Articles
ARCHITECTURE IN CYBERSPACE OR
CYBERSPACE IN ARCHITECTURE?
A Study into Cyber Technology, Cyber Culture and the Impacts on Man at the Turn of the
Millennium
Paper by
Yang Li
National University of Singapore
Section 2
3.0
RECONFIGURING ARCHITECTURE
As we are being morphed into cyborgs, the space we inhabit, the buildings and the
entire urban environment are also transforming. Circulation systems are being replaced by
telecommunication systems. Traditional building types become obsolete. Office floors
raised, old copper wires dug up and replaced by fibre optical cables, as catalogue shelves
in libraries are replaced by computer terminals and so on.
Traditionally, architecture played an important role in organising the functions and
relationship between activities. Landscape affects the interaction between spaces. For
instance, the Berlin wall was a dividing line between the East and the West. To get money
from a bank 20 years ago, one will have to travel physically to the bank. To give a guest
lecture, one has to travel and even fly for almost a day. There is a close relationship
between the physical environment and us. As Winston Churchill once pointed out "We
make our buildings and our buildings make us."
Today, spaces in general are being taken up by telecommunication and computer systems.
Book shelves and catalogue shelves are filled with computer disks and CD-ROMs. The
digital, electronic, virtual side is increasingly taking over the physical. Instead of
flipping through a thick dictionary, one would rather use the MS Word 7.0 spelling,
thesaurus and grammar check. To transfer cash from bank to bank, I could do it through the
telephone, which is much faster than signing a check and depositing it through an ATM
machine.
Although book stores can be replaced by bit store, museum reading rooms and library
stacks and catalogues replaced by servers, galleries replaced by virtual museum, theatre
replaced by entertainment infrastructures, schools replaced by virtual campuses, it is not
happened yet. The idea was not new, back in the 1980s, Alvin Toffler has already written
it in "The Electronic Cottage" . The success of technology is flawed when it
does not address the social issue about this kind of living. The extreme end of cyber
technology is isolation. Isolation as been clearly illustrated in E.M. Foster's "The
machine stops" It is a time where there is no desire to touch or feel another human
being, a time when the physical element is “boring” and reinterpretations of
what is considered “interesting” and reinterpretations of the interpreted are
considered “even more interesting”. A time whereby information is paramount and
physical form redundant.
Unless the society has been transformed so drastically, social aspects became so
differently, only then, will architecture become obsolete.
3.1 Recombining Architecture
Efficient delivery of bits into domestic space will collapse many of the spatial and
temporal separations of activities. Many activities could be done at one location.
Diffusing the boundary between workplaces and working hours, theatres and performance
times, at home and at one’s own time. The switch time between different activities
becomes almost immediate. Free time and work time become flexible and interchangeable.
The perception of spaces differs because the functions of these spaces are now
combined. The living room with the screen will become a work place, an entertainment space
and a recreational space, all of which could be controlled by opening up windows by a
simple click.
All these instabilities and ambiguities in space also challenged traditional ways of
representing social distinctions and stages of socialisation. Especially in societies
where there are well-defined spaces for different activities, for men and women, for
family members and guests, for adults and adolescents. On the urban scale, there is a
separation between quiet space for academic activities and noisy place for jam sessions
and performances, for the rich and poor, sacred place and common areas, restricted areas
and public areas. These spaces lost their identity in cyberspace.
The definition and description of these spaces will change. Access to these places will
become almost immediate. Spaces thus become defined by the availability of equipment.
Whether is it a 686, pentium 586 or 486 and at what frequency and how many megabytes of
RAM, what kind of telecommunication network, normal copper wire phone line or ISDN optical
fibre connection? Is there a video capturing device for teleconferencing and a virtual
goggle to experience a 3-Dimensional effect? Is there a high speed printer that can
generate copies of documents? Is there colour print out and the size of the print out also
matters?
In a space without these telecommunication and transportation facilities, a
telecommuter will certainly feel paralysed for a long period of time.
Telecommuters need not work in downtown offices but the computer mainframe needs to be
serviced and maintained or even repaired in the quickest time, downtown offices may thus
be filled up with computer mainframes and with super high speed gateways to suburban
regional centres. There will also be small teams with highly trained engineers and
technicians who will be stationed at centralised location attending to the computer
systems in a few nearby buildings.
3.2 Programmable Places
For other building types, the story is much the same except some change of use. The
function and circulation of the original spaces will not change drastically. When we enter
a library to look for the physical embodiment of knowledge, the book, the process is still
the same although it could also be available on an electronic webpage. Viewing something
virtually will not completely erase the need to see the real thing. It will only decrease
the number of visitors visiting physically and increasing the number of virtual visitors.
Just look at the main page with the counter and imagine how many visitors less would there
be if it is on a bounded copy alone.
When it is possible to substitute face to face contact most of the time, the spatial
linkages for these activities loosen, they can potentially relocate and recombine in new
logics. Perhaps we will find compelling advantages in putting together spaces. A certain
group that is on this side is the Eco-conscious group, like what they said, "Just
look at the amount of petrol saved". In any case, old bonds break and new bonds will
form.
Buildings nowadays not only have to relate to the urban context but also to the cyber
context. Instead of huge roller coaster rails, they will be replaced by rooms with
excellent audio and video facilities with mechanisms to defy Newton's law of gravity like
the Star Tour at Disneyland California and Batman Ride at MovieWorld in Australia. Rooms
and buildings will henceforth become the links between the body and bits.
Building these spaces is not about putting in fibre optics cables because these
equipment will decrease in size every day. In the end, the only obvious piece of equipment
is the keyboard and the mouse. Display devices and effectors will multiply. In the end,
building could become the computer interface and vice versa.
Humans will still sit on the chair and not in cyberspace. Having a sumptuous dinner in
cyberspace will never fill our stomach, therefore, architects will still continue to
shape, arrange and connect spaces. But architecture will not be the same due to the change
in the interface and modern futuristic perceptions.
4.0
MANIFESTATION OF CYBERSPACE
The definition of a home for a cyberian has a different meaning. It is not about the
physical living space with tables and chairs, bed and sofas. It is about the Interface
between the physical space and the cyberspace.
..The door to cyberspace is open...cyberspace will require constant planning and
organisation. The structures proliferating within it will require design, and the people
who design these structures will be called cyberspace architects.....
In the book “Cyberspace”, Benedikt (1991) explained the evolution and meaning
of architecture. Beginning with displacement and exile to creative response to climatic
stress, with the choosing of advantages for settlement, the internal development of social
structures to meet population and resource pressure and etc. All this carried out in terms
of time, materials and design and construction expertise. He brought up this theme of what
it used to be and explained the self-dematerialisation of architecture.
In modern times, after a century of industrial Revolution, the turn of the twentieth
century saw the invention of high-tensile steel, steel-reinforced concrete, and of high
strength glass. Under economical pressure to do more with less, architects seized and
celebrated the new vocabulary of architecture.
Towards the end of the twentieth century saw a need to relate cyberspace to
architecture, thus finding new meaning for architecture.
4.1 Virtual Architecture in Cyberspace
Virtual Museums, virtual/cyber cities, virtual shops, computer modelling, VRML cities
and etc, are examples of virtual architecture in Cyberspace. The vital ingredient of this
architecture is the use of virtual reality . Using cyberspace as a tool to present or
imitate an organisation of the actual physical self. Architecture in this space remains
fundamentally changed in the sense that it is no longer concern with the design of the
physical parts and looking into the joints and the response to the climate and etc. What
is termed building construction in cyberspace is not about brick and mortars but the
programming language.
....cyberspace architects will design electronic edifices that are fully as
complex, functional, unique, involving, and beautiful as their physical counterparts if
not more so....
Architecture is the design of meaningful spatial environments. It is created by
transforming the existing social, cultural and technological world through theoretical and
technical skills.
....there now can exist an equivalent realm situated in an entirely new context:
computer simulation....
An analogy can be drawn from architecture works presented in cyberspace. But the
question is does that mean that there is also architecture in books and architecture in
cardboard models? Or are they just presentational tools?
This is by no means a conclusion.
Virtual architecture in cyberspace serves as an advanced tool for Paper Architecture.
According to Lebbeus Woods:
...Drawing is for me a way of entering into architectural space and form and into
thoughts...
Thus, drawing is a form of representation architecture. As drawing is a testing ground
before actual construction, so is cyberspace. If paper architecture is to prove an
architectural theory positive/negative, built/unbuilt, there is also cyber-architecture.
If this is the case, architecture in cyberspace would be more than one dimensionally a
better testing ground.
4.2 Physical Space with Cyber Technology
With the advancement of cyber technology, physical components for creating
this cyber environment could be introduced into a physical space. An example of how this
may be found in the Cybersuite at Century Plaza Hotel, which is the closest example to a
Futuristic Cyber Home.
CYBERSUITE AT CENTURY PLAZA HOTEL It is a prototype that was built in
June 1996, with it comes along all the latest available cyber technology. Most of the
cyber technological equipment that is known is being injected into this Hotel suite.
Including card key system, micro camera and intercom, "Butler
in a box", Plasman screen technology, NetTV, Video Disc Viewer (VDV), multimedia
computers, Internet access, Internet Video on Demand (VDO), Video Disc Recorder (VDR),
surround sound system, E-mail, wireless 3D mouse, Virtual Head Gear and etc.
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This is still a prototype suite for this 'High Tech' hotel. In order
to cater for more of this type of suites, the hotel needs to pull in more fibre optical
cables, raise the floors and get an architect to redesign the spaces and perhaps the
entire the building. At the moment, this suite is enhanced with all these high tech
gadgets but its present structure and fixtures might not be able to cope if 10% of the
rooms were to be converted. The hotel will need a bigger substation or generator and
probably a new air-conditioning system. Then, the room service and engineering department
would have to be expanded etc.
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Thus, the introduction of cyber technology into a physical space is not a 'buy off
the shelf' process. It requires re-engineering the various aspects of architecture, if not
the erection of a completely new building.
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4.3 Integration of Cyberspace into a Physical Space
As cyberspace and cyberian lifestyle only came about in the 1990s, buildings and
projects related to cyberspace is not many but they are increasing in number. The reason
is that more business organisations are moving towards computerisation, therefore
Cyberisation.
With increased exposure to cyberspace, the perception of the building users is being
tuned towards cyber-technology. Constant upgrading and changing of parts become common
activities. Thus architecture, instead of creating something that is monumental and can
withstand the ageing of time, now deals with relatively more temporary and easily
reconfigurable. The city is seen as an immense node of communications, a messy nexus of
messages, storage and transportation facilities, a massive education machine of its own
complexity. Is idea of the modern city is not new.
In the late 1960s, Archigram dreamt of a city that built itself unpredictably,
cybernetically, which did not resist television, telephones, air conditioning, cars and
advertising but accommodated and played with them made up of inflatable buildings on
rails, buildings like giant experimental theatres with video cameras gliding like sharks
through a sea of information etc.
Although Archigram’s dream city did not become a reality, traces of this city can
be seen from some of recent projects.
GLASS VIDEO GALLERY
The Glass Video Gallery was commissioned by the city of Groningen and the
Groningen Museum as a public pavilion for watching music videos. It is at the centre of a
traffic roundabout. Within the glass volume are six banks of video monitors. Tschumi's
pellucid structure signifies the immaterial nature of video images as flickering patterns
of coloured light projected onto a glass screen.
The elements of its architecture comprise of toughened glass plates held by metal
clips. The barrier between the inside and outside has been minimised and thus enhanced the
message of information bursting out of the built form. Compared to a cinema that has a
single window looking outside, this idea is further multiplied by the multiple reflections
in the glass planes.
The lucid and rational function of glass as a building material is ultimately denied by
moving the gallery out of the cartesian grid in which it would otherwise seem to belong
and tilting it on two axes.
The glass volume of the gallery, the glass-screened video monitors and video's function
as in instrument of surveillance are all inverted. The anonymous subjectivity of the
visitor is rejected, instead, the signified becomes also the signifier. The spectator
becomes the subject.
The feasibility of private life in a media-suffused culture is being questioned. At
night, the architectural volume disappears and cyberspace thus flows out into the
surrounding that can be seen from reflections picked up by shiny surfaces round.
By using multi windows and multi channels in cyberspace, the viewing of
MTVs is changed. Architectural elements that use transparent material like glass instead
of solid walls. It allows the viewer to choose and switch from one channel to the other.
The idea of universal accessibility in cyberspace is demonstrated. In the night, the
idea together with the sense of placelessness is being emphasised by the sensuous floating
TV screens.
The focus of the public towards cyberspace is translated into the location, which is at
the centre of a roundabout, enhancing the idea of importance and significance.
By the use of materials and the layout of the elements, light from the TV monitors
shines out of the built form and is reflected onto the surrounding. This is even more so
at night. Thus, there is interaction between the internal and the external, and an
integration of the two by multiple reflections, reflections of both internal and external
surfaces superimposed and reflected by another piece of glass, echoing the success of the
Internet that is about interaction.
D.E.SHAW AND COMPANY OFFICES IN NYC
D.E. Shaw and company uses sophisticated mathematical models running on
Sun workstations to make high-volume trades in global markets. Steven Holl was asked to
design the office to create an environment that represented the spirit of this high tech
trading firm.
In this project, Holl used planes and the reflection of light as a metaphor for
reflection of information. Natural and artificial light enters the space from concealed
windows and fixtures, after being reflected from surfaces painted in brilliant colours.
The painted colour surfaces are invisible and thus rendered mystical in its
sourcelessness, and the effect is of a cloistral anteroom to the realm of high finance.
Holl's design uses light in some of its many manifestations. He uses the
projected diffuse colour to impart the intangible nature of the client's business, which
relies on computer links to telephone lines and satellites.
....Here, behind a fluorescent green facade in the sky, computer scientists and
mathematicians monitor and respond day and night to electronic transmissions of minutely
fluctuating numbers...
In this project, Steven Holl used cyberspace as a metaphor in architecture and thus
combined both elements to produce a kind of cyber architecture.
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