traditional way.

(2001:121)

Whilst many publications (Fawcett-Tang and Owen, 2002; Engeli, 2001; Burry, 2001) do note a difference between the real and virtual, the extent of this separation is a highly contested idea. Ideas surrounding what we may call ‘real' or ‘virtual' are constantly in a state of flux. Clarification of definitions of reality can be established by turning to scientific efforts, in particular those described by quantum reality theory. For the purpose of this dissertation I will adopt the notion presented through quantum reality theory that presents the world in two ways, not one; that the world is in some sense not real except during an act of measurement[1] (Herbert, 1990). This view has proved highly popular in the practice of science, but is not without its contesters. Einstein, Schrödinger and De Broglie initially felt that ‘giving up reality was too high a price to pay for a mere theory' (Herbert, 1990:101). However quantum theory later proved itself by addressing the problems of elementary particles[2] which many physicists believed to be the world's ultimate constituents (Herbert, 1990).

For the purpose of this dissertation, Architecture of the real can be defined in the sense of architecture having an observed physical existence through construction. Architecture of the real has a solid existence. Real architecture is always at one particular place at one particular time, with precisely measurable attributes such as spin, velocity and position.

Architecture of the virtual can be defined as architecture that, for whatever reason, is not under observation. The object becomes represented as a wave of probability. Instead of defined values for attributes such as position, velocity and spin, each of the object's attributes takes on, mathematically at least, a wide range of possible values that oscillate in a wavelike manner at a variety of different frequencies. Virtual architecture is not an actual happening but a collection of possibilities. It is a potentiality of architecture existing outside of the observed world.

1.2 Body and Architecture: the Search for Geometric Truth

The relatively recent proliferation of architecture that has its beginnings in the virtual, the unreal, the unobserved, have largely had unsatisfactory projections into real space. One of the key arguments relates to the way we conceive of the body in relation to the space it inhabits. I will first discuss the relationship between the body and the architectural body. I will then discuss the shifting regard for the body in a disembodied cyberspace.

Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the 1st century BCE Roman architect, is regarded by many to be the world's first engineer. In his third book of De Architectura Libri Decem[3] he describes the proportions of the human body as a model for the architectonic body. Vitruvius's work contained no images, but interpretations of his notions of body as a blueprint was a major source of inspiration for Renaissance treatises. The relationship between body and the constructed environment is considered especially important to communities; ‘...in many ancient cultures, the city on earth was supposed to represent a celestial model which it was extremely important to reproduce accurately.' (Kostof, 1999:34). An accurate reproduction of the heavens meant an accurate reproduction of the proportions of the body. This can be seen throughout history to create an intertwining relationship between collections of human bodies and collections of architectural bodies ‘You are yourselves the town, wherever you choose to settle...it is the men that make the city, not the walls and ships without them' (Nicias, cited in Kostof, 1999:36-37)

Figure 1.1 Vitruvian Figure. Da Vinci. (Palumbo, 2000:9)

Many centuries later Leonardo da Vinci's (1452-1519) interpretation of the Vitruvian figure, shown in figure 1.1, shows the proportions of geometry coinciding exactly with the space common to the two figures, thereby reinforcing the dynamic balance of the whole. The drawing no longer solely illustrates the harmonious proportions of the body, but also the search for a higher level of harmony that could perhaps solve the contradiction between two opposites: the objectivity of number, law and measurement and the subjectivity of the body. His illustration becomes a proof of harmony that resolves the clash between the individual dimension of conscience and the collective dimension of reason and science. Leonardo's work demonstrates that the harmony between body and geometric truth is not only a model of work as Vitruvius proposes, but a guarantee for the principals of using the body as a system of measurement to be applied.

1.3 The Uncertain Body

However, during the 16^th and 17^th centuries the journeys of exploration and colonisation, the division of the church and the Copernican revolution led to the disintegration of the harmonious Renaissance world. This prompted a completely new vision of the world and of man. The body as a visual machine was turned into a sensory machine. As Palumbo describes: ‘The idea of the body as a model of formal measurement was replaced by the idea of the body as a system of perception' (2000:12). This was followed by the belief that architecture should be designed in accordance with the human senses rather than the proportions of the human body.

Figure 1.2 Study of Human Stature. Le Corbusier. (1961:65)

Contrasting this, Le Corbusier's ‘The Modulor' (1961) represents a recent attempt to stop the collapse of the Vitruvian figure as an element of certainty, an objective and unchanging measurement on which to base a legitimate and univocal criterion of design, see figure 1.2. Now, in the 21^st century the body has become the measurement of a continuous drive to overstep the limits, a constant tension to surpass all measures. From being the centre of a proportional system with all things, it has become an anthropological measurement of the deconstruction of every presumed principal of reality. As we add new technologies to the physical body we extend our senses and our physicality. The body's total world availability via global communications generates extreme possibilities of dislocation in time and space, resulting in the explosion of the body and in turn, the explosion of our relationship with geometric form.

1.4 A Summary

It is clearly evident that the physical nature of the human body has shaped our understanding of form, geometry and architecture. This intertwined relationship between body and form has been used in practice for centuries. However, our recent interaction with new technologies has seen a shift in mans ways of thinking, transforming from a physical-centric body towards a non-physical consciousness. I will now seek to argue that instead of leaping effortlessly out of our physical bodies and into mental spaces, we have been existing in the gap between the two. Never quite in one plane of reality or another. As a result, this has a remarkable effect on architecture.

1.5 Bodies Without Limits

Roy Ascott optimistically expected that ‘the passage from real to virtual will probably be seamless' (1990:314), yet despite advances in technology the most likely experience of Western man's interaction with electronic volume is what Stephen Perrella describes as the ‘tele-spectators'(2002) model. Participants, who leave their body behind the screen and step into a media world with their mind's eye, not their feet, believe themselves to be transported into pure data[4]. Nothing is real, especially not us; ‘the machine eliminates human performance, which amounts to paralysis' (Weibel, 1990:209).

Figure 1.3 Third Hand. Stelarc. (Brown)

One key reaction to this paralysis is the birth of the Cyborg, or cybernetic organism[5]. In the cyborg era the notion that ‘biology is no longer limited by the genetic codes of evolution' (Mann, 2001:2) permits experiments into the extended, modified or unlimited body. Experiments such as Stelarc's Third Hand Project (1976-81), Steve Mann's WearComp (1980 to present) and Kevin Warwick's Project Cyborg 2 (2002) diffused the notion of the body and its proportions as a unit of certainty. Where Da Vinci portrayed a geometric harmony between body and architectural body, cyborg experimentation dissolves this relationship entirely. This has, in turn, informed the design and creation of architecture for virtual spaces. As we extend our bodies into the digital domains of dataspaces, new forms of architecture are generated. We are presented with an infinite variety of ever changing architectures in which to house our digital dreams, thoughts, interactions and activities.

1.6 Friction of Physicality

However, the extension of the body in physical volume such as Stelarc's Third Hand project (1976-81), as shown in figure 1.3, could arguably be seen as a hindrance to entry into electronic volume. In order to transgress into a virtual reality the physical volume must minimise the friction between itself and the interface to electronic volume. Adding to or extending physicality as cyborgs increases the number of physical atoms even further. To truly transcend into electronic volume we must search to reduce our atoms to zero, and become represented instead as bits. In electronic volume there can be no physicality, only binary.

Figure 1.4 Broadcast Architecture. Rashid. (2003:102)

Contrasting Weibel's view, it is crucially important to acknowledge the presence of the body, and the fact that it is not yet paralysed, as we have not fully transcended into electronic volume. This is illustrated in the work of Hani Rashid's ‘Broadcast architecture' (Lynn and Rashid, 2003:102), see figure 1.4, an experiment in reducing friction between physical body and digital signal. By tracing a gymnast's physical movements into digital data, and then broadcasting that data back into physical space in the form of a static structural frame complimented with digital projections, Rashid creates a fusion between the body and its implicit geometrical form and displacement of physicality through electronic broadcast over the internet. By utilising notions such as replay, rewind and multiple points of view, the architecture exists without space or time, but still employs a body as a generator of form. However, the potential of this as architecture is severely limited, as the body becomes a grounding factor tying the architecture to the physical world.

1.7 Non-physical Possibility

Human physicality is a key barrier that prevents cybernauts[6] from entering electronic volume in a totally immersive capacity. We must be reminded at this point that pure binary existence is already enjoyed by artificial life or A-life creatures, intelligent agents, automated avatars, computer viruses and many other forms of electronic data. Whilst neither alive nor dead, existing or illusory, these datasets are able to travel through pure electricity, yet unlike the cybernaut, they leave nothing physical behind. Therefore the ultimate reduction of physicality becomes the theoretical resolution to atomless existence in electronic volume.

However in practice this reductionist ideology is not currently a practical solution, as Maurice Merleau-Ponty a philosopher of consciousness says, ‘to be a body is to be tied to a certain world' (cited in Lechte, 1994). We cannot currently convert ourselves to pure electricity; instead we must interface with it. As we leave our body behind the glass screen, or any other device we may use as a crossing point into dataspace, we increasingly become enticed to explore the notion of existing outside of physical constraints. This leads to new designs of system that have no need to regard aspects that have plagued embodied entities forever. Aspects like gravity, physics, location, space, time, gender, identity and even death no longer play a part in electronic volume. Paul Virilio explains of the erosion of physicality when dealing with virtual worlds;

Deprived of objective limits, the architectonic elements begins to drift, to float in an electronic ether devoid of spatial dimensions yet inscribed in the single temporality of an instantaneous diffusion. From this moment on, no one can be considered as separated by physical obstacles or by significant time differences... ‘elsewhere' begins here and visa versa.(1994:276)

As a consequence of this erosion, almost every familiar concept to the embodied entity does not apply to the disembodied entity. They navigate spaces in different ways, not just flying instead of walking, but being blessed with the ability to be everywhere whilst really being nowhere, to be inside the system whilst actually being the system, becoming pure data in a space for data.

1.8 The Aesthetic of an Unrestricted Culture

Figure 1.5 Example of rebellious architecture.(Woods)

Some architects, artists and designers have conceived constructions that could be considered more likely in virtual worlds than physical worlds. Free from physical constraints architects can push the boundaries like the physically rebellious work of Lebbeus Woods who uses architecture as a battle against power, gravity, and time, as seen in figure 1.5. His architecture becomes a claim for liberation from all determinations of form and substance. It is important to acknowledge the sheer volume of work presented by artists that deals with issues that are not possible in physical reality. By outlining these works, insight is gained into a cultural and mental shift away from the physical, away from the local and away from the referential.

Figure 1.6 Cloud Cover. Lalvani. (Burry, 2001:37)

Dr Haresh Lalvani's architecture study ‘Cloud Cover' is a complex virtual reality model based on higher-dimensional geometries. ‘Cloud Cover' is appropriately visualised in electronic volume and then converted from its 27 virtual dimensions to be projected into traditional 3 dimensional plans for construction in physical volume. The studies are described as ‘context free' (Burry, 2001:36) and are frequently used for transient applications such as industry exhibits, performances and temporary events. The surface can be constructed modularly, combining expressionless glass surface with light sensitive panels that allows the surface to be re-assembled to portray varying transparency. The temporariness of electronic volume here can be understood as a way to generate architectural form.

Figure 1.7 The Boolean House. Dunlop and Burry. (Burry, 2001:21)

Use of technology has become fundamental in the modelling of architectural blueprints and in the creation of new surfaces that may not have previously existed due not to imaginational limitations but to limitations of the tools available. New virtual tools allow, for example, the creation of ‘The Boolean House' (Burry, 2001:20) designed by Grandt Dunlop and Mark Burry as a theoretical house for the mathematician George Boole (1815-1864), that was created using the logical operations named after him. Using architecture software that offers Boolean methods of carving out spaces within an otherwise arbitrary architectural solid results in a fusion of mathematics and space.

1.9 Boundaries Touching

Figure 1.8 TRANS-PORT. (Burry, 2001:191)

Some architecture is designed to create a linking between physical and electronic volume. Oosterhuis.nl's ‘TRANS-PORT' (2001), shown in figure 1.8, is an electronic/rubber interior/exterior skin placed on a controlled hydraulic space frame. This allows a distributed network that facilitates the communication between real people in the local environment and virtual people in the virtual environment. This creates an augmented reality of physical being and virtual avatar presence. The content of the TRANS-PORT is a real time ‘game' of evolution that generates data and changes the physical and virtual make up. The intent of dualist environment systems like this is to explore the possibility of seamlessly walking off the street and into virtual reality, allowing the participants to appear on the other side of the physical or virtual world in an instant.

Figure 1.9 Waveknot. Lalvani. (Burry, 2001:200)

Another example of architecture designed to bridge the void between the electronic and physical is Dr Haresh Lalvani's ‘Waveknot' (Burry, 2001:200), an architectural system that uses computer algorithms for morphologic columns in the form of knots, creating a connection tie as the knot winds from one location to another. This transitional architecture could theoretically be used to link real and virtual worlds together; however, it has found little support as a practical application. We are currently unable to transcend in entirety, body and mind, through the physical to the electronic and back again. Despite all these attempts at smoothing our passage through worlds, we find ourselves at the locked glass door of the interface. We can peer through our screens, our virtual reality goggles, and see the worlds behind the door, we can touch the data with our keyboards, mice and datagloves, but we cannot penetrate the barrier of the interface, the door that signals our way into electronic spaces yet will not let us through.

1.10 Un-escapable Physicality

One of the fundamental reasons for the lack of success of our transgression into dataspaces is that despite VR simulations presenting us with an existence free from the body, vital parts of our selves are trapped within the body, as physical humans we cannot feasibly become pure data as our body becomes prohibitive.

Jean Baudrillard writes prolifically on the subject of humans constructing simulations of reality (including virtual reality or fiction) in order to make reality seem more real[7]. The physical limitations of the body in reality are heightened as the mind steps forward into virtual reality. As Baudrillard explains;

With the screen... one has to be inside; it is possible to play with it but only if one is on the other side, and immerses oneself in it. That scares me a little, and Cyberspace is not of great use to me personally. (Thibaut, 1996)

Marcos Novak addresses this issue through the creation of his term ‘dis/embodiment'. He proposes that there is no actual state of disembodiment, there are only alternative states of embodiment within media (Mork, 1995).

Even if the media turns out to be entirely informational, they [participants] would still constitute a form of embodiment, since there would still be the invariance of the relational structure that we are made of. (Mork, 1995)

Stephen Perrella describes the current dualist culture of living between reality and virtual reality as a ‘schizophrenic culture' (2002). He encourages experimentation within this culture that he sees as inevitable; ‘we must accept it, the best we can do is become productive schizophrenics' (2002).

1.11 Reconfiguring the Atoms that Remain

Figure 1.10 TV watcher. Sandelin. (Ridderstrale and Nordstrom, 2000:72)

One of the distinguishing outcomes of increased experimentation with architecture in electronic volume is that all forms can be created with equal ease. No one form is more or less intricate, demanding or challenging than another. Therefore architecture in electronic volume has fantastic potential to generate forms that are preferred by their designer; and where the designer is human, these forms must appeal to both mind and body. Novac, in his experimentation with those experiencing virtual architecture, explains that ‘the mind was much more particular than the body' (2001). However, with the increasing presence of virtual spaces creeping into our everyday lives, our minds have become perfectly trained to step into and out of imagined realms. The television, with its hundreds of channels allows us to flip in seconds through multiple media spaces. The mind adapts and absorbs instantly, it is the body that must be re-configured within physical space, located with a good view of the screen, eyes facing the box. As Perrella strongly states ‘Without the TV, how would you know where to put your couch?' (2002) He illustrates that the virtual media worlds have grown so powerful that we are constantly re-adjusting our physical atoms to become further immersed in electronic volume. What may be called the ‘living room' of many Western homes, traditionally used as a space for living, has now become a space for interfacing. With the addition of an interface to electronic volume such as a television, the entire physical area is re-configured; furniture is moved so that the best possible interface experience is available to us[8]. When electricity is fired through the television screen and combined with data signals to produce picture and sound, it has the potential to dominate the room and its viewers by allowing their bodies to exist in physical volume but their minds to exist only in the electronic.

1.12 Summary

This chapter has established the awkward experience of a culture oscillating between the real and virtual, the physical and electronic. Through the empowerment of new technologies this culture is increasingly experimenting with alternative systems of existence. As such, it is important to acknowledge the compelling potential for architects to create paradoxical physical representations of electronic spaces, and to create new interpretations of physicality and virtuality through architecture.

CHAPTER 2

2.1 The Influence of the Imaginative Experience

This chapter explores the reflection in architecture of a culture engaging with connected technologies. This chapter will argue the emergence of a superlative Modernist sensibility in architecture as a direct result of the influence of new technologies, and will explain how a transient and connectivist culture erodes many of the conventions of Postmodernism, as ideals shift from environmental harmony towards to a deterioration of place.

With the abundance of the availability of new technology in the West, countless artists, technologists, designers and companies have worked towards creating immersion within electronic space. They see simulations of how life could be as pure electronic data through the screens of their computers, through their TV sets, through their telephones. This may not currently provide a wholly immersive experience, yet the human imagination is flexible enough to fill in many of the gaps, so it is possible for participants to imagine an existence wholly as data, without the body, whilst still existing within a body. This becomes evident in the experience of non-physical worlds created in the imagination though information such as books, films, radio, television, and story-telling. The Deleuzian view that there is no distinction between production and product (Krauss 1993:315) is an attractive area for exploitation by those wishing to create new architectures; through imagination, participants become both physical and virtual simultaneously.

Joel Garreau's ‘Edge City' presented the concept that;

Cities are always created around whatever the state-of-the-art transportation device is at the time. If the state of the art is sandal leather and donkeys, you get Jerusalem. (cited in Johnson 2002:90).

Now, mentally at least, we are travelling by data, instead of by donkeys. In this chapter I will discuss how this seemingly dichotic existence of real and virtual fuses concepts together to impact recent architecture and our experience of it.

I will argue that there is a provisional and temporary movement in architecture that is emerging, not from direct influence with electronic space, but from the growing need to accommodate a culture that has had its perceptions, attitudes and ideas changed and shaped by limited interaction with electronic space. As our imaginations become more accustomed to existing in a state of ‘dis/embodiment' new architecture will naturally be influenced by this, and will rise to meet new and changing demands placed upon it by those who no longer perceive themselves as having a wholly physical existence. It is important to establish a connection between various communication technologies and how they re-shape mentality that in turn re-shapes architecture.

2.2 Non-places

The swift proliferation in recent years of global technologies such as the internet, and satellite communications and the increasing mobility, especially in the affluent northern hemisphere, creates a new mentality. A mentality that a larger portion of the world now one way or another is familiar, seems familiar, or is assumed to be familiar by individuals. This allows our personal radius of action[9] to expand. This supersized radius of action allows space to be reduced to an interval in a continuous moment, interrupted at most for a brief stopover. Our global transience becomes a catalyst for what Marc Augé calls ‘Non-places' (1995). Supermarkets, airports, hotels and motorway stops generate a recognizable form acquiring a degree of familiarity. These non places are seen as typical expressions of the age of globalisation; however, these are not the only examples. There is a remarkable slippage of concepts that branch from experience in electronic volume into physical volume architecture.

One trait that slips into the physical world perfectly from our experience with architecture in electronic volume is a characteristic lack of place or location. For example, coded software that runs on a computer in England could just as easily be running in Japan without anyone telling the difference. The potential for useful data to be everywhere and simultaneously be nowhere is extremely appealing to a mind encased within a body; so that wherever the body goes in physical volume, the data is there.

Figure 2.1 Geskin and Bazanski, New York, New York Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, USA.(Ibelings 2002:74) illustrates that location and relation to place is dissolved through simulation.

The understanding that theoretically everything architectural can also stand everywhere, undermines the Postmodern dogma that architecture must always have a unique, authentic relationship with the context. This became particularly apparent in the ‘VDS: Multiplying Time, Place2wait Project' (1997) that existed nowhere, but was accessed at the University of Hong Kong, the University of Washington, Seattle and ETH Zurich. Existing only in electronic volume, students from the three institutions collaborated on a single project during normal working hours for their time zone. They then passed on the data files to the next time zone, thus creating a 24 hour working environment that existed across the world. The project brief, being truly indicative of the globalisation of culture, was to create a building for a Chinese painter and a Swiss writer off the coast of Seattle. Each university's local styles were passed on to the next, and after the designs had travelled the world several times, being modified at every turn, any sense of localised style was eroded to become a ‘global style'.

2.3 New Global Territory

A common trend in working in this way is the need for re-establishing territory, not as a physical boundary but as a mental state. Traditionally place was something that, from a human geography perspective, could be measured the distance to and to other points, a location in space, a geographic property. Human geographer Kathrin Horschelmann sees evidence of society changing as we experience the impact of electronic volume in our physical lives. There is no longer a case of separate, segregated identities that have traditionally formed territory. Territory is replaced with a ‘sense of multiplicity of places and spaces' that stems from the wider range of things we consume and our ‘media experience' (Horschelmann 2002). Horschelmann believes physical humans are no-longer from anywhere, as they encounter differentiation and fragmentation of cultures on a daily basis; cultures become overlapping and are no longer distinct.

This constant mixing and re-configuration of spaces, places and identities is a side effect of the new global village[10], its communicative and potentially homogenising powers are hard to avoid. Even the most anti-globalisation polemicist Naomi Klein paradoxically travels the globe promoting an anti-global message worldwide.

2.4 Internationality

Personal experience of and interaction with a global style is gaining momentum as international travel and worldwide communication are no longer the reserve of the aptly named ‘jet set'[11] but increasingly become everyday phenomena for millions of people around the globe. Internationality, which was seen as an essential element of Modernity, has expanded through technology to such an extent that national borders and time zones, mentally at least, are no longer a barrier to any kind of interchange. In this respect the 1990's can be seen as the superlative of the Modernist 1950's and 60's, representing amplification in modernisation and internationalisation. Modernism is consciously international. The first clear example of internationalisation in architecture is the creation of grand hotels. These provide international travellers a degree of uniformity and familiar refuge from the different environment outside. This raises the concept of international style, that an architectural style or approach should be internationally applicable, that is given a new significance in this technological era. Although it is this international quality that Postmodernists strongly objected to from the beginnings of Postmodernism, in recent years Postmodern architecture paradoxically contains a certain international quality of its own (Ibelings, 2002).

2.5 Supermodernity

After the explicitly defined spatiality of Postmodernism and Deconstructivism, it appears that the ideal of boundless and undefined space, inspired in part by the physically liberating and globally connected experiences brought about by networked technologies, is set to become the main leitbild[12] for architects. This view is shared by Augé who provides a provisional framework for this new phenomenon. Augé uses the concept of what he calls ‘Supermodernity' to describe the logic of excessive information and excessive space.

The three figures of excess which we have employed to characterize the situation of Supermodernity - overabundance of events, spatial overabundance, the individualisation of references - make it possible to grasp the idea of Supermodernity without ignoring its complexities and contradictions. (Augé 1995:40)

Supermodernity inspires a new architectural sensibility that can be characterised by its sensitivity to the neutral, the undefined, the implicit; qualities that are not confined to architectural substance but also find powerful expression in a new spatial sensibility. Augé disentangles anthropology from history, to such an extent that he describes Supermodernity as ‘The face of a coin whose obverse represents Postmodernity: the positive of a negative.' (Augé 1995:30). Augé creates an important distinction between ‘place' encrusted with history, and ‘non-place' that exists without history, without time, without location. This is in contrast to Baudelairean Modernity, where the old and the new are interwoven. Supermodernity is self-contained in supermarkets, airports, hotels, on motorways, in front of televisions, computers and cinema screens. It is most interesting that Supermodernism is not only an amplification of Modernism, but describes a theoretical encapsulation of many of the human experiences of electronic volume. Supermodernism's extreme polar nature to Postmodernism brings to mind many of the attitudes, values and beliefs of those interacting with networked technologies today.

2.6 Technological Reflections in Supermodernism

It is important to establish that Supermodernism is not only an antithesis to Postmodernism, as Augé describes, but it also encapsulates the cultural phenomena resulting from a lifestyle integrated with digital technologies.

2.6.1 Regard for the Surroundings

One of the original hallmarks of Postmodernist architecture is the regard for the surroundings, its context within an environment, regional idiosyncrasies and respect for the concept of ‘local'. The architecture of the Supermodern has no regard for its surroundings, it is global, neutral, generic, non-symbolic and above all, commonplace. Just as Internet dataspaces attempt to remove themselves from all locality. Many websites, for example, erode the concept of locality by having chunks of data in a variety of places. Even at the simplest level websites may show text written on a German computer describing images on an American computer hosted on a French computer. An extremity of this example is the popular technology of mirror sites, where an exact duplicate of the data from a computer in one geographic place is stored on multiple computers a variety of geographic places. The data has presence everywhere, globally, yet nowhere physically. The users interact with the data, not the place, removing any concept of locality. Here, lack of dependence to a physical location can be considered a survival strategy. If for some reason a particular location is damaged or destroyed, perhaps due to war or extreme acts of nature, the data flow is not disrupted, its users are invisibly re-routed to any number of other locations. In this respect, Supermodernism is considered to be in keeping with the time, not the surroundings.

However, one crucial argument for Postmodern locality in architecture is that it aids the notion that the built environment is an essential point of reference in daily life. That buildings, spaces, neighbourhoods, cities, and monuments function as prompts for individuals and communities. This view was articulated by Aldo Rossi in 1966 in his work ‘The Architecture of the City' (1984) regarded as one of the theoretical foundations of Postmodernism, Rossi defined ‘aide mémoire' as an analogue city that exists in everyone's imaginations, a personal version of the city consisting of buildings, streets, and parks that become associated with particular individual memories. Now, as society becomes increasingly transient in both lifestyle and culture, there may be no memory to attach to place, or no point of reference in the local environment. Instead focus turns to homogenous, global associations. The same products and services are available to us no matter what our location and they are delivered to us in the same way. In the identical aisles of supermarkets, in the universal language of the logo, in the familiar glow of the television screen that allows us to receive the same broadcast from a multitude of places, in the mobile phone that never lets you lose contact. This in turn homogenises architecture. This is illustrated in the writing of Tom Wolfe who claims that ‘every child goes to school in a building that looks like a duplicating-machine replacement-parts wholesale distribution warehouse' (cited in Farrar et al., 2001). Wolfe illustrates how social and intellectual trends have determined aesthetic form, and how architects have clearly abandoned personal vision and originality in favour of the Modernist coherent world architecture.

2.6.2 Referencing, Labelling and Allusion

Postmodernist architecture created illusions through representation, infused with allusion, referencing the surroundings and the past. Practitioners would express the buildings purpose, either by following the conventions of building typology or by adding symbolic pointers. Postmodern architecture was seen partially as a communicative system to the point of creating what could be considered as ‘building linguistics'. The architecture was completely overloaded with references to architecture and architecture history, the context of the building or its internal activity. This became problematic as Hans Ibelings points out; ‘increasingly buildings started to function as vehicles for ideas that had nothing at all to do with architecture' (2002:18). Allusion, especially to context, was the most frequently used means of legitimising Postmodern architecture, that in turn filled the world with what Perrella describes as ‘streams of representations...continually pushing through our lives' (2002). Neutrality can be seen as a reaction to the Postmodernist and Deconstructivist tendency to design everything from the building to the doorknob, from the furniture to the coffee pot.

Supermodernism presents an alternative approach where objects are sufficient in themselves and are not required to convey anything.

Architecture that refers to nothing outside of itself and makes no appeal to the intellect can instead prioritise direct sensory experience of space. This gives Supermodernism as an architectural style special significance for integration with electronic volume, as it shows a move away from a body-centric system towards a system of experience. Architecture based on radical reduction is used to conjure up an exceptionally strong impression that refuses to transmit a literal message. Instead it creates an emotional exchange, an atmosphere.

The atmosphere and emotion of architecture takes on a fresh importance in an environment where people frequently engage in electronic exchange. Huffman claims that ‘the encountering of electronic memory as reality has become commonplace' (1999:136), and if this is indeed true, then architecture must create a sensation, rather than a dialogue. As Ibelings believes; ‘the immediate sensation of space, form and light, of transparency and weightlessness is more important than the communication of any message' (2002:43). We see a breakdown of Postmodernism in favour of the desire to bring to fruition the lightness of our cyberspace experience. Conclusively the removal of Postmodern signs has becomes the search for the absolute zero of physicality.

2.6.3 Clean Slate: the New Start

One of the traits of modernism that is mirrored most clearly in a society experiencing constant technological advancement is the freedom to demolish the past and begin with a clean slate. The Modernist viewpoint is that the past can largely be considered as dead weight, with the exception of the particular line in history from which Modernity claimed descent[13]. The clean slate mentality was somewhat revived during the ‘dot com boom' of the 1990's, as an entirely new sector of business emerged around a new technological innovation, the Internet. This allowed small companies in humble locations[14] with very little capital compete for business on a global scale that was normally reserved for giant multi-national corporations. This drastically and rapidly changed the usage of architecture. What once was a bedroom was now a global headquarters, what once was a garage was now a worldwide distribution depot. In the minds of people empowered by a presence in electronic volume, rather than in physical volume, the Postmodern adage that the pre-existing is beautiful, valuable and morally superior to a clean start, was quickly worn away. The past was no longer seen as a natural starting point for new constructions. Instead, new architecture was created with the expectation that its usage would be varied, and its occupants would be transient. A Supermodern view took over, and presented buildings that look as if they could be anything, an office, a school, a hospital, a hotel or apartments.

2.6.4 Experiential Construction

Access to connected technologies, digital production networks and remote participation in projects has given architects themselves the ability to remove all physicality from the involvement of construction. On inspection this seemingly paradoxical situation is far more common than one may first think. Architect and designer Isozaki never saw his ‘Team Disney' building at Epcot Florida with his eyes, only his minds eye. (New York Times cited in Fletcher, 2001:166). By encoding his imagination into data such as blueprints, and transmitting it remotely, he was never present at the site of construction. This allowed the creation of the architecture of experience, rather than the architecture of physicality. What is unique about this process however is that Isozaki's interaction with his building would have been identical even if his design was never physically constructed at all.

Figure 2.2 Parasite Las Palmas, Rotterdam, Korteknie and Stuhlmacher (authors image, 2003)

Architects Korteknie and Stuhlmacher have taken this a step further with their creation of ‘Parasite Las Palmas', Rotterdam (2001). The Parasite is currently on-top of the Las Palmas warehouse in Rotterdam, but it could be anywhere, or nowhere, is a statement about flexible, temporary construction in the built environment. The Parasite is designed to be constructed on any top of existing buildings, and utilities such as power and water are taken from the host of the Parasite. This imposed multifunctionality distorts the original decisions made by the host's original architect. This is a new kind of connectivism for architecture, it is an imposed prosthesis. Just as the cyborg supplements its body with new technology, so too can architecture. The Parasite represents a symbiotic system that subverts the original intentions of both the Parasite's architect and its host, generating a mutual sense of re-purposing. This is a transformation of architecture towards a sensory machine as it becomes a wave of probability. The Parasite indicates that there is no solid measurement of architecture; instead it becomes a wave of probability. There is no way to define what a particular building is; only a speculation on the many things it could be.

2.7 The Rise of the Glass Box

Figure 2.3 Building for the Ministry of the Interior, Madrid, Spain. Inaki Abelos and Juan Herreros. (Ibelings 2002:91)

We are now noticing a trend in construction of what can rather simply be described as the ‘glass box', architecture that is light, rectangular volume, architecture that is almost not there, architecture that expects to be changed. Smooth glass surfaces are utilised to evoke a sense of insubstantial superficiality. The simplicity of the glass box is not just a reaction to the aesthetic of visual excess. In essence, the new abstraction is an expression of the fundamentally different attitude to architecture which it sees less and less as significant and filled with symbolic meaning, and more and more as a neutral object, open to interactions both physical and electronic.

Figure 2.4 Twin Tower. Massimiliano Fuksas. Wienerberger Ziegelindustrie. (Architekturtage.at 2003)

The glass box is Supermodern in its independence from specific conditions. The ephemeral appearance is rarely, if ever, the product of formal considerations. It is characterised by sensitivity to the neutral, the undefined, the implicit, qualities that are not confined to architectural substance but also find powerful expression in a new spatial sensibility. The undefined space within is not a void but a multipurpose container.

Figure 2.5 Videopavillion Erotics , Groningen, The Netherlands. Bernard Tschumi. (Lava.ds, 2003)

Bernard Tschumi's Videopavillion Erotics in Groningen, the Netherlands, constructed in 1990, shown in figure 2.5, is designed with the expectation of multiplicity of purpose. It currently houses video media and is used as a library, but it has been used for many other changing functions depending on the needs of those who use it. It is designed as if it is almost non-existent, and as a result the usage of the building projects outwardly rather than imposing meaning, place or rule onto the inhabitants.

Figure 2.6 Mediatheque, Sendai, Japan. Toyo Ito. (Designboom, 2003)

Toyo Ito's beautiful Mediatheque in Sendai Japan constructed in 1994, shown in figure 2.6, is characterised by coolness, smoothness and abstraction from Postmodern meaning. The rising frequency of the occurrence of the glass box around the world shows that events are taking place more or less simultaneously across the world. There is a conviction that people everywhere belong to the same global community thanks to networked communication technology. It has become almost effortless to take an active part in a global society.

Figure 2.7 ¿Cuantos? (How much?), Madrid, Spain, 1991. Wodiczko. (Artangel)

Largely as a reaction to the imposed meaning of Postmodern architecture, visual artist Krzysztof Wodiczko projects large video images onto buildings in order to offer a critique of the powers within dominant architectural institutions. He describes his work as ‘a symbol-attack' (Vallen, 1999) removing, altering or subverting the allusions broadcast by architecture. Unlike the Parasite that re-contextualises meaning through physicality, Wodiczko's work adds a data dimension to architecture, as shown in figure 2.7. This data dimension is a crucial consideration for new architecture, as technology improves we may find ourselves residing in spaces where data is not projected onto an existing physical space, but the physical space hardly exists at all, if only to serve as a display for data. There may be a strong case for ‘inscribing' Supermodern buildings with an editable, temporary text or image to reappropriate an intrinsically expressionless form. Eventually the physical volume will drop out of significance in architecture and it will be replaced by electronic volume, as bits replace bricks. This is clearly seen in the work of Rafael Lozano-Hernmer a Mexican-Canadian artist who expands on Wodiczko's work[15] through new technology like the Internet and robotics used to intervene with the interpretation of architecture. He calls this ‘relational architecture' (Canogar, 2002); an act of transforming the narratives of a particular architecture by adding and removing audiovisual elements to re-contextualize or de-contextualise it. Relational architecture becomes laced with physical hyperlinks activated by spatiotemporal signals, thus merging physical volume with electronic volume. This emphasizes the relationship between urban and personal scale. Instead of dematerialising the body, it dematerialises the environment. It is improvisational space without rules.

CONCLUSION

By modifying the architecture, rather than the body, humans can interact simultaneously with two volumes as if they were one, blurring any possible distinction between the two. This permits a fluidity of experience, an alteration of reality, an exciting exchange of interaction. Whilst it must be recognised that this is perhaps a digital utopian view, it must also be recognised that it is a very real possibility.

It is clear that the impact of digital technologies on global culture is represented through architecture. Digital technologies do not only give us new ways to perceive architecture and new ways to render architectural form, but also empowers human thought with a connected consciousness that is expressed in our everyday interactions.

It is imperative to understand that our future experience with electronic volume may not come directly from screens, data goggles or online communication, but from the very physical architecture we inhabit each day. As the physicality of architecture becomes reduced closer to zero, there will no longer be perceivable boundaries between real and virtual, physical and electronic. Cities will become worlds full of windows, a concentration of invisibility. Bodies will move through physicality as our minds move through virtuality. Cyberspace is already becoming undeniably real. Although Ito claims he has ‘not yet found a space that reflects the idea of living in the age of electronics'. (cited in Puglisi, 1999:22), he has contributed to the realisation of community space for the digitally connected mindset. As no single architecture alone can create a virtual reality, as that architect has the measurement of every detail of their creation, a mass of decentralised artists, architects, designers and other practitioners all influenced in their own unique way by interaction with electronic volume, will ultimately create a virtual reality though a wave of probability.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] This can also be described as an act of observation.

[2] Quarks, gluons and leptons.

[3] The Ten Books on Architecture.

[4] Perhaps the only pseudo-physical attributes we possess are that of our avatar, a digital representative of the body, but even these avatars are not bodies but additional data-architectures moving around a dataspace.

[5] Defined by Steve Mann as a ‘person whose physiological functioning is aided by or dependent upon a mechanical or electronic device' (2001:1).

[6] Cybernauts can be defined as those travelling into and out of cyberspaces. ‘An electronic astronaut. Avid internet users are often called cybernauts; however, anyone deeply involved in communications networks, online services, and computers in general can assume this title' (TechEncyclopedia 2003).

[7] A fascinating example of this is Baudrillard's story of confusion and unease when reality and artificiality are juxtaposed :

In the 18th century, at the dawn of the machine revolution, a strange story took place. A magician, an extremely adept watchmaker, had constructed an automaton. He had executed this machine to such perfection, its movement so smooth and natural, that the public could not distinguish them, once both appeared on stage. To put a point to the spectacle the master felt compelled to mechanise his own movements, even his complete bearing, lest the spectators in their increasing unease as to who or what was a real should actually take the man for the machine, and vice versa. (1974, cited in Weibel 1990).

[8] Commonly the television is placed in a location that maximises visibility, at eye level, in the corner of the room so as to maximise the number of chairs and seats pointing towards it. With the recent popularity of DVD player technology and digital surround sound, we now have the possibility to interface with the ‘home theatre'. By placing audio speakers around the room the physical home space is altered into the virtual, electronically enabled, sensual, theatre space.

[9] The personal commonly encountered area of interactivity and participation.

[10] A term coined by Marshall McLuhan who envisioned the world interconnected via electronic communications. (2001)

[11] Defined as ‘an international social set made up of wealthy people who travel from one fashionable place to another' (Dictionary.com 2003).

[12] Leitbild is a German word meaning ‘model' or ‘example'.

[13] Andrea Palladio, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Claude-Nicholas Ledoux.

[14] Michael Dell, for example, began selling computers from his dormitory room when he was 19. Dell Computers is now one of the worlds leading computer providers. (Ridderstrale and Nordstrom, 2000:208)

[15] It should be noted that Wodiczko is not Hernmer's sole inspiration. Other artists in this area include Archigram, Toyo Ito, Gordon Matta-Clark, Jenny Holzer, the Situationists, Christian Moeller, Christo, Peter Greenaway, Vito Acconci, Dennis Adams, Knowbotic Research, Dan Graham, Richard Serra and Rachel Whiteread.

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Lectures:

Engeli, M. (6. December 2002) Bits and Spaces. Babbage building: University of Plymouth

Horschelmann, K. (4. December 2002) Human Geography. Scott building: University of Plymouth

Perrella, S. (28. November 2002) Hypersurface Architecture: Existence Within Planes of Immanence. Robbins Lecture Theatre: University of Plymouth

Warwick, K (18. February 2003) I, Cyborg. Robbins Lecture Theatre: University of Plymouth