Towards An OOA by Shing Yi Lee

T O W A R D S A N O B J E C T - O R I E N T E D A R C H I T E C T U R E

SHING YI LEE

T O W A R D S A N O B J E C T - O R I E N T E D A R C H I T E C T U R E

SHING YI LEE

UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH M A R C H A R C H I T E C T U R E , R I B A P A R T II

ABSTR

ACT

This paper investigates the potential of object-oriented ontology (OOO) as an alternative, complementary philosophical agenda to stem, and possibly abolish the various dogmas brought about by almost two decades of disciplinary obsession with relationism in Architecture. The structure of this thesis begins by discussing the issues probed by relationism through the lens of object-oriented ontology. The argument then develops towards the consequences of its’ opposing set of ideas of different manifestations which will be analyzed through selected case studies.

This paper attempts to not only suggest the possibility of this new ontological foundation in both academia and practice of the discipline, but also as the conceptual basis for the development of operations, primitives and vocabularies of its formal experimentation in Architecture.

CONT 03

ENTS

Preface

Part 01 09

The Functionalist Subject

13

Decentralizing the Subject

Part 02 15

Helsinki Guggenheim Proposal

17

‘Kitbashing’

19

Interim Summary

20

TE-1 Project

24

Conclusion

24

Ideology

25

Method

25

Formal

26

Critique & Self-reflection

27

Bibliography

P R E F A C E

My disciplinary inquiries point towards one particular problem set of interest, which centers around contemporary architecture’s preoccupation with the philosophical notion of relationism. Specifically, my concerns include identifying the various limitations this mode of thinking poses to the discipline, as well as investigations into the potential of object-oriented ontology as an alternative, complementary philosophical agenda to stem, and possibly abolish the various dogmas brought about by almost two decades of disciplinary obsession with relationism.

To mount an effective critique, I must first frame the meaning of relationism within the thesis – it is specifically meant in context of the type of disciplinary ideas that held sway over architecture over the past twenty years, marked particularly by what is known as the ‘Digital Turn’ (Carpo, AD). This began from what is arguably the incepting moment for the use of the digital in architecture – the Paperless Studio at Columbia University’s GSAPP of Greg Lynn fame, to the prelude of procedural thinking through Sanford Kwinter’s seminal text Hammer and the Song, culminating in the recent movements of Parametricism vehemently championed by Patrik Schumacher.1 What these seemingly disparate, but almost canonical efforts within the discipline have in common, seem to be the fact that they share a certain underlying fixation in the ‘philosophies of becoming’, a major example of which would be Deleuze’s interests in all ‘things-in-between’, or ‘relations’ - hence the term relationism.2 It implies the study of everything surrounding the object, but the object itself, including but not limited to notions such as flows, intensities, underlying or hidden processes, and continuities. In this sense, the architectural discipline has gained both significant traction and fatigue from its explorations with these ideas.

1 2

Carpo, M. Ed. The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012. Wiley & Sons Ltd. Gannon, T. The Object Turn: A Conversation. AnyCorp. Pg 73.

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The ramifications of this set of ideas within architecture can be analyzed through its different manifestations – not only as the discipline’s ontological foundation both in academia and practice, but also as the conceptual basis for the development of operations, primitives and vocabularies of its formal experimentation.

“The immediate architectural fallout of Deleuze’s fold, and most likely one reason for Eisenman’s and Lynn’s interest in the matter, was Deleuze’s exegesis of Leibniz’s mathematics of continuity, of calculus-based points of inflection (the ‘fold’) and parametric notations (the ‘objectile’). But, through Deleuze, it was a whole post-modern universe of thinking that offered itself, sometimes covertly or inadvertently, to the then nascent theory of digital design.” –Mario Carpo, 2013.3

The ideological pitfalls brought about by this agenda can best be understood through the writings of Graham Harman. In his book The Quadruple Object, Harman highlights a fatal flaw within the relationist argument – which is its imperative to not directly confront the qualities of an object at hand, but rather to arrive at it through feats of reduction, mostly via overmining and undermining.4 In this context, to undermine an object is to say that objects are a mere surface effect of some deeper force, which means that an object can only truly be known by comprehending its greater fundamental properties. An example of this would be to trivialize the qualities of a table as inconsequential, in favor of its deeper reality, such as its subatomic makeup.

To overmine is to perform the same dismissal in the opposite direction, that is, to ideologically reduce them upwards rather than downwards. In this view, the existence of the table as an object is consequential only insofar as it is first and foremost understood as being a part of a living room’s interior.

3 4

Carpo, M. 2013. The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012. Wiley & Sons Ltd. Harman, G. 2011. The Quadruple Object. (Zero Books). Pg 7-19.

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The consequence of the above disposition (not coincidentally along with the advent of digital tools in architecture), is that an entire generation of disciplinary output were driven by techniques that sought to explain their problems by referring either to a larger flow above or a more fundamental process below – ideas such as smooth manifolds, continuous variations, iterative morphologies, networks and evolutionary computing come to mind, to name a few. The trivialization of problems in this manner also go beyond the realms of formal experimentation into the domains of architectural practice, as relationism coerced Architecture into a position where the only justification for its being is via its relations to other things, such as site context, sustainability, functionality and cost. (In other words, ‘practical agendas, which will be further discussed in Part 1).

A compelling counter to this can be seen in the ideas of object-oriented ontology (hereinafter referred to as OOO), a branch of study under the movement of specula-

tive realism5 in the discipline of philosophy. As its name suggests, OOO deals with the importance of the object-in-itself in addition to the relations surrounding it. The meaning of ‘objects’ in OOO includes entities that need not be physical nor real. The unicorn, the idea, the lamp, the ladybird, architecture and the rust all share equal status and category of the objects. The point of such distinction is not to claim that they are all equally real, rather they are all equally objects.

Among the many concepts that OOO brings to the fore, the few key concepts that allow meaningful critique of the shortfalls of relationism are of particular interest to this thesis – namely that objects have inexhaustible qualities within their autono-

mous realities, and that these objects exist in a flat ontology.

5

Harman, G. 2011. The Quadruple Object. (Zero Books). Pg 7-19.

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To understand how flat ontology provides a critical relief to the current ontological stranglehold posed by relationistic thought, one should first trace a particular development embraced by western philosophy to what could be arguably the most prevailing mode of reduction-through-relations – anthropocentricism or what Harman refers to as ‘the post-Kantian obsession with a single relational gap between people and objects’:

“…the human subject comes to mind – sticking its nose under every tent and trying to constitute a full half of reality, as in most Western philosophy since Descartes.

Think of how ridiculous it is that we set up a basic opposition in philosophy between the mind and “the world” – the latter is a pretty sloppy catch-all category, given that countless lizards, stars, bacteria, sand grains, black holes, and shrimp that are assembled on on side of the boxing ring with the human species alone on the other.”- Graham Harman6

The meanings we assign to objects in our reality are arguably anthropocentric, which means their qualities are defined by its relation to us - the pillow is soft, the rain is wet, exhaust gas is smelly. In flat ontology, causal relations between non-human objects are no different from the human perception of them. For instance, interaction between paper and fire belongs on the same footing as human interaction with both paper and fire.

‘Equally exist yet… not exist equally’ – Ian Bogost, Alien Phenomenology.7 This leads to another understanding essential to the validity of the argument - that is the notion that every object intrinsically carries an autonomous reality containing infinite, inexhaustible qualities within itself. This means, in principle, that any given object houses infinite, inexhaustible qualities within itself, of which only some are accessible through its relations to the outside.

6 7

Harman, G. 2015. The Object Turn: A Conversation. AnyCorp. Pg 75.

Bogost, I. 2012. Alien Phenomenology. Minnesota Press

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The overall structure of this argument is well-rehashed by Harman in one of his lectures8, where he provides the analogy of the fire and cotton: if Humans perceive Cotton as white and soft, then Fire perceives a certain combustibility-quality of Cotton which humans can never fully grasp - because the human cannot combust cotton the way fire does. Harman says that objects should not be reduced to the greater glory of others, but should instead describe how objects relate to their own visible and invisible qualities, to each other. Qualities of objects have limited access because they are always reduced on the basis of point-of-view; hence in an attempt to debunk objects, they are viewed from the ‘nth’ person perspective9 and in return invisible qualities would emerge itself. The later section of the thesis would employ this thinking in order to debunk the flaw of our perception towards Architecture and the meaning of Architecture-as-object.

“They must be autonomous in two separate directions: emerging as something over and above their pieces, while also partly withholding themselves from relations with other entities” –Harman, Quadruple object.

A growing number of architects have expressed interest and curiosity in the writings and thinkings of OOO. The emergence of this philosophy has drawn interest from many contemporary Architects from the discipline, such as Tom Wiscombe, David Ruy, Mark Foster Gage, Todd Gannon to name a few.

My area of interest within this philosophy is that it reverses the way we look at our surroundings as a bag of existing relations and it offers a hint of how we might create new forms of logic in the way we perceive Architecture. Architecture needs to return to the idea of the object. The term ‘object’ will be referred to in this entire thesis and as the definition unfolds, bear in mind that objects in this paper refers to the philosophical definition of objects by Harman.

See Bartlett International Lecture series 12/13 by Graham Harman.

Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflvToKOWCg 9 Harman, G. 2013. Zero person and the Psyche Essay.

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P AR T 0 1

Questioning the idea of subject as a mode of relationist reduction in society as well as Architecture The definition of subjects here are my own and it works as concepts of relations drawn by man. Examples are drawn from contemporary Architecture and they refer to a particular construct of man’s perception and how it inspired their building design. The following section is significant because it draws some statements and observations from it as it sets the thesis within its contemporary context.

THE FUNCTIONALIST SUBJECT

My stance is that function such as site context, program and sustainability is seen as a mode of relationistic reduction in Architecture.

“Form ever follows function, and this is the law” – Louis Sullivan, 1896 10 The notion that a building should appear to be the result of accommodating its function has been evident in many places since Louis Sullivan’s statement in his 1896 essay “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered”. In Malaysia, the country where I was brought up, building design development is mainly dominated by the mindset that the ultimate purpose of a building is to fulfill functional requirements such as site context, building program and sustainability criterias. These two specific notions have influence the contemporary understanding of what architecture is by architects and the public in Malaysia. One renowned and significant architect that preaches this in Malaysia is Kevin Mark Low. “Understanding specific context is about perceiving intelligently the subtle effects of geography, society and culture in any one particular place….. If design is indeed the conversation between creativity and context, then specific context is that which births specific design.” - Kevin Mark Low, 2010 11

10 11

Sullivan, L. 1896. The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.

Low, K. 2010. Small Projects. (Oro Editions).

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During his conference in ArcAsia Bali 2012 in Indonesia which I attended, Low talked about his design process as a critical response to the site context.12 For instance, he studies in very detail the immediate environment such as the direction of the sun and wind movement which would directly influence the positions and orientations of spaces and elements within the design. His design principle is such that one should always respond to the micro-geography of the site context.13 Low’s building forms are heavily dictated by practical agendas. The materials used are usually local materials such as cement, steel and bricks; they are usually left unfinished not only on the metaphysical basis that materials should be ‘honest to their own functionality’, but more importantly, due to it being more labor, time, and cost-effective – again a nod to the project’s functionalist external relations. As a result, natural accumulation of concrete stains overtime became an aesthetic staple to his projects. Apart from that, the building form is backed up with sustainable matters; one of it is a house which I visited is the Louvre Box house.

Louvre Box house. Authors own.

12 13

ArcAsia Bali Conference. 2012.

Low, K. 2010. Small Projects. (Oro Editions).

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The extensive rustic aluminum louvres not only gives porosity to allow penetration of illumination and to maximise the views of its surrounding context. The house is shaped as such to create a ‘stack effect’, providing good ventilation to the house. The trees grown around the house are local species including pelong and jelutong, koompassia excelsa, caesalpinia ferre a, among others, adding value towards the building’s stance on account of its genius loci. The influences of his agendas are wide-reaching and influential within the local disciplinar y sphere, so far so that many students from the academia are inspired to employ similar practical agendas to legitimize their own designs. In 2012, in an event called “Chiacchiratta with Kevin” where students are encouraged to have a more close-up and personal conversation with the Architect, Low made a casual statement, “Starchitects like Frank Gehry are simply Architects that design forms with no content and just replicating their forms/styles all over the world” a statement that will eventually serve to become a simultaneous source of frustration and inspiration in my forming of this thesis. To me, it was a malaise in the architectural practice that besets not only Architects and students of architecture, but also the public alike – that practical and functional criteria eclipses the importance of all other qualities in the appreciation and justification of a building’s being. Through the OOO lens, it is evident that Architecture-as-form has been turned into a functional object – a mere tool robbed of all its unspoken wonders. Architecture design can be said has been reduced due its relation as a functional requirement with man.

In OOO terms, this is known as undermining Architecture-as-object.

12 13

ArcAsia Bali Conference. 2012.

Low, K. 2010. Small Projects. (Oro Editions).

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Another distinct example of undermining architecture today is through the ideas of ‘Parametricism’, an architectural method termed in 2008 by Patrik Schumacher, himself a renowned partner in Zaha Hadid Architects.14

“Parametricism is one of the most pervasive current techniques involves populating modulated surfaces with adaptive components. Components might be constructed from multiple elements constrained/cohered by associative relations so that the overall component might sensibly adapt to various local conditions.” 15–Patrik Schumacher The interconnected components can be clearly seen in the building’s formal language of flows and swarms. Parametrically designed building method is about inserting a set of component of data into the program, and using algorithms, the design is then generated responding to the inputs which impacts the overall building design. General types of data, or parameters, that are used to affect the form are sunlight, wind, heat and/or sound data that would best suit the building program (itself another form of parameter). This example of undermining Architecture shares similar idea of practice similar to Low’s agendas where the building is produced and vindicated by the sum of its parts to generate the building as a whole.

“Any architectural movement that redirects legitimacy from the discrete entity towards a grammar of parts undermines architecture” 16 The above examples show contemporary buildings being validated by their participation to a larger network such as urban context, performativity and sustainability criteria. This should serve as a starting point for architects to be aware and realise other invisible realities and qualities in architecture that have been sidelined. Environmental concern is of course important duty of architects to keep it well and going; but such ambitions are not fit to stand as the sole justification of a work of architecture. Here, Architecture is completely robbed of its mystical plus infinite qualities; it is being jailed by its relations to its parts. From Classicism to Modernism, Postmodernism, De-constructivism, and Parametricism17; this thesis presents and speculate OOO as the new theoretical perception, from which fresh strains of diffuse architectural notions and languages could arise.

Schumacher, P. 2010. Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism - ‘Let the style wars begin’.

Schumacher, P. 2008. Parametricism as Style - Parametricist Manifesto.

16 Gage, M. 2015. Killing Simplicity. Any Corporation 17 Gage, M. 2015. Log 33. Any Corporation. Pg 100.

14 15

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DECENTRALIZING THE SUBJECT

The criticism against the anthropocentric position also points to a greater point of contention in Architecture which is the problem of relationism. One could argue that relationism is the cause of many reduced reality and the anthropocentric mindset that has been embedded within our culture.

By thinking about architecture as an (OOO) object, my stance is that we have the chance to redefine architecture which can have significant impact on how the discipline can operate in the future.

“Therefore a book has no object. As an assemblage, a book has only itself, in connection with other assemblages and in relation to other bodies without organs.” 18 -Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

For the last several decades, it can be argued that the architectural discipline has largely been influenced by the writings of Gilles Deleuze, specifically with interests in the relationships, flows and process of things happening beneath or beyond things.

Mario Carpo claimed, in a recent lecture on Big Data lecture, that even the digital era that tries to incorporate notions of flows, has largely run its course.19 Given that flat ontology is reasonably new and untested within the architectural discourse, this thesis proposes that OOO offers a hint to how we might realign our thinking about these forms of architectural relations. Todd Gannon draws a good point of the part-to-whole hierarchy in Architecture discipline and how OOO privileges part-to-part relationships. He states that this theory still has very sound logic but not the kind we have seen before in the discipline. My stance in this thesis is that using OOO as a method of thinking, we are able to access other parts of reality in Architecture, thus creating new forms of values embedded within it. The following case studies suggest the allusion of OOO in Architecture and presents the argument of how Architecture could be perceived in the realm of OOO. 18 19

Deleuze, G. Guattari, F. 1980. A Thousand Plateaus.

Stadelschule Architecture Class Public Lecture by Mario Carpo. 2015.

Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAg-mBNfc5g

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P AR T 0 2

HELSINKI GUGGENHEIM PROPOSAL

Helsinki Guggenheim Museum Proposal by Mark Foster Gage

My first case study is Helsinki Guggenheim Museum. This Guggenheim Museum design is a proposal by Architect Mark Foster Gage and is located along the waterfront of Helsinki in Finland. This project as claimed by the Architect as being ‘designed without any conventional relational alibis to the outside as a mainstream architecture would, for instance, to site context and sustainability features.’ Conversely, this project was constructed from ‘recycled digital materials’ which does not seem anyhow related to the building’s program, site or user specificity. One could argue that Mark Gage is an object-oriented thinker because in his essay ‘Killing Simplicity’, he writes that architecture (an object) as OOO suggest must first be understood to have infinite qualities, properties and relations; however their complete reality should not be reduced to common critique and observation. “Architecture can be justified only by its existence and not by reductively isolated key relationships”20 –Mark Gage This means that Architects should begin to look for other unconventional ways of perceiving Architecture, and techniques to explore new forms of Architecture relations (to other objects, not just form a human perception) and meanings.

20

Gage, M. 2015. Killing Simplicity. Any Corporation.

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Through the lens of OOO, this project does attempt to allude a form of acknowledgement towards this theory. By firstly being aware that the design of this project was done without any relation to any practical agendas, one could look at this architecture and reflect on it by pure experience. As Harman states, one way to do justice to objects is to consider that their reality is free of all relations (autonomous reality), and deeper than all reciprocity. “It is like a dark nucleus, irreducible to its own pieces and equally irreducible to its outward relations with other things.” 21

This diagram explains the notion in theory whereby between two objects, one is called the ‘real object, one that withdraws from all experience; the other the ‘sensual object’ which exist only in experience.

21

Harman, G. (2011). The Quadruple Object. (Zero Books).

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What would this mean for Architects? This changes the role of Architects into designing qualities that embraces and hints the presence of other realities (inspired by relations of other objects), instead of extracting great, particular ideas into diagrams or concepts. This proposition changes the role of Architects and from there it would also affect the modes of production that they employ. Referring back to the case study Helsinki Guggenheim, Mark Gage designed the museum without addressing the common ‘necessity’ as seen in most architectural practices today, it was designed independent of environmental criteria, cost, site context, politics and social considerations, itself a gesture that seemingly borders on being a taboo in contemporary practice. Conversely, the Helsinki Guggenheim can also be seen to be alluding a sort of cultural value which is embedded within the Architecture. The familiar figurative definitions carried by many of the individual figures used in its design, such as Minions, Chickens, Chinese fan et cetera, were intended by the Architect to ‘short-circuit readings of relational composition or symbolism’ – in other words, to favor of the emergence of new forms of architectural meaning by means of losing their existing signifier-signified relationships currently entrenched within the mind of society. Here for the first time, we are able to grasp architecture, purely for its own, free from its bondage as equipment hired for a functional resolution to a limited set of perceived problems.

KITBASHING

Furthering the subject on architecture production, this project also demonstrates a new method of composition. The term used for this construction method is called ‘Kitbashing’. This technique is being researched at Yale University and is pioneered by the same Architect Mark Gage. This digital modeling technique recycles pre-worked digital models, in order to produce high-resolution formal compositions. The students researching ‘Kitbash’ managed to collaborate with Autodesk Corporation to develop this production technique by using Fusion 360 and Meshmixer software programs.

After one year of research, this technique was then applied to Guggenheim Helsinki and the final model was materialized in Belgium, standing three feet tall.

22

Kitbashing Research in Yale. Retrieved from: http://www.mfga.com/mfga-kitbashing-research

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This model was a single pass 3D printed model which was a success from the techniques developed by the Yale Graduates. Here, we can say that the technique used in this project also abides to the definition of OOO and suggest a reality in which architecture can exist that disengages the conventional architecture production method.

This is not to proclaim that architecture should only be built this way. Conversely as we have discussed that through OOO, one possibility of the role of an architect is to look through OOO lens and begin to study the relations between other objects and that the production would innovate accordingly.

Kitbashing Research

by Mark Gage and Yale Graduates

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INTERIM SUMMARY

With the Helsinki Guggenheim competition itself already being the most popular architectural competition in history with over 1,715 entries, the tournament also served as a platform that reflected society’s prevailing, unspoken cultural conscience towards this ‘building-as-object’. Many controversial opinions and comments that reeked of functionalist sentiments such as “This is not environmental friendly” and “This does not blend in the context” unwittingly highlighted the ever-present and growing bondages in the form of external moral or transdisciplinary obligations confronting Architecture that threatens the discipline’s very own autonomy.

An additional reading to the project would be to see it as a reversal to the conventional regionalist approach, where, instead of using context to inform the design of the building, the building affects the context instead. In this case, the building-as-object becomes an instrument to produce new realities, rather than it being a product of reality. Guggenheim Helsinki is an important project because it prompts us to react and rethink the way we perceive Architecture. From this chapter, using OOO as a tool of inquiry has given us a clue or a method to perceive, and by some means points to provide Architecture back the value of itself as an object.

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TE-1

TE-1 project by Ruy Klein

My second case study is on a project called TE-1 by New-York based architectural office, Ruy Klein. This was a collaboration with a major tidal electric company from Colorado that owns patents for technologies related to renewable power generation via tidal waves.

The interesting point to note here is the reaction of the residents in Wales (in which the project is sited) towards the original design, in which many protested to the proposal on the reasons that introduction of such machines in open waters ‘disturb the pristineness of nature’.23 Given the choices of pursuing power sources between nuclear and tidal sources, the option to procure a nuclear facility eventually prevailed on similar aesthetic grounds despite the numerous environmental advantages of a renewable tidal source. According to principal David Ruy, society has yet to develop the necessary aesthetic cultural apparatus to confront an object that seemingly disturbs the intactness of nature with its ‘ugliness’; rather, society chooses the path of immediate comfort by absconding from this encounter – choosing to hide a familiar, albeit a far more harmful machine, in the forest.

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Public Lecture at the Stadelschule Architecture Class (SAC) by David Ruy. 2014.

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Subsequently, Ruy Klein developed a series of alternative proposal for the projects that attempts to sublimate the aesthetics of the lagoon-objects into the prevailing aesthetic criteria of the romantic picturesque or that of ‘pristine nature’ – however not completely. An estrangement arises in perceiving this object, identifiable only at a precise point of its straddle between the realm of the man-made and nature. It is also in this moment that the project is at its most irreducible (towards that of being a metaphor or caricature) – where the lines between the grotesque and the picturesque are blurred, imbuing the object with its quality of strangeness.

In his essay ‘Returning to (Strange) Objects’, Ruy talks about his position towards nature as a designer. He says that ‘nature’ itself is a super-container of objects that are currently categorized within it, which can be interpreted under OOO terms as a ‘made-up unity’. A return to object is the turning away from the romantic understanding of nature, towards the particularities of strangeness in an object. This resonates with the OOO ideology on flat ontology of how objects should be perceived and how Ruy perceives objects without overmining it and thinking it is a part of nature.

TE-1 project by Ruy Klein

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Apart from his perception of nature, Ruy is concerned about the notion of what constitutes the real. His questions on the real resonates very clearly with OOO. According to him, society in general already have an idea of how the real should look like. This has been society’s basis to inform itself of what is familiar and unfamiliar. The consequences of this to the discipline can be seen when a proposal is being deemed ‘unrealistic’ for the reason that it ‘looks weird’. This implies that the proposed architecture does not how reality should look. If so, what decides how reality should look, in the first place?

“Architecture is the first thing that tells us what reality looks like”24, said Ruy during an interview at Innsbruck University. In other words, Ruy is also implying that the role of Architects is to challenge the notions of that which is deemed unrealistic or unfamiliar.

In OOO terms, it could mean finding access to hidden qualities and relations embedded within Architecture-as-object.

How he devises this method of designing as I interpret, is through his thinking as a designer. According to Ruy, an attempt to design weirdness will backfire, because the attempted design would look weird in a way that one would expect weirdness to look like. “Think of a monster movie that is not frightening but tragically hilarious. Most of our celebrated monsters are not monsters at all but familiar friends that make us laugh.

This kind of monsters are not about novelty or strangeness but familiarity.”25

By pushing expectations and estranging the aesthetic desires of the residents, Ruy created a familiar looking, yet strange object in the TE-1 project. The usage of lagoon-like forms with nested areas gave rise to sub-lagoons that are read not as machines, but chunks of natural formations. According to the architect, one experiences a moment of estrangement when looking at these designs for the first time. However, Ruy admits that these moments are fleeting, as a familiarisation is quickly forged upon recognition. This relationship is but one of the infinite relations that it can have; through the object-oriented thinking, the object itself remains withdrawn, this is the same occurrence with our surrounding buildings as well.

24 25

Interview with David Ruy in Innsbruck University. 2014. Retrieved from: https://vimeo.com/88102002 Ruy, D. 2015. Log 33. (Any Corporation). Pg 100.Pg 85.

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His works and method can be seen as an attempt to break through the boundary of the ‘real’ and accessing the other inaccessible relations to a certain level. Ruy’s method of hinting the ‘other realities’ of architecture is by taking a familiar reality of man and with methods of estrangement, to create new forms of unfamiliar Architecture.

He then represents it on a familiar format, (for example satellite imagery reminiscent of google earth snapshots) as a method to challenge the notion of what ‘real’ is in our minds, as seen in the TE-1 project.

As a key analysis, my stance towards the Helsinki Guggenheim Museum and TE-1 is that both projects destabilizes what we think architecture should look like by intentionally breaking its own existing relation towards man. This has created new advantages that were unexpected beforehand and even so unintentionally created other pragmatic agendas. Designers should not be bound to any sort of requirements and be liberated as we enter an era of technology, big data and acceptance of multiplicity.

This ontology allows us to recreate our mindset and produce other forms of qualities and realities in Architecture, in both discipline and practice.

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CONCLUSION

The impacts brought about by object-oriented thinking in Architecture can be understood through three critical aspects: in terms of Ideology, Method, and Formal Lexicon.

Ideology Ideologically speaking, OOO provides a defense against the ever-increasing modes of trivializations that the architectural discipline faces today, specifically in the form of undermining or overmining. The various autonomous qualities of architecture can be undermined in the sense of being reduced to a series of capitalistic marketing bullet points (building classification ratings) or as badges of associations to sustainability (e.g. LEED certifications or green building credentials). Conversely, architecture is overmined when it becomes caricatured and legitimized by its participation in a singular big idea, where a diagram is usually the relational conduit to justify its being (think BIG’s architectural rationale for their Mountain Dwellings project in Denmark as the result of a series of convenient diagrammatic nips and tucks – producing entrances by lifting corners of buildings or selective pushing of its massing according to whims of an arrow).25 Here, OOO provides relief by means of the possibility of producing architecture that is free from such relational alibis, and hence, more ‘resistant to consumption and cliché’.26 A case in point would be Gage’s Helsinki Museum, a project that has shifted itself to pure aesthetic visuals and one that doesn’t concern itself with other practical concerns. It provides the chance for audiences to question their perception of what the buildings is and, in return, invent new forms of logic in the way architecture can be perceived.

Despite the spatial uncertainties of the new synthetic world, provocative opportunities are evident as the computational and the ecological movements merge and attention shifts to the sublime horizon that is glowing with feral technologies. – Ruy Klein 25

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3 Warp-Speed Architecture Tales (TED talk) by Bjarke Ingels. 2009.

Retrieved from: https://www.ted.com/talks/bjarke_ingels_3_warp_speed_architecture_tales#t-22430 Ruy Klein. Retrieved from: http://www.ruyklein.com/about_rk.html

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Method Methodologically speaking, object-oriented thinking provides new room for architecture to instrumentalize ideas from multiple doctrines, opening up various avenues of exploration that were previously left unimagined for reasons that they were either uninteresting, unimportant or taboo to the prevailing ontological thoughts of their time. If relationism and anthropocentricism produced hierarchical inside-outside dichotomies between that of the manmade and nature, then flat ontology equalizes the top-down hierarchical relationship between man and the world at large, in such a way that there is no longer a specific and targeted ‘outside’ or ‘subject’ (e.g. nature, the divine, the rational mind, the irrational mind) from which the Architect taps into for disciplinary inspiration and aspiration. The possibility of exploiting ‘intellectual materials’ from within the manmade itself, such as ‘Kitbashing’ (using recycled technological creations as a method of figuration or defining axiomatic building blocks in a project), or ‘Estrangement’ (defamiliarizing that which is familiar through methods of discontinuation, such as glitching, bugging or flawing) opens up an avenues of formal exploration which has thus far evaded past efforts. Channels to re-imagine new forms of composition are also present in OOO, where, for example, the agencies of copying, replicating, imitating and reproducing are dusted away from the shelves of the contemporary taboo and employed directly as design tools and operations.

This liberates Architecture as being a fixed idea of a functional tool and also liberates designs from a limited set of perceived problems.

Formal Formally speaking, after a long period of focus on Deleuze-influenced paradigms of fluidity and connectivity, OOO holds the potential to revitalize architecture’s formal lexicon by once again reintroducing and reiterating the disciplinary significance of disjointed formal logics such as chunks, joints, gaps, parts, interstices, contour, near-figure, misalignment, patchiness, low-res, nesting, and embedding, among others. The respite from hierarchical part-to-whole relationships brought about by OOO

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also ushers in a new era of speculation on part-to-part formal relations, where global organizational regimes are suppressed in favour of local ones. This is best illustrated through methods such as piling, chunking, accumulating, etc where differences between parts are derived from its direct relationship to other neighbouring parts; this is in stark contrast to the prevalent grid-based organizing systems (stacking, extrusion, UV mapping and network deformation) that has been in use since the early days of modernism until the end of the digital turn – where a top-down, global organizing element (most commonly the grid) has always been the overarching, transcendental indexical presence in any given composition.

Critique and Self-reflection The question of which philosophy architecture should consult and be guided by, for instance whether or not it should adopt an object-oriented rather than a relational ontology, cannot be answered in advance of working with such an ontology.27 – Patrik Schumacher 2012 All said, although on the surface Schumacher is a strong opponent of object-oriented thinking, however his quote here suggest the opposite, rather it can be seen as a rallying call to explore this ontology. At the end of the day, with Architecture being a discipline of the humanities, it may still be a difficult preposition for OOO and the ideas espoused by flat ontology to displace the idea that Man possesses a privileged relationship between himself and the world at large - itself an idea still ingrained strongly within society. It may also be the case that at a certain point in the future, and for various reasons unforeseen, a rise in nostalgic tendencies within society triggers a romantic return to human-centric design. Despite the uncertainties, it is worth appreciating the intellectual value of the alternative propositions brought about by OOO, if not for the appeal of it being the sole contrarian position against the dominance of prevailing contemporary discourses on connectivity and relationism at large today.

27

Schumacher, P. 2012. Architecture’s Next Ontological Innovation. Pratt Institute, New York

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B I B L I O G R A P H Y Books Harman, G. (2011). The Quadruple Object. Winchester, U.K. ; Washington, D.C.: Zero Books.

Bryant, L. (2011). The Democracy of Objects. Open Humanities Press.

Kwinter, S. (n.d.). Requiem: For the city at the end of the Millenium. Barcelona: Actar.

Kwinter, Sanford. “Who’s Afraid of Formalism?” in Phylogenesis: FOA’s Ark. Barcelona: Actar, 2004.

Gage, M. (2011). Aesthetic theory : Essential texts. New York ; London: W.W. Norton.

Mosley, J. and Sara, R. (2013), The Architecture of Transgression: Towards a Destabilising Architecture. Archit Design, 83: 14–19.

Loos, A., & Opel, Adolf. (1998). Ornament and crime : Selected essays (Studies in Austrian literature, culture, and thought. Translation series). Riverside, Calif.: Ariadne Press.

Lifchez., N., & Leach, N. (1997). Rethinking Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis.

Groat, L., & Wang, David. (2013). Architectural research methods (Second ed.).

Somol, R. and Whiting, S. (2009) Notes around the Doppler Effect and Other Moods of Modernism. The MIT Press on behalf of Perspecta.

Kant. I. (1790). Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Krauss, R. (1979) Sculpture in the Expanded Field.

Rendall. J. (2006). “Critical Spacial Practice.” Art and Archtiecture: A Place Between.

Bogost, I. (2012). Alien phenomenology, or, What it’s like to be a thing (Posthumanities ; 20). Minneapolis, Minn. ; London: University of Minnesota Press.

Carpo, M. Ed. (2012)The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2012. Wiley & Sons Ltd. Low, K. 2010. Small Projects. Oro Editions.

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Locations & Visits -The Louvre Box House by Kevin Mark Low, Malaysia. 2014.

-Postmodernism Architecture Study trip with Mark Wigley and Beatriz Colomina.

Vitra, Basel. 2015.

-ArcAsia Conference, Bali. 2012.

Journals & Articles -Davidson, C. (2015) Log33. Anyone Corporation.

-Davidson, C. (2015) Log34. Anyone Corporation.

-Brough, J., Erdogan, S., & Khalili, P. (Eds.). (2010). Perspecta 43: Taboo. The Yale Architectural Journal.

-Roosth, S. (2013), Of Foams and Formalisms: Scientific Expertise and Craft Practice in -David Ruy Essay : Returning to Strange Objects -Harman, G. 2013. Zero person and the Psyche Essay.

-Schumacher, P. 2010. Patrik Schumacher on Parametricism - ‘Let the style wars begin’.

-Sullivan, L. 1896. The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.

-Schumacher, P. 2008. Parametricism as Style - Parametricist Manifesto.

-Schumacher, P. 2012. Architecture’s Next Ontological Innovation. Pratt Institute, New York

Videos & Programmes -Public Lecture at the Stadelschule Architecture Class (SAC) by David Ruy. 2014.

-Bartlett International Lecture series 12/13 by Graham Harman. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hflvToKOWCg -Stadelschule Architecture Class Public Lecture by Mario Carpo. 2015. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAg-mBNfc5g -Interview with David Ruy in Innsbruck University. 2014. Retrieved from: https:// vimeo.com/88102002

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SHING YI LEE shingyi_92@hotmail.com