“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references is erased, leaving only an optical white-out and the white-noise of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.”

Diller Scofidio

Case study:                 Blur building, Diller Scofidio + Renfro

Critical reading:        G. Deleuze, F. Guattari, “Rhizome”, in a Thousand Plateaus, July 1980, pp. 3-25

The Blur is an unconventional building designed by DS+R, an American multidisciplinary firm that constantly swings from architecture to art.

The practice started its work setting temporary installations and at the beginning its attentions was closer to art and theory than to conventional buildings and constructions. This interest was carried on even after they started designing “real” buildings, so the practice has continued to investigate the art field developing media installations, sculptures, sets, and integrating these art researches in their projects, focusing on the consequences of architecture in the society.

The Blur is an installation designed for the Swiss Expo 2002 on Lake Neuchatel. It is an architecture of atmosphere, an ephemeral non-built construction that interacts with the users and the context, investigating the concept of evanescence. The pavilion was characterized by 31’500 high-pressure nozzles pumping the water from the lake to create a big cloud. A smart weather system was able to read the shifting climatic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, processing the data and modulating the cloud’s shape.

“Upon entering the fog mass, visual and acoustic references is erased, leaving only an optical white-out and the white-noise of pulsing nozzles. Blur is an anti-spectacle. Contrary to immersive environments that strive for high-definition visual fidelity with ever-greater technical virtuosity, Blur is decidedly low-definition: there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.” (DS)

This building was a sensorial experience. In fact, within the cloud the public could feel and “drink” the architecture in a media installation that involved all the human senses. Moreover, the pavilion tried to interact with the users establishing new relations between “compatible” users, thanks to the raincoats (brain coats), that visitors were supposed to wear. Indeed, before entering to the pavilion visitors were invited to fill a questioner about their character profiles, then in the brain coats were loaded the personal character data. Therefore the coats were used as protection from the wet environment as well as personality data storage. Communicating with the cloud’s computer network and using tracking location technologies, each visitor’s position could be identified and the character profiles compared each other. When visitors passed one another, their coats could change colour indicating the degree of attraction or repulsion.

The pavilion represents a changeable form, a dynamic system that processes data and establishes relations based on personal information. Moreover, the Blur symbolizes the construction of a building dissolution. This dichotomy (built – unbuilt) is not the only one that can be observed in this project: this architecture is at the same time solid and temporary, stable and in-stable, static and dynamic.

If the architecture is thought to reflect the humankind, I read many analogies between the cloud and the current society. The building, as our society is a liquid mass without any straight hierarchies nor univocal interpretation or conventional limits.

In my opinion, designing a good public building means understand and interpret the human behaviour. Personally I consider fundamental for my profession the works of sociologists and anthropologists such as Lévi-Strauss, Augé Latouche and Bauman. From this perspective I would be interested in analysing the Deleuze concept of rhizome and the idea of non-linear thinking, considering his works a key point for my personal and professional growth, as well as an interesting reflection on contemporary society and humans behaviours.

Image: Matteo Silverio

Case study:                 Views House. Johnston Marklee and Diego Arraigada

Critical reading:          Mark Wigley, “The Architecture of Atmosphere”, in Daidalos 68, July 1998, pp. 18-27

Both case study and critical text investigate the atmospherical interaction between buildings and nature.

Case study: the view house designed by Johnston Marklee and Diego Arraigada tries to establish a relation between the living experience and its surrounding landscape.

For this purpose the architects have introduced the time as dynamic variable developing an internal staircase which leads to a roof deck. This architectural element allows the users to enjoy the nearby views on all sides in a dynamic and changing spiralling path that would engage an interaction among users and nature.

Critical reading: the Wigley’s essay speculates about the concept of atmosphere, defining it as a theatrical effect, intangible and personal. According to the text, trying to capture and control the atmosphere, architects often deceive themselves drawing perfect environments and thinking that they -the environments- can be controlled.

A tangible problem of intangibility: The idea that architect and architecture can control the nature creating the exact atmosphere they conceived is an illusion, especially because atmosphere is imperceptible and really subjective. Moreover the environment evolution is frequently unpredictable and it could compromise the architects aim.

In the view house, for example, Johnston Marklee and Diego Arraigada try to create an interaction system between architecture and its surrounding. However the architects cannot control the environment and, as result,  now the windows frame the neighbourhood houses, compromising the owner privacy as well as the main project feature.

Wigley seem to believe that there is no way to learn how to create atmosphere. The intangible ambience cannot be designed or predicted. The writer finally assert that architects as special effect producers should learn that the drawing they produced and the atmosphere in architecture are distinct.

Nevertheless I believe that the introduction of new digital tools as well as the use of virtual and augmenter reality could help architects to better understand the natural environment in order to produce more controlled and accurate projects, well suited to the morphological and climatic environment conditions.

Personal research: Personally I am really interested investigating the relation between architecture and its surrounding environment. In particular I would like to analyze how the natural conditions could modify an architectural project and how the introduction of the technology are helping architects to design better buildings as well as cities, redefining the architectural process.

Image: © dezeen.com