SERENDIGITAL–a special to CARLO RATTI
Siamo molto orgogliosi e soddisfatti nel potervi mostrare un documento video che lo studio CARLORATTIASSOCIATI ha voluto rendere pubblico su aramplus. Abbiamo aggiunto un testo di Picon, scritto in occasione di una mostra non troppo lontana, che secondo noi definisce bene il lavoro svolto dallo studio di Carlo Ratti.
In attesa di una prossima imminente Video Intervista sul lavoro dello studio di Carlo Ratti, vi auguriamo buona lettura.
digital_minimal Text by Antoine Picon
What spatial consequences should be drawn from the pervasive presence of digital media in the worldthat surrounds us? This was one of the questions at the center of a recent exhibition at MIT, whichreviewed, under the title ‘digital_minimal’, some work by Carlo Ratti’s SENSEable City Lab and Turinoffice carlorattiassociati – Chiara Morandini, Walter Nicolino, Carlo Ratti1. Carlo and his colleagues areby no means the only researchers and designers to address such a problem, but their approach andtheir conclusions differ noticeably from other better known attitudes and answers. Their refusal of the”blob”, or to be more accurate of the formal researches that the New York Times critic HerbertMuschamp once characterized as a new Baroque, is certainly among the most striking aspects of theirposition. Although disputable, it raises stimulating questions about the true range of possibilities thatshould be considered by designers when dealing with the digital world.
The advent of the digital represents an even greater challenge for design than what the early stages ofmechanization had meant for modern architecture. Contrary to what was the case with the automobileor the airplane, today’s mobility is not indeed epitomized by objects that can be a direct source offormal inspiration for the architect. The digital age is populated with quasi objects rather than fullyfledged”technological individuals” like traditional machines. The networks and fields these objects belong to are more significant than their appearance and inner structure. For the first timeperhaps, architecture has to confront itself with a deeply non tectonic reality. This reality displaysproperties, such as a high degree of redundancy, which are furthermore adverse to the qualities thatusually valued by architecture. Despite the multiple analogies that one has tried to establish betweenthe organization of virtual spaces and the layout of architectural projects, the design of informationnetworks obeys principles that are profoundly different from the conception of buildings.
Given these premises, how can the designer be in deep accordance with the invisible flows ofinformation that constitute the bones and flesh of the digital world? Until now, the most commonanswer has been to emphasize the participation of the design process to this fluid world in whicheverything is always in motion. Greg Lynn’s theoretical writings – his Animate Form book in particular -revolve around the architectural potential of the use of the computer in such a perspective.The main ambiguity of this kind of approach lies in the fact that in order to express spatially the fluidityof the digital realm, there seems to be no other alternative than to freeze at some point the computergeneratedgeometric flows manipulated by the designer. The blob may thus be compared to a footprint,a projection, or better a snapshot or still frame. The implicit gamble lies in the hope that if the momentis well chosen, the complex geometrical form obtained by freezing the digital flow will retain somethingof its initial dynamism.
The ambition is also to communicate this dynamism to the body and the mind of the spectator. Digitalarchitecture is inseparable from the quest for a new spectrum of sensations and emotions that justifythe provisory suspension of the question of “meaning”. For the development of the digital dimension inarchitecture often has been accompanied by the refusal to refer oneself to a set of conventions andsymbols exterior to the realm of design6. Robert Venturi and his Las Vegas lesson seem to be definitelygone. This had led among other consequences to a reinterpretation of the ornament sometimes as atopological accident, more often as a surface condition based on effects of light and texture.From the approach of form as a frozen geometric flow to the concern with ornament, what many digitaldesigners have had in common is the belief that architectural form must express the intrinsiccomplexity of the invisible electronic networks and fields that surrounds it. In such a perspective, formappears in turns as an indicator of the networks and fields intensity, a resonator in tune with theirinvisible rhythm, or a terminal enabling to visualize their fundamental patterns of organization andbehavior.In their work, Carlo Ratti and his colleagues and partners have taken a different course. First, thevisualization of the electronic networks and fields occurs on another level than form finding. Theirmapping exercises – such as the Mobile Landscape projects, which revealed the real-time dynamics ofcities such as Graz or Milan based on the traces left by cell phones, or the iSPOTS initiative, whichaims at visualizing activity on the MIT campus based on WiFi usage – come prior to any architecturalendeavor (Figure 1). They reveals a level of complexity with which design should not even try tocompete. Actually, their conception of design seems to have more to do with the longing for a pacifiedenvironment in which to pick up these networks and fields than with the desire for a direct spatialtranslation of their dynamism.
In this sense, a strong reference should be drawn to the MIT Media Lab philosophy as expressed inbooks like Negroponte’s Being Digital or the more recent William J. Mitchell Me++7: a belief that thedigital is first and foremost a mode of being, a human condition that will eventually permeate allaspects of life. Being digital is not primarily about using a computer in the design process, nor aboutmaking this use visually conspicuous. It is an everyday state that goes in hand with gestures as simpleas being called on a cell phone or listening to an mp3 player. In direct proportion to its pervasivecharacter, such a condition is synonymous with an overabundance of stimuli and information that maybecome rapidly tedious.
In a world saturated with invisible flows of information that form intricate patterns, do we really need toadd to the ambient complexity with architectural objects overloaded with plastic and emotionalintentions? One may of course be tempted to play this card. It has led to seductive results like some ofForeign Office, Nox or dECOi projects (Figure 2). Carlo Ratti’s answer is as for it negative. Hisdigital/minimal stance is to be understood as an attempt to restore a peace of the body and the mindsomewhat reminiscent of Jean Prouvé’s quest for simplicity, a quest in complete contrast with the moreexuberant forms of modernity the author of the Buvette d’Evian was contemporary with (Figure 3).
The digital_minimal stance is also returning to an alternative present in earlier architectural history. Thisalternative reveals itself when one examines closer the contrast between seventeenth- and eighteenthcenturyBaroque and late eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Neoclassicism. It is well-known thatbaroque architecture may be interpreted as a hymn to movement. But the movement baroque architectswere concerned remained essentially visual. It was also of a limited scope, having not much to do withthe physical circulation of men and goods on the roads and waterways of early modern Europe.
Even more than the body, it concerned primarily the mind of the subject that experienced architectural space.If it was obsessed by questions like the trajectory of light inside churches and its spiritual meaning,baroque architecture remained indifferent to circulation at large. Actually, it is with Neoclassicism thatarchitecture began to confront itself to the modern imperative of mobility and its translation in terms oftransportation infrastructures. This confrontation was already present in the seminal projects of theselate eighteenth-century pioneers of Neoclassicism, Etienne-Louis Boullée and above all Claude-NicolasLedoux. It is no hazard if both designed bridges at some point in their itinerary. The reference tomodern circulation was to play an important role in the subsequent work of the great Prussian architectFriedrich Schinkel who envisaged his monumental new Berlin in close relation with preoccupations ofindustrial and commercial development (Figure 4)
Now, on a formal standpoint, Baroque captures movement through a series of fluid and rhythmicspatial sequences, while Neoclassicism adopts a more rigid geometry that is supposed to act both as alandmark and a regulating device in the mobile world that surrounds it (Figure 5). Baroque buildingsundulate as a series of waves, contrary to neoclassical compositions that remain voluntarily rigid inorder to be functionally more efficient.
How is one to conceive architectural efficiency and effectiveness in relation to the theme of movement?The example of Baroque goes with the ambition to incarnate movement, to entrap it using purelyarchitectural means. Neoclassicism exemplifies a more distanced attitude. For the latter, architecture isnot movement embodied but movement controlled. Its purpose is to canalize the circulations withoutcarving their envelope in the stone. Baroque entertains an imitative relation to movement, whereasNeoclassicism ambitions to locate itself at the level of the principles that generate mobility. At that level,a strange peace is supposed to reign: the peace of mind that settles in when reasons are made visible,so that one may stand still for a moment in the middle of a world in constant motion.Is such a peace possible in the midst of the digital world? Can we experience it with detachmentinstead of being in the immersive mode that has been so often striven for by artists and designers?Ultimately, the digital/minimal attitude is about the suspension of unwanted agitation, the possibility toexperience the digital with a certain degree of serenity.
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