No Matter: Theories and Practices of the Ephemeral in Architecture

Anastasia Karandinou

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317087151
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture Criticism

How do digital media (mobile phones, GPS, iPods, portable computers, internet, virtual realities, etc.) affect the way we perceive, inhabit and design space? Why do architects traditionally design, draw and map the visual, as opposed to other types of sensations of space (the sound, the smell, the texture, etc.)? Architecture is not only about the solid, material elements of space; it is also about the invisible, immaterial, intangible elements of space. This book examines the design, representation and reception of the ephemeral in architecture. It discusses how architects map and examine the spatial qualities that these elements create and questions whether - and if so, how - they take them into account in the designing process. Karandinou argues that current interest in the ephemeral in contemporary culture and architecture is related to the evolution of digital media; and that it is related to the new ways of thinking about space and everyday situations that new media enables. With sound and video recording devices now being embedded in everyday gadgets and mobile phones, capturing sounds or ephemeral situations and events has become an everyday habit. New animation techniques allow designers to think about space through time, as they are able to design dynamic and responsive spaces, as well as static spaces explored by someone over time. Contemporary video games are no longer based on a simple visual input and a keyboard; they now involve other senses, movement, and the response of the whole body in space. This book therefore argues that the traditional binary opposition between the sensuous and the digital is currently being reversed. Subsequently, new media can also function as a new tool-to-think-with about space. Designers are now able to think through time, and design spaces accordingly. Time, temporality, ephemerality, become central issues in the designing process. The notion first claimed by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, that the emergence of new di

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Vaporizing Architecture

SEEKING THE UN-REPRESENTABLE

In the work of remarkable writers, artists, or composers one sometimes finds disconcerting elements located at the edge of their production, at its limits. These elements, disturbing and out of character, are misfits within the artist’s activity. Yet often such works reveal hidden codes and excesses hinting at other definitions, other interpretations. The same can be said for whole fields of endeavour: there are productions at the limit of literature, at the limit of music, at the limit of theatre. Such extreme positions inform us about the state of art, its paradoxes and its contradictions. These works, however, remain exceptions, for they seem dispensable – a luxury in the field of knowledge.¹

Bernard Tschumi

As Bernard Tschumi argues, work undertaken at the limits of a discipline enlightens our field of knowledge and expands our experience of things. The limits of architecture can be interpreted and considered in various ways. Within this book we will mainly look into the intangible aspects of space and into the attempts made by architects to comprehend them, represent them and involve them in the design process. The elusiveness of such elements makes them hard to handle and map, and for that, their exploration is a challenge and an excess within architectural research.²

The atmosphere³ of a place is an element of this sort; atmosphere can be described as what always remains a background to living, and when faced in a straight way disappears.⁴ Non-visual sensations, like sound, smell, textures, temperature, are also elusive invisible elements of space, difficult to represent, since representation is so often based upon the visual.⁵ The event, as the way in which space is or will be inhabited, is also an unpredictable and ambiguous issue.⁶ A place’s performance is what constitutes to a great extent its nature, character, function and meaning.⁷ However, its complexity, changeability and potentiality make it experienced as something abstract, often non-comprehensible and non-representable.⁸ New media, electromagnetic fields and digital gadgets, also constitute, in a way, invisible elements of space.⁹ They create invisible fields, territories, links and boundaries. They affect most everyday spaces and the relationship between them.

Out of a close account of these themes, there are some key questions arising such as: why do these themes appear (or re-appear) now, in this particular moment in time? How are they related to contemporary thought, practice and to current shifts in society, culture and science? The research conducted within this field of questions leads us to some correlations that we will briefly look into now and which will be developed further later on.

Digital media change the way in which we inhabit and perceive space, and also the way in which we understand and represent it.¹⁰ Digital media, for example, allow us to record and represent duration and, therefore, the events and the situations occurring over time can be documented and studied. Subsequently, this can also function as a new tool to think about space with, which, in turn, affects the designing. Situations that were not possible to be represented with a static representation can now be handled more easily.¹¹ Thus some elusive aspects of space such as events, temporality and the function of the non-visual senses can be approached and studied in a more elaborate way. As Marshall McLuhan claims, the emergence of new electronic media has caused a ‘shift in the sensorium’ and has readdressed the significance and role of other kinds of experiencing and sensing.¹²

The issue of the event and digital media are not only related in the sense that the latter have the potential for representing the former in new and richer ways; the events themselves have changed by nature. Events occurring within the city now instantly affect and are affected by events taking place elsewhere.¹³ As Deleuze and Guattari would describe it through their post-stucturalistic approach, contemporary world is organized and expanding as a ‘rhizome’ in non-deterministic and non-linear modes.¹⁴ The extensive use of the internet, mobile phones, GPS systems, smart-phones and other equivalent media interconnect and inter-inform places and events.¹⁵ This situation does not necessarily mean that the design process has to change accordingly in an immediate way. It indicates, though, that the dimensions of space and the way in which it is occupied have changed. Architects therefore, as would be expected, are prompted to explore the potential of these new qualities of space and are challenged to inform their design processes accordingly.

The notion of the non-visual and the non-formal is a theme that has emerged through the appearance of new materials, interfaces and consequent ways of thinking. Some new materials and kinds of forms are of a very different nature compared with those of the past. New, fluid or transformable materials, such as interactive surfaces or foggy clouds (e.g. the Diller and Scofidio Blur project created in 2002) change the way we describe the notion of form or matter.¹⁶ Therefore, on one hand, the form becomes something different to the form of the past, since it is not static and easily definable. On the other hand, this transition of the notion of form provides space for other, non-visual senses and sensations to appear. Several contemporary architects and theorists (such as Roemer van Torn, Peter Zumthor, Ole Bouman, Kengo Kuma) present polemical arguments against the traditional formal approach to architecture, placing it in opposition to the experiential. The notion of light and lightness have also been used by Gianni Ranaulo for describing a series of different things: the ephemeral, the light-weight, the fluid, the transparent, or the changeable. Ranaulo describes the variety of notions related to the ‘lightness’ and he also suggests that the consideration of these notions may have a positive effect in the contemporary thought and society; that such a consideration would possibly bring along some kind of solution or ‘ideological foundation’. Ranaulo, in his book Light Architecture, presents:

In this phase of modifying reality, Light Architecture, introduced as a new architectural trend that plays on the use of ‘light’ – both in the sense of illumination, lightweight materials and the architecture’s ironic view of itself, more detached, even temporary – and activating a fusion of the real and the virtual on the urban scene as one of the possible configurations of contemporary society, could be seen as a solution to the problems of today’s cities and an ideological foundation for the construction of the city of the future.¹⁷

His design projects make use of light literally and of the notion of lightness metaphorically; they often involve ‘light’, temporal, ephemeral, hybrid interventions, designed for public places. As the above quote suggests, he correlates the shift in the materials and elements used for design with a shift in the way of thinking about spaces and cities.¹⁸

SHIFTING SENSORIUM: SHIFTING VOCABULARY, MATERIALS, DESIGNING ELEMENTS

We have noticed that there is an increasing interest, within architectural discourse, in the intangible elements of space. Within the last few years many books and essays have dealt with this issue in various ways.

Since 1994, for example, at least eight books have been published in this field: Jonathan Hill’s (2006) Immaterial Architecture, Anna Barbara and Anthony Perliss’s (2007) Invisible Architecture: Experiencing Spaces through the Sense of Smell. Edited collections on the theme include: Aldo Aymonino and Valerio Mosco’s (2006) Contemporary Public Space: Un-volumetric Architecture, Katie Lloyd Thomas’ (2006) Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, Gianni Ranaulo’s (2001) Light Architecture, Therese Tierney’s (2007) Abstract Space, Ole Bouman and Roemer Van Toorn’s (1994) The Invisible in Architecture, Todd Gannon and Jeffrey Kipnis’ (2002) The Light Construction Reader, Georg Flachbart and Peter Weibel’s (2005) Disappearing Architecture, Julieanna Preston’s (2008) Interior Atmospheres and Doris Kleilein et al. (2008) Tuned City.

Moreover, numerous journal special editions and conferences have been addressing these issues, such as the JAE on the theme of ‘Immateriality in architecture’ (2008), the international symposium ‘Creating an Atmosphere’ in Grenoble (2008)¹⁹ and the 11th Biennale of Venezia (2008) on the theme: ‘Out There; Architecture Beyond Building’.²⁰

The purpose of the following chapters is to examine the range of literature on the theme, articulate some of the principle theoretical arguments that are made and explore the wide range of vocabulary that gathers around this theme, such as ‘immaterial’, ‘invisible’, ‘intangible’, ‘atmosphere’, ‘un-volumetric’, ‘event’ and ‘mood’.

My hypothesis is that, since these books and essays appeared roughly within the same one or two decades, they might be employing the notion of the intangible to question issues that are closely related to contemporary conditions, architecture and probably intellectual culture in general. The notion of the immaterial, for example, may have a particular significance for the way we build and dwell in places in the contemporary world; the study of the debates around it may, hence, enlighten us and enhance our understanding of space-making and dwelling.

Before examining relevant theoretical debates and case studies, it is important to note that there are many different ways to organize an approach to these themes. Notions related to beyond-the-material have been used to describe several different things and situations. In some texts they refer to fluid, transformable, reactive materials, and to materials of changing shape or qualities (density, colour, transparency, etc.). In other parts of the discussion on the theme, the immaterial has been considered as specific elements of space, such as sound or smell, which are not visible but which create spatial qualities and can be handled by the architect as a design element. Other studies discuss the immaterial in relation to the idea, the concept related to the form and its perception by the user,²¹ rather than to the materiality of a building, while other texts break the binary opposition of form versus matter, and interpret objects and buildings as a result of exchanging forces.²² The events, happenings and the behaviour of a building’s occupants or user, have also been considered as aspects of architecture beyond-the-material. The immaterial has also been considered to be the processes involved in the making of a building.²³ In this sense, the political and economical networks, activated by the making of a building, are strongly rel...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• About the Author
• Notes by the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Vaporizing Architecture
• 2 Beyond the Visual versus the Non-Visual: The Sonic and Other Senses
• 3 Beyond the Formal versus the Material: The Performative
• 4 Beyond the Physical versus the Digital: The Hybrid
• 5 Further Questions
• Bibliography
• Index