Movement within immobility
Movement within Immobility is a triptych exploring, among other things, the concept of n-spaces:
– 1 / From the Field of Traces to the Song of Traces
– 2 / Architecture as an Instrument of Environments
– 3 / To Every Place Its Formula
It was published as a series of articles in Chroniques d’Architecture during the winter of 2020–2021.
1 – From the Field of Traces to the Song of Traces
This text is the 1st part of a triptych « Movement within immobility ». It was published in Chroniques d’architecture in novembre 2020.
To close the writings on the trace (1) and because our confined lives reduce our mobility, here is the first of a series of three texts on architecture – From traces field to traces song; Architecture is an instrument of the environment; A formula for every place – like an invitation to travel in immobility.
In n-spaces, the carryer of traces, tools for appropriating places and preserving memories, are at the same time larger, more numerous and more diverse. Each new trace is deposited like a sediment, while taking part in the digital weaving of the place. It « patinates », shines the space and like a door, opens new paths in immobility. The trace is linked to other localities, stories, and it is anchored in the memory of the place, facilitating its appropriation and sharing, its division into space-times.
Impressions
Memory is the ability to retain information, an event, but it is also the ability to bring it back to life. It is therefore a question of inscribing, storing and allowing and producing resurgence. To classify, choose, establish rules, families, determine the lifespan and organize (the right to) erasure. Without organization, the n-spaces would be quickly saturated and impractical. Each new trace must be able to connect to others (hyperlinks), to multiply the routes.
Weavings
Tagged in its geographical space, the trace is part of the local network (the Local Thick Web (2)) then inviting each visitor, free, to choose their route in the « digital foam ». He pursues as he pleases each of the « foams’ fibers », personal or more or less public, which can accompany him to other physical or virtual spaces of the www or other neighboring networks. The place grows from/towards the interior and at the same time extends by multiplying the links in particular with other spatially disjointed spaces. The increased weaving consolidates the whole.
Wanderings
A new augmented cartography is taking shape. The relationship between n-spaces of various kinds induces new wanderings… The time spent surfing above ground (on social networks or websites) could be reduced in favor of another wave which would take its starting point or rebound in physical space. To be able to wander in the mysteries of an n-spaces, navigating from place to place, in space and time, to discover I don’t know what, to meet I do not know who; first virtually then, perhaps later, physically, because these relationships are mainly local.
Résurgences
Memories can also appear unpredictably (a program releasing information according to more or less random parameters). So, reminiscences color the place like flashbacks that arise in the heart of a story.
N-spaces makes a new type of movement in still space possible. From a teenager’s bedroom to a coworking space, a theatre, a library or a museum, places are filled and tinged with hidden but linked meanings, giving way to a future archeology of life, of the infinitesimal. After having going through the volume and the past, I enter the infinity of here. I dig, I read, I write and the trace is at work, as a work (3). Each place becomes a museum of itself and the organization of data produces stories, exhibitions, encounters. This motionless movement, at the intersection of traces and places, invites you to travel mentally and physically.
Aesthetics (spatio-digital)
A chimerical vision, a dream? Inside the place yes, but in absolute terms certainly not. It is based on profitable rational tools and simply consists of using them in a complementary way, to produce “music”, immaterial aesthetics, to stimulate the imagination. The technique is there, and soon the infrastructure too, in all our buildings. It will then suffice to put the right arrangements in place.
Compositions
To the newly designed architecture of the place, a digital architecture that is both generic and specific is therefore added. It is accompanied by a formula containing algorithms and other computer programs capable of capturing local data such as memorial, climatic, sensory, technical ; as resources to produce different effects or events, chances and coincidences. This formula participates in the movement in stillness. The place reacts, comes alive. And its manner characterizes it: it textures and defines the space as do the material of the ground, the color of the walls, the air currents, the temperature, the views of the landscape or the historical memory.
Reactions can take various forms: to the reminiscences (flashbacks) can be added other random phenomena capable of surprising. The space is activated, the formula guides the actions (between sensors and actuators). It sculpts the radiance. From this new material which is digital, the place vibrates.
Resonances
This formula amplifies the essence of a subtle ar(t)chitecture(4) that reinvents and rediscovers itself at leisure. An ar(t)chitecture which, once built, is never exactly the same, never exactly another. It plays with the environment, with the inhabitants, with memories. It enriches the place by transforming and weaving links. As in a landscape where the stones remain in place, the sea sometimes sways and the climate alters: wind, rain, light – which transform the colors – but also air and animals (the flight of a bird, the exit of a crab or the passage of a deer), the seasons. According to different rhythms, new events, imprints and configurations emerge.
Phenomenology where words, sounds, (smells?), images are engraved in space, in place. Another language. Finally, the book of stone? The book under the stone. The book, the poem, the poem space, the place, the closed space that opens through/towards the senses. Traces: intentional or spontaneous inscriptions, disappearance, appearance.
Listening, reading… in n-spaces, from sedimentation to travel and uses.
Forest of objects, system of layers and weaving.
The digital traces, like variations of renewed abstract paintings, are revealed and eclipsed. Nourishment of serendipity in the space to come, stimulation of illuminations.
Encrypt decrypt? Write, more or less visibly; hide dreams, ideas to feed the mystery, the enigma. The surprise to (re)awake a flash of thought.
And superstition sometimes grows. It reactivates the imagination. The magic reappears. From time to time, the n-spaces sparkle and undulate.
A (necessary) bit of spirituality in our modernized buildings.
Eric Cassar 2020
(1) All the texts below are available in french online here: Chroniques d’architecture.
Trace n°1: The trace, to make time its ally
Trace n°2: The trace, physical nature and presence of an absent thing
Trace n°3: Nature of the digital trace
Trace n°4: Trace and digital nature, ordering the data
Trace n°5: Trace and place: hybridization of physical and virtual spaces
Trace n°6: In the new strata of augmented spaces
Trace n°7: The links of n-spaces contribute to the rhythm of architecture
Trace n°8: From rhythms to personalized resonance of places
Trace n°9: Walls²: from walls to whispers
(2) Trace n°10: From the world wide web to the local thick web… from hospitals to museums
Trace n°11: (to) Trace: a vessel between the webs
Trace n°12: The n-spaces augments a place into a link
Trace n°13: Data center and urban meta-platform: places of memory storage?
(3) Jacques Derrida, Rams. The uninterrupted dialogue: between two infinities, the poem, Galileo
(4) Eric Cassar, The case for subtle ar(t)chitecture, HYX
2 – Architecture as an Instrument of Environments
This text is the 2nd part of a triptych « Movement within immobility ». It has been published through 3 articles in « Chroniques d’architecture » during winter 2020-2021.
Being bored somewhere invites you to get to know the place better, to set out to rediscover it, to sharpen your gaze, to read and track the unknown. If the subtle ar(t)chitecture (1) is there, nuances are always revealed and the place resonates in us and us with it.
Reading an ar(t)chitecture both as an integrated environment and as a sound board for inner and exterior actions, also requires activating one’s curiosity, searching for signs as if we were in a wild space or a landscape looking for a plant or an animal (2). But it is because this forest of signs is designed, or made possible, by ar(t)chitecture that our senses are sharpened. These signs can appear by chance or be the result of the architecture as a preliminary writing – even if it is a writing of the contingency. Ar(t)chitecture is at the same time the support, the writing instrument and a polysemous writing, forever changing, charged with mystery, of which certain hidden meanings are clarified according to parameters or unforeseen events.
Architecture is an instrument for measuring and observing the world (the environment), an instrument in the sense of a tool of perception (3). But it is also an instrument for the production of sensitive environments, of effects, like the musical instrument which has created a language of sounds and various harmonies. In this sense, ar(t)chitecture becomes an environmental instrument, both listened to and sometimes played by life.
The effect
The idea of instrument sheds light on the importance of the result, of the effect, even more than the object, the tool itself (the building). The instrument does or creates something. It is designed for what it produces.
Architecture supports an activity, sculpts space, suggests encounters (with others, materials, a landscape, etc.). It (dis)orients the senses and arouses events. It acts on the inner environment (which it produces) and on exterior environments, which then act on us. Its impact is as important as its essence. Its “being” merges with its “action”. Architecture is simultaneously the thing and the effect produced (4), the consequence. It is resonance and undulation. The instrument of environments produces a building endowed with stillness movements (5) in the n-spaces. The instrument is more or less rich and complex although today, it often isn’t, because the construction is content with uniform and incapable volumes, that is to say generator of no effect and no variation.
However, even perfect, an instrument is never enough on its own. It is always an instrument of something and it is always played. Depending on its nature, the field of possibilities increases or decreases, but the resulting action, the work, even beforehand composed or written, is always ontologically open.
Vibration
Once the instrument has been created, there are one or more « actors » and a substance produced: the work. Architecture as an instrument of environments joins this other idea, that architecture is an unfinished art which is completed by the life impulsed by its inhabitants and visitors.
Modernism conceives it more as a minimalist, uninhabited, frozen sculpture, a matter of light and shadow where the inhabitant disappears. In the case of an architecture-instrument, it is the impact on the inhabitant that interests us.
Whether he is an observer or an actor, his sensitivity, his « capability », must be empowered. The architecture can decide to fade away but it must remain able to signal through messages, even infinitesimal ones. The more or less hidden signs are able to reveal themselves, or not, depending on different parameters. Architecture challenges the inhabitant, sometimes stimulates him, consciously or unconsciously, subtly. It releases perceptions, frames, proposes to enter into vibration alternately by its presence or its disappearance, its relations with the landscapes (physical or virtual), and with the other n-spaces. Plurality (producing multiple actions and effects), it relaxes, awakens senses and thoughts, excites questioning. It then invites interaction, opening up new fields of action and reflection.
Fertilization
Vladimir Vernadsky has shown how all living things are intertwined with the biosphere and how human activity acts on it. It is the same for the inhabitant with his environment. Inseparable, they interact, that is to say that the environment (also) acts on us. However, our environment today is unbalanced, it is colonized by virtual spaces, screens (smartphone, computer, television, etc.) which increasingly absorb our attention.
There are many reasons for this, but one of them is partly due to filling in an empty space. Digital spaces are bewitching first of all because they meet our primary expectations, limiting our efforts and stimulating us in gross ways; but also because they fill the gap in our increasingly banal and boring physical spaces.
Architecture participates in the organization of our environment (both in its physical and virtual dimensions) in the sense that it produces environments and it stimulates, generates, promotes or reduces certain relationships. It is active and it acts on its occasional inhabitants (when we visit a place) or permanent ones (when we live there). It can help them to heal and to think, to move and to be moved, to better exchange with each other, to come up with (new) ideas. This maieutic dimension is explained by its ability to structure, fertilize environments and therefore inhabitants, first through our habitat and also our neighborhoods and all the buildings we pass through. It is a tool of individuation (6).
The beauty of an environment, its stillness movement – the work of the instrument – soothes. When you are locked up at home (in confinement) or in a hospital room, sometimes psychologically affected by an uncomfortable (even painful) situation, the importance of architecture increases, it characterizes the atmosphere, it participates in the care. It can relieve, question, inspire. Yet it often remains negatively empty and neutral, it disappears behind its function, leaving the field open only to a useful and confused decor and to the virtual windows of our smartphones.
Its absence then promotes confinement and alienation. The impoverishment of the physical environment and its standardization leads, in its wake, to a withering of thoughts and individuals. Reducing architecture today to an inert shell, uniform because optimized to meet only simple standardized expectations, often to a number of m² and an energy performance, induces deficiencies, produces an underlying feeling of painfulness and represents a danger for the evolution of human societies (7).
It is time to turn the page, to revalue the a-normality which incites you to reopen yours eyes. The ar(t)chitecture, as an instrument of environments must help (in addition to gardens or « natural » freely evolving spaces) to produce a new balance between physical and virtual environments, through more diverse, more subtle, more fragrant environments.
The luthier (or the architect)
The living architect designed an instrument for habitation and to be inhabited from birth to death : to grow, learn, have fun, store, work, play, heal, feed, live, dream, spend, speak, listen, debate, create, do, meet, find one another, exchange, love one another, be moved, etc.
Its destination can vary, be specific or multiple (simultaneously or alternately) but the instrument, beyond being just an effective support for use, has an essential role for the proper accomplishment of the purposes of its functions. To do this, it must be able to connect imperceptibly with us via the environments in which we are immersed, playing the environment and playing with the environment, sometimes simultaneously.
The environment is both the exterior and interior climate, the atmosphere, the sensitive construction, the shape and texture of the walls, the smell, the digital and physical traces produced by the living beings present, but also by the objects, the materials, etc. It’s around us, everything that is not exclusively us but with which we are in inter-relations. Thus the instrument is able to feed on the environment, to compose a mechanics of weaving – sometimes unconsciously –, by transforming and enriching it.
It is then a question of playing with the environment as one would play music. The cello sings through the meeting of the horsehair bow with the metal of the strings which vibrates in the wood. It is the instrument of the cellist and of music. An architecture is the instrument of the “environment times environment”, because architecture plays on the environment as the instrument plays music and it is played, among other things, by the environment as the instrument is played by a musician.
The environment is the substance produced but it can also be the initiator. A little like a simple wind chime, it transforms an energy produced by the environment (here the wind) into an effect altering the sensitive environment (here the sound generated).
If the architecture first sought to protect the inhabitants from the variations of the external environment (the shelter), it then worked to create a form of ideal environment, which became a standardized comfort (8), frozen. It must now seek to play with the external environment both to better connect with it and because it represents an immense source of randomization, chance and modulation.
The exterior, subset of the biosphere, essential to our survival, whatever it is, becomes, for the instrument, a source of potential energy and possible stimuli: words for a new language. Architecture is no longer a closed system but an open system that takes advantage of all the inputs acting simultaneously from the interior (inhabitants, objects, etc.) and the exterior (the living, the climate, etc.).
Defining architecture as an instrument of environments does not mean the instrumental field. The origin of the playing (the action) can draw from many sources. Since there are hundreds of types of musical instruments, there must be an infinite number of types of environment instruments. Even if families can be formed, each instrument, each ar(t)chitecture will differ, playing more with sounds, physical movements, digital memories, climate, emotions, crowds, encounters, etc.
Thus the work of the architect no longer creates only a useful decor but a unique, active decor, activatable by several “subjects”: humans, living things and non-living things.
The playing
The instrument must be able to accommodate, combine, play with the predictable, the unpredictable and the actions of multiple and diverse actors ; even if certain rules depend on the instrument itself, that is to say on the architecture (physical and digital) of the place. It is usually played by several people:
– the inhabitants (9): owners, managers, or occupants. They reproduce or manufacture a composition (consciously or unconsciously) from the possibilities opened up by the instrument designed by the architect and placed at their disposal: actions as simple as closing a shutter, directing a blind, lighting a fire, opening a window, increasing the flow of ventilation, but also making a terrace accessible (apart from a simple amenity), adapting the place to a new use, (un)dressing an envelope, dividing or assembling rooms, modulating (physically and numerically) inner vibrations and accessing to other n-spaces, etc. This transformation of the place is facilitated by architectural design tools such as the notions of served and serving spaces as defined by Louis Kahn, whose efficiency can be amplified by an increased management of an infrastructure and a digital application, combined with human « conductors » (10).
– the climate (short and long term): more or less natural source of unforeseen events, which involves different rhythms. The position of the sun varies with the seasons. A gust of wind, a shower or a sunny spot appear over shorter periods of time in more unpredictable ways, but it is possible to anticipate their actions and amplify certain resonances (without knowing either exactly when, where, or how long they will take place.).
– vegetation through flowering, the growth of plants, trees and all types of living things depending on the context. An architecture can be conducive to welcoming and listening to other forms of life (flora and fauna) which, in turn, will act on the place. It can dialogue with them or encourage life to different degrees (11).
– (connected) objects whose programmed behavior (more or less determined or random) could have repercussions on the indoor environment. Various mechanisms, internal to the place, could increase, improve, alter or even occasionally « disrupt » the instrument.
– other external places, information or people could have a remote influence because they would be connected to the n-spaces thanks to new technology. Porous, an n-spaces opens or closes to other n-spaces according to previously defined parameters.
Instrumentation and inter-relationships
The instrument of environments opens its « playing » to a large number of actors, living or non-living things, connected or disconnected, material or immaterial. The nature of the instrument, its design, will guide the weaving, the orchestration of the actors with each other as well as with the place itself (12).
It will sometimes invent multidimensional mesh techniques, made possible in particular by new technologies in the era of n-spaces. Just as each living being is a world within the world (the biosphere, its associated environment), it has its own geometry and sometimes its own physical laws inside its body. Each building, as an instrument of environments, becomes a world in the world (the district, the city, the different digital spaces) with its rules, its intrinsic functioning, its relationships.
It generates its meshes, permanent or temporary; it defines its internal weaving (roots, rhizomes (13), plurals, etc.), its properties, its techniques and produces a hybrid “sphere of space” that is both physical and digital. This sphere is never autonomous (unless an exceptional effect is claimed – each rule contains its exception –) because the environment instrument acts on/with the environment. It is always an element, a tool which exchanges and is linked more or less intensely to the associated meta-environments, both the biosphere and the noosphere (14).
The manual & the score
Instrument of environments with multiple actors, the inhabitants as performer(s), even if well coordinated, are not skilled enough to produce a beautiful work. They need to learn how to play to better understand the subtleties of the architecture, and they need a score.
In order to correctly compose with the place, the architect must be didactic because, the inhabitants must know, at least in part, the instrument, its functioning and its resonances. The instructions for use are contained in a manual provided at reception of the building and taking part in a formula (15). It details the modus operandi, presents ways of playing, its specificities and describes the instrument, etc. declining a series of « instructions », a bit like for the use of a complex technical object.
Even if, as we have said, the faculty of openness is inherent in the instrument, the architecture can also integrate certain compositions pre conceived (sort of suggested or recommended scenarios) that the instrument will « play » alone or with help from the inhabitant… who could also invent others.
The environment will be nourished by a perpetual movement of actions-interactions. These compositions and their scores are inscribed or exist in the instrument itself. They are another statement of the formula. With both physical and digital characteristics (algorithms), each score is plural, it plays (16) (with) the place by reacting to the external actions of the augmented environment (including digital, inhabitants, living).
But the instrument can also accommodate improvisation (play without score) or even other writings. Created by users, possibly with the help of artificial intelligence, these compositions will then constitute new scores, complementary or alternative, with sensitive and functional purposes. They make the place “sing” (17)). They will enable, the recording of new learnings for the use of places, and for the new configurations. They will enrich the building, which will evolve over time, improving its uses, and performance (energy, reception, metamorphosis, etc.) and adapting its sensitive character by integrating new processes that are still unknown (18).
The induced atmosphere will vary according to function, intensifying the relationship between the building and its occupants, doubly free in the choice of the composition, pre-established or personal, then in its interpretation. Because as in music, each score must be able to continue to leave an important place to the performer, like for example Bach’s Goldberg variations reinterpreted by Glenn Gould 400 years after they were written.
Some examples
* The instrumentower is a tower that acts as a visual and musical instrument, a source of various sensory events, more or less random, augmented by digital technology. It plays with the environments but it is also accessible to artists, musicians, researchers or creators so that they can take control of it and occasionally invent both compositions and uses, for example for atypical concerts at the city scale.
For the renovation of Notre-Dame de Paris and its spire, my answer would have been based on this project if a competition had taken place: an intervention on the existing where the visual would have been secondary. An instrument of environments, first musical, like an extension of the organ whose main challenge would have been to sing punctually in Paris, sometimes accompanied by the bells…
* The sun museum in Helsinki, inspired by the reflections experimented on the Villa D, is an instrument which plays among other things with the rebounds of light. It extends the duration of sunshine on a place protected from the winds and open to the bay. It produces symphonies of light and heat which in winter transform the relief of the snowpack, melting parts of the snow and reshaping the ground in the square. * Wind-wing in Taichung is a complex including museum and library that plays with the air. A green concrete wall captures the prevailing winds and creates or transmits, after having produced energy, a breeze in the building cooling the place (in response to the subtropical and humid climate). On the garden side, a « wing » is set in motion by the winds, producing, under it, a kaleidoscope of shadow and light.In my habitat too, I experiment, on a small scale, with architecture, an instrument of environments that plays with natural elements, and welcomes the surprises that invite themselves into the space: play of light, multiplication of images, views and viewpoints, mirrors that increase visibility, circulation of fluids, traces of the sun, reflections that waver with the wind, shadows (dis)ported, music of rain and breezes, hospitality of butterflies and birds, dynamic filters and various hazards, permanent and ephemeral traces, hidden spaces. The atmosphere “vibrates” according to events, both in short periods (a breeze, a spot of sun) and long periods (winter or summer sun). Time passes at different speeds.
I took a few examples among those designed, partly through these ideas, with Arkhenspaces, but there are others (the Pavilion on a field capturing and naturally storing rainwater, a Landscape for an urban highway, the villa La Sousta, etc.) and also by other architects: The Louvre of Abou Dabi by Jean Nouvel (even if I have not yet been able to experience it), the chapel or the thermal baths of Peter Zumthor, the brutalist churches of Gottfried Böhm, the Holy Chapel, the Alhambra, the amphitheater of Epidaurus, the Pantheon in Rome, but also in Mycenae, Petra, Angkor, etc.
On a smaller scale, the works of artists like Nicolas Schöffer with his cybernetic sculptures or more recently James Turrel with his luminous environments, also correspond to this idea of instrument.
Frank Ghery and Coop Himmelb(l)au produce more of a movement architecture (an architecture that changes according to the points of view of the observer) but with few instrument effects. Peter Zumthor and Jean Nouvel are generally more into the object (architecture designed from a block) but they produce environmental instruments in their own way. There are others of course, the list is not intended to be exhaustive. Le Corbusier with the chapel of Ronchamp succeeds perfectly in combining the two, it is very rare. A masterpiece !
Considering ar(t)chitecture as an instrument of environments opens up new fields of design in which the architect conceives a place of potential vibrations, activatable, endowed with resonances and capable of surprising. An open space-tool, which fertilizes the environment. It welcomes the inhabitants-users and the living things around, without knowing them. It (dis)orients them, sometimes letting them take part in the composition, and/or interpretation, reaction. It touches them. If they wish, the inhabitants thus pass easily from the status of simple occupant to that of an actor in their environment.
Architecture becomes for them a vector, a way to establish a more intimate relationship with places.
In extension, architecture, as an instrument of environments, has an active role in weaving both internal and external inter-relations, that is to say in the habitability of the place but also of the city, the world, and of their thoughts.
Today augmented by digital, the instrument is deployed in new dimensions. The perspectives and effects are multiplied, the n-spaces increases the environment by the sophistication of the mesh. It multiplies the spheres of action, the subtleties and the events. Its “structure” provides tools to enrich an open, unfinished work of art and leads architectural art to new dimensions.
Clever, active, ecological, sensitive, efficient and mysterious, buildings take shape likes book to be read, giving body to material environments and interacting with other physical and virtual environments. Creating them will bring out new surprises, emotions, stimulations, new uses, new sharing, new compositions, new thoughts… New dreams will also appear.
Eric Cassar 2020-2021
(1) Ar(t)chitecture highlights the artistic dimension of architecture, going on the (t) disappears, this does not mean that architecture has lost its artistic dimension but rather that it founds it. Sometimes it will reappear to remind that this dimension is still there.
(2) See the tracking of wolves in Manières d’être vivant, Baptiste Morizot
(3) “The instrument is the technical object which makes it possible to extend and adapt the body to obtain a better perception; the instrument is a tool of perception”. Du mode d’existence des objets techniques, Gilbert Simondon
(4) “To paint not the thing but its effect”, Stephane Mallarme
(5) Movement architecture, Eric Cassar
(6) See the works of Gilbert Simondon and Bernard Stiegler ( http://arsindustrialis.org/individuation)
(7) “We build buildings which then build us”, Winston Churchill
(8) From Yves Klein and the architecture of air, in which the connotation was positive: recreating the “Eden”, to the proliferation of controlled environments decried by Rem Koolhass in Junkspaces.
(9) The inhabitant of a place is not only that of a habitat. He is here the one who manages the place, maintains it, takes care of it, whether for himself or for others. The one who regularly lives in a museum, who works there as the caretaker, the “conductor” or the manager of the space, the one who is in charge of its proper functioning.
(10) See Living in infinity, Working in c(h)oeur and more generally active building, Eric Cassar, Arkhenspaces
(11) See the “Degree of Life” defined by the architect Christopher Alexander in The phenomenon of life
(12) From « The trace field to the song of traces », Eric Cassar
(13) Mille plateaux, Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze
(14) See the works of Vladimir Vernadsky. The biosphere is the physical space occupied by life. The noosphere is the space of thought.
(15) This concept of formula will be described in the 3rd part of this triptych through the text « A tout lieu sa formule »
(16) From the trace field to the song of traces, Eric Cassar
(17) “Tell me, did you not observe while walking in this city, that among the buildings with which it is populated, some are silent; the others speak; and finally others who are the rarest, sing? » Eupalinos or the architect, Paul Valéry
(18) A metaphor with the computer (the building) and the interchangeable software it hosts (the partitions) seems interesting but also reductive because computers are not very different one from each other, whereas we underline here the necessary wide variety of instrument (building) typologies.
3 – To Every Place Its Formula
This text is the 3rd part of a triptych « Stillness movement ». It has been published through 4 articles in « Chroniques d’architecture » during spring 2021.
I will always remember the emotion felt in Olympia facing the track of the first Olympic Games. There was almost nothing left, just a line and yet the emotion was immense, intense. Thought, memory, history and narrative, alone, fully constituted the place like a great architecture. Can an architectural emotion be expressed in the absence of construction? Beyond or below a material form?
Arthur Rimbaud already invited us to “Find the place and the formula”. And if the formula participated in making the place? Be that as it may, it fits; and together, simultaneously, place and formula orient or organize the environment, (of) life. They augment it.
Difficult to define, a formula is always plural. It connects times. It juxtaposes or combines explanation, composition, description, incantation, process (recipe), suggestion, functioning, adjustment. It facilitates the proper use of the place and allows the inhabitants (managers, occupants, visitors), who so wish, to better listen to or act on the architecture, to transform it, adapt it, regulate the atmosphere or quite simply play with it.
The formula is not an architectural program. It is not a question of defining the general use of a space which is often known before the design (offices, housing, a hospital, a school, etc.). It is not an internal regulation, which is established independently of the architecture. It is an addition, an immaterial application inseparable from the built and multiple place: possibly memory, rule, instructions, ritual, supplement of soul. It helps to make it work better, to transform it, to appropriate it and sometimes also to make it sacred. It is a « modus-operandi » of the n-spaces in relation to the interior and exterior environments; a writing that instructs, documents, guides, acts.
Essential tools for the proper functioning and appropriation of architecture as an instrument of environments, it can also participate in building a part of surprise and magic, however small, necessary for any building. The formula activates the soul sculpted by architecture, it completes an identity, adds a guide, shapes a fable, choreographs part of the lifestyle that it hosts and which completes the work – always a work of architecture is finalized by the life of its inhabitants -.
Story
In Olympia, history, ancient stories and their enhancement resonate, color and formulate. Some buildings of the past: temples, mausoleums, religious buildings have their embryos of formula for any visitor whether he is a believer or not – only the resonance changes –, and habitats too. They vary. These ancestors of the formulas as we are going to describe them are, in these cases, more attached to a type of monument or to a geography (building of such belief or history, habitat of such culture), than to architecture or building himself. For more commonplaces, there are more anecdotal “formulas”, often conventional, identical everywhere and rarely expressed. These are habits and customs or rituals often linked to crossing a threshold such as the prohibition to touch, to write on the walls, the need to take off your shoes, to discover yourself, etc.
Today, the multiplicity of arrangements, configurations and processes are at the same time relational, spatial, luminous, climatic, memorial or spatio-digital. So, in the light of new techniques and the digital age; the design of each building as an instrument of environments, widens the possible fields of action. Consequently, a more substantial formula becomes necessary to explain, simplify, increase ecological performance and participate, even more than in the past, in the spirit of the place.
Associated with n-spaces, the formula inscribes a corpus of physical, social, digital or usage rules, at the same time descriptive, prescriptive and generative, which animate the building and orient part of the life that takes place there.
Partly performative, this writing acts in real life: on the material (built), the way (to inhabit it), and especially on the relationships created or maintained between architecture and the environments on the one hand and on the living things on the other hand. It can describe certain effects, formulate the way to use the instrument and propose certain compositions or scenarios.
Combining processes, means, explanations or rules; confidential or shared, the formula shapes the place: its use, lifestyles, or its built environment, its relationships.
It contains fixed parts that will follow the building throughout its lifespan, tracing the continuity of uses, history, lives; and it contains variable, adjustable parts, modifiable at different time scales, improving the re-appropriation of the place, by transforming certain instructions for use, or certain reactions of its environment.
A multi-statement formula
The formula is a composite and complex writing. It contains several more or less private statements, more or less accessible depending on the nature of the person who wishes to consult them. They may require prior knowledge to enter the place.
The formula is like a partly open, partly hidden code. It instructs both the inhabitant on how to use the instrument; and the instrument by improving its self-operating system. It brings together various statements. We are going to identify certain typologies:
Typology (of statement) no. 1: a user manual that explains how it works, its climatic adaptability and uses
The user manual for architecture (environment instrument) is a kind of manual for the instrument, intended for the resident, regular user. It reveals tricks, indicates means and ways, for example:
- Actions to transform the place according to uses and needs
It describes the possible arrangements (a meeting room which becomes a work or play area for children, an amphitheater which is open to the public, a refectory which hosts conferences, etc.); the means (displacement of partitions, use of doors, etc.) and the use of space-time transformability tools (spaces used in relation to the spaces served, digital application, etc.).
- Actions with a « climatic » purpose for better thermal regulation (especially natural) of the atmosphere through an ecology of action.
The user manual guides the use, gives instructions to improve the indoor climate or make better use of the place. It describes quick actions to be implemented, to reduce or increase solar heat gain, use spaces according to their sensitive properties, ensure good ventilation, etc. For example, for better summer comfort in a hot zone, it can suggest activating certain systems or quite simply indicating the doors, windows or openings to be left open so as to produce effective nocturnal over-ventilation and cool the air. In this case, the architecture would have previously designed the openings according to the prevailing winds and the circulation of interior air, while integrating any anti-burglary systems depending on the context.
- Actions for seasonal adjustment
The formula describes more substantial transformations thought beforehand to better adapt a building to the climate according to the seasons. It is a question of explaining the operating mode of various architectural mechanisms designed and implemented in order to transform the building or the place, via quarterly or half-yearly interventions, so that it reacts better with the external environment. In Phoenix Palace, a neighborhood renewal project around a railway infrastructure, we had designed a complex based on recycled containers which, thanks to a system of removable canvases, were completely transformed between winter and summer in order to be adaptable to the climate.
Typology (of statement) no. 2: keys to understanding and sensations
Intended for residents but also visitors, these statements instruct and demonstrate, like a guide without a specific route. They direct the gaze and invite to sensitive experiences or simply to better listen to the surroundings. The formula is used here to describe the effects of the instrument, of the magic of the architecture, to better observe them. It maps non-exhaustive series of events, mainly sensory, which can take place according to different parameters resulting from climatic, biological or human consequences in the short or long term. It explains resonance processes, autonomous or in relation to the external environment. It delivers keys to discovering certain situations or hidden mysteries such as the writing and the appearance of events according to time, to the way in which, for example, Stonehenge can react and « light up » at the solstices.
It describes the specific atmospheres of certain places: level of sound, reverberation, luminosity, various effects which can vary at different frequencies. For example, a space that would open onto an exterior receiving regular temporary events (a market, a concert) would have a different atmosphere depending on the day and the time with a possible impact on the use of the spaces. The statement helps to take better advantage of all these contextual specificities integrated into the architectural project.
Typology (of statement) no. 3: descriptions of possible actions with a sensitive purpose
These are proposals or compositions that (would be) played (in) space. This typology of statements intended for « creative » inhabitants, wishing to « make the instrument sing » or to interact with it, mainly concerns the description of physical actions and comes in two types of incidences describing patterns to make the environment “dance”:
- the transformation of atmosphere
The formula describes the means to make the sensitive atmosphere vibrate and vary. For example, acting on the atmosphere through the regulation of light (natural and artificial) which transforms colors, resonance (acoustic parameters), humidity, heat or the feeling of heat (fire) etc. It is a question of describing, giving examples of actions on the environment made possible by architecture: playing the environment as one would play music; present the modulations or actions (e.g. orienting a mirror) likely to produce and shape one or more events (e.g. adding a splash of light in a shadow zone or observing an invisible part of space) according to natural parameters and/or artificial (eg the position of the sun or the observer).
- the production of compositions
The formula also contains scores or stories that the instrument can play. By describing these compositions or scenarios, it relates observation (the inhabitant is invited to observe such a phenomenon) with actions inducing in turn possible reactions (the inhabitant is invited to act to produce such a phenomenon: orienting a reflective panel, position a sliding shutter, etc; or more simply move around in space). If observation is more passive, only external actions (climatic or other) produce reactions and resonate with the perceived environment. The appreciation of an architectural effect often requires on the one hand the creation of this effect (production, generation) and on the other hand the good positioning of the gaze, of the observer to appreciate this effect. A bit like a cinematographic sequence that depends both on the scene that is playing and on the angle of view from which it is filmed (the eye of the camera or the framing).
These statements explain physical subtleties. They can be linked to algorithms that govern immaterial aesthetics, other statements of the formula.
Typology (of statement) n° 4: organization and regulation of actions-reactions (writing of the computer program)
This family of statements acts, from the inside, on the essence of the building and gives it color, rhythm, and pulse. Just like the facade (which is only an external part of the architecture), it shapes its identity.
It is made up of pre-designed algorithms, opened or closed, which will organize the actions and reactions of the electrical and electronic systems in place via a network of sensors and activators. They will plan certain settings (climate, luminosity, memory, use) and coordinate the more or less ostentatious « movement » of immaterial aesthetics.
The formula here is made of computer code. It coordinates the functioning of the intrinsic mechanics of previously determined systems, for example like a program which, regulates a temperature according to more or less adjustable parameters. Ultimately, the objective is to create varied environments, whose composition, at different scales, will draw a « character » by organizing the vibration of materials, the dynamics of atmospheres.
The formula also manages hybrid processes such as the organization of memory and traces, by orchestrating the modalities of their registration (both physical and digital) to ensure a better appropriation of the place (1).
Part of the statements are open and can be adjusted or adapted, so as to transform the initial composition which can learn through artificial intelligence systems or be transformed by human actions acting on the algorithms in temporary and permanent ways.
Typology (of statement) n° 5: the description of certain rules of use or rituals
Aimed at visitors and residents, this time the formula describes suggested behavioral rules and regulates certain uses.
It formulates possible rituals of entry, exit, route, or protocols linked to the climate, the weather, or people, like a usage scripts in relation to spaces.
It defines and describes processes to organize the evolution of the place over time, how it ages. Like a winemaking process, the formula can guide the rules for inscribing physical or virtual traces in the n-spaces, actions on the vegetation, its evolution… a bit like with the maintenance of a garden. The landscaper delivers a landscape that will change from year to year with the growth of trees and plants. In a similar way, it is possible to formulate the modalities of evolution of the living things (plant and animal), actions-reactions, materials in relation to architecture. These modalities can describe a final result but also processes, such as Gilles Clément’s concept of the moving garden, which integrates the evolution and movement of plants in relation to each other and leaves the gardener (present, future) a part of the choice.
The formula here is an orientation of the continuation of the unfinished work (2).
These rules participate in the ar(t)chitecture, they guide its experience. Taken to excess, they could take the form of an installation, a little like in the art compositions of Tino Sehgal, for example at the Palais de Tokyo (3), where the « color » of the work is born in/ with the empty space, through the rules formulated for its participants: dancers, actors; through their encounter, action and interaction with visitors.
But these statements of formula are not intended to be intrusive. They should not be confused with the rules of regulatory use specific to an activity, an occupation or an appropriation which are generally defined by the inhabitant which occupies the place (individual , company, institution etc).
These five typologies of statements present the extent of the role that the formula can play. But these families are neither compartmentalized, nor exhaustive, nor restrictive. A rich formula, systematically integrates hazards. It will be able to play with overlaps, and sometimes contradictions between the different types of statements.
An architecture instrument of environments naturally produces movements in immobility: the capture of the movement of a ray of sunshine, of a breath of wind, are added to digital reminiscences and other digital events. The formula, made up of statements of various natures, accompanies this movement. It orients a perception, composes a frame, an atmosphere, an ephemeral oriented writing. The formula multiplies the levels of interpretation of architecture, the richness of which should appeal to both the layman and the initiated. It reinvents itself, never ending. – Builders have always filled their construction with hidden subtleties, from the oldest temples, to the subtle architectures of today, including pyramids, cathedrals, etc. -
The building instrument of environments is enriched, inseparable, from a notebook that is both material and/or immaterial, readable and/or unreadable, a guide and/or a mirage. The formula and the place become inseparable.
Formulation
The formula helps to read and acts on the place, it composes it temporarily. Its writing contributes to the conception of the work. It will have an impact on the appearance of the building but also on its echo, its use (making the instrument resonate) and the way in which it is perceived, appropriated.
Its structure is made up of statements, some of which are associated with the building and its architecture. Often fixed in time and space, this fixed part concerns, at least, what is linked to the climate, the site, learning how to use it, the relationship with the neighborhood, optimizing its consumption and the architectural specificity of the place (immaterial aesthetics).
Another part is associated with the occupants or visitors (individual inhabitants, a company, a manager) who can make it evolve through their discoveries or their developments. Partially convertible, it can then facilitate the implementation of new uses, a bit like a telephone that hosts an interface and its preferences. Thus, a design of appropriate statements would help the use and identification of a set of networked buildings: hotels, sports areas, multi-site companies, etc.
When its construction calls on different actors (computer specialists, designers, etc.), the architect ensures consistency between the formula and the instrument, but also the conservation and continuity of the systems. He is attentive to the proper registration and use of all data related to the “building learning” (such as machine learning), whether it concerns the memory of the place, its relationship to the living things and nearby environments or its proper use of energy and spaces. Visible or invisible, the formula is inscribed on different physical or virtual media: a notebook, a smartphone or in one of the layers of augmented spaces.
Exploitation leads to certain readjustments. In this sense, it is desirable to support the « running in » of the building, during the first years, so as to readjust certain statements according to the experience of the newly built places.
Examples
The Phillips pavillon at the 1958 Universal Exhibition in Brussels is interesting in this sense because the architecture cannot, in this case, be dissociated from a semblance of formula through its status of electronic poem (visual and sound). This project is an installation by Le Corbusier, who delegates the architectural part to Iannis Xenakis, the musical part to Edgard Varèse, designing the visual and textual parts himself. The work extends beyond a material architecture: everything was created together and everything disappeared together. The formula here is inseparable from the building.
In my habitat, a place of architectural research, I experiment on a small scale with some infinitesimal effects capable of surprising and making the space vibrate, singing according to the climate and desires. The actions-reactions here today are only physical (question of means). They have built up organically over time.
1.1 – The kitchen is a volume with an independent exterior envelope, facing south. It plays the role of a bioclimatic greenhouse. The actions are multiple: open or close the blinds, the bay windows, a « skylight » or the access door to the rest of the house. The temperature of each space is measured and visible. In winter and mid-season, keep (if possible) the door in connection with the rest of the house and the skylight closed, the blinds up. In case of strong sunlight, open the door so that the excess heat is evacuated towards the house. In summer, lower the blinds in case of absence, and open the skylight in the upper part to create a draft and evacuate hot air in the evening or during the day, etc.
1.2 – Layout: the table partially slides under the bookcase or unfolds.
1.3 – The bench and the window sill above it both serve as a seat and as a threshold (staircase).
1.4 – Upstairs, depending on the number of inhabitants, two bedrooms can communicate through an interstitial space. Closed, it can also serve as common storage. Open the two cupboard doors to allow air and light to circulate.
To warm up :
1.5 – Go closer to the fireplace. Its operation requires the opening of the ventilation grille in the immediate vicinity.
1.6 – Sit on the bench located above a radiator and increase the intensity of its heating.
1.7 – Move up above one of the habitable piece of furniture (it is hotter above).
To refresh:
1.8 – Create an East/West air current on R+1 or R+1 and R+2 using Italian window openings.
1.9 – Install the shading canvas on the terrace.
Typology of statement n° 2 (keys to understanding and sensations of the place)
2.1 – From the top of the habitable furniture, two people cannot see each other, unless they look in the direction of the mirror located above the desk. The field of vision increases (See the effect).
2.2 – A hole in the « half-partition guardrail » lets a ray of light appear in the staircase in the morning at the end of spring.
2.3 – From May to September, leaving the door of a bedroom on the second floor open, at the end of the day, the setting sun is reflected in the broken mirrors of the upper staircase.
2.4 – During spring, summer and autumn, at the end of the day, the west sun’s rays are reflected in the mirrors of the terrace. They produce bright light to the east with spots of light moving to the east inside the living room or on the terrace.
2.5 – At the same time, the setting sun is reflected in a high entrance mirror (ground floor) oriented to produce a moving parallelogram of light on the opposite wall.
2.6 – The visible and audible colored pipes resonate with the sound of cascading movements of water in the bathroom and the stairs.
2.7 – Rectangular dichroic films change color according to the luminosity, in the morning and evening. They are visible from the inside and the outside on certain windows, doors and glass walls.
2.8 – Look at the sky while taking a shower.
2.9 – Discover a message on the door of the stove.
2.10 – Listen to the sound variations of the rain in the kitchen.
2.etc – Some hidden spaces and other mysteries.
Typology of statement no. 3: descriptions of possible actions with a sensitive purpose
3.1 – Positioning of a wind chime.
3.2 – Description of some different ways to use the living furniture: position of the body, effect with the bathroom mirror when opening the door, view from above on the outside, opening / closing of mobile elements.
3.3 – Artificial light: description of color and lighting variations.
3.4 – Positioning a hammock.
3.5 – Shading variation.
3.etc – Orientations around the living things: maintenance and/or planting of plants, perfume, inviting birds or insects…
Typology of statement n° 4 (organization of actions-reactions (computer program))
None (at this stage)
Typology of statement n° 5 (description of certain rules of use or rituals)
The formula sets out certain precepts that frame and organize.
If it is allowed to write on the walls, it quickly seemes obvious that simple rules have to be put in place. They should not be the same in all rooms and on all surfaces. Even if it is welcomed, chaos is always organized; thus a painted frame gathers the inscriptions that the guests or visitors would like to leave (5.1).
Close to the ceiling, there is a place where writing is authorized, for connoisseurs (the inhabitants) but in finesse, with small letters for messages readable only a few cm from the surface (5.2), another welcomes the name of certain films viewed in the place (5.3), another of the memories of confinement (5.4).
Elsewhere, there are dark flat areas of « blackboards » which receive more or less ephemeral chalk messages. One is a useful memo, the others are surfaces each associated with an inhabitant, a place to send him a message (5.5).
These rules of use, these actions or orientations of the gaze are not strict, they evolve, invite and color the place, organize its maturation.
The architectural design and the writing of the instrument of environments, accompanied by a formula, constitute a whole, an experience, a singular environment where situations (scenarios) are repeated, emerge, sometimes enrich themselves, to the rhythms of the seasons, sky or passages, never exactly the same, never exactly different. They renew themselves. Stories appear, the walls speak.
Half landscape, half work of art, full of signs, the ar(t)chitecture leaves a trace to then be discovered and increases its possibilities of resonances. Combined with ecosystems, it directs the gaze and provides the first signs of possible tracking. Blind spots light up.
Sets, formulas and ar(t)chitecture can orient or even twist reality, overturn preconceived ideas, to question, see without being seen, touch, awaken, make people feel, desire, fantasize, dream.
They exalt a writing of circumstance, which changes according to the atmosphere, producing a (meta)writing, long lasting this time, which marks memories and transforms the decor.
Combined with new digital tools, they feed the n-spaces and further multiply the possibilities. They weave links that widen the field of sensations and the degrees of freedom. They welcome and let the unexpected flourish. They initiate a poetics of the place, enrich the experience and caress the lives of their inhabitants and passers-by.
Eric Cassar 2021
(1) A work of architecture is completed by the life and traces that the inhabitants and visitors will breathe into it.
(2) Tino Sehgal at the Palais de Tokyo: Vidéo 1, Vidéo 2, Vidéo 3.
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