5. Interactivity
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The New Transparency and some
hint on the "hows"
In Paris Ecaade 1998 I gave a speech
called "HyperArchitecture" which
lent its title to the first book of the series. We must now reconsider
this line of thought.
HyperArchitecture means conducting
a search for an architecture characteristic of the Information Age. Information
is the greatest commodity of this age. The vegetable we buy at the supermarket
is 90% information (research, marketing, and distribution). The same, only
more so, goes for appliances or automobiles. In addition, more and more
people are producing goods that are "pure" information. In other words,
information is the key to this age and electronics are its main tool. But
the crucial aspect is not the bits of information themselves, their immense
number and continuing mutability, as much as their capacity to interconnect
and interrelate.
The world of Information Technology
is, in fact, like a mobile web, in which the fundamental elements are the
inter-connections among the atoms or bits of information. If this fluidity
describes it, then it is the dynamic quality which characterises this world.
We can regroup units, one with the other, put them into a hierarchy of
innumerable relationships and create models. And, with the variations of
an atom, verify change in the entire system or, changing the sense, the
order or interfacing of the connections, forming different worlds. The
structure of the Hypertext is the key. There, the bits of information are
connected by channels through which we can freely search, freely find,
freely construct our own story.
Now, the question is: can we work
on an architecture which is not only metaphorical (i.e.: an architecture
that makes static information its value), but also an architecture that
is a dynamic "creator of metaphors", which leaves its own decodification
open, free, structured/non-structured and suggests and offers to the user
the possibility of constructing "his/her own story"?
So the real challenge is not only
how to create an architecture that is narrative and metaphorical, as is
a part of all contemporary architecture, but how architecture itself can
be interactive.
But just a moment; the problem
here is not of a technical nature. We know that smart houses exist in which
the environment changes depending on the situation. There is the "host"
scenario in which certain lights are dimmed and doors opened, several sliding
walls or double ceilings are moved, a temperature or air flow is created
and then the DVD starts up with a certain film or musical selection. Perhaps,
and this is already on its way to us with microfibers in wall coverings,
the physical characteristics of the walls may also be able to interactively
change in grain, porosity and their capacity to absorb sound or color.
And the opposite "house with children" scenario could also be obtained
in which everything is changed, or even a "sleep" scenario or a thousand
others. As in the house of William Gates, we can create a scenario for
every situation. Furthermore, the architecture can interactively mutate
with the external environment; with the wind, the light, noises the flow
of visitors, and temperature.
The real problem, as always, is
not of a technical nature, which is easy and almost banal - even if it
well deserves our attention and admiration - but rather of an esthetic
nature. In other words, how to construct an architecture that would have
the "knowledge" to be capable of being interactive, of being able to have
structures, spaces and situations that are as navigable and modifiable
as a hypertext.
Using steel-reinforced cement in
the new architecture of the Twenties did not require in itself a new esthetic.
Old buildings could be made with support pillars and beams and then re-covered
with a coat of stucco following the classic Renaissance perspective.
But through a collective effort
progressing from the Glass Pavilion by Bruno Taut to the Maison de verre
by Pierre Chareau and passing through Gropius, Mies and Mendelsohn, architects
understood that perhaps the transparency permitted by the punctiform structure
was the key to a different vision of the world. No more interior-exterior
separation, but a freer way of relating to the environment. Transparency,
precisely since it represented the fundamental esthetic of the new architecture,
also became the ethic: the willingness to objectively open up toward the
new world.
Today we not only have a very powerful
method for conceiving, manipulating and building but are also faced with
great, new theme: What is the esthetic sense of interactivity? Will the
breakthrough role played by transparency in the new architecture of the
Twenties be held today by interactivity? Will the new architecture allow
everyone to be both actor and protagonist? Will our children be able to
interact not only with the monitor but also with the environment and the
world and especially with the space of architecture in a new dimension
of our being?
Dell'interattività
Proiezioni e metamorfosi urbane
First they are coming from the field of arts. We all experienced since Sixties interactive installations. We were not aware at the time that this research was one of the keys at the future of architecture. But the same happened with Cézanne: who understood in 1880 that is effort toward an "analytical" vision was the main force behind the abstract, elementary, industrial analytical way of Neue Sachlichkeit? I asked to Alicia Imperiale, who is publishing in my series a book entitled New Flatness, few names of today artists that are in this stream of thought. She mentioned Stelarc, Gary Hill, naturally Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Mona Hatoum. Imperiale is very competent so I guess these are very precious advises for further researches.
In the field of architecture I want first of all make the name of Toyo Ito. His search of hybridation between an artificial nature and a natural building reaches its maximum in his interactive architecture such as Cupola A, Egg of Wind and the Wind Tower. I was also to mention Gianni Ranaulo, an Italian architect established in Paris which theorises and build many examples of "light architecture". This is innovative strategy to find a way in which interactive architecture finds a way to deal with the inner city. Finally last but not least in the American scene should be pointed out the work of Diller+Scofidio and in Europe the work of Nox Group. Without the profound meaning of the word interactivity the work of these architects cannot be understood.
Mies Van Der Rohe, in closing the Werkbund Congress in Vienna in 1930, said, "The new era is a reality; it exists independently of the fact of whether or not we accept it or refuse it. It is neither better nor worse than any other era; it is simply a given fact and is in itself indifferent of values. What is important is not the ‘what’ but purely and simply the ‘how’". The how is ours.
L'albergo che cambia
Da un luogo all'altro
Costruzione e progetti
Piccoli Gruppi organizzati
The End
Go BACK TO THE FIRST
Antonino Saggio, "Interactivity" in Promise and reality,
Proceedings of the 2000 Ecaade Conference, Bauhaus Weimer 2000 (pp.239-243).