Everything Nowhere

UNStudio / Galleria Centercity

Everything Nowhere

This project by UNstudio got me thinking about the purpose and emphasis of "Programming" in the architectural process. Below are some thoughts and ideas about how we as architects can modernize our programmatic approach and incorporate it more thoroughly into our designs.

Not long ago, Abe brought up the concept of improvisation within architecture and design. As a refresher, improvisation is:

 

"The practice of reacting, making, or creating, in the moment and in response to one's immediate interpretation of their surrounding environment. This can result in the invention of new thought patterns, new practices, new structures or symbols, and/or new ways to act or behave."

This type of activity is most typically exercised in music, acting, & painting, but can also be observed in recent trends of social behaviour inspired and encouraged by advancements in digital technology. Wireless communication & information-access technology has enabled a factor of mobility & spontenaity in the realm of social networking and information sharing. This, in effect, has created a sense of casualness to the way people organize, manage, and "schedule" their daily, hourly, or even minutely, actions. These "actions", such as eating, doing business, learning, being entertained, etc., have remained relatively unchanged for hundreds of years. What's evolving, is the style in which people participate in these activities; and this style can most accurately be described as improvisational. Assuming this is true, we as architects must question:

 

"How can architecture respond & accomodate for the improvisational behavior of its occupants?"

 

"Should we be encouraging this behaviour?"

 

"What are ways we can enhance this behaviour?"

 

The answers, are: Casually; Selectively; and Intricately.These fundamentals are both: approaches for potential architectural solutions as well as guidelines for successful improvisational participation. The concept of "improvisation" is not an excuse for any lack of design on the architects behalf. Instead, an atmosphere and built environment that can entertain this type of casualness must be intricately designed and planned so that improvisational activity Can occur selectively throughout an Architecture.  In function, the basic principal of architecture is dependent on the concept of boundaries, thresholds, filters, gateways, & parameters, which holds true for improvisational music, I.E. Jazz, as well. These elements determine where you can be depending on who you are; when and why you can be there, and most importantly how you get there. 

We realize through this that architecture is not about the "what". Factors such as color, style, theme, and atmosphere will always be mixed and matched by designers in order to offer people new experiences and emotions; But a prison-cell with a chandelier for no particular reason, is a prison-cell none-the-less. The "what" should be dependent on the who, where, when, why, and how's. This dependency and limitation is traditionally what creates a sense of exc!tement when the rule is broken. In using the concept of improvisation as a model for design, we as architects will be responsible for inventing & determining the governed (who, where, when, why, and how) spatial boundaries in which people are "free" to carry out any activity that might fall within these parameters. This can be as simple as limiting wireless internet access to certain parts of a building, or as complex as developing a system of personnel filters, which grant access to particular moments of a building. Regardless, this method of improvisation is what has allowed for people to push boundaries and spontaneously create new occasions/event-types in other fields, so why wouldn't we harvest this potential and nurture this type of activity in our own field.

Personal View: We as architects are responsible for creating context-specific, spatially sophisticated, access routing maps, for users to navigate at their leisure. By addressing Architecture as an interdependent set of governed spatial boundaries, we provide the user with a terrain park for testing, investigating, and using in ways we might have never thought possible.

SC