This chapter discusses how the new field of ‘media architecture’ is able to transgress traditiona... more This chapter discusses how the new field of ‘media architecture’ is able to transgress traditional hierarchies between surface and structure and between scenography and tectonics to create new urban textures and spaces through the integration of media technology, media content and built architecture in a field where previously the sheer surface of the façade operated. The authors rally against the current and all-pervasive allopoietic reality of the media façade that consistently produces something different to itself, and instead for the development and implementation of self-creating and autopoietic systems of media architectures that produce and act contextually, interactively and out of themselves. It is shown that the traditional media facade operates as a medial alien body, attached to the outer skin of a building and thus operating as both parasite and masque. Following on from Perrella’s theory of the hypersurface, a kind of liquid architecture that is able to transcend the dichotomy between form and surface, body-subject and building (Perrella 1995), the authors discuss how the interactive space of the hypersurface adds to the complexity of a readability of the city. The chapter demonstrates the technological and conceptual development of the media face from its early beginnings (Nitschke 1934-36) and argues for a contemporary, architectural analogy of the biological notion of the productive cross talk between organism and parasite as a cross talk between the interior of a building and its outer shell. A new four step future model of the emergent genre of media architecture is developed by the authors that is centred around an autopoietic design process, that is able to develop a virus-like infiltration of the urban body in a bundle of information-giving and information-communicating medial instruments
This text identifies critical space-making strategies in the performance environments of two proj... more This text identifies critical space-making strategies in the performance environments of two project series by Rimini Protokoll, Cargo Sofia X/ Cargo Asia and Ciudades Paralelas – Parallel Cities. through rejecting and going beyond conventionalised scenographic practices in favour of the negotiation of an agonistic model of public space (Chanta Mouffe), both project series make spatial policy visible and negotiable. Cargo and Ciudades Paralelas will be discussed as examples of scenographic productions of space through self-organised and resistant spatial practices
In their German Dictionary from 1838, the brothers Grimm give an intriguing definition of the ter... more In their German Dictionary from 1838, the brothers Grimm give an intriguing definition of the term Doppelganger as someone who ‘is thought to be able to show himself at the same time in two different places’ . Intriguing is this definition as it defies the popular notion of the Doppelganger as someone who looks just like another person, who is somebody’s twin, or double. Rather than focus on the physiognomic aspects of the Doppelganger, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s dictionary entry proposes a shift toward a topological definition that in its consequence speaks of a person who is present and is seen in two different sites simultaneously. This paper follows Grimm’s initial orientation but turns it on its head by considering the Doppelganger phenomenon from the perspective of site, thus discussing such buildings that show themselves in two different places and expanding the field of observation to include such buildings that show themselves in two different places at different times. The phenomenon of the architectural double is investigated here in relation to ‘what it does’ rather than ‘what it is’, with the authors taking their cue, again, from the word itself, the German ‘doppelt gehen’ is the equivalent of the English ‘double walking’. Rather than ‘doppelt sein’ (eng ‘to be double’), the Doppelganger implies the action of walking, thus suggesting that a performative element is bound to the very existence of the double. The perception of the architectural double, with perception understood here as an active and cognitive process of our sense-making of the world, this paper argues, merges into the pronounced experience of a split presence where the architectural Doppelgangers are neither identical twins nor complete reconstructions, defined by difference and, possibly, constructed across several sites and temporalities
Concurrently arguing from the perspectives of theatre and architecture, Professors Thea Brejzek a... more Concurrently arguing from the perspectives of theatre and architecture, Professors Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen, of the University of Technology Sydney, examine the model as an architectural fragment, revealing its performative and worldmaking potential
This chapter investigates the phenomenon of 'transience' in modernist architecture and po... more This chapter investigates the phenomenon of 'transience' in modernist architecture and postmodernist transdisciplinary and architectural experimentation. With case studies spanning over a time period from 1922 -2012, the authors argue what connects the selected key practice case studies is their common origin in the positively connoted notion of the nomadic, the temporary and unsettled. In architecture as much as in philosophical thought, temporary occupations have offered an alternate vision of inhabitation to the constraints of a society that typically defines itself through conventions of settledness, stability, and duration. Deleuze's notion of nomadism as an activity and a process that sets up a counter-space to the dominant space of the State, provides one set of relations with which to think about temporal and transient built structures and its contemporary reflections, and Heidegger's practices of 'dwelling' as a mode of 'being in the world’ where, however, identity is not linked to a place, form another theoretical provocation. Through two modernist case studies of 'unstable architectures', namely Rudolph Schindler’s Kings Road House in Los Angeles (1922) and Eileen Gray's E-1027 house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (1926-29), we reflect on both architects' desires for the design of their own houses as distinctly temporal dwellings. In contrast, the third case study, designed and built 60 years later, the architect's collective Raumlabor’s Marathon Camp at the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria (2012) shows not a private dwelling but rather a model for the temporary housing of 'theory', i.e. for a localized and collective thinking. The concept of unstable architectures, it is argued here, is linked to the creation of systems of performative relations between people and spaces through experimentation, critique and contextualisation. Unstable architectures provoke and enable alternate modes of individual and collective behaviour and in doing so, these built structures serve to destabilize and unsettle existing social orders
This chapter discusses how the new field of ‘media architecture’ is able to transgress traditiona... more This chapter discusses how the new field of ‘media architecture’ is able to transgress traditional hierarchies between surface and structure and between scenography and tectonics to create new urban textures and spaces through the integration of media technology, media content and built architecture in a field where previously the sheer surface of the façade operated. The authors rally against the current and all-pervasive allopoietic reality of the media façade that consistently produces something different to itself, and instead for the development and implementation of self-creating and autopoietic systems of media architectures that produce and act contextually, interactively and out of themselves. It is shown that the traditional media facade operates as a medial alien body, attached to the outer skin of a building and thus operating as both parasite and masque. Following on from Perrella’s theory of the hypersurface, a kind of liquid architecture that is able to transcend the dichotomy between form and surface, body-subject and building (Perrella 1995), the authors discuss how the interactive space of the hypersurface adds to the complexity of a readability of the city. The chapter demonstrates the technological and conceptual development of the media face from its early beginnings (Nitschke 1934-36) and argues for a contemporary, architectural analogy of the biological notion of the productive cross talk between organism and parasite as a cross talk between the interior of a building and its outer shell. A new four step future model of the emergent genre of media architecture is developed by the authors that is centred around an autopoietic design process, that is able to develop a virus-like infiltration of the urban body in a bundle of information-giving and information-communicating medial instruments
This text identifies critical space-making strategies in the performance environments of two proj... more This text identifies critical space-making strategies in the performance environments of two project series by Rimini Protokoll, Cargo Sofia X/ Cargo Asia and Ciudades Paralelas – Parallel Cities. through rejecting and going beyond conventionalised scenographic practices in favour of the negotiation of an agonistic model of public space (Chanta Mouffe), both project series make spatial policy visible and negotiable. Cargo and Ciudades Paralelas will be discussed as examples of scenographic productions of space through self-organised and resistant spatial practices
In their German Dictionary from 1838, the brothers Grimm give an intriguing definition of the ter... more In their German Dictionary from 1838, the brothers Grimm give an intriguing definition of the term Doppelganger as someone who ‘is thought to be able to show himself at the same time in two different places’ . Intriguing is this definition as it defies the popular notion of the Doppelganger as someone who looks just like another person, who is somebody’s twin, or double. Rather than focus on the physiognomic aspects of the Doppelganger, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s dictionary entry proposes a shift toward a topological definition that in its consequence speaks of a person who is present and is seen in two different sites simultaneously. This paper follows Grimm’s initial orientation but turns it on its head by considering the Doppelganger phenomenon from the perspective of site, thus discussing such buildings that show themselves in two different places and expanding the field of observation to include such buildings that show themselves in two different places at different times. The phenomenon of the architectural double is investigated here in relation to ‘what it does’ rather than ‘what it is’, with the authors taking their cue, again, from the word itself, the German ‘doppelt gehen’ is the equivalent of the English ‘double walking’. Rather than ‘doppelt sein’ (eng ‘to be double’), the Doppelganger implies the action of walking, thus suggesting that a performative element is bound to the very existence of the double. The perception of the architectural double, with perception understood here as an active and cognitive process of our sense-making of the world, this paper argues, merges into the pronounced experience of a split presence where the architectural Doppelgangers are neither identical twins nor complete reconstructions, defined by difference and, possibly, constructed across several sites and temporalities
Concurrently arguing from the perspectives of theatre and architecture, Professors Thea Brejzek a... more Concurrently arguing from the perspectives of theatre and architecture, Professors Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen, of the University of Technology Sydney, examine the model as an architectural fragment, revealing its performative and worldmaking potential
This chapter investigates the phenomenon of 'transience' in modernist architecture and po... more This chapter investigates the phenomenon of 'transience' in modernist architecture and postmodernist transdisciplinary and architectural experimentation. With case studies spanning over a time period from 1922 -2012, the authors argue what connects the selected key practice case studies is their common origin in the positively connoted notion of the nomadic, the temporary and unsettled. In architecture as much as in philosophical thought, temporary occupations have offered an alternate vision of inhabitation to the constraints of a society that typically defines itself through conventions of settledness, stability, and duration. Deleuze's notion of nomadism as an activity and a process that sets up a counter-space to the dominant space of the State, provides one set of relations with which to think about temporal and transient built structures and its contemporary reflections, and Heidegger's practices of 'dwelling' as a mode of 'being in the world’ where, however, identity is not linked to a place, form another theoretical provocation. Through two modernist case studies of 'unstable architectures', namely Rudolph Schindler’s Kings Road House in Los Angeles (1922) and Eileen Gray's E-1027 house in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin (1926-29), we reflect on both architects' desires for the design of their own houses as distinctly temporal dwellings. In contrast, the third case study, designed and built 60 years later, the architect's collective Raumlabor’s Marathon Camp at the Steirischer Herbst Festival in Graz, Austria (2012) shows not a private dwelling but rather a model for the temporary housing of 'theory', i.e. for a localized and collective thinking. The concept of unstable architectures, it is argued here, is linked to the creation of systems of performative relations between people and spaces through experimentation, critique and contextualisation. Unstable architectures provoke and enable alternate modes of individual and collective behaviour and in doing so, these built structures serve to destabilize and unsettle existing social orders
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