Interfacing Realities: Introduction by Bart Lootsma

When talking about the relation between architecture and technology we traditionally deal with four different topics: organisation and infrastructure, aesthetics, construction, and production. The latter two topics are evident: while developments in the calculation of constructions have made wider suspensions possible as well as a reduction in materials, developments in construction technology have led to an industrialisation of the construction process. Such developments in production and construction were to a large degree determining for what Reyner Banham has called the "First Machine Age" and for the successful break-through of modern architecture. We will probably not talk much about these two topics during the conference, although it would be interesting to ask the panellists whether, and if yes, how they think the electronic revolution is also going to affect the construction and production of their designs. Machine Age or not, building is still one of the most archaic human activities. However, building is not one of the favourite subjects in the contemporary debate which focuses rather on imagining a completely immaterial architecture.

 

The First Machine Age also saw important changes in the field of infrastructure and organisation. Gas, water and light entered the buildings, and motorised traffic had its impact on urban development and planning. The building itself was conceived as a machine, as a disciplining or a curing machine like it has been described by Foucault, or as a "machine à habiter" as outlined by Le Corbusier, for which the factory and the abattoir served as models, as well as the ideas by Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor. All of them were buildings or machines which wanted to influence or improve the conditions and the behaviour of their inhabitants - sometimes quite drastically and against their will. Architecture tried to bring nature under its control.

 

What is most remarkable and surprising in the contemporary discussion about the influence of technology on architecture is that the relation between architecture and nature is conceived in a completely different way. Technology is now being conceived or imagined as a means of flexibly adapting architecture to nature. The computer then plays a crucial role as an intermediary between the organism and the technology. The organism can, in this case, be an individual body as well as a group of bodies, and the way in which and the entities between which the computer "mediates" is construed very differently by today"s panellists.

 

The title of this conference, "Interfacing Realities", suggests that the computer mediates between different realities. Between different landscapes, varying according to what we traditionally understand as landscape in architecture and urban planning, supplemented by landscapes in which wind, rain and sound also play an active role, and also fully virtual media landscapes. The computer mediates these landscapes to different configurations of bodies, configurations whose dynamic development can again be simulated and investigated by means of the computer. The mediation itself can also take on changing, dynamic forms. The dynamics of mediation sometimes makes the technology itself appear like an organism, or at least take on organic features. The dynamic role of the computer as mediator for the design also implies a shift regarding the moment of creative intervention by the designer. The design appears to receive a less and less definitive style or form specified by the designer. This form is increasingly determined by the choice of software and by the selection of data that are imported.