John Walsh Quest Essay

8/6/2019 John Walsh Quest Essay

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Architecture and Information:

How will the rapidly increasing database of digital information beutilised to generate a more relevant architectural form for society?

Word Count: 3095



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Contents

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Introduction: Architecture and Information Page 3

Spatial application Page 3

A New Virtual Reality: Urban Possibilities Page 5

Information as experience Page 7

Conclusion Page 10

Additional Information Page 11

References and Terms Page 11



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Architecture of Information:

How will the rapidly increasing database of digital information be utilised to generate a more

relevant architectural form for society?

In the present realm of architecture we are experiencing a transitional period within design

with the increasing emergence of “digital places”, these hybrid spaces contain both physical

and electronic characteristics. These places are undoubtedly not an ends mean but part of

the evolutionary process of adaption whilst we continue to seek to link “bricks to clicks” as

the intersection of electronic and physical spaces occurs at an increasing rate, through

necessity. We must ask the question, as our access to information changes, how will

architecture embrace the vast world of new data and will space become increasingly

virtual?. It is unlikely, no matter how far this evolutionary process continues the importance

of physical space will disappear, as it is1“human need to attach meaning to physical places

as part of their culture” (Horan 2000:86) and the need for physical place and interaction willnot cease, but continue to evolve.

At present we are living in one of the most exciting periods in the world’s history. Society is

being transformed rapidly around us by a growing need for information and how it is being

distributed. Accessing this vast constantly growing database of information from any point

in the world is now a reality. Through these advancements and the constantly growing

prosthetic digital networks we are becoming ever closer to one another, developing

alongside an increased understanding of the world. Recent innovations have lead modern

society to share and generate information now in more abstract methods.

Spatial application

2“Progressive information technologies are constantly evolving and mutating, and if

communities do not evolve they will be left behind” (Wilson 2004). As the world of

information progressively moves faster around us it is imperative that this process of

evolution is integrated into the fabric of the space we occupy.

The virtual information networks attracts a deal of negative stereotyping with some of social

critics such as Mark Slouka taking the view that the growing trends will unintentionally

eliminate social interaction as virtual life becomes a escape of the real. However3“despite

the rise of intoxicating virtual places, social science research continues to find that the built

environment plays a key role in defining our sense of self identity” (Stokols 1999). The

concept of digital place does not eliminate the need for the design of meaningful building

types that we are accustomed to; instead the ambition should be to focus on alterative

combinations to complement the meaning of physical place. The additional electronic layer

can give rise to new functions not feasible without.

In the modern urban world with the increasing privatisation of space, the necessity of

relevant public space as a stimulant for encouraging cultural, educational and social

1

Horan, T. 2000, Digital Places: Building Our City of Bits, ULI-The Urban Land2Wilson, E.J. 2004, The Information Age and Developing Countries, MIT Press.

3 STOKOLS, D. (1999) Human development in the age of the internet: Conceptual and methodological horizons. In S. L. Friedman &



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interaction is becoming increasingly important. “Public Space, both real and virtual- have

the capacity to provide a perceptual and functional meeting grounds for friends and

strangers alike” 4(Horan 2001:15) and have the capacity to transform a sense of place into a

sense of community. Public buildings must become important points of entry for members

of society into the digital realm.

Architecture has always had a symbiotic relationship with scientific technology throughout

time and the architecture of the information age should continue to embrace this

relationship. Designing to accommodate the needs of this generation one must bridge the

gap and utilise the structures components as a link between the physical and virtual worlds.

Design must surpass the simple screen and physically interact, change, update and stimulate

users. Essentially it is required to rethink conventional building programmes and functions

for the creation of a more immersive knowledge experience.5“Architects of the twenty first

centenary will shape, arrange and connect spaces (both real and virtual) to satisfy human

needs. They will still care about the qualities of visual and ambient environments. They will

seek commodity, firmness and delight. But commodity will be as much a matter of softwarefunctions and interface design as it is of floor plans and constructio n material” (Mitchell

2000:105).

The inevitable effects of current resource storage systems are that bytes are replacing the

once physical, removing requirements for large storage areas; this creates implications

regarding form as some previous necessities no longer apply, creating the potential for a

more relevant brief. Planners and architects are beginning to comprehend the importance

of “space flows” and their ability to create new dialogues among educational institutions in

a manner that stimulates social interaction. Advancing technology will continue to impact

our communities and social communications; the success of their integration will bedependent on the quality of design. This awareness has resulted in the materialisation of

some modern public structures whose programmes provide electronic and physical access

to residents. Particularly effective examples that illustrate this transitory process include:

Toyo Ito’s Sendai Mediatheque and OMA’s Seattle public library. These multimedia learning

environments encourage both electronic and face to face communications.

4 Horan, T 2001 Digital PlacesDesign Considerations for Integrating Electronic Space with Physical Place

5Mitchell, W.J. 2000, E-topia, Paperback Edition edn, MIT Press, USA.



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A New Virtual Reality: Urban Possibilities

Representing the Virtual is proving to be a problematic challenge for architecture. The very

nature of virtual realms is the issue, as their presence lacks visibility and physical expression

being currently primarily perceived through un-stimulating mediums. To perceive the

invisible it is imperative that we reshape the space that houses it as senses such as seeing

and feeling are central to the way we comprehend information.6“Vision is especially

important when dealing with architecture. Technology and architecture often met in their

common attempt to shape or reshape the categories of visual perception”. (Picon, Lerner

2003:295). Our perception of the virtual information is related to our level of understanding

and it can only flourish through our understanding and how we engage with it. This virtual

reality of information is but a potential awaiting its full realisation.

Programmatic datascape development

Attempting to establish a more related method of designing to embrace this realisation, a

partial new generation of architects are becoming to embrace the scientific based ideology

of “deep planning” and “datascapes”. Architects MVRDV are among the forefront of this

new generation of architects who choose to incorporate this massing of digital information

we create as a central tool in analysing the city to influence design in ways never

anticipated. The modern creators of the architectural datascape process, MDRDV has

sought to create a new visual means of representing architecture as it relates to the

mapping of urban phenomena. Mapping these urban phenomena involves data driven

visualisation to represent the “unacknowledged” features of the city. Through mapping this

invisible information in a perceivable manner bearing scale, creates the possibility to merge

6 Picon, A. & Lerner, R. 2003, Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors



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information and form to create a more relevant structure for modern society. Brett Steele

describes datascapes as7“visual representations of all quantifiable forces, which can have

an influence on the work of the architect or are even able to determine and to steer them”

(Steele B, 1998).

The work of Maas (MVRDV) exhibited in

the Metacity/ Datatown publication seeks

to give visual expression to the numerical

value of the information incorporated.8“Data do not yield information except

with the intervention of the mind.

Information does not yield meaning

except with the intervention of

imagination” (Harvard.B 1985) and this

approach allows the complex statistical

information to be presented in a muchmore perceivable way through the

medium of digital art. The publication

explores various data from both real and

theoretical scenarios in Mexico City, San

Paulo and as a contrast Netherlands.

Datascapes expose extreme conditions,

new unexpected spatial boundaries and

are considered to have paradoxical

properties. The process is considered to

be rational as it is derived from scientificinformation and irrational because the

spatial restrictions exposed can give a

surreal image of the area under

examination. The datascapes are

controlled and critical in nature offering the dweller of urban space a visual critique of that

in question. They can examine the effects that external forces have and the implications

that trends may have if they continue in terms of spatial consequences.

Datascapes are much more than persuasive illustrations, they reveal urban influences and

when transformed into images (digital art) become maps with multiple dimensions. Thesemaps can then become a tool to guide the urban designer to achieve potential new

development in current practise’s and used as a persuasive power to guide public policy.

One of the most interesting features of datascapes is that they can continually be updated

as information in the world around us changes. Information however when materialised

into a physical object becomes an artefact and is quickly outdated as information changes.

Architectural firms such as UN studio have begun to embrace a similar method, however

there approach is more clearly related to finished final constructed form than that of

MVRDV, whose initial datascape projects are primarily theoretical works. In order to do

7 Brett Steele, “Reality Bytes: Datascapes in Daidalos” 9/70, 1998, p.10.

8 “The Globalization of Markets” in Harvard Business Review, May/June1985, p.99



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things differently we need to see things differently and UN studios in projects such as

Arnhem Central Masterplan in the Netherlands have embraced the use of digital

information as a means to generate habitable space through a process known as deep

planning.

Deep planning incorporates a variety of aspects including economics, infrastructure,

programme and construction. This result is similar relationships as appose to the use of

individual data, form the parameters of a project and illustrate suitable space.9“The typical

product of deep planning is a situation-specific, dynamic organizational structural plan that

uses scenarios, diagrams, parameters, formulas and themes, encompassing the mapping of

political, managerial, planning, community and private relations.” This allows for the

generation of increased possibilities and more functional space as one of the primary

focuses in Arnhem is the concentration on overlapping spaces that contain shared

parameters, with movement studies becoming an important focus and generator of form.10

“The reason why such a large effort is a made to map information on the actual flow of

movement, as well as projected future movement, is that this information, together withtime, defines use; and use is the most vital ingredient determining the future of a location.

Since no program is thinkable without people, no value exists without users”. By analysing

the site for its spatial flows areas that may be problematic and positive are highlighted. The

primary aim of deep planning is not to generate a design proposal, but to create a concise

development policy that relates specifically to that which surrounds it.

Information as Experience

Emerging as a result of current practise methods in the architectural realm and our shifting

perception of the world, there is an increasing alteration in the way scale is being perceived.Unlike physical matter whose dimensions define building scale, virtual information has no

scale; its scale is only established through the medium of representation.11

“Information

ignores the distinction between the large, the medium and the small, between the macro

and the micro.” (Picon, Lerner 2003:30). This transformation in scale has been brought

about due to our ability to perceive a much broader perspective than was possible of

previous generations; we can now focus on molecules or complete images of planet earth.

The implications of this shift in the perception of scale is important when considering the

impact of creating a hybrid environment, that will nurture and stimulate users of future

buildings to enjoy a more complete learning and cultural experience. Some modern

experimental innovations have begun to explore the relationship of spatial flows by the useof interactive displays that relate to human scale.

9

http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/deep-planning/ accessed 11

th

May 201110www.unstudio.com/uploads/.../e54d03f7-7614-4b1e-8d6a-44d709c08450 accessed 11th May 2011

11 Picon, A. & Lerner, R. 2003, Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors

http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/deep-planning/

http://www.unstudio.com/uploads/.../e54d03f7-7614-4b1e-8d6a-44d709c08450

http://www.unstudio.com/uploads/.../e54d03f7-7614-4b1e-8d6a-44d709c08450

http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/deep-planning/





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Increasingly members of the virtual information age are becoming equipped with an

electronic body that manifests itself in the form of personal media devices that circulate

information linking us to the world through a network of information.12

“This virtual body of

electron flow is drastically changing the mode of communication in family and community,

while the primitive body in which water and air flow still craves for beautiful light and wind”

(Ito Toyo 1997). The issue arising is how can design consolidate these two contrasting body

types, traditional architecture form has its origins rooted in the movement of fluid physical

characteristics. Contemporary architecture must establish a more intimate relationship with

the digital environment by arrangement of “information vortices”. How primitive space and

nature will be connected to virtual space is its link to the world through the growing

electron network. People who occupy this new space will experience the built form as an

extension of the skin, nature and information simultaneously.13

“Architecture today must

be a media suite” (Ito Toyo 1997), people who are immersed in this suite will have their

consciousness expanded as the suite will act as an external brain feeding information to the

mind.

“Hyperhabitat” by Vincent Guallart

Vincent Gullart’s “Hyperhabitat: Reprogramming the World” installation for the 2008 Venice

Biennale engages with these themes in a provocative, innovative way. The project was

12 T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18

thApril

2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html13

T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18th

April2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html

http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html








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developed in tangent with MIT’s The Centre for Bits and Atoms. The installation suggests the

need to re-programme the spaces that we as users inhabit by14

“distributing intelligence in

the nodes, networks and environments with which we construct buildings, cities and

territories” (Wiley John). The project highlights the multiscalar relationships between

objects, (from that of the individual to more worldwide spans) and illustrates the line codes

that previous interacting users were encouraged to follow. The project was also connected

simultaneously to the internet and proposals visitors created for reprogramming the world

were able to be submitted by use of “line codes” that illustrated how by establishing

different relationships we can create more efficient interactive urban environments. One of

the primary ideas of the digital space was that as the project was a node in broader digital

network15

“any person will able to register their personal objects belonging to any of the

categories, and propose the relations that they would like to establish with the world,

between same category and scale objects (books with books), objects of same category but

different scale (book with the Congress library), different category and same scale (book and

cross) or different category and scale (book with the Vatican)”(Gullart Vincent). The exhibit

sought to be a platform for the sharing of ideas through an abstract medium and promoteinnovations within architecture. All the furniture used in the project contained interactive 0

micro servers that correspond to one another to create relationships intended to be similar

to neurons of the brain.

Conclusion

It is inevitable that world of the virtual as has been illustrated throughout the last two

decades will increasingly become a more fundamental part of design across all forms of

urban architecture. Embracing this digital extension of the mind promises to redefine the

way we interact and create relationships leading to a more efficient, sharing society.16

"Weof the modern age are provided with two types of bodies, writes Ito. The real body which is

linked with the real world by means of fluids running inside, and the virtual body linked with

the world by the flow of electrons" (Ito Toyo1997).

Innovations such as datascapes promise to create more efficient and equal cities through

more informed urban planning. It is imperative that the new structures we design go

beyond simply just relating to the surrounding urban syntax but embrace the invisible acting

forces that can lead to the creation of more profound and functional spaces. Recent work by

Paul Krugman who received a Nobel Prize (in economics 2008) for his contribution, gives rise

to greater potentials of datascapes in urban planning. His studies examined geographic

concentration of wealth and consumer preferences for goods and services; this promises toadd a new dimension when incorporated into future datascapes.

17“In the highly digitised

age of the 21st

century, architecture has become so thoroughly enmeshed within a network

of other disciplines that what we are witnessing are new hybrid, mutant forms of practice

that serve to reinvent the discourse of architecture as we know it.”

(Leach Neil)

14 Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, pp.89

15http://www.hyperhabitat.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hyperhabitat_eng.pdf accessed 12th may 2011

16 T. Ito, Tarzans in the Media Forest , in 2G, n°2, 1997, pp. 121 –144, (accessed on 18

thApril

2010)http://www.designboom.com/eng/interview/ito_statement.html17 Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, pp.89

http://www.hyperhabitat.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hyperhabitat_eng.pdf




http://www.hyperhabitat.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/hyperhabitat_eng.pdf



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Additional Notes

I only was able to look briefly into the work of Pipilotti Rist. Her work looks really interesting

and her grasp on digital media as a means to create immersive space is amazing. I was

particularly interested in her “Pour your body out” installation, that’s a space I could chill in

for a few hours!. Unfortunately I have been unable to come across any solid text in relation

to her recent work so that is why it has not been included as a reference. I wish I had a

greater amount of time to work on the essay as I feel I was just beginning to uncover some

interesting ideas and the essay does not necessarily reflect that.

I would like to wish you all the best for the summer months and thank you for your guidance

in Quest. The subject was very interesting and scary, but refreshing to know that there are

still so many ideas in architecture and the world left to explore.

Terms:

“Digital Places” term coined by Thomas A Horan

“Space Flows” refers to our virtual interactions and the components that make it possible.

“Deep Planning” term coined Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos UN studio’s to describe the

process of computer based information input used to create building forms and advanced

spatial programmes.

“Line Codes” Description by Neil Leach: The line codes proposed in hyperhabitat are

essentially relationships poised in abstract form, and can be emotional or functional. Theydo not identify the kinds of relationships that are established directly between objects.

Image Referencing:

Cover Image: “Hyperhabitat” Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley,

2009 pp.86

Bloomberg Ice: https://reader009.{domain}/reader009/html5/0515/5afa264496529/5afa264a8eb34.jpg

[accessed 19th

of april 2011]

Programmatic datascape development. Image accessed 11

th

of May 2011http://www.arch.columbia.edu/work/courses/studio/sp10-rothstein/collin-anderson

Data Town Image: http://media08.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/mvrdv-datatown_02.jpg

“Hyperhabitat” Digital Cities Neil Leach (ed.), Digital Cities, London: Wiley, 2009 pp.87

Text References:

Included in footnotes at bottom of page

.

http://www.klein-dytham.com/uploads/projects/full/331.jpg



http://www.arch.columbia.edu/work/courses/studio/sp10-rothstein/collin-anderson

http://media08.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/mvrdv-datatown_02.jpg




http://www.arch.columbia.edu/work/courses/studio/sp10-rothstein/collin-anderson


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John Walsh Quest Essay