Thing-Shapes

from Intumus: Interior Design Reader Edited by Mark Taylor and Juleanna Preston 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Winka Dubbeldam

philosophical

21st century material

Architect and academic Winka Dubbeldam postulates that while materials currently have the ability to trace memories through their surface, in the future they will have the potential to act as mnemonic interactive surfaces in literal and philosophic ways. She suggests that this proposition emanates from a collapse of the subject-object and interior-exterior dichotomies resulting in a set of intelligent layered responsive subjects and interiors. Informed by a generative and process-orientated design method and a desire to engage with Husserl's 'smooth' surfaces, boundaries are no longer barriers but are interactive; they are creases – a hard-soft space allowing for local conditions. The smoothness of the interior registers a relationship to the human body so that they are part of a system of 'thing-shapes.'

… A philosopher proceeding from the practical, finite surrounding world to the theoretical world-view and world-knowledge … with his manifold finite shapes in their space-time [he] does not yet have geometrical shapes, the phoronomic shapes; [his shapes, as] formations developed out of praxis and thought of in terms of [gradual] perfection, clearly serve only as bases for a new sort of praxis out of which similarly named new constructions grow.

Edmund Husserl¹

Architecture is by nature a 'slow' profession. Only through avant-garde movements and technological inventions has it challenged notions such as traditional craftsmanship, proportional systems and aesthetics. Now, in the 21st century, the computer has accelerated the mass media into digital electronic communication – whose tendency towards specialisation and individualisation has fragmented the mass society of the postwar period into a society of niche cultures (for example, hackers). Demassified niches, says Alvin Toffler, commandeer the space of the Internet.² The net operates not only on this microscale but also on a macroscale; increasing globalisation is transforming our cities into physical expressions of global economies in which only the traces of local cultures remain. Within this global network, a new hybrid condition proliferates in which the relationship between local and global is constantly adjusting. Situated precisely

between the real and the virtual, architecture is challenged, yet it resists. As Gilles Deleuze states in his treatise Bergsonism, in developing new methodologies the first real challenge lies in the statement and creation of problems (the right problems); the second challenge lies in 'the discovery of genuine differences in kind; the third, [in] the apprehension of real time.'³ The differentiation between the 'right' and 'wrong' problem and the introduction of real time is of interest here. The departure from a static perception of history (Husserl) and the proposition of a generative future (Deleuze) is where Deleuze and Husserl seem to overlap. In our present condition we find a collapse of the generative past and of the to-be-generated future, where the posing of probabilities and/or the right problems makes us active participants. For architects, this interactivity and the imperative to action necessitate an understanding of the scientific method as applied by mathematicians, and an engagement with the complex systems of the global network, thereby providing opportunities to develop the dynamic spatial constructs integral to this hybrid condition.

In mathematics there is a crucial difference between the 'thing' and the mathematical model of the thing. While geometry defines itself in absolute values, mathematicians study and define the state of the thing; this in turn defines the validity of the calculus applied, and thereby the definition of the thing itself. Mathematicians make assumptions about mathematical behaviour – such as the higher dimension (the manifold) – and research these hypotheses by using animated computer simulations. This overlap of the virtual and the real is where new propositions lie. The corporate world has adopted these behavioural studies, leaving the marketing structures of the 1980s behind. Studies of lifestyles and stock markets have replaced the innately too slow study of 'what the general public wants' and transferred it into a prognosis of probabilities: the flux and behaviour of global network economies, emerging immigration patterns and urban settlements. A space, unlike a place, is now an electronically created environment, subject to a multiplicity of real and virtual pressures, described by Kevin Kelly as possessing a 'different kind of bigness, rampant clusterings, peer authority and re-intermediation.'⁴

In this network economy, architecture has to become generative – not unlike phoronomic shapes as discussed by Husserl which imply the existence of generative structures out of which new similarly named constructions grow. Husserl's notion of 'horizon-exposition' refers to departures from the historical in which the activity of free variation runs through the conceivable possibilities of the life-world, giving rise to a general set of elements that go through all the variants of spatiotemporal shapes. This endless modulation, of which we can convince ourselves with apodictic certainty, implies the generation of a spatial construct not as a static device but as a set of inventions; not as literally moving objects but as surface registrations of force fields, smart systems and programmatic mappings. This generative, process-oriented approach is the basis and definition of the organismic paradigm – an organism is characterised by its immanent patterns of organisation. This is similar to spirit, which was also described by Leibniz as monads and by Hegel as Begriff

or absolute ideas. These internal organising phenomena occur on all levels: in social interaction, in individual behavioural processes and in nature. Time and space relationships are inseparable; memory irreplaceable.

'Traditionally, we call body that part of substance that is caught in the sack of our skin' (Bernard Cache).⁵ In Husserl's world of "things," including the human beings themselves as subjects of this world … all things necessarily [have] to have a bodily character.' He describes these pure bodies as 'spatiotemporal shapes [with] "material" qualities … related to them' and names these 'thing-shapes.' Specific for these thing-shapes in their relationship to the human body are their 'surfaces – more or less "smooth," more or less perfect' – registrations that strive for gradual perfection. As he states, 'Here too, proceeding from the factual, an essential form becomes recognisable through a method of variation.'⁶ The generative aspects of integral architecture activate these surfaces into a hybrid system of layering. Similar phenomena of collapse, inversion and negotiation characterise the concept of this architecture. The politics of layering, creasing and wrapping activate zones and environments where boundaries are negotiated and distinctions are blurred.

Industrial design with its speed of innovation in industrial-design technologies provides for a smoother and more intereffective relationship between design and the life it houses than does architecture. Imagine the following architecture: the first layer is a hard shiny shell, which protects against weather (rain, wind) and forces (traffic accidents, impact). Part of this outer hard shell is transparent and movable, a visor that can be slid open into different positions. Its form mimics the curvature of the hard shell, an active sun-filter adapts to the brightness of the sky. The second layer, an integral foam layer, negotiates between two systems: the shell's hardness and the biological frailty of the body. Its amorphic shape is configured by negotiating the imprint of these two systems. It is an informed, intelligent layer, constantly providing and adjusting, thus achieving ultimate efficiency and an optimisation of space. This smart layer adds comfort (softness) and impact protection, as it envelops and provides integrated amenities like communication, music and ventilation systems. The third and last layer is the animate body; or the animated body, the modulated void – a fragile unit, reflective of the soft body. It creates a space to be occupied, a free zone, undefined in use but specific to its environment. The human body – its other, its imprint – occupies, floating through, similar but not the same. The trace of efficiency of use, the memory of comfort allows for an organic formulation of space, thus negotiating desire with facility.

This description of an integral motorcycle helmet is an interesting example of interdependent layering, efficiency of use and negotiation of means. Here, behavioural aspects rule the state between two dynamics and architecture becomes a materially responsive expression, with its intelligence inciting efficiency of use, high performance,

Aida salon - Manhattan: 'Smart Wall fold out to accommodate programmatic pressures.' Photo courtesy of Paul Warchol

smart controls and the resultant modulation of space. The form of the human body resembles this modulation and allows for a smooth transition between the layers.

Existing subject-object and interior-exterior dichotomies and hierarchies collapse, presenting us with a set of intelligent and layered objects, surfaces and skins, and a set of supple, responsive and connected subjects and interiors. With these sorts of collapses and inversions, we find ourselves in the midst of objects and subjects and exteriors and interiors that are constantly retooling and optimising each other. Nonhierarchical and boundaryless, it is along this labyrinthine smooth surface that we now constantly renegotiate and remake our contingent private and public architectures. Located in between at the incidence and co-incidence of modern life, we find the crease. The crease is malleable, soft, adaptable and multidimensional. Not unlike cartilage between spinal cord fragments, it allows for flexibility and precise adjustment. Disseminating the soft in

the hard and the hard in the soft, and produced in collaboration with the complex exigencies of contemporary urbanism, the hard-soft space of the crease works between and conflates the requirements of the urban and the individual, demanding minimum space and providing maximum comfort and efficiency. It conflates mathematical behaviour with industrial precision into a set of smart layers, hybrid structures.

The crease as a hybrid construct was investigated as a set of 'smart' adaptable, supple walls in Aida's Hair Salon (2000), located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The design for this space was based on the concept of the wall as a smooth wrapper enveloping all functional requirements and leaving the space free of clutter; its creases create a sculpted void to be occupied by the clientele. The wrapper starts at the facade as a folded smooth stone surface; it transforms, softens and continues as it folds inside. Fade out the individual. Transgress the liminal space between the private and the public. Disavow the Internet's illusory Utopias of neutrality and democracy. Inhabit the slip between former dichotomies. Ride this slip until its surface creases from internal and external pressures, producing a space that is at once grotesquely beautiful, intimately public, urbanely private and tactilely cerebral. Penetrate the delicate surfaces of this crease, the unimagined depths of our fac(ad)es. Wander across these faces and keep moving. The soft zone, the wrapper, renegotiates both the urban landscape (hard space) and the private domain (soft space). Disseminating the soft in the hard and the hard in the soft, the smart wall encapsulates the human body while demanding minimum space and providing maximum comfort and efficiency. At the interior this wrapper encapsulates all of the programmatic requirements, such as storage, music, lighting, heating and cooling systems, as required for a modern urban work environment. All evenly distributed: a free zone. The result is a supple, smooth set of surfaces, where creases allow for local insertions of cutting stations, desks and seating elements. Bodies are seen not as objects in themselves but as integral parts of a system of thing-shapes with layered smooth surfaces, generating and regenerating space. (… p 30)

Notes

1 Edmund Husserl, 'The Origin of Geometry', Jacques Derrida, Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln), 1989, pp 178-9.

2 Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave, Bantam Books (New York), 1981, pp 275-6.

3 Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism, Zone Books (New York), 1991, p 14.

4 Kevin Kelly, New Rules for the New Economy, Penguin Books (New York), 1999, p 96.

5 Bernard Cache, Earth Moves, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA), 1995, p 130.

6 Husserl, Origin of Geometry, pp 177-8.

Winka Dubbeldam, 'Things-Shapes', Architectural Design, vol 72 no 2, 2002, pp 26-31.

100