An alternative architecture is an open and highly technological system that seeks to diffuse physical bounds and to engage in the subjective sensorial envelopes of the body. This approach seeks not only to evolve architecture from passive service to active participant, it seeks to implement relationships of mutual stewardship between bodies and environments. Architecture is conceived as a spatial embodiment of a mutually active embrace. Through the act of embracing, spatial motifs of softened edges, intertwining systems, and intimate thresholds scaled to the human body are explored. A transition away from the solid and rigid is proposed; instead diffuse systems are constructed of many distinct and varying elements, spreading and stretching outward. Simply, diffusion produces a reduction in concentration, and an increase in volume. It is through such intentional porosity that overlap and softening occur. It encourages deliberate and intentional confrontation through pliable, physical acceptances. These systems seek to adapt to external conditions while simultaneously recalibrating its own inner workings. Diffusion reconfigures the enclosure, and acknowledges working with the impacting conditions. This system recognises flux, and chooses to embrace it. It is made to intersect, sharing space with other species around it, celebrating post-human pluralism as a desire for infinite difference and variation. In this world heterogeneity is celebrated over homogeneity, entanglement over separation, relating to, over fear. Fertile, open networks of scaffolds and instruments. Porous, active, breathing architectures. A reciprocity of relations between architecture and bodies. When we release traditional canons of architectural relations, the formal figure and ground fades away. The boundary is subjective, contingent, changing. Layers of nested interiors and exteriors, porous envelopes of exchange reconfigure our preconceptions around living and inhabiting. This shift in organisational geometry assists in modifying our spatial readings of architectural form. From architecture that emulates (classical, passive) to an architecture that hosts (modern, passive) to an architecture that participates (contemporary, active, sensing and reacting), this is the first step in translating architecture from its traditional position as static, and serving, to an active environment meant to be viewed as a companion. (figure 4 ) When considering the technological requirements to support the architectural forms described above, its sensing and responsive components require technological dexterity. Fortunately, in the
posthuman world, increased economy and availability in manufacturing and physical computing makes an embodied architecture possible. Digital and electrical components of mechanical construction are readily available, and so are the tools that can be used to work with them at the individual scale.
softer, sensitive architecture that emulates the boundaries of the body, help us find better versions of ourselves? ( figure 5 ) This premise of architecture in symbiosis, simultaneously empathetic and contributing as it engages directly in the processes of everyday life serves to view architecture as a ‘companion species’. A form of other, more significant in our relations than traditional architecture. This necessary modification of the relationship between user and building from its traditional, ambivalent, served and serving dynamic, to an explicit, reciprocal, companion relationship is driven by the reassessment of boundaries between beings. The hope for such a modified human- environment relationship would be the activation of a greater collective, aimed at cultivating social-emotional learning and fostering greater empathy. The proposition of such an architecture is best suited for the public realm, where the personalities, interactions and subsequent reciprocities of the many are formally projected. Architecture could reflect this process of ‘becoming’ and recognise the multiplicity of sensing layers we have in order to better respond to our human needs. The intended architecture can be described most easily through the description of choreographed hands. When two fists meet, closed and unfamiliar, the duration of contact is generally brief. It is an action that signifies informality and casual circumstance. This exemplifies the current relationship between humans and the built environment. The next evolution of such relationships, to the act of shaking hands. More formal in nature, it has an increased duration and some degree of intimacy.
Connor OGrady
figure 4: Expanded thresholds, diffuse boundaries
Desktop 3D printers, CNC routers, knife and waterjet cutters, all have dramatically expanded the world of independent making. The accessibility of infrared and light sensors, moisture readers, piezoelectric systems, and electrical microcontrollers mean that interrelational dynamics can be quantified, and a responsive architecture can be calibrated. It is in this world that the quantified self is embraced, where biological, emotional and social measures are taken. When the strides in human neuroscience and psychology are paired with sensing equipment and manufacturing capabilities a diffuse architecture of posthumanism can form and can come alive. Before, these invisible qualities — the neurological ingredients of emotion, big data systems, microscopic nano-systems and intangible sensory responses — could be speculated upon, but could not be used to inform sensitive architectures that respond to personal behaviour. This new shared language between being and system allows for nuanced and intimate relationships to form. The environment — sensing our own behaviour — reacts accordingly, through its own mechanical being. When we witness this response, it too becomes part of our own embodied simulations, allowing for active relationships to be formed between building and bodies. Empathy and understanding can be cognitively processed through a responsive architecture. Can a
on site review 38: borders, lines, breaks and breaches 36
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator