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The question of the Artificial How can you define artificiality if everything that surrounds us is artificial itself? Where is the limit that breaks the apparent barrier of a natural element? How can we explain when something transcends the terms “pure” and “natural” to become fictional and artificial? There are no boundaries in this topic as everything is simultaneously both, one can consider an art work to be pure and natural, in time and space because it has been designed with a purpose in a current moment. But, it is actually something questionable that wants to elude and that represents something real, a concern, is a reflection of a true act, of a moment. It is a fact of reality and it is false because it has been made with technology, or hand-made work which also has use objects that are already made objects. It has used material that is not raw, and even if it is raw material is already discovered, analyzed, explained, searched, reinvented, reused, recycled. So, is there such an explanation for what is true and false? Ana González Granja
There is a loop in which everything is contradictory, superimposed, correlated, and where one statement merges with another. I do see artificial and natural as something opposed and related, they are, of course, contrary terms, and one is necessarily opposed to the other, defining its meaning. But their reason of being is that each justification is explained by the other concept itself. For example, black is contrary to white, white appears when you combine the three primary colours, (white means light, purity, perfection, security). Opposite black is the absence of colours, (meaning darkness, unknown, fear), just with two colours you may define different characteristics of an space, not just how a space looks even what an space wants to transmit. We make classifications because it is easier to remember, it is easier to learn, but the truth is that although elements may perform alone, as isolated objects, they are always related, creating links between them, and avoiding that loneliness of being one, that apparent artificially or purity. But artificiality is defined in many different ways and theories of artificial. The concept is related to “representation”, something which is handmade, is sign, symbol, and image, everything that is used as substitute of reality. The concept is “pastiche”, a plagiarism, that consists of an uncontrolled and messy union of different elements of different art works, that merge together to create something new, and that pretends to be exclusive and original. The concept is “prosthetic”, artificiality also interpreted as an addition, an exchange of elements, a substitution or replacement from natural to artificial, like surgery. The concept means “simulacrum” where simulacrum is real, the truth masks that there is no real truth, as Baudrillard established. Finally, the concept is “generative”, something created from another element, the evolution of what already exists. Is generative because it comes from the already made. Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4
Architecture is generative, is not artificial, because artificiality most of the times evokes pejorative terms. Negative assumptions, because people always want that naturalness and freshness of something that have not been transformed, something that is just how it is and that do not have any kind of addition or change on it, (we prefer a face that has not passed trough a process of aesthetic surgery). Just because of preconceptions naturally made, or the mere term “natural” in this society we live in, it evokes something better than just saying “this it artificially done” or that something is just “artificial”. Architecture can be defined as natural although it always has an artificial process. What about the operation made out by Peter Eisenman on his project, Cidade da Cultura in Monte Gaias (Galicia)? He had cut the top of a mountain to do it again through building. Why is he doing something artificial (a set of buildings) to recreate the natural environment he decided to remove? I am sure the explanation of this project never says “an artificial construction that has destroyed the real natural environment to recreate that purity again through out the construction of the death environment, a group of buildings”. Why? Because, artificial is not a selling term. Eisenman would say that his project is “a series of friendly and natural buildings in terms of their blending condition, of being able to create a smooth surface that has the quality of linking the nature around and the local materials, which shape through architecture the top of that mountain”. People would be amazed about how a project can be resolved in a way that is purely natural, and how those buildings take care about the nature, the culture and the surroundings. We believe without proof that “natural” is better than “artificial”, but is that true at all? Ana González Granja
Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4
Artificial heart
Ana Gonzรกlez Granja
A pure artificial environment, a city in a house, a container of the energy a city detaches, everything reduced and condensed to a machine, Masion Bordeaux (1993-1998 by Rem Koolhaas). This house is a network of the same isolated elements that creates a natural connection between them, the purpose and the connection are not artificial, but its mode of creation is, a creation that is possible trough technology, through artificial mechanisms. Masion Bordeaux is an instrument, is a high technology machine reinterpreted as a house, all about artificial advantages that allow a new type of dwelling and lifestyle, there is here a mechanism that produces an artificial environment. The story of how the house has been conceived comes from the unexpected and natural incidents of life. The client had a car accident that sentenced him to live in a wheelchair the rest of his life, so the house was his opportunity to recover his freedom and to define his new world. There is a prosthetic artificiality in the client’s life, from the naturalness of the city to the artificial world of the house. A machine is the new heart, regarding the house-machine and the wheelchair-machine, two simulacra of real life, the wheelchair is simulacrum of being able to walk, and the house is simulacrum of a natural and friendly environment where to move around. Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4
The main circulation of the house is purely artificially forced, because it is related through a platform elevator which connects the three levels. It is a continuous space that makes the most architectural and cinematographic part of the house, there is a single wall intersecting all the floors, next to the elevator, full of books and works of art, a technological machine that allows pure and natural spaces, that changes the perception of the house every moment by locking floors or floating above them. The house frames specific points and natural views through artificial holes in the upper floor container, elements that depending on the user’s position connect the human with the exterior or with strategic objects around. Revealing holes, relative holes or dynamic holes creates a non physical connection between the user, the house and exterior. The main artificial part is created by this element that floats in between one floor and the other, it can be physical or not, it can be just the mere and simple movement of the elevator creating new experiences, or it can be the new lifestyle the client has to life because of his new natural condition. We find here a new conception of the world due to technology and machinery, due to the recreation of real life by artificiality and technology. Ana Gonzålez Granja
holes in plan and elevation
Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4
Artificial that kills. junk-s In contrast with the small and controlled Bordeaux artificiality, where everything is intentionality done, there are other kinds of artificial spaces that are done in a way that they seem to be the same everywhere, with no variation, they are like a repetition all over. Rem Koolhaas’s concept of junk-space transcends the physical space that belongs to history, human relationships, the material connections, and culture. Junk-space is interior you rarely perceive where the limits of the space are. Is junk-space generative and natural? Of course it is. It is a system of connecting factors and elements that do not create boundaries in the total space, “If space-junk is the human debris that litters the universe, junk-space is the residue mankind leaves on the planet.”(Constructing a New Agenda. Architectural Theory 1193-2009, edited by A.Krista Sykes). So that is why junkspace raises new possibilities of understanding architecture, but not in a negative way and not translating this concept into fictional and unreal spaces, it is a new space possible because of natural and artificial living together. Ana González Granja
space A desert is a natural feature but it is also junk-space no boundaries or limits to define, a space that may happened in different parts of the world where you feel as lost as in an airport, or a hotel, or that spaces that want to recreate an atmosphere that is not natural at all. So something natural may be able to be also junk-space. But, what happened with that artificiality you find when you enter in a hotel? Why that feeling of knowing a space you have never gone before? How is that easy to be lost in an airport but to fast know all of it? You leave a city from a cold space, wide enough in height, huge distances to walk, that is totally disconnected from the culture and of the city where it is, completely different from the city you are travelling to. But, when you land, you arrive to the same place, to that repetition of the same experience, you can do exactly the same and in the same order, having the same perceptions and feelings, although you are in a completely different city with different culture, architecture, ways of living. There is a globalization of architecture where no limits exist inside that place, where you pretend to live freely. Junk-space is a new artificiality spread all over. Spaces you are there for first time but you get the feeling of being there before. A new artificiality that can remove your memories, here is where artificial architecture is used with pejorative background, where it crosses the line of being well-thought artificial architecture and it happens as dangerous containers for people to flow.
Artificial architecture changes live. Does The Artificial Exist? | Chapter 4