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.

The construction industry leaves a significantly negative environmental footprint.  It is one of the main contributors of greenhouse gases production, which leads to a global environmental disaster.  How should we act to stop the ecosystem devastation before it will be too late?  What our priority should be nowadays during the design process? Phillip Rahm answers this question with two simple words:  sustainable development.

The idea of sustainability is to ensure that our present actions would not inhibit the opportunities of future generations.  Sustainable architecture must take into account future forecasts.  It should also take into consideration a limited capacity of the ecosystem and the necessity to maintain its functioning.  Nowadays, an architect has to adjust his role to space and energy use manager.  His goal is to reduce building’s non-renewable energy consumption.  His focus is not only on the esthetical aspects of the building, but also on its guts and skin.  In other words, his role is to optimize the functioning of the building as if it was a complex organism.

In the essay “Form and Function Follow Climate” Rahm presents designing priorities of the last century:  Sulivan’s dictum “form follows function” – a credo of functionalism and “function follows form”- a doctrine of Luis Kahn, who treated architecture as a system of hierarchies and relations.  Rahm opposes above statements to his designing philosophy in which form and function follow climate.  His objective is to literately built space from functional determinations, to leave it interpretable, to permit architecture to be driven by climate, leading it to discover innovative forms and functions.  The following quote is a thorough summary of his thesis:

“What we are working towards is a reversal of the traditional approach to the design in order to achieve a new spatial organization in which function and form can emerge spontaneously in response to climate”

Form and Function Follow Climate, Phillip Rahm

Case study house related to Rahm’s philosophy is called Never Never Land and was designed by Andres Jaque in 2007 on Ibiza.  It corresponds perfectly with the idea of interpretable space, liberated from functional determinations.  The main assumption of the project refers to sustainability philosophy.  Never Never Land maintains the continuity of the valley’s natural base, its arboreal mass and the cycles of matter in the soil. Designing process was started by making accurate path analysis which took into account all existing arboreal mass. The building is fitted into the free space between the greenery, raised on piles, which minimizes trees removal and disturbance to the ground.  In terms of relational logics that are given between advanced architecture and the environment, in this case we can explore the existence of positional relation.  The form put between the trees stays in strong relation with them e.g. in terms of shading.  In my opinion, there is also a disturb relation- Never Never Land shows how we can alter the relation with nature and its elements.

Is the Never Never Land a good example of advanced architecture?  In my opinion, it is not.  Architecture is always connected with other various fields.  The more connections it has, the more advance it is.  In Jaque’s design I cannot notice many other aspects than maintaining the continuity of the valley’s natural base.  Moreover, his assumption is realized without consistency.  The house is raised on piles to avoid disturbance on the ground and at the same time a huge concrete cube with tank is installed in the ground.  Other drawback is a lack of eco construction materials.  Sustainable house should not be made from tons of steel and glass.  I think that advanced architecture is about complexity which is perfectly described by the following quote from the Metapolis Dictionary of Advance Architecture: “The complexity of a real object is measured by the wealth and variety of the parts that make it up and by the wealth and variety of the different states it can take on”.

In light of the above conclusions, the area of my personal research which I would like to explore deeper is a relation between function, form and climate in housing.  This would help me to understand how these connections were established during the history, what events triggered those transformations, how these relations would look in the future and what would be their consequences.