Competing Chronologies_Time, Space, and Architecture

COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES TIME, SPACE, AND ARCHITECTURE

NICOLAS TURCHI

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 01

INTRODUCTION

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SPACETIME_A FRAMEWORK

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PRELIMINARY STUDIES

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 2.0

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 3.0

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INTRODUCTION

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ARCHITECTURE = SPACE + TIME Architecture is a discipline that has always been associated with the idea of Space (“Architecture is the thoughtful making of space” Louis Kahn VS “Architecture is the art of how to waste space” - Philip Johnson). It was only in 1941, with the publication of Sigfried Giedion’s Space, Time and Architecture: The Growth of a New Tradition, that the supremacy of a three-dimensional structured discourse in Architecture was first strongly undermined.

The experiential dimension of space began to entice further investigation while avant-gardes made way for the digital turn and authors like Colin Rowe, Bernard Tschumi, Greg Lynn et al. started to speculate on crossing dimensions. Ironically, it could be said that those endeavors actually happened at the wrong time, since new technologies and scientific breakthroughs were not yet fully absorbed.

Building on this discourse, my thesis, emblematically titled Time, space and Architecture, seeks to un-subordinate the dimension of Time to the dimension of Space in/through a design process that deploys Timebased techniques and reflections to solve architectural questions.

Therefore, an unprecedented architectural vocabulary will be built around thematics of memory, entropy, relativity, trace, multiverse,

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etc. This new approach is informed by crossing disciplines, borrowing notions from philosophy and recent physics theories while attempting to address Architecture by both enhancing the theoretical discourse as a pedagogical source and the final design as tangible authorship.

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GENERAL RELATIVITY: SPACE-TIME CONTINUUM The one known as the Theory of General Relativity from Albert Einstein’s refinement (published in 1916) of his earlier Special Theory of Relativity and Sir Isaac Newton’s much earlier Law of Universal Gravitation, holds that acceleration and gravity are indistinguishable - the Principle of Equivalence - and describes gravity as a property of the geometry (more specifically a warpage) of space-time. Among other things, the theory predicts the existence of black holes, an expanding universe, time dilation, length contraction, gravitational light bending and the curvature of space-time. Although classical physics can be considered a good approximation for everyday purposes, the predictions of general relativity differ significantly from those of classical physics. They have become generally accepted in modern physics, however, and have been confirmed by all observations and experiments to date.

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A WORLD MADE OF EVENTS Relativity brought an extraordinary freshness in all the fields by challenging our most profound perspective on reality. we might start to think the World we live in as made out of Events instead of things, and that is a radical shift compared to the idea of reality, as we knew it before. In such a view, objects, things as we use to consider them are not single quantifiable static objects anymore. They are the events they carry with themselves, and they are rendered true via time. Their qualities in the space do not different anymore to those in time, as we now consider the time space continuum, as well as they cannot be so easily identified and de-associated from all the rest of events and things that partake to the creation of this continuum.

Organic fragments that subtend to a multiplicity of readings, this is what we can extrapolate when we try to map or trace an object, a site, its history and its geography.

The observer plays a fundamental role in the way he affects reality in the precise moment he perceives it. The perspective as we intend it, by physics, has been associated with our own way to perceive reality, the way we spatialize it. An artificial strategy that naturally puts the observer in the new role of whom who change the information just by

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his inner way of reading and understanding them, and so with what we call reality.

WHAT IS THE ARROW OF TIME? You might have heard of entropy: A measure of the disorder of a system and of its constituent molecules.

More specifically, in thermodynamics it is a measure of the unavailability of a system’s energy to do work. The Second Law of Thermodynamics embodies the idea that entropy can never decrease, but rather will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value as it reaches thermal equilibrium. A classic example of increasing entropy is ice melting in water until both reach a common temperature.

New theories suggest that entropy simply represents the measure of our myopic view of reality, something we are not yet able to grasp but which the only evidence is that there was a certain order BEFORE and a certain mess NOW. This is probably why we naturally distinguish past, present and future.

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SPACE/TIME: A NEW VOCABULARY IN ARCHITECTURE Space-time (or spacetime or the spacetime continuum) is any mathematical model that combines space and time into a single construct. The fourth dimension of time is traditionally considered to be of a different sort than the three dimensions of space in that it can only go forwards and not back but, in Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, space and time are seen to be essentially the same thing and can therefore be treated as a single entity.

While other artistic disciplines seem to have already recognized the drastic shift that unsettled Newton’s Legacy at the beginning of the last Century. the architecture field is still too affected by the hegemony of space over time and is reluctant to admit the existence of a single hybrid dimension.

However, some side effects are slowly started to emerge in the last decades, yet without being recognized as such.

I see the urgency for the architecture discourse to acquire a new vocabulary that is cross referencing to other disciplines allow the hybridization of a static model that is obsolete and no longer viable for describing any kind of architectural operation. This glossary serves the

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purpose, however, it must be considered as a language in constant expansion that is also open to further hybridization with other disciplines, both in the scientific and humanistic fields.

This is not just an attempt to inject a new language into the preestablished one; this glossary also aims to suggest a possible use of the introduced terms, solving a translating issue that, by the nature of the languages different structures and absorption and accumulation of sub-meanings, would immediately present.

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LAW OF CONSERVATION OF ENERGY [In Short] Also known as the First Law of Thermodynamics, this is the principle that energy can never be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another (e.g. the chemical energy of gasoline can be converted into the energy of motion of a car). The total amount of energy in an isolated system (or in the universe as a whole) therefore remains constant.

[Implications] No Energy is created or destroyed and then, according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, mass is neither. It’s time for architecture to stop confounding creation with selective composition. There is no empty space. The conception of absence acquires an entire new meaning that necessarily needs to be contextualized in order to be defined. This also menaces the existence of a starting point over an un-hierarchical sequence or possibility of sequences ( the First Law of Thermodynamics does not yet undermine Causality).

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ex. preservation of “energy” in architecture implies: - At a larger scale: an organic consideration of the entire design process where different figures in play “exchange” informations, notions, etc. and partake to a networked structure where idiosyncrasies become less defined.

- At a narrowed one: The idea of process itself can be subverted.

- At a very specific one: Starting from scratch is banned. Evolution is the keyword over Creation. Reversing in allowed and auspicable, considered as an enriching act.

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LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITATION [In Short] Published by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687, and sometimes also known as the Universal Law of Gravity, this was the first formulation of the idea that all bodies with mass pull on each other across space. Newton observed that the force of gravity between two objects is proportional to the product of the two masses, and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Although the theory has since been superseded by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, it predicts the movements of the Sun, the Moon and the planets to a high degree of accuracy and it continues to be used as an excellent approximation of the effects of gravity for everyday applications (relativity is only required when there is a need for extreme precision, or when dealing with the gravitation of very massive objects).

[Implications] Approximation is part of human experience and understanding of reality and, on contrary to what someone might think, defines architecture in many of its aspects. An incomplete or corrupted understanding of a

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matter does still have significance and might be the model on which building up further research and discussion. Questioning the process, at all its stages is a keypoint for refinement.

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MASS [In Short] A measure of the amount of matter in a body. It can also be seen as a measure of a body’s inertia or resistance to change in motion, or the degree of acceleration a body acquires when subject to a force (bodies with greater mass are accelerated less by the same force and have greater inertia). Mass is often confused with weight, which is the strength of the gravitational pull on the object (and therefore how heavy it is in a particular gravitational situation), although, in everyday situations, the weight of an object is proportional to its mass.

[Implications] An architectural object does not have to be considered anymore as a static one. At many levels. It carries a series of informations and qualities that can only partially be listed and manipulated. Along with the First Law of Thermodynamic, the object should not be discussed about its static qualities but about the possibilities subtended. The manipulation and articulation of certain qualities of an object organically affects the rest (there is no situation of stasis co-living with transformation one within the same entity). A human being is a part of the whole called

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SPACETIME_A FRAMEWORK

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02.1

ST. AUGUSTINE

02.2

ISAAC NEWTON

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EDMUND HUSSERL

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe; a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts, and his feelings as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.�

A. Einstein

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02.1 ST. AUGUSTINE 354-430 ‘Confessions’

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St. Augustine is appealing to God help in the understanding of time, memory and eternity. The given conditions that relies on Augustine’s personal faith are the following: the earth is temporary, God is eternal.

This status immediately brings up a tension that seems to undermine the existence of time; In fact, taking the word of God as a truth, our existence is subordinated to the divine’s one. God created (let’s carefully consider “create” here in its intrinsic etymological meaning: the Act of giving existence to something) humans, but in order to creation happens there must be a creator who is at the same time existing. So what role does time play in this game if time affects whoever exist but it does not with the divine?

“We exist because we were made; but we did not exist before we existed to be able to give ourselves existence”.

It is particularly interesting to notice how immediate the association between time and space happens in St. Augustine monologue: “How, o God, did you create heaven and earth? Obviously it was not IN heaven or earth that you made heaven and earth,; nor in the air nor in the waters, since these belong to heaven and earth; nor did you make the universe in the universe, because there was no place for it to be made until it was made…” And then the act of creation is associated to sound

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too, specifically God’s voice is the creative act, God pronouncing the words heaven and earth created heaven and earth. But the word of God itself is controversial: as sound seems to be too affected by time to be such close to the divine figure. The trick is that God speaks through something else he already created: “a movement in time but serving God’s eternal will” since the essence of the word of God endures forever but manifests in it’s temporary condition: God’s Word is always being said, and has no beginning and no end.

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02.2 ISAAC NEWTON 1642-1727 ‘Principia’

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Isaac Newton tendency is to separate time from its relation to sensible objects of phenomena and make a distinction between “absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common” time.

Hence, working by dichotomies, Newton tries to line up what constitutes time.

While “absolute, true and mathematical” time is not affected by anything external and can be associated to the idea of Duration (still a very far concept of duration from Bergson’s one); the “relative, apparent and common” time is considerate as a mere measure of duration of motion.

The second time, according to newton, is a deceptive one.

Newton strongly believes in an Absolute time (or “Newtonian time”) that passes uniformly without regard to any perceiver or physical event of any kind. It progresses at a consistent pace throughout the universe, and can only be truly understood mathematically. Place is that part of Space, either absolute or relative, that a Body takes up.

Absolute Motion is the translation of a body from one absolute Place into another.

Relative Motion is the translation of a body from one relative Place into another.

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Newton asserts that all things are “placed in time and space” in a certain order, if those were moved out of their places, they would be moved “out of themselves”. He describes everything placed in time as order to succession and in placed in space as to order of situation. The only way we have to understand transformation is through motion, but instead of using absolute motion and space we use relative ones.

This time-line in the following page looks extremely familiar to us.

This is how human beings generally experience everyday’s life and how we organize our existence.

Time is mono directional and fixed. Past, present and future are distinguished, and cannot mix up, reverse etc. This is deep rooted in our grammar, the way we organize thought etc. and it corresponds to Newton’s model of Universal Time.

This represents an extremely outdated view of reality and how time works.

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02.3

EDMUND HUSSERL 1859-1938 ‘The Consciousness of the Appearances of Immanent Objects’

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“Central themes in the discussion of Husserl’s phenomenology of time in this book are: the connection between the analysis of timeconsciousness and the analysis of phantasy-consciousness and image-consciousness; Husserl’s position in the debate between A. Meinong and W. Stern concerning the possibility of the perception of time; the self-constitution of absolute time-consciousness; the influence of Husserl’s development of genetic phenomenology on his analysis of time-consciousness; and the question of the intentional character of time-consciousness”.

In this treatise, Husserl focuses on the Immanent Object itself, placing it at the same hierarchical level of all the other “Temporal Objects” which include humans as well. Keeping the Past,Present, Future structure of every temporal objects: a phenomenon which is similar to spatial perspective happens in both directions, Past and Future.

Husserl begins by considering the extremities to the to the nucleus of the discussion, both in a figurative way and quite literal . If there is a relationship of dependency between two instances A and B, that implies a third one which can be seen as the conjunction of both or the underlying status that is continuous at all stages.

Husserl get to the point to describe Time as a coexistence of a series of

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status of consciousness which partially rely on the flow of experiences (Erlebnisstrom). However, he focuses on the Now as the key aspect of Time comprehension. Husserl identifies the Now as the orienting point, the one that generates the recognition of events either as “no longer’ or “not yet”.

Conversely to Newton, he does not identify time as a series of “nows” like points on a time-line that can be viewed as containers of events, instead the Now is composed by a synthesis of pro-tensions and retensions and the link in between them. Re-Tention is the act that makes us conscious of the immediate past temporal phases in the Now we are living. Pro-Tension is the anticipatory act that makes us able to draw a prediction, influenced by the inner research of a continuity within the Re-Tension apparatus.

Therefore, by nature we tend to constantly draw a connection between the two instances that are already the A and B parts composing the present (Now). By placing the event in relation to preceding and succeeding events we really never experience the Now in isolation from the past and future, yet this is the very core of the entire Time-question. We tend to experience a collapsing of the re-tension and pro-tension. Past, present and future do not carry any particular quality, they are just modes of appearing of time and they can accommodate

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multiple events simultaneously.

Husserl provides an examples to explain the interplay of these stages: a melody.

“All experience entails a temporal horizon, according to phenomenology.

This claim seems indisputable: we rush, we long, we endure, we plan, we reminisce, we perceive, we speak, we listen, etc. To highlight the difficulty and importance of explaining the structures of consciousness that make possible the experience of time, Husserl, like his contemporaries Henri Bergson and William James, favored the example of listening to a melody. For a melody to be a melody, it must have distinguishable though inseparable moments. And for consciousness to apprehend a melody, its structure must have features capable of respecting these features of temporal objects. Certainly, we can “time” the moments of a temporal object, a melody, with discrete seconds (measured by clocks).

But this scientific and psychological account of time, which, following Newton, considers time as an empty container of discrete, atomistic nows, is not adequate to the task of explaining how consciousness experiences a temporal object. In this case of Newtonian time, each tone spreads its content out in a corresponding now but each now and thus each tone remains separated from every other. Newtonian time can explain the separation of moments in time but not the

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continuity of these moments. Since temporal objects, like a melody or a sentence, are characterized by and experienced as a unity across a succession, an account of the perception of a temporal object must explain how we synthesize a flowing object in such a way that we (i) preserve the position of each tone without (ii) eliminating the unity of the melody or (iii) relating each tone by collapsing the difference in the order between the tones�.

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Physics is a way of decoding something we call reality but that we inevitably actively shape as observers. The mental construction of memory is our own most profound way of understand and exist in TIME. This is a diagram from HUSSERL which I am arguing would replace Newton’ s Universal Time structure and is closer to the Designer process.

Those diagonal lines represent retention or protension. They constantly contribute to the creation of a Present (which is called such for simplicity here) that is informed by fading in and fading out retentions and projections. Brought into architecture, the G* instant becomes both the designer most significant projection act and the user closest experience of the the design in question. It is my intention to investigate this memory based construct of time and pair it with a renewed knowledge of last findings and theories in Physics .

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PRELIMINARY STUDIES

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03.1

PRESENCE OF ABSENCE

03.2

INNER MATTER

03.3

2DVIA3D

03.4

COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 0.1

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03.1

PRESENCE OF ABSENCE

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A primitive shape, a cube, is taken apart from being a static object in the space by a series of dynamic boolean operations which involve the possibility of its dynamic presence in an unfixed space. The boolean operations mainly consist in subtraction of a twin cube that is animated in its basic transformations (movement, scale, rotation) through the main cube.

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Afterwards, a range of possible outcomes has been considered as a target for another dynamic operation involving blendshape (Blendshape driving objects in the above picture). This allowed for the generation of a vocabulary of geometries that all share the same primitive shape and two layers of temporal complexity affecting their properties in the space (in this case, mainly through the mean of excavation-absence). The negative, the space of absence, becomes the prominent one by the way in which the visual recognition is triggered thanks to the use of a primitive shape and its repetition throughout the process.

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03.2

INNER MATTER

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In this exercise, the driving idea was to uncover a potential series of geometric possibilities embedded in an apparently dormant instance.

The inner capacity of a finite shape was precisely identified and subsequently animated within the outer shape constraining it. By controlling different timelines for both the outer shape transformations and the inner shape succession, it is possible to uncover new and unpredicted spatial relationship that becomes readable only within the introduction of the fourth dimension.

The pictures in the following pages show the first steps of the exercise, where the outer shape (in blue wireframe) is still readable through the progression of the “inner matter� (in violet wireframe) that is here baked out in a mesh. The rearrangement of the parts in a different chronological succession and their animation can be a further step into the time/space related vocabulary.

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03.3 3DVIA2D

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Starting again by using a primitive shape, a cube, in this particular exercise I wanted to play within the idea that recent digital tools and the increasing use of media have raised the separation between mass and surface. I am particularly interested in showing how, through the use of the fourth dimension, it is possible to subvert and hybridize this relationship.

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A texture deformer is applied to the cume and then animated. Some of its basic properties like scale and tessellation are key-framed obtaining a chrono-controlled 3D transformation on the object.

A further development of the same exercise may include an opposing and simultaneous animation of the cube and/or a system of physics forces and third-party objects/instances acting and influencing the cube deformation.

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03.4

BLENDSHAPE

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Similarly to the second part of exercise I, this study aims to merge fixed temporalities, a plurality of languages that start to merge and negotiate characters between each other. The main used tool is Blenshape. It allows the designation of a base-object that will mutate and a series of target-objects that are considered the deformers. Each target must share a series of properties with the base-object (number of vertices, UV etc.), however, all the geometries can be considered as independent ones. By animating the degree of influence of each targetobject on the chosen base-object, it is possible to create a dynamic hybridization, that can eventually be baked into geometry. Different approaches can partake in the same research, both in the modeling phase (Subd operations, sculpt tools etc.) and by aggregating the results into a composition and keyframing their properties uniquely (for instance, in the case of a building, the right wing of a villa might be affected by the presence of a heavy traffic road while the left one is facing a backyard: the first could absorb a diverse level of speed and chaoticness and reflect it in its morphology or chiaro-scuro, while the second will accommodate a slower temporality that engages with the peaceful environment of the yard).

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES

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The goal of this short exercise is to obtain a certain design result by working with different means of temporal matter, investigating a workflow in which memory is embedded and becomes crucial to the construction of each next phase. The hypotetical goal is a building to be designed nearby Liverpool Street Station. In the practice, apart from given constraints, it is up to the designer to establish which criteria will drive the design process, as well as what aspects to give priority and what to “forget about”. All of this shares plenty of similarities with how memory works. As a matter of fact, neuroscientists demonstrated how, during the creative process, the amygdala (the part of the brain that performs a primary role in the processing of memory) is constantly involved. Working memory (short-term) and episodic memory (long term) both tremendously influence the creative process.

Furthermore, it can be said that the design process itself is an event where time collapses and its three main measures (past, present, future) manifest in an unconventional coaction. The word “project” (from Latin “projectum”: ‘something prominent’, neuter past participle of proicere ‘throw forth’, from pro- ‘forth’ + jacere ‘to throw’) suggests a migration (the so-called and ever discussed “arrow of time”) but at the same time, as just noticed, the pro-jection happens through a pre-consultation of past experiences through the memory.

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Fig.1

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A tourist’s footage of Liverpool St. Station (Fig.1) becomes a reference of itself in a process where the project is influenced by all the aspect that it influences at the same time. How memory works is by filtering information and enhancing those that for some reason are considered useful. In Episodic memory, however, superfluous details often becomes crucial in the way they contribute to the reconstruction of the memory.

The manipulation of reality and so the construction of a memory is exactly what architects and design constantly do without weighing it too much, in favor of a more pragmatic view of the profession or, perhaps, focusing all the theoretical speculation on the final scope of their activity, without really digging into the cognitive aspect that drives their process.

Back to the footage; how does a short video turn into a piece of design, what information is captured and why? The media has been reworked and filtered in order to highlight black and whites, in a similar way to the memory filtering process, collecting only useful information for the reader (being it a human, a machine, or a software).

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Fig.2

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Fig.3

The footage is rearranged into its components, certain frames are selected. Those flashes are here considered as fragments of an individual memory of the place. The media involved - a recording system - represents nothing more than what eyes and brain constantly do while registering reality (inevitably altering it). (Fig. 2).

Another form of memory that opposes to the individual one, is the collective memory. Very often related to conventions and signifiers, it involves the lighting up of an idea or “the memory of something else� through a mental connection triggered by some acknowledged signal.

These two types of memory are oftentimes mixed in our experience of reality. For the sake of the exercise, they have been extrapolated and represented here with a fragment of the footage ( individual memory) and the London Text logo (collective memory). (Fig. 3)

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Through a specific tool in Zbrush called Shadowbox, it is possible to generate 3D geometries by projecting 3 2D masks via a Cartesian structure. These masks can be customized 2D images, arranged in a similar way to those in the previous pictures. (Fig. 4) The result is then manipulated and ideally becomes part of the vocabulary previously mentioned while introducing the preliminary exercises. In this case, the geometry is edge-looped and poly-grouped and only selected information is kept as and brought to the next stage of the process, where all the other proposed workflows come into play and are mixed and reworked again.

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 2.0

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04.1

THE BRIDGE

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THE ARCH

04.3

THE FOSSIL

04.4

THE HAIRBRUSH

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SITE EXPLORATION

The goal of this short exercise is to obtain a certain design result by working with different means of temporal matter, investigating a workflow in which memory is embedded and becomes crucial to the construction of each next phase. The hypotetical goal is a building to be designed nearby Liverpool Street Station. In the practice, apart from given constraints, it is up to the designer to establish which criteria will drive the design process, as well as what aspects to give priority and what to “forget about”. All of this shares plenty of similarities with how memory works. As a matter of fact, neuroscientists demonstrated how, during the creative process, the amygdala (the part of the brain that performs a primary role in the processing of memory) is constantly involved. Working memory (short-term) and episodic memory (long term) both tremendously influence the creative process.

Furthermore, it can be said that the design process itself is an event where time collapses and its three main measures (past, present, future) manifest in an unconventional coaction. The word “project” (from Latin “projectum”: ‘something prominent’, neuter past participle of proicere ‘throw forth’, from pro- ‘forth’ + jacere ‘to throw’) suggests a migration (the so-called and ever discussed “arrow of time”) but at the same time, as just noticed, the pro-jection happens through a pre-consultation of past experiences through the memory.

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04.1

THE BRIDGE

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04.2 THE ARCH

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04.3

THE FOSSIL

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04.4

THE HAIRBRUSH

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Duplication. False Copy.

Ghost.

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Mirror.

Boolean.

Materiality.

Function Change.

Repetition. False Perspective.

Axis Shift.

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04.5

SITE EXPLORATION

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STATION/PHYSICS DEPT.

LIBRARY/ARCHIVE, RESEARCH CENTER.

COMMERCIAL AREA.

PUBLIC PLAZA.

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COMPETING CHRONOLOGIES 3.0

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TIME. MENTAL CONSTRUCT. MEMORY.

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I_RECOGNITION / FILTERING II_FRAGMENTATION / MERGING III_PROJECTION / MANIPULATION

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Decades of research have deepened our understanding of how the brain forms memories and uses them to build our mental past and future. But how does it determine whether an evoked memory refers to the present and can be acted upon?

Forging plans for the future appears to involve very much the same neural structures that are necessary to store information; building a mental future is very similar to constructing a personal past (Schacter et al., 2007).

The formulation of new memories is sometimes called construction, and the process of bringing up old memories is called reconstruction.

Yet as we retrieve our memories, we also tend to alter and modify them. A memory pulled from long-term storage into short-term memory is flexible. New events can be added and we can change what we think we remember about past events, resulting in inaccuracies and distortions. People may not intend to distort facts, but it can happen in the process of retrieving old memories and combining them with new memories (Roediger and DeSoto, in press).

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I_ RECOGNITION / FILTERING.

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The way we perceive reality is extremely artificial. In the sense that it is all happening in our brain and simultaneously changed by it.

This is also how memories are firstly baked. Yet such a complex process does not happen without data loss. Recognition alters reality at so many levels. One way it does so is by filtering and selecting information. To understand the distinction, think of how difficult it would be to store thousands of cakes. It would require a small warehouse.

But thousands of recipes (instructions for making cakes) can be stored in a filing card box or small computer database. When it is time to “remember” a cake, the recipe is retrieved and the cake is baked again, following the instructions. This is much more efficient than storing whole cakes, and the same is true for memories. Memories are not “stored whole.” Instead, we store data used to generate an image or word or scene from our past. Each time we remember something, we are producing a fresh construction.

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- Data Information Loss - Abstraction of reality highly influenced by other memories and experiences - Tendency to modifying our perception of reality according to future vision (scopes, etc.)

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II_ FRAGMENTATION / MERGING

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Once a certain reality recognition is filtered and stored, it becomes part of our costructed past, a memory. An entity we can draw from in case of necessity. This is not recognised as the living “now� from our brain anymore, and the filtering process, while still happening, starts to deal with a larger set of stored informations.

In fact, all the gathered memories are not frozen frames perpetually stored and fully preserved in our brain. The change within the accumulation of other information and start to aggregate, merge, clash together. Fragments of them get lost in the process, only the useful part is kept and it adapts in order to form a larger and more useful piece of information with other fragments.

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- Entire pieces of the city are collected in the form of abstract blocks - They are clustered together - They city-fragments are projected on a neutral entity (extrusion of the site, a platonic solid) - The pieces of information collapse in a single yet multi layered entity - This is metaphorically happening by Projecting, Booleaning and Intersecting between solid objects.

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III_ PROJECTION / MANIPULATION

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The reason for the entire process of storing and filtering information is the advancing of humans’ capabilities of foreseeing future comings.

This relates back to our inner survival instinct. If we have stored information about what can be dangerous, we will try to avoid that.

The entire process is actually far more complex than that. However, just by observing these three stages in sucession (althought they are indivisible parts that constantly overlap and loop back in an organic flow of information) we can draw a pattern that is actually a mental bridge between past and future.

We elect pieces of information that has been altered already and we manipulate them in order to best serve our purposed or our projected goals.

Some manipulations are conscious, others are not, but the fake nature of memories makes them malleable mental constructions. In this sense, there cannot be any projected future if there is no past. If there is no memory there is no past, hence no existence recognition and no future goal.

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- The single entity starts to compromise its nature by being manipulated in order to serve the purpose, a future goal - For instance, by breaking in pieces for allowing an infrastructure to pierce through the volume - Part of the volume might be scattered instead of remaining a full solid, playing with the train passengers perception and triggering different reactions - This phase is highly affected by arbitrariness and contingencies

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REFERENCES

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THE RUIN (THE BUILDING) I am interested in the idea of ruin from the point of view of the metaphor to human finitude transposed to the human artifact, in this case, buildings. A sort of false beliefs of eternity that has always been deposed in architecture. The shell, built around us, must be stronger than us, it must be standing longer, surviving the events.

The building I am proposing is the result of a human-like memory construct, therefore is explicitly suffering human limits, including its finiteness and time dependency.

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THE PROGRAM If on one hand, the finitude of the building becomes a manifesto of humans’ dependency on time (through memory), the chosen program aims to set a strong tension. The Physics Department is a place where people are advancing their inner spirit of curiosity and unsatisfactory passive dependence from the human limited condition.

The aim is to reverse the process that sees humans building timeless objects for feeling safe in it, making them confronting with reality and so enhancing and reinforcing the program.

In a Physics Dept. teams of researchers might spend their entire life on studies which they might not ever see the results. Certain explorations can cross multiple generations of scientists. I like to think about this inner force as the manifesto of humans’ effort to fight time and limits, a shared effort to advance humanity on a broader scale. I am extremely interested in the dichotomy produced by the relationship between the design of the building and the proposed program. I ultimately also feel that this is the real aspect that makes a building alive, by the stimulation of its occupants’ feelings and memories. An interesting building should not deliver answers but raise questions.

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Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record, and they’re irrelevant if you have the facts.

Memento_

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We would be in a nasty position indeed if empirical science were the only kind of science possible.

Edmund Husserl _

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