INTERNET
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Internet_map_1024_-_transparent.png
Blur Bluilding by Diller, Scofidio and Renfro for Swiss Expo 2002
This pavillion is an analogy to a cloud, with its uncertain and unpredictable boundaries. Solely made of its light tensegrity structure hidden by the fine water particles that floats in the air to create a fog mass through thousands of nozzles that project the water pumped from the lake on which the buildings sits on, or rather seems to be floating on. The water nozzles control its intensity through pressure and amount of water, regulated on a base of micro local weather state using digital sensors, either it is the wind strength or direction, temperature, air pressure, etc. to ensure the permanent yet ephemeral presence of the building as described.
Concept of rhizome by Deleuze and Guattari in the text “A Thousand Plateaus”
First, the concept of rhizome is the part of philosophical turning point, a shift in discourse of contemporary philosophy, with Deleuze considered as most important according to Foucault. Ontologically speaking, the choices are beyond binary and dualist; it is multiplicity. The openness to possibilites, attractions, influences and connection between these characterize the rhizome, as a complex map. Like a botanical rhizomatic system of roots with nodes, the concept of rhizome supports that there is no hierarchy, nor linearity, nor beginning nor end, it is always in a part of complex interrelated processes, often opposed to the tree system, where choices are linearly branched through linear ascension with clear cause as entry and consequence as exit.
The experience through this pavillion as a case study can be interestingly related to this concept of rhizome. The blurred limits of the building which statistic states are ephemeral, or rather constantly dynamically evolving based on its environmental influences. Once in this sensorial space, a visitor cannot visually and auditorily locate itself due to the dense myst and innumerable nozzles’ noise. Only the central system, as a third-eye can track the position of each individual. The smart raincoats, which respond in LED a color that corresponds to an affinity of one visitor to another based on a pre-input data from a questionnaire prior to the visit, can be related as a part of sensorial experience, as a social relationship. It is hence digitally mapped as a network of people, but also as one approaches another, there is social and psychological responses through attraction and repulsion between unpredictably approahing people meandering in a 3D space, resulting in a proliferation of senses, new encounters and further experiences. This evolving network of links and chains of reactive responses is clearly an analogy to the Internet, which reminds us of how the concept of rhizome is part of our life.
These ideas are right within our field of study. How does affinity between buildings and inhabitants, social context and existing environment within a micro context can impact its neighbourhood and building design? Mapping this relationship in a micro scale and macro scale to finally obtain a global tendency or evolution of city as a whole network can foster us architect in approaching better tools and assets to design a better builiding implementation within its context and multiple factors defining its area and the area within an urban area. It would be interesting to take advatage and full potential of digital tools to relate a new building design and its context, a node with its possible networks.