In his article “The Shape of Energy”, Sean Lally advocates for a new architecture that is based on “material energies”. We are constantly surrounded by different energies – thermodynamic, electromagnetic, acoustic, chemicals – and we take them for granted, but in reality the role which they play in our lives and in influencing our behaviours are just as, if not more important, than our concrete environment. Material energies create boundaries that are fluid and responsive, resulting in a vernacular that is intimately connected to both regional and climatic conditions.

So how would one apply these intangible energies? Unfortunately, while he brings up some very interesting points, Sean Lally has failed to address the practical application of his ideations. One cannot just take energy and build with it. Humans exist in the physical domain, and we do not have a physical grasp on energy. In order to use something as a building block, one must first gain an intimate understanding of the material at hand, and while we may have an intuitive sense of different energies since we are surrounded by and interact with them on a daily basis, we are a far cry from being able to control them, not to mention manipulate them for careful study and experimentation, and eventually incorporate them into our architectural realm.

What I find fascinating is the physical manifestation of energy. Every energy somehow influences the physical environment. Tree wells form because heat generated by trees melts the surrounding snow, and compass needles point north because of the Earth’s magnetic field. Paying attention to changes in the physical environment provides information about surrounding energies as well as changes in energy conditions. A person putting on a sweater might signify a drop in temperature, while the same person, now reading a book, moving from one room to another might suggest an increase in noise or a decrease in light in the former space. By observing such changes in our environment, one can gain much insight into the invisible forces that surround us.

Another compelling thought is that architecture based on material energies would be able to adapt almost instantaneously to changes in the environment or in social programming. Through a feedback relationship between material energies and existing climatic context, an active dialogue would emerge between a building’s environment and its building blocks, with architecture that can either “dissipate on command” or respond accordingly in its shape and configuration. Of course, such a fluid reality is still far away.

It is interesting to view Sou Fujimoto’s House N in light of material energies. The house itself is purist and minimalistic, and in the physical domain it might seem like a purely spatial exercise – that is, three shells nested one inside the other. However, it is not just the walls that create an increased sense of privacy and separation as one moves deeper into the house; the change in light, sound, view planes, temperature, bodily sense of enclosure, etc. all contribute to the gradient that exists through the spaces.

I am of the strong opinion that so long as we do not transgress the physical nature of our corporeal existence, neither will our architecture. However, this does not mean that we cannot study and become more in tune with the forces that we cannot readily control, because we can certainly shape existing energies with solid-state building materials. An example that comes to mind is Philippe Rahm’s Convective Apartments, in which the architecture is designed according to the principle of convection. In this case, it is the existing thermal landscape that has shaped the resulting configuration of the building’s solid elements. Even though the architecture remains static and potentially iconic in its form, this is the first step towards an architecture informed by energy. I would be interested in examining such basic physical and climatic principles in order to generate systematic, vernacular designs that directly reflect their environmental conditions.

http://cloudatlas.wikia.com/wiki/Neo_Seoul

Photo: Compass Table by Dunne and Raby (2001)

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/books/90/0

The House N of Sou Fujimoto may appear only an example of minimalist architecture, but it encompass a richer discussion of the relationship of men and nature. It could be an example of how the japanese culture see their relation with nature, since the building is not making a total separation between nature and man, or public and private, but creating a gradient of values of nature&men and public&private.

In Sean Lally critic text, the architects of the future will not design the walls of the building, but instead of designing barriers, such as walls, due to advances in tecnology, architects would design spaces controling the climate and energy creating walls based on electromagnetic fields and chemicals.

Dunne and Raby made a piece of design/art with a similar approach to the perception of huge quantity of electronics that surround us. The Compass Table (2001) is a wooden table inset with magnetic compasses that allows us to see the effects of electromagnetic fields of typical objects, such as laptops or cellphones, in this way, the table shows the users the invisible fields that surround them.

In conclusion, both of them believe in a more blured relation between the outside and inside spaces of a house, and although Sou Fujimoto answer to this question on a more formal way, and Sean Lally prefer to go to a more expeculative area, primary based on technological advances, both the architects have similar aproaches to the protective aspect of what a building should have.

Photo courtesy: Iwan Baan.

Architecture is not so changeable, but the weather and people are, so architects have to find a platform that could accommodate the changes, Sou Fujiomoto pointed that out. His approach is always about how to make a relation between inside and outside environment as one of the realisations of his idealism. House N is not only about space nor form, but also about expressing the richness of what are `between` the house and the street. There are 2 types of gradation that he wanted to achieved through the design; boxes gradation (as the application of space concept which incorporate the inside and the outside) and openings/windows gradation (as the application to help the concept reaches its sense). It gives the experience that even when you are inside you still feeling outside, and when you are outside you actually have the transcendence access to still feel being inside. Somehow this experience is giving a sense to our understanding on Sean Lally’s The Shape of Energy which introduces of a new possibility that could advance our architectural approach through intangible matter.

 It is a very interesting display of thoughts even though it is beyond its realisation, Sean Lally expressed that buildings in the future wont have walls and will instead consists of climate controller areas of landscape. We as architects will be able to analyse and harness energy and then process it to create sustain space of architecture. Electromagnetic fields, thermodynamic, and chemical power should be possible matters to control and used as space divider. Also, the energy that is attached to humans themselves potentially could build a social architecture barrier. It is very clear that his approach is making energy as a new architecture typology with out physical development.

Critically thinking on what Shape of Energy could contribute an alteration to Fujimoto-san’s House N is that actually the most outer layer of the house could be eliminated but the house still could achieve the original desired concept. Most outer space will be maintained by the existing of tress and gravel landscape that somehow incorporate with the sunlight.

Drawing courtesy; Left: Sou Fujimoto. Right: Maulidianti’s simulation on the original drawing.

Architecture exists because of human needs, so for me personally it is human’s attribute (humbly speaking), therefore the consistency on making architecture in order to comply to the nature of human is essential. In my opinion, technology is another evolution to support that concept, not necessarily to alter architecture’s role, but to make the most out of its function and enhance architecture. Therefore I will be quite practical in choosing my research, the ones that will be the closest with human evolution of needs. In this era, the world is separated in physical and digital platform, I would really like to incorporate them in my architecture work so all possibilities and breakthrough on human’s needs could be sustained, and the design itself will always be a very specific and unique solution. Form wise, it is not necessarily to be a physical parametric shape, advanced architecture could offer a simple form or solution that also can be a configuration of system, and at the same time not secluded from nature.

 Photo courtesy: UAP. Via: http://www.designboom.com/

Brisbane Domestic Terminal Car Park

By ned kahn, collaborated with hassell architecture, UAP and the brisbane airport corporation

Arcosanti post card, 1978, Arizona

Architecture is one of the disciplines that most requires to focus attention towards the relationships that exist between objects and contexts. While in art the actors analyze the context (if it exists) as basis of a process finalized to the creation of an object, often conceived as a representation, science, in the opposite way, puts too much emphasis on the relationships between objects and it is almost completely unaware of consequences in human lives.

After almost three hundred years of distance from the classic conception of architecture as made not only of designing processes, the Advanced Architecture, in different and adaptive ways, is trying to recover an holistic vision of planning and construction. In such a situation, relationships between subject, object and context are various and contribute to generate a more complex scenario than the one you can obtain only considering all variables as independent from each others.

Specialization is an evolutive phenomenon issued with a vital importance in our universe and permits to increment efficiency and productivity, but if not controlled it will transform the human being in a programmed machine that carries its task out. What we are making out is a future made of knowledge, sharing, continuous learning, experimentation and collaboration addressed to the constitution of active intervenes that possess “functional resonance”, that is the ability of a system element to develop, at the same time, multiple functions and to reach multiple goals. The logic with which relations could be created and linked with each others feels the effects of a natural complexity.

All parts of a project react to his surroundings according to different system (illation, analogy, interaction, correlation, alteration, energy) and to their relative relational logics (positional, metamorphical, atmospherical, intangible, disturbed, environmental). It seems clear how these categories simply are a first and general subdivision and representation of how Advanced Architecture operates. It is dutiful to remember that an unambiguous subdivision is not able to describe all the possible dispositions and that some of these logics can assume more resonance than others.

Energy and environment, for examples, have been taking for the last decades a huge relevance and they have to be considered as first system and logic. For this reason Diego Arraigada’s and Johnston Marklee’s Wall House assumes a shape and a material composition not really usual for a residential purpose, made of four different energetic layers and an external tent surface. In this concept natural energy flows are not interrupted but followed and architectural solutions go along them. This kind of approach, as Sean Lally writes in The Shape of Energy, allows us to create an “architecture built of material energies” that “produces a type of shape that is micro-vernacular, as each site creates a unique feedback relationship to the energy system deployed”.

Similarly to the idea of an architecture made of energy, the interaction between parts of systems is fundamental and has the first aim to generate an atmospherical relation (natural and artificial) with the territory and within the concept of atmosphere as “the envelop of gases surrounding the Earth or another planet” and “the air in any particular place” instead of “the pervading tone or mood of a place, situation or creative work” (Oxford Dictionaries). View House and N-House are examples of this logic but, as written above, each project feels the effects of different influences and distortions according to designer, builder and user. While Sou Fujimoto tries to subvert the natural perception we have of inside and outside, Arraigada and Marklee want to underline the natural environment and his visual potential. Both houses, nevertheless, instead of focusing in the interaction with their surroundings, tend to consider them as artificial features lacking of positive influence on the built up. What seems to be relevant to mark is the necessity of analyzing the ways in which architecture and its products operates in the nature rather than over the nature.

As we discussed, relationships categories and intervention strategies are subject to variation and it is theoretically possible (and maybe it has to be hoped) to detect other relational logics according to the amount of architectural topics and visions. We could have a logic of economic in a natural disaster situation, a logic of safety in another context and maybe more new logics generated by the mix or by the mutation of some of them. Taking in account the metamorphical relation between urban and natural, the actual emergency of cities, the constant population increase and the quality of life (sound, light, pollution, food) we can presume an explosion of the urban boundaries along a completed built (not urbanized) world. The solution could be to finally mix urban and natural in a unique organism, thinking to buildings and landscapes with natural appearances and functionalities. We are speaking about an environment that permits to go from your house to your office without never loosing the awareness of a world that is firstly natural, as all its parts.

Text Assignment: The Shape of Energy – Sean Lally (photo)

Architecture, in all of its many abstract definitions, is being pushed to a fusion with nature. From some perspectives, such as that of Sou Fujimoto and Sean Lally, architecture ought to be defined by natural elements.

The case study of Foujimoto’s House N uses a shell strategy to illustrate a concept of incremental spatial mediation without the use of distinct boundaries; this way, the outdoors feels like the indoors and vice versa. By the inclusion of trees in it’s outermost shell, House N speaks to topics of atmospheric, disturbed, and intangible relations.

Similarly, Lally’s interpretation of Architecture’s current status and its future, is highly reliant on atmospheric and intangible relational logics in Advanced Architecture. Material energies, the sensational environment that surrounds us, are proposed as a new typology to follow the static mediation used in Architecture today. The shapes of these ever-changing habitats become a job for the architect to define and design custom to the particular properties of the environment. The idea is that society becomes inexplicably aware of material energies’ ability to activate a feeling of space, as well as transform to adapt to change.

Critically thinking, both of these methods seem conceptually competent. With Architecture’s acceptance of rapidly advancing digital technologies, as well as environmental impact, new boundary defining mechanisms appear inevitable. However, both Foujimoto’s and Lally’s concepts distance themselves from issues of security and stability. The role of an architect is certainly changing, but does that exclude the duties of providing such comforts to habitable spaces, especially residential?

In the future, I may be interested in mimicking the inherent successes of natural systems in Architecture. I question strategies of inclusion, forcing nature into the bounds that are today still necessary in Architecture, or wrapping architecture around the freedom that is synonymous with Nature. In this race to design the true “future” of architecture, I hope to develop research that helps to narrow down the contenders to those that are sensible in respect to economical, social, and environmental impact.