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2 Extant Knowledge
Extant Knowledge
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Figure 8 Casa Mila (La Pedrera), Barcelona, Antoni Gaudí, 1912
Extant Knowledge
Many architects have discovered buildings can transmit meaning to evoke emotion in building users. For instance, in designing the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Germany, Daniel Libeskind used a zigzag form, diagonally and dynamically inserted openings to stir up users’ emotions for persecuted Jews in the second world war in Germany as well as Frank Gehry’s Dancing House in Prague, Czech Republic, which resembles a pair of dancers.
Besides that, the building comes with another symbolic meaning of the transition of Czechoslovakia from a communist regime to parliamentary democracy. Since the second half of the past century, the phenomenological relationship has been the essence of a designer’s narrative, illustrating how the designer emancipated themselves from restrained imagination (De Bleeckere & Gerards, 2017). They used the term ‘Narrative’ to describe their work. Narrative as an approach is ideally suited to design in our present age of communication (Coates, 2012).
This methodology often bucks the previous trend in designing memorial architecture which was based on the building as a container of memorabilia. This is well known in the design of museums and galleries. While Malaysia has many history museums, there is yet non that explores exhibition architecture through the theory of narratives. I was therefore interested in attempting this design methodology for an, as yet, untold story.
Figure 10 Jewish Museum Aerial View
Figure 11 Jewish Museum Ineterior 1
“The Jewish Museum is conceived as an emblem in which the Invisible and the Visible are the structural features which have been gathered in this space of Berlin and laid bare in an architecture where the unnamed remains the name which keeps still.” - Daniel Libeskind
Jewish Museum - Daniel Libeskind, Berlin, 1999.
In 1988, Daniel Libeskind was chosen as the winner among several other internationally renowned architects; his design was the only project that implemented a radical, formal design as a conceptually expressive tool to represent the Jewish lifestyle before, during, and after the Holocaust.
For Libeskind, the extension to the Jewish Museum was much more than a competition/commission; it was about establishing and securing an identity within Berlin, which was lost during WWII. Conceptually, Libeskind wanted to express feelings of absence, emptiness, and invisibility – expressions of disappearance of the Jewish Culture. It was the act of using architecture as a means of narrative and emotion providing visitors with an experience of the effects of the Holocaust on both the Jewish culture and the city of Berlin.
- Bernard Tschumi
Figure 14 Manhathan Transcript Diagram
Parc de La Villette - Bernard Tschumi, Paris, 1982.
Tschumi’s now well-known scheme for the park involved a grid upon which sat points, lines, and surfaces; these theoretical concepts translated respectively into red structures (points), nonsensically curving paths (lines), and landscaped green-space (surfaces). See Figure13.
Most famous are the structures, which Tschumi referred to as “follies” in a nod to the non-functional but whimsical structures of the English garden tradition. Built as forms without clear functions, the all-red structures are evenly spaced through the park, becoming an orienting intervention in the large city park. A grid of red follies suggests the fragile order in society, while arabesque marks and meandering paths hint at the need for eccentricity.
La Villette enabled Tschumi to explore the detachment of architecture from its function, while introducing the notion that meaning comes from other more associative possibilities arising from the gap between the actual use of the park (strolling, football) and its symbolic use (film, architectural heritage, society).See Figure14.
Figure 15 Mixtacity Installation
“Like all visions of a future architecture, Mixtacity uses the illusionist power of the model, a giant L that occupies a corner of Global Cities. Unlike most planning models which have a political and economic determinism, this one is driven by an artistic spirit.” - Nigel Coates
Mixtacity - Nigel Coates, London, 2007.
In the 2007 Tate Modern Exhibition, Mixtacity emphasised identity, difference and place (See Figure15). The aim was to make a city full of the unknown and the unexpected,such as the buildings made from scaledup body parts. In this imaginary world, Central Londoners would certainly have heard of Smoking Gun Heights or Barking Towngate, and the massive finger towers at the centre of Dagenhamburg, the new symbol of the Gateway.
These hybrids and crossovers may not be a replacement for the historic depth of most cities across Britain, yet they are capable of expressing the kind of complexity so often omitted from most new development. Without ever claiming this work to be art, it certainly was a critical work with a high component of imagination. It built on people’s familiarity with architecture, if not with designing it, and harnessed the public’s playful fascination with miniatures – the sense that artistry could, and should, have a role in architecture.
Figure 15a Taichung Metropolitan Opera House Landscape park view.
Figure 15b Taichung Metropolitan Opera House section sketch hand-drawing.
Taichung Metropolitan Opera House - Toyo Ito, TaiChung, 2009.
The design is notable for its spacious, curving, and folding inner shapes create a stunning and complicated section that is elegantly, based on a few straightforward geometric principles integrated into a simple rectangular external form (see figures 15a and 15b). This building’s fluid and continuous shape represents the concept that the theatre arts are holistic phenomena that integrate the body, art, music, and performance.
This Ito’s built project shown the possiblity of a simple construction method that creates a dynamic architecture to represent a unique story.
Figure 16 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, 1932.
Figure 17 Animal Farm, George Orwell,1945
Figure 18 1984, George Orwell,1949
Literature: Brave New World(Huxley, 1932), Animal Farm (Orwell,1945), 1984 (Orwell, 1949).
As Orwell reflected in both of his book, talking about how people in power have corrupted the political system to gain even more power and benefits for themselves.
Animal farm is based on a political story, Russian Revolution and betrayal of Joseph Stalin which Orwell referred to a group of barnyard animals. Which the setting is with this group of animal rebellion and chase off their manipulative human owners and established their own democratic society. However, at the end they failed due to the intelligent and power-loving leaders form a totalitarianism whose worse than their former owners. “All animals are equal, but some snimals are more equal than others.”
After Animal Farm Orwell wrote 1984 to warn the world against the totalitarianism by those who has the most powerful weapon or in this discussion intelligence. This sci-fi novel is about the story of rebellion of a citizen to the totalitarian government that rules by distorting the truth to benefit themselves. Eventually, this man was captured and reeducated(brainwashed) in prison until he submitted to the government. The love of power and domination over others has developed into the perpetual surveillance and pervasive corruption that overtook the human integrity.
In addition, Huxley (1932) portrayed a futuristic society with a group of people in absolute power in charge of everyone life from born to death.
From these literature lead me to the issue of our political status. Which (see figure19 overflip) i started researching and comparing the political systems in a diagram.
Literature: Totalitarianism (Holmes, 2015), 2084 (Catemario di Quadri, 2014), Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence (Lovelock, 2019), Industry 5.0 and Human-Robot Co-working (Demir et al, 2019)
All these articles are investigating the concept of totalitarianism through its definitions, features, history and future. ). In Holmes study (2015), he doubted while it was truly the case that globalisation and the world wide web make it incredibly hard for governments to restrict their citizens in the ways that they did in the twentieth century, and he believed highly possible that governments will catch up with technology revolution and exploit it to new totalitarian objectives and styles.
Hence all these suspicions either from Holmes (2015) and Demir et al (2019) lead to my hypothetical skepticism that what if the governments and the elites manipulate the power of AI to a new world order. There are actually some countries have been manipulating the big data and all-time surveillance through AI platforms, such as China.
Catemario di Quadri (2014) continued his speculation from Orwell’s 1984 warning, that AI will be the force/ catalyst of coorupted people to gain thier power to control a state. Beside those concerns, Lovelock (2019) wrote the AI will overtakes human power as the dictator to reign the future world, either it will get rid of us or helps us with the apocalypses so we can live on longer on earth.
Let’s not focus too far away, the recent pandemic is the proof of how those elites manipulated the freedom of the people. Therefore, from all the research modern democracy is equally soft totalitarianism.
Figure 20 Inhabitable Infrastructures
Figure 21 Narrative Architecture: A Designer’s Story
Figure 22 Narrative Architecture
Literature: Narrative Architecture (Coates, 2012), Narrative Architecture: A Designer’s Stoty (De Bleeckere & Gerards, 2017), Inhabitable Infrastructures: Science fiction or urban future? (Lim, 2017).
Architecture is the mother of all arts, and human express their emotion through art. Government or politician used propoganda to communicate to the public, which it is also considered an art piece.
Coates(2012), De Bleeckere and Gerards (2017) claimed that architecture could be used to narrate the story of the city or place. Therefore, my thesis is telling the untold story of fighting for freedom of the Malaysian people.
Although these 3 books are exploring about different topic as the research background, however it has illustrated the speculative visions of future built environment which they can be an instrument to narrate the topic.
