IaaC blog

‘The Next Jerusalem’ is a book which is some kind of conclusion after two architectural conferencions sbout Jerusalem. The first one took place exactly in Jerusalem, but it excluded Palestinian participation. The second one was organised by Micheal Sorkin, proffesor from Columbia University, who gathered in Bellagio, in Italy 25 different architects from Israel, Palestin and ‘others’ (mostly Americans). Thus in ‘The Next Jerusalem’ we can find interesting analisys, essays by many authors, who present the city from different point of view and would like to design a new solutions for it. Every part is focused on another subject like preservation, ecology, neighborhood development, rather than on politics.

The meaning of a term material, according to its etymological origins, was inextricably related to its physicality, same as it is with materiality. Recent studies on cyberspace, “electronic nirvana over data lines of global networks” and technological progress lead to redefinition of “materiality”, changing the understanding of materials as physical substances into “immaterial materials”, in a virtual realm. Nowadays materials can be perceived as virtual.
There appears a dichotomy between the virtual and the material world. Despite the increasing to conversion of atoms into bits, as Nicholas Negroponte points out in Being Digital, we still need atoms interact with the bits. If Being Digital is a state of being hooked to the network with one’s point of view flying through empty space, then it is Being Material that makes that connection a reality.

What follows is a question how different is embodiment in the virtual realm from the embodiment in the material realm. Merleau Ponty in his exploration in Phenomenology of Perception comes to the conclusion that the mind and body are intricately intertwined in the project of being in the world. Our vision is perspectival, our body parts determining what perspective we will obtain of the object that is the focus of our attention. . Body without consciousness is dead matter and consciousness without the body has no way to materialize itself. Thus, subjectivity is always embodied in the lived world.
However we can go in our considerations one step futher.
What determines the physicality of materials is its sensual measurment possibility, like for emample visual appearance or touch.
Nowadays technology gradually tend to invent materials, where one of it’s sensual physical characteristics is reduced, like transparentness ( transparent concrete), shapelessness, interactivity a.s.o. Integrating some of those characteristics would create materials, which are still in some way physical, but on a level of perception became immaterial. Their physical structure is fine enough to make them be perceived as invisible. Nanotechnologies enable working on the smallest possible structures, what created a wide spectrum of new possibilities. Understanding material as a structure consisting of milliards cooperating atoms and opportunities of designing them can let us omit thresholds of human perception in the sphere of feeling materiality. For instance there are enormous undiscovered possibilities while working with substances others than solids, like liquids or gases. Particularly among gases, their existance understood in a physical way, is rarely noticed- human senses does not register their physical features. Therefore repartitioning them main functions like dividing, creating barriers, isolating a.s.o. creates a huge potential for developement and evaluation of science or architecture. Ever since, there was a desire to invent materials that could be visible and invisible in the same time, or such that you can go through them. In consequence the boundaries between material and virtual realm slowly start to blur. Somewhere between reality in virtuality atoms and bites could overlap each other, physical substances could be perceived as virtual and virtual – materialized.
references
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_(disambiguation)
http://www.scholars.nus.edu.sg/post/poldiscourse/odin/odin1.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Negroponte
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Merleau-Ponty
http://www.panalytical.com/index.cfm?pid=533
http://optics.org/cws/article/research/19184
http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bdcont.htm
http://books.google.pl/books?id=tOCZPO6EFQAC&dq=phenomenology+of+perception&pg=PP1&ots=GdgkpJIi4v&sig=izmjo0n_1W1bGyEr8fI7-Z1DIEU&prev=http://www.google.pl/search%3Fhl%3Dpl%26q%3DPhenomenology%2Bof%2BPerception%26btnG%3DSzukaj%26lr%3D&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

mapping-311007.ppt

The presentation about global eating in barcelona, exactly in barri gothic - done by agata kycia and krzysztof gornicki

I have posted three graphics of our group about global eating. The first is a diagram showing turistic flow in the city, local places there and diversity of prices in Barcelona. It based on some characteristic, small areas in the city which were deeply analyzed by us. The second graphic is about our model. We would like show by it the mess which is in centre. That is really diffcult to define some places by local specifics and to find original restaurants in the streets taken over by Mc Donald, Pizza Hut etc. That is why we closed the city and some local foods in the Mc Donald’s box (as a symbol of global eating). It is also important to create some kind of suprise by it, because in whole the city you are often suprised by locazation of some nice places to eat. The sequence of photos shows a part of our research which we did during this week. You can read it in to directions: by localization in the city and by the prices level.

I want also to show some diagrams which we did to compare all the prices in the city centre, based on our observations. 

We decided to take as a subject to develop a term “minification”. We would like to explain it and define it by the other terms, like for example:

widgification
multi-scalar
macropuncture
comsumology
open media
time compaction (or expansion).

During this weekend we will try to find a new sources to develop the main topic. Also we will look for 2-4 more words describing our ideas

This text is a monography devoted to Steven Holl, who is one of the most influential contemporary architect in the world, also very unique personality and artist, who is as much painter as he is an architect Kenneth Frampton bases on two main anthologies of Holl’s work: ‘Anchoring’(1989) and ‘Intertwining’(1996), and studies a lot of his projects. Almost thrity years of Holl’s work and experience in architectureis devided generally into two mainstreams. The first one is included in ‘Anchoring’ and it is connected with such a terms as typology or morphology. This conception is based on relationship between a site and architecture, which is the most important aspect in designing. All the ‘phisics’ elements provoke to create ‘metaphysics’ in architecture and are something more than an ordinary ingredient of project’s conception. Author examines some examples of the early projects of Steven Holl and define more preciesely this first conception. He presents ‘Metz House’(1980), Cohen Apartment(1983) and ‘Van Zandt House’ (1983) and shows all the most interesting ‘leit-motives’ in Holl’s work. He focuses on materials in creating spaces and specific atmospheres, like in the Cohen Apartment. Morever this period of his work is strongly determined by the intrinsic character of materials, and effects which you can create by it. Besides he concentrates on contrast, which can devide project on two different wings like in ‘Metz House’, one (dark) part for the male sculptor, another (light) one for the female painter. We can also find many more motives like pivoting corners for example (Cohen Apartment). So generally this conception is anti-ideological, anti-sociological and so on. Holl wants to play with site morpholgy and typology to create his architecture.
At the beggining of 1990-ties his approach is changing. Even in the latest 80-ties project we can find trailers of the new conception. ‘Stretto House’ and ‘Fukuoka Housing’, designed between 1989-1992, are treated as his transitional works, but also there are the culmination of the ‘typological-morphological’ conception.  

A term “complex geometry” is usually treated as a developed, sophisticated and parametric system, useful in creating new objects. In architecture it is generally related to physical structures and used as a good design tool. However, much more stimulating can be perceiving the same geometry as a void around us. Changing stereotypic point of view and looking at the same things in a different way, not through matter but inmatter, not through mass but through space in between, can open new possibilities and bring us new experience.
It seems to be necessary to use the same geometric system to describe both mass and void. We have to treat matter as well as inmater as complex structure. As well in mathematics as in philosophy we can find a lot of proves that there is no difference between them. For instance, Paradox of Zenon brings us another point of view, claiming that we can’t be sure if anything like physical being exists. That is why we should think about a void exactly like about the physical objects. We are supposed to measure it, to divide it, to explore it in the same way as we usually do with places strictly arranged by matter.
It allows us to discover new spaces, generate any kind of geometry, play with the whole surrounding, and with all the natural sources. For example in the void we can try to find new spaces generated only by the sun and shadow, noise and silence, by different smells. The only anxiety for architecture is to amplify feeling of that kind of space; to characterize it and to describe it extremely precisely. In this kind of geometry it is very hard to define spaces for people without any deceive obstructions.
In this way void can offer much more complicated and complex geometry, to be arranged without using any physical barriers, pure geometry.

G10 - Agata Kycia, Magda Osinska, Krzysztof Gornicki

Some sites with philophy, maths and new architecture, which devolop this subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno’s_paradoxes
http://mathworld.wolfram.com
http://hipercroquis.wordpress.com/