Clements_Technological Mediations_03

Technological Mediations

Architecture and Technology: a paradoxical relationship

Introduction:
We all live in a world where technology has enabled us a plethora of freedoms, including instantaneous information access and communication and mobility, yet it also has a number of unintended consequences, including increased data on personal relationships and creating a pace of life more hurried than ever before.  Architecture, relatively, has remained static to this change in lifestyle and culture.  How does architecture operate within this digital, technological landscape?  Can it be used to reinvigorate and even prioritize physical place, which has become lost amidst our stare into “glowing” rectangles and our speed of travel?  Does architecture embrace this new technology or refute it in someway, inverting the messages we receive from our “freedom” giving devices?  

Territory:
Places that either lack cell phone reception, or conversely, have high connectivity.


Site/Situation:
Architecture, as it operates within the territory of information, may be used to reinforce physical place, by providing for tactile experiences that prioritize physicality and intrigue.  It may contend with this digital content.  Furthermore, it is an architecture of aggression, sending out signals that disrupt, distort, and make useless such devices, providing for a disorientation that reverts the occupant back to relying on physical senses for navigation and forcing again a more place based socialization.  Architecture in this way, takes an active role in making its inhabitants aware of and critical of their relationship to technology and its affect on their lives, in regards to both information and experience of space.  

Relevant Legal Instruments that Govern:
Social acceptable norms, monopolies on information/data systems
Government/Economic Conditions:

Pace of life requires new technology to keep up with demands of economies and

business.

Everyday Uses/Misuses:

Technology presents both inherent freedom and a kind of slavery and reliance on the

system.

Developed/Inherent Disbalances:
Who are the existing players?:

Communications infrastructure corporations, individual users

What are the existing relationships between players? (circumvent, emphasize, rectify, qualify relationships?):

Individual users have become enslaved to a system of information accessibility which contests with physical space.

Potential Case Studies (Concentrate on Architecture)

Case Studies:

Seattle Public Library by Rem Koolhaas

Elbe Philharmonic Hall by Herzog and de Meuron

De Young Museum by Herzog and de Meuron

Crown Fountain by Peter Walker

Edward Francois

Wind Tower by Toyo Ito

Reactive Void by Ley and Stein

Podium Light Wall by SOM

Ron Arad architecture

Architecture and Technology:

“Multimobility, Multispeed Cities: A Challenge for Architects, Town Planners, and

Politicians” by Francois Ascher  (autonomy and space time)

Subway as Intermediary Public Space

“Conversation Theory” by Gordon Pask (theory of interactions)

“Evolutionary Architecture” by Cedric Price (theory on responsive architecture)

MIT Machine Group

Embedded Computation by Sachin Anshuman