‘Stupid’ Ideas for Architecture : TEXT
“Transform the surface of sensory appearances into a new sensorium that is a mirror of its own activity”
Ranciere
2013 STATEMENT : This thesis aims to critique the current inability within architecture to think synthetically about the material and the digital as well as to challenge the accepted duality between smart and dumb technologies. It proposes to rethink the system of categories (both architectural and conceptual) which lock the discipline into a position of subordination, and transform dead ends into avenues for exploration. Ultimately, it suggests an architectural actualization of a world where mind and matter are radically* coupled - what, for the purposes of the proposal, we could call ‘a quantum architecture.‘
“Radically,“ here, having a double function: on the one hand calling a discipline out of a temporary marasmus, on the other pointing to the irrational and willful operations necessary for the fulfilment of the project (that is, if you think mind and matter are already coupled, collapse them further - beyond any reasonable limits).
see related images and installation here
1. Introduction: The virtual does not exist.
The world is less and less relevant. More and more happens ‘under the surface’ in strings of 0s and 1s flushing at the speed of light through optical wires, able to conjure up millions of worlds whenever the flow is intercepted - cable cut open to release an abundance of ‘realities’ through a media interface. Tables, walls, ceilings, floors – remainders of some older age, are essentially gutted, thinned to the surface, and made ‘smart.’ The world is necessarily devalued – at most an inert carrier of this higher intelligence, cultural essence, real communication and knowledge, and at the least a mere façade covering up the unbearable tangle of wires.
Architecture (the world) is settling for this inert position. Collaborations with ‘media-specialists’ rather than unifying the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ make the distinction between them even more pronounced. Part of the project is wired – the rest is a frame. The digital is overpowering.
This situation is of course false.
First of all, smart materials, artificial or not, rescue the traditional notion of material relevance and, by providing diffuse intelligence, promise a reevaluation of the worldly bulk. Furthermore, a closer examination of the idea of material smartness (through all the Latin and Greek root recombinations of piezo-electics, electro-chromics, magneto-rheological fluids, thermo-optics, and others) leads to the conclusion that smart materials simply connect phenomena, inscribing themselves as causal (often reversible) links between properties. The boundary between smart and dumb reveals itself not well defined and depends on the application. Ultimately only human creativity is the judge between responding and being. We could imagine a property as commonplace as thermal-expansion to be elevated to a status of a project-motivating smartness rather than being painstakingly muffled with expansion joints.
Even though the simplest techno-material networks are considered most elegant, there may be no essential criteria to distinguish them from the other assemblies. Though computers may be perceived to divert techno-material systems away from ‘honesty of expression,’ they themselves are based on nothing else but these elementary material units (in all their ‘truthfulness’!). It is precisely the material devices described above that allow physical phenomena to enter the electronic circuity. Piezoelectric materials serve as sound sensors (and are incorporated into all kinds of ‘buttons’). Light is detected with materials that change resistivity, or create an electric current when illuminated. Changes in temperature can be registered by the degree of bending of a bimetallic strip with two different thermal expansion coefficients, etc., etc. The digital and, by extension, the virtual are just an aspect of the material.
The idea that the virtual creates a radical alternative to the real/material (even to the point of competition), is historically constructed. Its most developed form being the kind of digital alienation of the last three to four decades, so ubiquitous through innumerable technological applications. It is a conceit of this thesis that the operational abstraction of 0s and 1s (absence / presence) overlaid on top of electric impulses is ultimately a poor version of a (better) world ontology.*
2. Then...
Several developments are intriguing in this context. First, the idea of quantum computing promises to transcend the digital paradigm and entangle computing within the complications at the elementary level of material. Not long ago a quantum device has been able to count as much as 3 x 5 = 15, showing the difficulty of that type of programming (having done so, however, on 5 atoms and perhaps concluding the calculation right before the researchers pressed ‘enter‘). Notwithstanding the details of these operations, it is unfortunately possible that the development will bring nothing more but a... leap in computing speed. This would result in a reevaluation of the virtual-matrial split only indirectly.**
This goes back to the fact that more and more scientific discoveries bear the adjective quantum, which, while extremely exciting to the laymen, usually means a basic change in the properties sourced to achieve a result. Quantum itself is originally associated with the, by now basic, discovery of electron energy levels. Quantum architecture needs to be defined within the context of desires projecting from, rather than actually relying on scientific expertise.
To call architecture quantum is a way to challenge it.***
Smart materials, as mentioned before, do open an avenue out of the digital. Their application, however, is often decorative, or environmental, and does not imply architectural issues such as structure, volume, access, etc. By blurring the concept of smartness, however, this theses aims to make the concept disciplinary and prevent the distinction between a ‘smart installation’ and the architecture beneath.
3. Statement: Defining quantum architecture.
Matter is the „sheer hardware” of the world. I am looking for a RADICAL MATERIALISM (not-materialism) that is at the same time a RADICAL IDEALISM (not-idealism) – a point where the difference between the two disappears. They become identical. “Only hardware”(or “No Software“ - F.Kittler) also means “only software.” Ideology becomes an aspect of matter. Matter is heavy. Matter is empty.
A quantum material is one whose properties are freely chosen (designed) and do not rely on immediate adjacency of determining factors. In a quantum material space and time are disrupted. Quantum materials behave like media interfaces. For example, a performance of a quantum stealth camouflage exists strictly in a feedback loop with the position of the observer (subject) and the image of its surrounding environment. A quantum material is constituted outside its material limits. As far as its performance goes, a quantum material is more a contextual setup than an actual technology (though technological aspects are always involved).
In a sense a quantum architecture is a way to ‘think‘ architecture. A quantum stealth technology, for example is nothing other than an invisibility cloak and one needs to admit that there is nothing else in the world that suggests such development except human conceptual desires. The subject is always implied in the setup. As such quantum architecture has more to do with forceful imposition than material honesty and lies in the tradition of conceptual misuses of architecture (deconstruction via Eisenman). Paradoxically it may have more to do with the absurdist naiveté of physical mathematical models [see illustration] than with a ‘smart‘ facade system. How to do theory on atoms?
Light will serve as a case study phenomenon for this semester. Because of its complex nature (both wave and particle) it is both the main symptom and a diagnostic of the ambiguities of the world. On the most basic level, it provides the main pathway for experiencing architecture. Structure, ornament, and materiality are all directly mediated through light. Most other aspects of architecture, up until when the eyes close, can be spoken of in a similar way, though indirectly. Light’s surprising properties, however, are made inconsequential to architecture (though sometimes used by the way of decoration). Effects such as polarization, interference, diffraction, reflection, etc., implicated in technologies from glass, though mirrors, video, or even photoelasticity allow to destabilize architecture through the main medium of its experience. I propose to redefine the politics of visuality into the politics of light itself.
* The virtual/digital - real/material dichotomy is nothing less than a world ontology - a version of the timeless divide between mind and matter, conveniently updated to the contemporary techno-secular paradigm but preserving the traditional hierarchy among the terms. Digitally conceived artificial intelligence is a case in point.
** As through the development of technologies currently thwarted by limited computing capacity. In claytronics millions of molecule-sized machines would arrange into any shape creating a new genera of embodied holograms, completely transformable architecture and more...
*** Others have already defined quantum architecture more or less metaphorically but always almost completely misunderstanding the scientific context of the theory - this will inevitably happen here as well.
Convoluted technological setup results in a ‘digital-glass’ – a redundant version
of a matter-based technology already widely available. The technology is thus estranged.
(The projection does not add anything - it aims to subtruct: subtruct the wall itself)
