It is interested to me thatthe language which
accompanies an architectural training is wholly inadequate when trying to
characterize the
space of active organization. The sites are totally different from those
addressed by architectural conventions. They are plural, multiple,
distributed in different ways. And when our profession became fascinated
with these organizations (first in the 60's), they were often seen
holistically as ecologies
for which an optimal pattern could be determined--returning a fascination
with activity and relationship back to a fascination with geometry.
As the computer provides us with a common model of an active organization.
All the various forms of networked media have become the favorite mascot
on many different kinds of academic theory. Architects (my favorite straw
men) are usually interested in all of these and dutifully take up each
one. Still , so few of these directly address the architecture of these
space in ways that an architect should know. What is the architecture of
these spaces and how is it adjusted. What parts are material, ephemeral,
or
virtual. How does the adjustment of any one of these protocols have
spatial and/or material consequences? We don't have very good terms for
that. We have a vast number of terms to characterize material
representations, however.
I have gone through a fairly tedious history of American urbanism,looking
for eccentric characters and episodes which practiced an understanding of
active organizations. Some used the terms of geology, some mechanics,
some mathematics. I wanted them to be historical so that their terms
would prefigure and enrich our current fascinations with electronic
terminology. Their terms were pretty good. In some ways their
understanding of an active organization was not so different from Brian's
insight into the parameters of HS protocols. I like to talk about the
same ideas in different intellectual settings.
One in particular, though lost in a boring boiled history of American
urbanism, was useful to me because he was doing something that I wanted to
talk about Because he had abackground in theatrical training, it was
perfectly natural for him to develop a kind of mental craft that involved
storing memory and crafting virtual adjustments of space. His architecture
was almost nothing physically. In some cases it was a vacancy. But it
was a very particular vacancy from which spaces were perceived/understood
differently. With a virtual adjustment he created physical spatial
consequences. He is only an anecdotal figure perhaps, but useful to me in
illustrating even within an historical episode, the craft and terms of a
virtual adjustment with enormous material consequences.
My own similar interests go in different directions from those of this
particular figure of course. I am warming up to respond later to some of
Bracha's suggestions for discussion.