Idea Lab, a Brooklyn based theoretical design studio taught by Illya Azaroff, was asked to represent the culture of our times and where it is headed. I postulated that, like our technology, we too are absorbing all the different fields of study into ourselves, just like a black hole. The barriers are coming down, and as more things become more accessible to us, the skill set of the future individual will become even more diverse than it is now. No longer do we need individuals to solely be electricians, architects, engineers, carpenters, cameraman, reporters, etc. They will all be in one.
Innovation speaks of a day when everything can do anything. And by merely taking notice of how next week’s anticipated products have all the capabilities of last week's devices, it is irrefutable that we are attentively listening. Although the image of that day may be a bit more unclear than we would prefer, the means of how to get there is a message that innovation delivers quite clearly: that the culture of these times revolves around the individual.
This very culture is expressed by a constant means of refinement, one that repeatedly discards its layers towards a simplicity which we paradoxically refer to as complexity. Creator and creation gravitate toward one another in likeness; with each refinement, man sheds a layer of self and outsources those traits into mediums like technology, while the latter gradually personifies human traits.
And like how children reflect the image of their parents, creation also reflects creator, as these series of refinements portray how we are becoming simpler and more adept. To master a musical instrument, to pour over books in a library, to rent movies at the store, are all one by one, examples of activities being branded archaic. The internet, plug and play devices, social networking services, are all facets of instant gratification, the demagogue of our times. And smartly playing on our desires, its effects are refining man to a state in that every individual is like a black hole, drawing every desire and convenience closer and closer, all within a finger’s reach.
The days when Jimmy shreds the guitar while Neil backs him on the drums are numbered; those who aspire to be the next Daft Punk can orchestrate a symphony on a Roland sample machine in their basement. Black Friday used to be a Darwinist affair that took place at the stroke of midnight across shopping malls nationwide, but is now rapidly being replaced by the likes of online shopping services such as Amazon, Slick Deals, Newegg, and new shopping days like Cyber Monday. Even aspects of recent technology are becoming obsolete and replaced by stripped down and simpler versions of their predecessors; internet blogging is dying a slow death, the fly by fly updates on twitter have dominated, where people can instantly read complaints about the salad that someone had at McDonald’s.
The barriers are coming down in this world, because technology is so very pervasive. The world’s response to Babel is for everyone to learn English, since the language is easy to learn compared to the others such as Japanese and Arabic. The people of today dabble in many different things, Generation Z is geared to become a generation filled with jack-of-all-trades, where anyone can plug in to any situation and contribute work.
This individual oriented culture will ultimately refine itself to the point that all black hole individuals have become modular beings within a society. Just like the English language itself, putting certain people together will be like assembling certain letters to form words. Industry, niches, and specialists will be a thing of the past when skill sets become more varied within a single employee; the modern industrial revolution will produce standardized people.
But if the individual becomes standardized and modular, does that mean that the individual is artificial? Would we call people who use robotic limbs to replace lost ones, artificial people? And if so, would this apply to people who regenerate lost limbs and organs if stem cell research were to one day become commercialized? Technology, which is constantly being reinvented, is getting smaller and smaller. And although parodies on the shrinking size of Apple’s iPod units are amusing, it does hold a certain truth of where technology is headed: that one day technology will exist all around us, but out of sight. If this becomes reality, does that also mean that our reality will become artificial as well?
What does this mean for architecture?
More specifically, aside from designing buildings that are modular and technology integrated, where is this modular individual culture taking architecture? Perhaps buildings will no longer be in plain sight; just as how technology becomes seamless in our environments, why not buildings as well? Maybe the means of doing so might be to visibly hide the buildings so that facing a street elevation becomes watching a projected scene of what were to exist in the absence of the very buildings placed there. Or perhaps it means that architecture will biologically mimic locally existing natural systems in terms of structure, operation, and use to an extent where it blends in with those natural systems. Is this then, considered artificial?
Architecture will irrefutably follow wherever technology goes. But creator should also be wary of creation, because although their uses can be amazing and entertaining, we tend to forget that they are merely tools for us to control, not the other way around. We should be careful not to let the common extension of self be assigned to tangible forms manifested within wires, buttons, and monitors. Technology should be seen like a wild bronco to tame, meaning that it should be assimilated responsibly. So how will this affect our lifestyle?
“Space may be the final frontier, but it’s made in a Hollywood basement.”
At least that’s what the Red Hot Chili Peppers say. And they’re right.
But given the direction of the times, the validity of that statement may soon be outdated. Will environments also become artificial? What if space can be created in everyone’s basement? It may not necessarily mean the conditions of space are physically present, but they can most definitely be simulated. Add astronaut to the skill set of the individual, along with architect, musician, graphic designer, and movie director.
Simulation may even be commercialized further to the point where vacationers can experience destinations inside a simulation room thousands of miles away from the actual site. The term “staycation,” will be given an entirely new meaning. Consumers can make use of simulation rooms to become an extension or an experimental laboratory for their imaginations. “Do I have what it takes to climb Mount Everest? Can I run with the bulls? If I were to make Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien fight, who would win? What if I fought Jay Leno?”
Simulation can also be applied to benefit us in how we learn. What if the future of learning for children were in simulation rooms, where they can run and experience up close the same lessons which the children of today learn sitting in classrooms? Imagine a student being able to stand next to Guy Montag while he burns books in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 or watch Ralph and Jack struggle for leadership in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or feel the tension between the American man and Jig in Ernest Hemmingway’s Hills Like White Elephants. What if the next soldier learns the merits of honor and value of life while experiencing the Battle of Thermopylae, or the value of teamwork and self sacrifice through other simulated battles? Perhaps disaster prone communities can prepare people by simulating disasters?
Simulation can also benefit us in how we live. Forget spending hours on the internet reading CNET or Consumer Report product reviews, what if we can just go into our simulation room and play with the product virtually? No longer do we have to make returns because we took the risk of ordering a small and not a medium or because we thought we would look great in orange. What if during cold winter days, a jogger can just adjust his environment and jog around Central Park right inside his warm living room? Living in the city may be too cooped up for some, so they change the insides of their rooms so they can sleep in the great outdoors or perhaps seasonal affective disorder can be cured by changing what is displayed through your windows?
Simulation in the working environment will reap endless benefits as well. Imagine training employees who deal with clients, to become more proficient when speaking, putting them in business meeting scenarios where the client is furious or uninterested, forcing the trainees to figure a way to handle such cases. Perhaps that could also be a tool for employers during interviews. Customer services can then visually instruct callers how to fix that buggy modem at home. Employees can have Casual Thursday everyday in a dress code enforcing work environment because they are projected wearing business suits. The break room may be redefined as a team building room, as it can be changed into any scenario for employees to interact. No longer can your boss say that there isn’t any budget to throw a paintball party for Dwight’s birthday. Office pranks will be redefined as well.
Aside from addressing fully interactive environments, architecture might also have to start addressing the concept of portability –not only for utilities, but structures and the sense of an environment as well. Taking this idea of “plug and play” further, what if architecture led to instant structures, deployable spaces, or even to a larger scale, like portable communities? The depths of space and Earth’s waters are the final frontiers for architecture to explore. Space colonies and underwater colonies may be archetypes to heavily consider if man can no longer adapt to the environment in which he ruined. And if he ruined it, will man just simulate Earth all over again and take it wherever he goes?
Self deployed design has to be simplified so that anyone can carry out the assembly. In scope of disaster relief centered design, immediate relief structures have to be even simpler because they have just gone through a traumatic ordeal.
Looking into automobile airbags, it is a potential solution to having simplified and deployable immediate relief structures. Imagine a person just pulling a cord and having a domed structure instantly.
If the structure is spherical, it is possible to roll it over any terrain. It is even possible to exacavate soil and fill in the bottom half of the sphere in order to achieve:
a.) A flat surface for the interior
b.) Anchor support for the structure.
Another design obstacle is the materials to be used for this structure and what were the mid term and long term uses of said materials. Xenon gas has many useful properties and could be a potential gas to inflate this airbag structure.
Disaster is a moment when the conveniences of a modern society are absent and man is left with only a right to survive. To sustain this life, architecture must respond through a question of where the boundaries between human need and human desire meet. Human beings require sustenance and covering, but in light of disaster relief and the responsibilities that architecture has to life, the bare essentials of food, water, and shelter are in fact, inadequate to ultimately sustain it.
To promote life is architecture. Vicente Guallart humors us by saying, “There would be no need for architecture if human beings were content to live in caves or in trees.” Nourishment and shelter are enough to sustain life immediately, but more is required to promote its growth. Although the essentials for recovery is ultimately different per scenario, the criteria to promote growth would be to maintain the morale and hopes of an affected community.
Social interaction addresses this necessity as it is vital for healing. Humans are social creatures and have a tendency to be in groups than to be alone. This undulating yearning for companionship exhibits the overlap of human need and human desire that calls for design that should encourage deep connections between disaster victims. If man were to lose his sense of hope for life, how can the hope for recovery exist?
Take into consideration Robert Zemeckis’ film “Cast Away,” where the main character Chuck Noland, who was stranded on an uninhabited island after surviving a traumatic plane crash, created his own companion out of a volleyball that washed ashore. Note that the creation of this character came along only after Noland had already secured his bare necessities of food, water, and shelter. Throughout the film, the volleyball that personified an imaginary friend created a pseudo-dialogue for Noland to address his loneliness. Often times Noland would express his concerns to the volleyball, only to somehow imply that this imaginary friend had the solutions to his problems. Noland eventually found rescue after four years of living in solitude.
Even to gauge real life circumstance, the earthquake in Haiti last January also exemplifies how humans turn to social interaction as a necessity to recover from a disaster. Just two weeks after the innumerable amount of news coverage on the extent of the earthquake’s damage, the media began showing the people of Haiti trying to heal spiritually, whether by singing and clapping, sitting down and counseling each other, or playing double-dutch outside.
To respond is also architecture. To respond to environmental stimuli such as natural or man-made disasters, architects must take certain things into consideration, such as the severity of the damage caused, the amount of people affected, how immediate of a response is required, and what victims presently lack.
Perhaps being disaster affected should be viewed as a condition, a condition that gradually is healing overtime. To both respond and promote life through the use of architecture, disaster relief centered design should be viewed as therehabilitation of the affected community. A living community is a “supra organism” and like all organisms, responds to stimuli with aim to restore homeostasis.
Designing shelters that are too simple will only need to be replaced later on and designing shelters that attempt to accommodate everything would take time. In view of disaster relief, need and comfort should not be separate –architecture must use the ideas of rehabilitation as a design principle and create modular housing which can be broken down into stages. If disaster relief centered design were broken into stages, it is possible to provide immediate support to disaster victims without ultimately having to replace the shelters that were initially setup in the beginning. A stage one relief shelter may provide the bare essentials to sustain life, but perhaps a stage two package could include a comfort related function such as a living space or a bathroom unit that can easily be attached to an existing stage one shelter.
Implementing the same vocabulary throughout the design is imperative. By breaking down relief into stages, it provides the victims with a sense of structure, a structure that is easier for the victims to comprehend and one that alleviates the traumatic stress which they have just experienced. A community on its way of achieving homeostasis rebuilds its way like a physical therapy patient relearning how to use his motor functions: the rehabilitation regiment is divided into exercises which gradually increases in complexity. Disaster relief centered design can lead to prefabricated structures that initially start out as relief shelters that ultimately become permanent housing for disaster victims.
This blog is a documentary of Theoretical and Architectural research course which considers disaster relief and individual project and direction research. Directed by Professor Illya Azaroff
students
boris YUNDELSON carlos QUINONES dalia RODRIGUEZ evelina AVERYANOVA florim KUKAJ
long RUAN michael LIU nadine FREDERIKS rodion PETROV victor DA BREO vimal AIRJDATH
