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2 .4.3 Architecture and the city: From Objectual Design to Relational Design Manuel Gausa

Architecture and the City

From Objectual Design to Relational Design

I- Paradigm Shift

The cultural context of the past decades in Europe has been especially influenced by the association between the terms “architecture” and “design” both on the level of architectural space and, even, urban planning and its (carto)graphic representation.

In our closest cultural spheres, the term “design” has been associated with an essentially “compositional” action, with the potential to ensure a certain precise, pure and elegant definition-delineation of architectural form.

This trade-based interpretation (related with the old drafting trade and derived disciplines) has left its mark on a large portion of the “calligraphic” experiments in postmodernity: the more eclectic and evocative ones (the styles and language of the 1980s) as well as the more iconic and objectual examples (diva-ism and brand-name glamour from the 1990s).

In recent years, the development of computing and the advent of the digital age has contributed, however, to reformulating these approaches, favoring the emergence of new paradigms in how we handle interchange spaces and in the relationships with the object associated with them.

On more than one occasion, we have pointed out how the past decades have brought a spectacular scalar – or inter-scalar – leap in the understanding (and perception) of our spaces for living and production: cities, territories, surroundings, but also networked scenarios.1 Today, we are conscious of an ongoing accelerated transformation (spectacular, fascinating and conflictive at the same time) associated with the construction and interpretation of a reality that is suddenly multiplied across all levels.

A reality characterized by mobility, interconnection, communication and data processing, and which favors a growing capacity for exchange among uses and citizens, cities and territories, cultures and habitats, in real scenarios and virtual ones.

From a univocal, analytical, segmented and partitioned outlook, accustomed to dividing, classifying or typifying the world into closedoff categories, we have moved on (are moving on) to a poly-synchronous outlook that is called on to combine and associate varying stimuli, messages, demands and information, processing synthesizing and orienting them at the same time.2 Cover - Virtual network, Archive.

Figure 1 - Barcelona Virtual Cartography, BCN Multistring City, Gausa + Raveau actarquitectura + GIC-Lab, 2012 2

This implies decisive changes in the old social, creative and scientific disciplines, especially in the ones connected to the interpretation and construction of space (and, particularly, in architecture as a cultural, spatial and technical discipline).

From architecture and urban planning understood as disciplines intended to outline, plan and design “linear” and stable forms in space, today we are moving toward architecture and urban planning understood as transdisciplinary – or a discipline between and through other disciplines – called upon to synthesize, formulate and express complex processes and variable and interconnected relationships.

Dynamic (or virtually dynamic) processes in space.

This transfer implies the substitution of a certain idea of urbanarchitectural space as an “a(bst)tractive object” (i.e., as a formal, essentially figurative event) and its conception as an “interactive milieu” (i.e., as a relational, implicitly configurative process).

And, therefore, the emergence of a “new logic” called on to substitute the old classical compositional order or the new modern “impositional” order (and the post-modern “expository” order) for a more “dispositional” order – that is fluctuating and flexible – called on to react with the medium and between media, based on strategic criteria that are open to varying stimuli and demands.

The inquiry, exploration and investigation of this shift in the current understanding of our era, has occupied a large part of the most engaged investigations from the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.

It is evident that this new “informational logic”, which is more surprising, more plural, less linear, more unprejudiced (although no less relativistic as a result) calls for more open processes (and procedures), which are more sensitive to the notions of complexity (simultaneity between layers of information), interaction (exchange between layers of information), and diversity and variation (irregular differentiality between layers of information).

The growing processes of informational interaction that are characteristic of our present day favor new forms of multiple exchange, which are more uncertain and unpredictable (more “informal” because they are “informational”) encouraged by the rapid development of new technologies and data processing, the increase in social networks and the accelerated flow of messages, references, documents and their parametric, matrix-based, and/ or relational combination, demonstrating the limitations of the old paradigms (associated with rigid architectural and urban planning disciplines tied to historic planning methods that were delineating or functionalist, zonal or formal, management-based and/or regulatory.

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II- Static Figuration, Dynamic Configuration

Architectural objects, urban objects (and, by extension, creative objects) no longer refer to an essential, absolute, univocal, closed and inviolable reality, but a mixed reality that is processed, combined and manipulated. Differential and, often, “impure” because it is irregular.

The object is no longer a category (and/or a figure), but a dynamic system (and/or process).

Approaching it, then, implies a multiple action, an inter-action as a combination of actions that mix different data, modes and formats.

Those of a reactive environment (product, building, city, territory), which reacts – evolves, changes, varies, mutates – with and according to the synthetic processing of information.

Figure 2 - Virtual methodology, Archive.

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We are talking about a new type of approach in design, which is less figurative and more configurative.

A new type of less formal, more formulative forms.

But also a new type of less hierarchical, more flexible and variable organizations and orders.

A new type of less uniform, more differential structures (“architecture”, buildings and urban structures, but also social, political and cultural structures).

The exploration of these dynamics has driven “in process” processes, which are present in a whole generation of ideas (rather than a generation in terms of age) convinced of this paradigm shift that has surpassed classical, modern and postmodern conceptions, directing them toward a new, more advanced informational logic.3 Whereas the verb to design traditionally referred to a process of creation and projection “in advance” of the production of an industrial product or living space, for exchange or relation – a projective, mentally anticipatory action: a (pre)figuration that is present in the etymological root of the word design “de-signare”, to mark as a “sign” – today, this projective and projectual action doesn’t refer as much to the areas of aesthetic figuration and composition, but rather to those of strategic and information formulating and programming, which have the potential not only to anticipate a production process, but also to prompt it, direct it and modify it at the same time.

The digital world and the new information technologies (Internet of Thinks, Smart-cities & Smart-citizens, etc.) have exponentially broadened this potential for exchange between situations and demands, along with the ability to parametrize and (re)design, to program and reprogram, to process and reprocess our own relational surroundings (in the form of precise, recordable, traceable logarithms that can be reedited into multiple and variable formats, trajectories and contexts).4

Figure 3 - Valldaura Research Seminar, IaaC. Figure 4 - Chromatic skin, IaaC Research.

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In contrast to the 1990s, when digital computational development seemed to be associated with the investigation of virtual reality, today we understand that the development of new information technologies and their translation into an efficient, multi-dimensional – often nano-dimensional – sensorization brings us closer to a reality that can be recorded in an increasingly precise and rigorous manner, opening up an immense range of possibilities in the field of the combination materiality-informationality.5 Digital fabrication is open to the use of new materials (or composites) and the opportunity to combine sensorization and fabrication in new productive and constructive developments and new industrial systems – structures and products – that are intelligent, (re)active and “coparticipatory”: interconnected and sensitive to a more efficient and qualitative mutual collaboration.6 This progressive sensorization of our material environments confirms the shift from the idea of design as formal production – the object as a fundamentally aesthetic element – to the idea of design as intentional programming – the object as an n-strategic interface (multi-layered and multi-relational).7 Industrial product, building, habitat or networked scenario – i.e., design that is projected and produced on all scales – bring together substantial complexity with the capacity for interaction and variation, in a new more interactive, more dynamic, irregular and differential condition, which alludes, in turn, to a triple operative quality.

1– An intentional and qualitative reactivity (sensory and sensitive), with regard to the environment and the surroundings.

2– An interconnectivity open to exchange, not only between the element and the milieu, but between the element and other networked elements (real time data, etc.).

3– A generative diversity that transcends the classical notion of (re) production (vertical, formal, in series, continuous, regulated, identical: centralized and typified) and its substitution by a new type of variable and differential (co)production, that is networked, more diversified and distributed. A capacity, in short, for global and local interaction that is systematized and differential, related with the digital processing of (singularized) information, but also with the capacity for networked interconnection among a whole series of distributed sources for horizontal generation and fabrication (open source technologies, fab-labs, 3D-printing, energrids, etc.).

All these qualities are related with the efficiency factors inherent in any structural and productive system: a capacity for energy exchange (reactivity), a capacity for linkage and communication (interconnectivity) and a broadened capacity for distribution (diversity).8

III- Static Figuration, Dynamic Configuration

The emergence of the digital and informational universe – theories on information, data and bits, but also demands, stimuli and messages – along with developments in computation and advances in parametric conceptions, multi-layered readings, networked communication and personal programming, differential fabrication (DIY) and atmospheric sensorization, in addition to online applications, have transformed – are transforming – social, productive and cultural relationships, as well as the associated productive, spatial and urban conceptions and approaches.

It is evident that, between the intuitions and the initial stages of the first research that was generated 20 years ago, and the present moment, there have been many transformations and evaluations to the avatar of this new informational logic, which was once a more alternative option and has become more widely accepted today.

When, two decades ago, in the midst of the postmodern, eclectic and calligraphic, and neo-historic cultural euphoria, certain pioneering experiences proposed the emergence of a new, more dynamic, transversal, complex and interactive, informational logic, those proposals tended to focus on aspects of “geometry” (topology), of “organization” (folding, refolding, unfolding) or of a reformulating strategy, which were recursive with scalar ambivalence – and the potentially transformative systematics – of certain paradigmatic urban processes (networks, voids, agglomerations, twinning, reliefs, etc.), which were transformed into multi-scalar and multiprogrammatic architectural devices.

This epitomic play between architecture and the city – which was common, on the other hand, during moments of cultural transformation, from Alberti to Le Corbusier, but formulated according to new rules – was the center of the first experiments that were undertaken.9 This recursive support is no longer needed today, and it has given way to a more direct and operative use of information, based on the combination of data that is qualitatively, strategically and intentionally processed... and (re)formulated.

It is also true that, even today, the inertias of certain, particularly conservative, cultural, academic and productive spheres still exist which associate operativity with “predictability”. Real-estate developments, public programs, commercial typologies still rely on neo-analogical and late-modern architecture, based on “guaranteed” standards.

However, it is clear (given the new advances in digital fabrication, constructive micro-robotics, and material and environmental sensorization, etc.) that in a short time the assimilation of this new, more experimental, more innovative operative logic – which has broken free from any predetermined and or retro-aesthetic a priori reasoning – should become the 10

natural evolution of the technological, cultural and formal development that is occurring today.

The activity in areas that are especially connected tied in with these concerns (the GIC-LAB at the UNIGE in Genoa – more focused on urban research – or the IAAC , Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia, more focused on the architectural impact of new technologies) combines with efforts in allied centers and spaces working in the field of advanced creative and scientific research (the AA and Bartlett in London, SCI-Arc in Los Angeles, Columbia University in NYC, Media Lab in Boston, the Berlage in Rotterdam, etc.).

In all of them, the impact of new digital technologies combines with a new, more sensitive and interactive intelligence (with the milieu, with the city and its inhabitants) looks to promote the emergence of a new type of multirelational spatialities that are more complex, precise and surprising, which has coincided today with the emergence of new generations who are more familiar with this new digital universe and the advent of new technologies with their progressive networked development, which no longer need transition scenarios or referential excuses – transfer models – not only to discover, explain or manifest a new spatial formulation, but simply to display it and materialize it with a decisive and “processed naturality”.

Based on dynamics that refer to a new smart (reactive) dimension of the city and how it can be approached interactively and informationally (using data that concerns urban mobility, energy efficiency, the social economy, collective space, collective self-organization, environmental responses, etc.).

At the same time, this informational condition, which is progressively open and variable, should be combined with the ability to create “shared horizons”: prospective visions and strategies, with the potential to express (direct and induce), to represent and “design”, qualitatively, the new open developments, by combining advanced technological models with new formal, plastic and imaginative expressions – cultural, spatial and social – that are both innovative and sustainable at the same time: with the potential to combine “sensory” and “sensitive” logics in these new inhabited spaces (sense-cities).10 And this is where the importance of project (pro-jection) and design (representation) is still rooted. As a shared, qualitative and directed vision of our own technological potential, but also of our cultural and creative capability – and imagination.

Notes and References

1.See GAUSA, Manuel: Open: Spacio-tiempo-información, ed. Actar, Barcelona 2010. Chapter 1 and chapters 4 and 5.

2. Ibidem.

3. See GAUSA, M.- GUALLART, V.-MULLER, W.: The Metapolis Dictionary of Advanced Architecture, ed. Actar, Barcelona 2003.

4. See LEACH, Neil: Adaptation, in IAAC Bits n. 1.4.1, ed. IAAC, Barcelona 2014, pp. 1-2.

See also: Camouflage, ed. MIT Press, Boston 2006, p. 5.

5. See RAMSGARD THOMSEN, Mette: “The Role of the New Technologies” in IAAC Bits n. 1.5.1, ed. IAAC, Barcelona 2014, p. 2.

6. See RAMSGARD THOMSEN, Mette: “The Role of the New Technologies” op. cit.

7. RIFKIN, Jeremy: The Zero Marginal Cost Society, ed. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2014.

8. RIFKIN, Jeremy: The Zero Marginal Cost Society, op. cit.

9. See GAUSA, Manuel: Open, Spacio-tiempo-información, op. cit. Chapters 9 and 10.

10. See GAUSA, Manuel: “City Sense: Territorializing Information” in V.V.A.A.: City Sense, 4th Advanced Architecture Contest ed. Iaac, Actar, Barcelona 2012, pp. 6-13.

Figure 5 - Digital Fabrication Seminar, IaaC 12

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IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands

Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of Barcelona Willy Muller, Director of Barcelona Regional Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

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