DETERGENCIES
ARCHITECTURE AS AN INSTRUMENTAL INFRASTRUCTURE BEYOND SPACE
NECESSARY ARCHITECTURE
Before building his hut, protecting him against outdoor conditions, the primitive man had to clean and smooth the surface he will build on.
This act, previous and inherent to the construction, involves the conscious and oriented modification of the existing reality.
The primitive hut myth as the real origin of architecture summarizing the rules that identify Architecture and Nature by imitation was related in his manuscript “De Architectura” by Marco Vitruvius military engineer missing something. The selection and preparation of this site happened prior to the construction of an enclosure where shelter in the place frequented by men to meet.
Perhaps the artificialized ground involves the true origin of Architecture. The leveling of surface discontinuities, that would allow men to think without having their attention distracted, set the origin of the meeting space where roofs will appear.
Should this hypothesis be valid, out of any epistemological historicist aim, the concept of Architecture as a physical construction could be extend to Architecture as a construction of events through physical modifications on existing reality, a necessary act of alteration to allow desired situations happen.
POSSIBILISTIC ARCHITECTURE
In his THEORY OF OBJECTS, Alexius Meinong explains the concept of nonexistent objects. This theory aims a study prior to the experience based on a priori intentionality. The denial of the existence as an object quality means that nonexistent objects are also subject of action, whether possible or not. Objects that do not exist but are possible, like a gold mountain, subsist. Objects that do not exist and are impossible, like a square circle, absist in a defined nature with a contradictory presence. Intentionality allows the possibility of absistent objects to be denied.
Architecture operates with subsistent objects.
In his THEORY OF MODAL REALISM, David Lewis argues that any possible world is as real as we the one we live in, being a casually isolated irreducible fact. This theory distinguishes existence, any possible world, and presence, the world we live in. Mathematical entities are abstract constructs that exist because of their usefulness. Although not being intuitive, possible realities that help us to state philosophical concepts do exist also in a logic way. Possible worlds must have physical existence along with an abstract logical existence.
Architecture operates with non present but possible worlds.
In CULTURAL ECOLOGY, Marshall Sahlims states that culture is directly determined by actions while environment sets physical limitations. Opposed to cultural geography determinism, possibilism considers existing possibilities in doctrines and circumstances to provide the materialization of desired aims.
Architecture operates with possibilistic geographies beyond environment limitations.
INTANGIBLE ARCHITECTURE
In ON THE SOCIETY OF INTANGIBLES, Juan Freire questions the role of Architecture in the contemporary scenario where intangible infrastructures are the key forces of post-industrial society. According to the study WHERE IS THE WEALTH OF NATIONS?, the importance of natural resources depends entirely on their conversion into wealth by the intangible capital, which includes human capital and organizational systems of the means of production.
In Freire´s words, although the primacy of intangible forces becomes evident in any social development, it is therefore paradoxical the obsession about tangible infrastructures that accepts the implicit assumption that its development will ensure economic growth. In a hyper-realistic culture, which tries to manipulate a reality both digital and analogical, uncertainty and the speed of change expand the possibilities for modifying reality.
The city is experienced as a landscape of possibilities to be explored according to received information and accessibility. The emergence of position localization technologies and the upgrading of transport networks have made mobility and information the main factors articulating contemporary cities reality, made of areas of interaction between nodes.
SPECIFIC ARCHITECTURE
Contemporary cities have evidenced the failure of any totalitarian planning imposition and the ingenuity of pursuing stable or permanent situations. As a result of evolutionary organizations, traditional assumptions have proved to be unable to narrow an undefined problem where cause-effect relations are no longer visible and, when they are, become unreadable.
Adaptability of buildings and urban spaces shaping the city reveals itself as a crucial intangible factor, preventing structural and functional obsolescence of built environment. Considered uses in original designs rarely remain unchanged during the lifespan. The assumption of this condition requires an open architecture and urbanism, capable of supporting negotiated decisions in a complex reality far from disciplinary practices.
An essential versatility trying not to plan situations but to provide reality so they could be possible. In this scenario of futile predictions specific becomes paradoxically the only effective tool for vagueness. Nothing is more demanding than the design of that with unknown dimensions.
PARTICIPATIVE ARCHITECTURE
In his THE SOCIETY OF THE SPECTACLE, Guy Debord assets that everything once directly lived has now become a representation, a description of modern society that affirms the replacement of social condition by its image and where the show, an inverted representation of relationships between goods as mediators of social life, replaces genuine activity.
Recovery of genuine activity requires the involvement of the alienated spectator as an autonomous actor. Architecture must redefine its status, perverted now as a manipulated representation of the show values leading to nowhere but themselves and where means coincide with goals, in search of a practice that exploits its potential as an effective instrument for generating situations, restoring the active participation of citizens in urban scenarios setting.
Despite the utopian nature of Situationist postulates, predicated on the assumption of an automated production that would make all time a leisure, their proposals could be paradoxically included in the contemporary urban practice of the economic system they aimed to change.
ARCHITECTURE BEYOND SPACE
In THIS IS NOT NOW, Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio wonder the possible future of Architecture. Being the dominant cultural medium of expression until the invention of Guttenberg´s printing press, its importance declined due to its heavy and immovable status, too slow and rigid to compete with books and newspapers.
For Diller and Scofidio the two trends resulting from personality disorders suffered by contemporary Architecture, technophobia and technophilia, include in their rhetoric the assumption that space has died.
In JUNKSPACE, Rem Koolhaas states the disappearance of Architecture in the second half of the 20th century. Characterized by a junk space, post-modern Architecture has only designed space from its container, resulting in objects whose materiality aims final states requiring their destruction to be modified.
For Koolhaas, despite the modern willingness to universally share science blessings, junk space can no longer be understood or remembered and its transparency only shows the impossibility of participating in the place it hides.
The question wondered by Victor Hugo remains without a convincing answer. What position should the Architecture defend in a time where digital transmission of information leads to a redundant saturation?
Should these theses, claiming the space or its traditional conception has dead, be true, a new paradigm where Architecture must abandon spatial qualification as the last validation criterion reveals itself essential in order to remain as an efficient vehicle for identity.
DETERGENCIES
Let us imagine space as fluid water. Any liquid surface tends to keep a minimum area. To extend it, we must act against its molecular cohesive forces.
Let us drop oil on water. The oil will tend to keep its molecules together stretching the water surface, which would act as an elastic fabric trying to counteract any alteration of its initial status by stretching the oil in return.
The size of the oil drop will depend on the balance between these two forces. We may change this size.
Detergents act reducing the interfacial tension of liquids.
Let us introduce a detergent affecting water but not oil. Water cohesion is weakened by the detergent and will not offer the same resistance to be stretched by oil, which continues applying the same attraction forces. As a result, the size of the oil drop is smaller than before the presence of any detergent.
Processes developed on a supporting platform tend to occupy a determined area, which we can refer as their influence zone.
Let us understand Detergencies as inductions able to distort influence zones by altering the status of the supporting platform they take place in.
Occupations vary elastically to adopt new balances by reconfiguring their boundaries according to specific needs.
Let us define Detergencies as inductive mechanisms to reach negotiated configurations where exiting resources are optimized.
AN INSTRUMENTAL CLASSIFICATION
Proposed classification aims, with the purpose of setting a valid operational range, the definition of qualitative categories to ease the instrumental organization of mechanisms used in the configuration of everyday environments together with artistic and architectural ones.
A PHYSICAL INDUCTION DETERGENCIES
A1 ERGONOMICS (CONTOUR CONDITIONING)
Ergonomics refers aspects regarding interaction between humans and artificial contexts in order to adapt this context to their needs while ensuring an efficient use of their abilities.
A1.1 Objects
Defining quality of an object is its non autonomous status which forces its status as a subject matter for action.
A1.1a Furniture
Mobile elements supporting human activities.
- An OPEN AIR CINEMA could be described is a number of chairs arranged in front of a screen
- In THE NEUFERT SUITE, Guillermo Kuitca sets abstract cartographies made of temporary and spatial relationships by representing furniture arrangements
- In his proposal for the TRÈS GRANDE BIBLIOTHÈQUE, Rem Koolhaas sets an immediate scale urbanism by defining spatial configuration by means of furniture arrangement.
A1.1b Tapestries
Mobile elements covering areas as facing.
- A BEACH could be described as clustered beach towels occupying the sand according to retarded stimulus.
- In PINK GHOST Périphériques transform an open plaza into an uncovered interior like space through the unification of trees, furniture and pavement by means of a continuous lining.
- In their proposal for PLAZA MAYOR DE SALAMANCA, Dosmasuno Architects raise a temporal distribution of the square through a layout of ephemeral plots defined by technical carpets.
A1.2 Wrappings
Defining quality of a wrapping is its topological perimeter which forces both exterior and interior accessibility.
A1.2a Reliefs
Shapes standing out from a reference surface
- A HALF-PIPE is an artificial U shaped surface for the practice of extreme sports.
- In SACCO AND VANZETTI READING-ROOM, Siah Armajani analyzes sociocultural and formal conditions influencing the surrounding configurations of specific situations.
- In the YOKOHAMA INTERNATIONAL PORT, FOA builds a continuous public plaza where surface reliefs define a fluid platform without linear directed circulation movements.
A1.2b Textures
Reference properties of the surfaces of a body
- An ARTIFICAL GRASS FIELD is a synthetic turf carpet mimicking conditions of natural grass.
- In GRUNDISS, Rachel Hegnauer interchange material conditions of an apartment and a garden by transplanting a grass surface from the garden to the apartment equal to its footprint area.
- In BARAKALDO´S PLAZA DEL DESIERTO, Eduardo Arroyo builds a map consisting on percentage distributions where reality vectors rearrange a quantified palette of preexistent site materials.
A2 TRANSMITTANCES (CONTOUR INPUTS)
Transmittance is the magnitude expressing the amount of energy through a surface unit area per time unit. Its calculation allows determining the amount of energy to be supplied in order to maintain desired conditions.
A2.1 Pumps
Defining quality of a pump is its resupplying status for retarded transfers.
A2.1a Generators
Devices converting a type of energy into a different one.
- A DYNAMO is an electric generator that operates by electromagnetic induction caused by the movement of a magnet.
- In THE WEATHER PROJECT, Olafur Eliasson explores the assumed experience of interior spaces by the insertion of a large sphere containing hundreds of lamps in a frequency only reproducing black and yellow colors.
- In VALLECAS ECOBULEVAR, Ecosistema Urbano builds public areas of activity where the insertion of integrated mechanisms for artificial conditioning replaces and accelerate the growth of natural trees.
A2.1b Batteries
Devices storing energy converting a reactive into reaction products.
- A CELL BATTERY is a primary accumulator of electricity converted into chemical energy through a reversible process.
- In DANDELIGHT, Drift collective implements the natural presence dandelions by adding copper sheets together with a LED powered by a cell battery.
- In her proposal for FUENTEÁLAMO TECHNOLOGIC PARK, Izaskun Chinchilla plans an uncertainty area where a collective facilities ring supplies the requirements of foreseen activities.
A2.2 Plugs
Defining quality of a plug is its immediate transferring status connected to a continue feeding power net.
A2.2a Trees
Tree circuits have a serial distribution of sequential paths.
- A HOME DELIVERY TRUCK concentrates deliveries according to shared circuits.
- In NIGHT AND DAY, Alexander Calder integrates similar circle shaped forms in a kinetic sculpture through articulated unions where masses maintain in balanced temporary instants.
- In his proposal for the VALENCIA UNIVERSITY CLASSROOMS BLOCK, Enric Miralles sets a fragmented arrangement of repeated classrooms grouped into parallel stripes connected by a communal corridor.
A2.2b Networks
Network circuits have a multiple distribution of alternative paths.
- A HOME DELIVERY MOTORCYCLE distributes single deliveries according to exclusive circuits.
- In GOOGLE FACILITIES, Marti Guixé replaces the requirement of a big kitchen in a traditional restaurant using a pick-up service from existing takeout restaurants in the surrounding neighborhood.
- In ALMERE STANDSTHEATER, Sanaa builds a complex pattern of interlinked spaces where contiguous distribution of variable size rooms allows a multiple non hierarchical circulation and use.
A3 SCENERIES (ENVIRONMENT INPUTS)
Scenery includes the set of sensitive circumstances configuring a scenario. These circumstances, whether corporeal or not, mean his configuration, transformation, update and layout.
A3.1 Ambients
Defining quality of an ambient is the joint condition of all factors affecting the status of the subset the act on.
A3.1a Atmospheres
Expanded groups of molecules without a proper shape occupying a volume.
- A GREENHOUSE is an isolated volume containing controlled conditions through the use of solar radiation to raise the temperature.
- In CONDENSATION CUBE, Hans Haacke materializes the inevitable influence of external conditions on a sealed environment where the condensation of inner water vapor reflects temperature changes.
- In THE BLUR BUILDING, Diller & Scofidio build a vapor cloud with the water from the lake by saturating the air by means of high pressure sprayers according to existing weather conditions.
A3.1b Infillings
Solid groups of molecules with a proper shape occupying a volume.
- A MARKET is a set of exhibition stalls and sales stands where people interchange gods.
- In MANY TIMES, Juan Muñoz involves the spectator by making him a virtual intruder of the dialectical relationships between the hundred figures which invade the room.
- In THE SENDAI MEDIATHEQUE, Toyo Ito builds a multipurpose stack of platforms supported by vertical cores where the furniture determines the function of each area.
A3.2 Machineries
Defining quality of a stage machinery is its status as a mechanism capable of transforming the physical configuration of a scenario.
A3.2a Stages
Mechanical components configuring the boundary a set.
- A CYCLORAMA is a colored surface acting as a canopy background to be replaced by Chroma Key mounting technique.
- In AEGIS HYPOSURFACE, Decoi Architects manipulate the shape of a paramorphic surface made of triangled faceted steel by regulating small hydraulic pistons that generate ruled sequences of equal elements.
- In the INTER-ACTION CENTER, Cedric Price builds a versatile support where a modular steel structure allows to insert different enclosures adapted to the proposed activities.
A3.2a Emitters
Conditioning components configuring the aspect of a set.
- A Metal Halide Lamp emits light with a power enough to allow the practice of sports at night as if it was daylight.
- In AGING, Dennis Oppenheim works with the external control of temporal dimension by placing a row of wax figures melting down in front of a row of heating lamps
- In HORMONORIUM , Décosterd & Rahm build an environment of specific physiological conditions where the light from fluorescent tubes reduces the secretion of melatonin and where the low oxygen level boosts the production of endorphins.
B VIRTUAL INDUCTION DETERGENCIES
B1 INSTRUCTIONS (ENVIRONMENT CONDITIONING)
Instructions consist in encoded sets of rules which transmit encrypted data and indicate actions to take. The code designates the subject action according to relevant records.
B1.1 Regulations
Defining quality of a regulation is its regulatory status over possible actions according to agreements stated by the members of a community.
B1.1a Boards
Physical layouts arranging possible occupations according to pertinent rules.
- A Multi-sports Court is a technical pavement where reference lines are painted.
- In SUEÑOS Y CONFLICTOS, Santiago Sierra delimits a public space by exclusively restricting the entrance to citizens with an official identification form a specific country.
- In KUVAS, Santiago Cirugeda designs items of urban furniture where a modified container placed in a restricted parking area acts as a podium for public activities.
B1.1b Calendars
Time layouts arranging possible occupations according to pertinent rules.
- A Multi-sports Court can, when not used to practice sports, be used as a parking.
- In WEATHFIELD, Agnes Denes questions the relationship between the rental value assigned to a plot and its yield by harvesting wheat on an expensive rent area at Manhattan.
- In his proposal for the YOKOHAMA FORUM, Rem Koolhaas presents a flexible platforms where multiple public activities are programmed according to time scheduled zones and minimum material infrastructures.
B1.2 Indications
Defining quality of an indication is its significant status as a sign for a given aspect of the reference reality.
B1.2a Signs
Encoded expressions of meaning that produce mental representations.
- A REVERSIBLE LANE is a width of a road able to be used in both directions according to the traffic board.
- In A SOUND GOWN SOFTER, Lawrence Weiner uses written language as a tool for the conceptual transformation of the space by the inclusion of typefaces meaning subjective perceptions on the viewer.
- In their proposal for the renewal of the HISTORICAL CENTER OF SALERNO, SANAA defines an intervention where the insertion of signals on the pavement links relevant places without modifying existing buildings.
B1.2a Windows
Visual expressions of meaning that produce visual images.
- A SPEEDOMETER is a device that translates instant speed into a representative visual representation.
- In S.P.O.R.E., Douglas Easterly and Matt Kenyon evidence the artificial condition of our reality by subordinating the conditions of am encapsulated plant to the stock market through a sophisticates pot.
- In ACTIONS TRANSPARENTING PETER EISENMAN, Andrés Jaque builds a public scenario of information where urban facilities show the evolution of the ongoing process of construction.
