Keywords: immaterial, post-humanism, creative authorship, beyond space
Home sweet home. The most intimate one among all spaces, home embodies the deepest identity of its Jonathan Hill - Immaterial Architecture (2006) subject. The epitome of personal space, home unfolds as a realm where concrete materiality depicts boundaries, provides separation, prohibits interference. As Jonathan Hill defines, “The purpose of home is to keep inside inside and the outside outside.” Home controls the climate inside and shelters from the unpredictable weather outside. Home is synonymous with the material: it is a vessel for the identity of its occupier, a container and a mirror. A threat to home is considered a threat to self. Remnants as temporal nomads, even without a material manifestation, extend beyond time and space. In archaeological ruins, we encounter intangible spaces Jonathan Hill - The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future (2019) more imagined rather than seen, emerging as significant storytellers shaping the narratives of future, present, and past all at once. Architecture becomes a time travel machine even without its concrete structures and inhabitants. Weather, the unseen architect, sculpts its history on decaying material. Authorship, as Hill argues, extendsJonathan beyond the human agency, acknowledging Hill - Weather Architecture (2012) nature as a co-author. According to Hill, a building is like a time machine, made Jonathan Hill - Research By Design, Architecture is a Time Machine (2022) from materials of different ages and rates of change. Through weathering, it can transport us to various Joseph Bedford - Is There an Object-Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman (2020) times, separately or all at once. Similar to history, design interprets the past in the present. Design is also like fiction, freely moving between past and future. Understanding time helps us learn from the past, rethink the present, and imagine future practices and discussions. It envisions an ethereal, non-existent, immaterial, ruined, collective space freed from time and not bound by physical limitations. In this sense, architecture is no longer just a building, it is the relation between Jonathan Hill - Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User (1998) the space and its occupant. This aligns with Lacan’s Beatriz Colomina - Sexuality and Space (1996) spatial reimagination, detaching the subject from its current spatial context and relocating it to an imaginary only way to coexist is to build topography.The a web of new relationships
Deconstructing its material structure unravels layers of meaning, inviting subjects to participate in the creative act of crafting new interpretations. By redefining space through the actions of its inhabitants, whether human or not, a continuously evolving entity that is not bound by a static format is created. Jonathan Hill’s perspective on architecture as an ever-evolving being, shaped by the imaginative user, dismantles the notion of singular authorship. Architecture, in this light, becomes a collective outcome of diverse creative actions, challenging traditional definitions and inviting us to explore the mythos beyond the unbuilt.
This way of thinking stems from our position as designers and researchers. Jonathan Hill, as well as an architectural historian, is a researcher and a studio instructor. His work is feeding through his students’ ideas alongside his own research. In such a creative environment, design work is quite often produced based on a theoretical background and practicality may cease to be a constraining factor. Therefore, it is possible to argue that the theoretical discussions about design would create a freeing environment to research on the possibilities of a space and its boundaries. Just as Jonathan Hill is doing through teaching a studio and writing, as designers we are questioning and speculating on the new ways of doing architecture. Envisioning those new ways of creating and interacting with a space is usually realized through writing; however, these speculations do not have to be independent from practice. As Diller and Scofidio highlight in their project Jonathan Hill - Immaterial Architecture (2006) called The Blur Building, defined as an architecture of atmosphere, the infinite possibilities are shaped by weather and the dynamic changes in space resulting from actions and events of the shifting climatic conditions such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and water pressure. The question arises: How can space react to the user? The environment, with its traces of the unbuilt, responds to human footsteps. D+S’s case, illustrated through human traces in the mist, emphasizes the interplay between the built and the unbuilt. The mythos beyond unbuilt, therefore, lies in the dynamic interaction between the user and the space, where space perceives and reacts to the user’s presence while blurring its own boundaries. Esse est percipi, as Berkeley put it, to be is to be perceived, emphasizing the reciprocal relationship Diller and Scofidio, The Blur Building, between the observer and the observed. In this search Swiss Expo 2002 in Yverdon-les-Bains for the mythos beyond unbuilt, we find ourselves in a realm where possibilities are not constrained by physical
Geroge Berkeley - A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710)
limitations but are instead shaped by the creative actions and imaginations of those who engage with the space. In the end we can ask ourselves, does a space really exist if there is no one to perceive it? Going beyond physical space through the cloud makes it possible to explore the potentials of the borderless body, and strip away its outer layer to reveal a chaotic transformation. The irregular and unpredictable body blurs the familiar forms, exposing a mix of geometries and shapeless blobs. The goal is for the mist to reflect the essence of pure movement, intensity, speed, energy, and desire once its surface is removed. In this narrative beyond, the fleshless state is both the basis of existence Diller and Scofidio, The Blur Building, and the highest point of formlessness. Swiss Expo 2002 in Yverdon-les-Bains
Essentially, by blurring boundaries it is suggested that using skin or the envelope in design to break away from conventional ideas and explore new perspectives on how things are divided or defined. Re-thinking skin as an element of design in a way that challenges traditional boundaries includes reimagining the separation between inside and outside, material and non-material, real and imaginary, and private and public.
Diller and Scofidio, The Blur Building, Swiss Expo 2002 in Yverdon-les-Bains
The concept of unexplored possibilities exists within the creative user’s imagination. The narrative surrounding the unrealized takes shape as a realm defined not by its material essence but by the infinite possibilities residing in the minds of its users. The space becomes solid or changed through perception.
Actions, both happening and are yet to happen, become central to the narrative of space. The mere act of imagining creates a space, aligning with the posthuman idea of going beyond the current narrative. The narrative of the human and the narrative of space are intertwined, Anthropocene - the era that depicts our irreversible effects on the and how one perceives influences how it is. nature. Humans tried to survive against nature but these actions resulted in human kind destroying its own species.
The decentralized, nomadic subject roams through a space that travels inside the user, experiencing and perceiving in a symbiotic dance. The narrative of space is continually rewritten, and the boundaries between the built and the unbuilt, the material and the virtual combine into a fabric of constantly evolving possibilities.
This resonates with Donna Haraway’s vision of a symbiotic entity, a cyborg, that was born through decentralization of subject rather than defining itself through a binary structure. “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short we are cyborgs.”
Posthuman theory, with its political utopian positioning, aspires to transcend the conventional definition of human. Then this question emerges: How can architecture go beyond the rigid confines of traditionally pre-defined spaces? In the posthuman Thinking from an interdisciplinary theory, certain determining factors of being human are perspective, relating this with posthumanism makes sense in a way challenged such as the white western male. In terms of that the notion of anyone can be an author is just like saying anyone can spatial arrangement, what kind of perceptions are be anything, anyone can be man or woman, just like the way Donna there about space that cannot be changed and can Haraway defines Gaia - she was the space be perceived without these perceptions? mother nature that didn’t really care about the wishes of the human, only tried to protect its own integrity but then after human intervention, it became the destroyer rather than provider.
Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1991)
As we try to explore the mythos beyond the unbuilt, we realize that architecture is not confined to the tangible structures; rather it is a dynamic interplay of narratives, meanings, and possibilities. It is an ongoing dialogue between the physical and the virtual, the built and the unbuilt, the known and the unknown. Then, our focus shifts to the virtuality of space and the metaphorical transfer Elizabeth of our existence into the “Future of Spaces”. Grosz - Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (2001) Architecture that was once limited to concrete structures, now exists in the digital realm, where creative users craft new interpretations and possibilities. The hybrid nature of space, beyond the limitations of the physical realm, reflects the human-machine combination. In the end, the mythos beyond the unbuilt brings an invitation to explore the limitless possibilities that unfold when we liberate our imagination and embrace the everchanging nature of architecture. According to Hill, “Architecture is made by use and design”. He introduces a perspective on the genesis of architecture, claiming that its essence emerges through practical use. The imaginative user, constantly redefines the space through their actions, injecting an Jonathan Hill - Actions of Architecture (2003) evolving meaning with each use and birthing unexplored potentials. In this discourse, architecture has gone beyond its conventional static format and it is defined as a continuously evolving being.
The notion of singular authorship perishes, transcending the boundaries of the initial architect to become a collective outcome of diverse creative actions. This case of creative authorship raises questions of naturalness and authenticity. Is it possible for the continually evolving, regenerative architecture to turn back to a state of being “itself” again? Also, how do we look at what was there before its current state? Architecture, once confined to concrete structures, now exists in the digital realm, where the creative user crafts new interpretations and possibilities. The notion of space is deconstructed, unraveling layers of meaning hidden within its material structure. The real owners of space are not necessarily its builders but those who creatively engage with it.
Through this question, we turn back to where we started. We found ourselves trying to find out what came before even though we were searching for the beyond. This act of spontaneity reflects the ever changing nature of architecture which was the main argument to begin with. We were searching for mythos beyond the unbuilt and we found our tactics along the way. Just as Raimund Abraham’s use of collision as a metaphor to define Raimund Abraham - [UN]BUILT (1996) polarity that creates the space, we found that true potential lies in between and created by means of the fluctuation between physical manifestation of a space The significance of architecture lies in the stories, and the idea of it. imaginations, and meanings associated with
spaces, whether they are physically built, in the process of becoming, or exist in a state of ruin. It encourages a shift in perspective from focusing solely on tangible structures to considering the dynamic, evolving, and sometimes elusive nature of architectural narratives and their impact on the subjects that engage with them.
Which points to the idea that the true essence and significance of architecture lie in the stories, imaginations, and meanings associated with spaces, whether they are physically built, in the process of becoming, reflected in the virtual realm, or exist in a state of ruin. It can be concluded as: beyond the unbuilt, narratives and the meanings that users attribute become more important than the visible materiality.
Beatriz Colomina - Sexuality and Space (1996) Diller and Scofidio, The Blur Building, Swiss Expo 2002 in Yverdon-les-Bains Donna Haraway - A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century (1991) Elizabeth Grosz - Architecture from the Outside: Essays on Virtual and Real Space (2001) Geroge Berkeley - A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) Jonathan Hill - Actions of Architecture (2003) Jonathan Hill - Immaterial Architecture (2006) Jonathan Hill - Occupying Architecture: Between the Architect and the User (1998) Jonathan Hill - Research By Design, Architecture is a Time Machine (2022) Jonathan Hill - The Architecture of Ruins: Designs on the Past, Present and Future (2019) Jonathan Hill - Weather Architecture (2012) Joseph Bedford - Is There an Object-Oriented Architecture? Engaging Graham Harman (2020) Raimund Abraham - [UN]BUILT (1996)