Paste your essay in here…The Industrial revolution brought architecture to a new age of materiality, construction processes and design, in which both the Eiffel Tower in Paris and the Crystal Palace in London has successfully embodied. With emerging ideas of the how materials could be used, skyscrapers emerged rapidly, and took a century to become ubiquitous. After a century of experimentation with how steel and glass could surpass certain heights, the world has allowed us to shift to the Information Age, now also referred to as the digital millennia, in which the paradigm shifts from mechanical to electronic. This singularity occurred when the digital industries create a knowledge economy by allowing our high-tech globalized and commercialized economy to be more convenient and efficient, thus making us more productive. Through advancements of modernization and capitalism of computer microminiaturization innovations, a modern day trend of fabricating electronics and devices in a much smaller and micro scale, makes technology much more affordable and accessible to a wider audience, and allow for an easier infiltration of machinery into our daily lives. This helps to revolutionize many industries, which includes architecture’s. Like the Industrial revolution, the Digital revolution not only challenged how we design buildings but also how we conceive and construct them. From the period of pen-to-paper drawings to the phase of computer-aided designs (CAD), computers has given architects a more elaborate tool to help improve their design processes. Frank Gehry was one of the first few architects to pioneer in computer modeling. Gehry’s iconic Guggenheim museum at Bilbao, Spain, in 1997 is perhaps one of the prime examples to encapsulate the zeitgeist of the era, of how architects have translated technological advancements into their buildings. The production of the Guggenheim museum would not be easily achieved if the design had to be done with hand-drawings; the assistance of the computer and of CAD helped to visualize the project and find new structural originalities. It evidenced that four basic walls are no longer essential to create design a building. Architects Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman are just few of the many who also understand the latitude that can be achieved with technologies in design and have used the tools vigorously throughout their production. But even though technological innovations may seem like a powerful product to further develop human productivity and improve our built environment, we also need to indulge it with a grain of salt.
Nowadays, architecture is often perceived as a practice of individual freedom, with very limited boundaries. Technology reshapes the way architects think and practice, and concurrently, architects demand from technology new methods to conceptualize and to create new functions and aesthetics. When granted limitless freedom to utilize technology as design tools, designers and architects tend to add complexities that can render the project dysfunctional and obsolete to the experience of the user of the space, in which Juhani Pallasmaa called “meaningless formal complexities” (Pallasmaa and MacKeith, 2012). This tendency is consequently reflected on Frank Gehry’s works after his Guggenheim sensation, which dubbed the ‘Bilbao effect’. Softwares are designed more intuitively to accommodate the different backgrounds of people, which allow anyone to be their own designer. In the age of digitization, architects have find keeping up with the pace of globalization and the changing urban environment difficult. The architecture scene of today is gradually losing its authority. Architects are making less value and impact on the urban environment as they cannot relate and adapt to the rest of the world. The practice is reduced to simply a form of critical art in a society of contemporary thinkers (Ghirardo, 1991), where aesthetic and functionality do not perform on the same alignment. But we can also question the meaning of art and design, and why can’t architecture be simply one and not the other? Is it its uniqueness the only element to separate it from being just art?
Immersive user interfaces and machine learning algorithms technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence have just recently became widely accessible and are extensively, publicly promoted as the agent to revolutionize the 21st century humanity to another age, and perhaps even to the another universe, as suggested by cosmologist Max Tegmark. But technology is never deterministic. Virtual reality and augmented reality are used as tools in the architecture industry to provide a superior communication method and expand creativity, similarly to the introduction of CAD. It can also help foster collaboration between the architect and the client, and alternatively between the architect and the machine. Through the insertion of generative design, which is the product of artificial intelligence, it offers architects and designers with an evolved method of design that helps to amplify the designer’s ability to explore, refine and experiment with multiple design iterations over a short period of time. This reflects the paradigm shift from electronic to automation. It can also hypothetically alter the responsibility of the creator to being the curator, in which case, the curator is the architect and the creator is the machine. Perhaps this also means that in order for architects to stay relevant, they have to rely on their intuition. Although machines are redefining the role of the architects and help produce endless possibilities, it also force adaptation and create a competition culture. The current architecture practice is on the path of obsolescence and perhaps through the death of the practice that this digital era can generate a new type of architect.
CHAPTER 1 – Extinction Phase
Section 1.1 – Frozen Music
The practice of architecture currently faces economical, technological, ecological, and aesthetic issues, according to Borries, Walz, and Bottger (2007). As we progress through a different age and while many other industries utilize the advancements of the era, the architecture industry still moves at a slower pace, making us wonder if the practice is no longer relevant, or is it already going into its extinction phase? As the world progress, everything is in constant flux, especially the urban landscape, but architecture seems to just be frozen music – architecture still remains immobile. Architecture reflects the current urban environment, but it does not progress with the urban culture. Although progression has been proven to improve the architecture process, from the industrial revolution that brought a new age of materiality, construction methods and design, to the digital age that grants us more efficient technological innovations to increase our productivity and improve how we conceive buildings, many still remain reactive rather than proactive about changes.
According to Eric J. Cesal’s ‘Down Detour Road’ book (2010), architects are immobile in their processes and lack a global outlook. The relevancy of architecture is constantly being probed as their value and impacts on the society decrease. According to Cesal, architects are unenthusiastic to embrace changes and risks, and are taught “what to think” rather than “how to think” about business and design construction. Clients and developers now regulate the economics of a project, and the architects’ responsibility is diminished to think only about how much a building would cost. Architects also lack thorough original research and knowledge on subjects, and therefore cannot prove why they add value to the subjects of the project. Another issue faced is the relatability of architecture to the rest of the world. The ability to clearly communicate is also what makes architects relatable, but unfortunately communication seems to be a difficult conquest. Architects have a particular language within their community, which does not spread outside of its inner circle, and makes it difficult for others to clearly and effectively understand, which often results in misunderstandings. For architects, these languages for architects are more so about the visuals, such as forms and matters, rather than words (Cornell Chronicle, 2015). These languages include plans and still three-dimensional renderings, whereby clients can easily misinterpret, as they do not ‘feel’ nor have a first person perspective of the space. Lack of collaboration within its design processes also leads to misinterpretation and results in a higher probability of errors.
In China’s provincial capital of Changsha, Hunan, in 2011, a Chinese construction firm, the Broad Sustainable Building Company, assembled a building of fifty-seven storeys within just nineteen days, known as the “Mini Sky City”. They assembled three storeys a day, using a modular assembling method, and proved to be the fastest in the world. This project was a response to the increasing demand of spaces for the fast-growing population of the world, to find appropriate living accommodations for the one million people born per week. This project took months of careful planning and creative thinking processes in order to construct it within a short time frame. The associate director of the engineering consulting firm Arup in Beijing, Liu Peng, also stated that this method of construction is worth further developing, as it is a safer and much faster way of developing future skyscrapers, with ambitions to create more buildings like this but at faster world-record. The final outcome was well-responded project that reflects the environmental and financial needs of the city. It was a project conceived by mostly engineers and had little to no involvements of architects. This proves that the architect is expendable and is perhaps no longer is needed in future equations.
The practice of architecture has also been criticized as being simply an art form because of its heavy reliance on the visual aesthetics. Increasingly, non-architects and builders enter the architect realm (like the “Mini Sky City” project). Generating from mini-malls to housings, effectively catering to the mass culture, but such non-architect designed buildings are not considered as architecture because it lacks the artistic qualities of an architect-designed building, therefore defining architecture through mere aesthetics. Described as literally “critical art” by Ghirardo (1991), as the vision is the strongest of the seven senses, pictures can easily be used to describe the architecture by simply looking the portrayed facades, and that would be all that there is to know about the building. The merit of the practice has perhaps being diminished to just being a commodity of the consumer culture, a form of cultural commentary or statement, and social and political intervention to the environs. Others have also argued for the belief that architecture is indeed and will ever be art, and has a high responsibility of forming and transmitting culture. In the nineteenth century, the philosopher, artist and architect, John Ruskin suggested that in a period of demanding and complicated architecture, only the artist was especially suited to be the conveyor of such standards. Architects are trained to design spaces that offer poetry through aesthetically pleasing forms, to potentially speak of beauty and truth of the environs’ culture to the inexpert audience (Ghirardo, 1991).
CHAPTER 2 – The Digital Age
This chapter will discuss on how technologies such as VR and AI are being used to tackle the difficulties that architects face. These technologies will ultimately foster a better collaboration system throughout the local and global enterprise, which would eventually lead to the freedom from making errors. This chapter will also discuss why we are so afraid of making errors and what do errors really mean. And finally, this chapter will touch on how the practice of architecture will evolve from being the creator to being a curator.
CHAPTER 3 – The Connotations of Freedom
Section 3.1 – Baroquization
“Strength is born from constraints and it dies in freedom.” –Leonardo Da Vinci
“Perhaps, it is because, in our fascination with our powers of invention and achievement, we have lost sight of the power of limits.” – Gyorgy Doczi (The Power of Limits)
Since the evolution of architecture in the digital age, architecture has now become a spectatorial practice. As technology progress, it has made possible for architects to have abundantly more possibilities to explore design aesthetics and functionality. The practice has become a realm of self-expressionism and individuality, devoid of rules and boundaries. Architects have become hubris and euphoric in their quest to design the next icon by producing extraordinary forms and visual effects, which has become the global craze for commercial advertisement, and thus born the ‘starchitects’. As architect Yona Friedman have noticed while working with his students, their work would start out very simple but when they were not restrained by limitations and were given enough freedom, they would keep on adding more to their designs. This tendency is what Friedman called “baroquization’ (Friedman and Obrist, 2007). It is an unavoidable human tendency to dramatize things, and has become an architectural trend. If a person is given new and better tools to find solutions to accomplish something, that person would eventually create something with more spectacle as they were given more possibilities, therefore baroquization does not necessarily translates to into negative trend. Baroquization has been a human trend around for centuries, like the Tokugawa period, also known as the Edo period (1603-1868), the final epoch of traditional Japan, which marked the time of peace and economic growth. With economic prosperity, things became more baroque than the previous period.
Fig. 3 Information and Computer Science/ Engineering Research Facility. Here Today Gone Tomorrow. (Architect Magazine, 2011)
Fig. 4 Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. (Ta Q. , 2016)
Fig. 5 Walt Disney Concert Hall. (School, 2017)
Powerful technological software has allowed the iconoclast and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Frank O. Gehry to also become more baroque since he first started as an architect. The Information and Computer Science/Engineering Research Facility (ICS/ERF), built in 1986 at the University of California at Irvine, was one of the first few projects designed by Gehry (fig. 3). The building adorned a simplistic façade, contrary to what we see from Gehry’s works nowadays (fig. 4). After his triumphant titanium-built Guggenheim Museum in 1997 that was built as part of Bilbao’s urban renewal program, many more clients quickly commissioned Gehry to replicate near identical his design of the Guggenheim to other buildings, hoping to have the ‘Bilbao effect’, like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in 2003 (fig. 5). Frank Gehry has been praised for his disruption within the architecture community, to challenge the meaning of design in his practice through his whimsical designs. His use of unorthodox materials broke conventions in building designs. Although he does not obey the common practice, he has been met with controversy throughout his career for being irreverent and radical. His portfolio is very visually grounded and vast with grandiose projects, and styled as deconstructivism, in other words, buildings that appear visually disoriented and chaotic. After his breakthrough in Bilbao, Gehry’s works do not seem to reflect on the current culture of the location. Juhani Pallasmaa was concerned that architecture has lost social validation and its sense of reality (Pallasmaa and MacKeith, 2012). He insinuated that the potentials of technology have been exploited to generate architectural complexities that have no meaning. Although it is an exciting moment for the architectural scene, where ecstatic constructions are pushing the boundaries of the profession, architects such as Gehry have forgotten to address bigger concerns, such as the ecological and sustainable future of our world, and re-evaluate the societal and cultural purpose of the practice, by using the given advancements of today. Through the techno-economic, architects have the obsessive notion of freedom from conventions and liberation of expressionism, which unfortunately create lack of social and cultural responsibility, and consequently diminish architecture, claimed the theorist and architect. Although there are meaningful and responsible architectures around the world, they often do not receive publicity due to the deficiency of visual and artistic sensations. “Reality is at eye level”, said Friedman in a conversation series (Friedman and Obrist, 2007), “that a city is pedestrian, so it’s only interesting from the perspective of the pedestrian who’s looking at it”. Architects often overestimate the impact of architecture.
Contemporary architecture has also become insensitive to its context, a profession without a novel view.
Section 3.2 – Competition Culture
As the techno-economy expands and enters the realm of technocracy, the ideology of freedom of artistic expression offers accelerated growth in terms of skills in the architectural industry. When CAD was introduced and proved to be faster and more efficient than manual work, architectural firms quickly employ the software to increase their productivity. Rapidly, having CAD as a skill in the curriculum vitae was a requisition to acquire an employment. Even though virtual reality and augmented reality are still at the novel stage, as the interface of these technologies progress, and prove to be efficient and essential to increase the productivity of the architectural workflow, they will also become significant as a skill set to seek future employment. This can foster a competition culture. Every once in a while, major architecture firms and even cities call for entries from architects and designers to submit their design according to a brief to compete for the realization of their design. What the client, who is the one giving the brief, benefits from such architecture competition is to find a sensational design to potentially promote their brand, through swift and effortless curation. What the competitor gains from such competitions is the publicity and promotion of their design, which would also aid to push their professional name to another level to advance their career, and also some monetary imbursement. Participants of these competitions are often young architects hoping to launch their careers and open more opportunities. This architecture contest is an attractive concept that can hugely benefits both parties, but the Garden Bridge project in London has proven that such competitions may not always be the most respectful and viable. The Garden Bridge contest was won by Thomas Heatherwick in 2013, and perhaps can easily be assumed that the aesthetically pleasing presentation was what allowed it to be chosen. Although the proposal was beautiful and visionary, the project faces numerous difficulties, such as stakeholders disapproved to allow large amounts of their taxed capital expenditures to be misused on building such a bridge. The project was abandoned in 2017 due to mass controversy and unpopularity. This proved that by having the knowledge on how to skilfully manipulate technologies, and when done properly and artfully, competitions can be secured. But when the majority of architects and designers will be able to manipulate better software, the competition par will be raised again.
Rem Koolhaas
CHAPTER 4 – New Architecture
This chapter will discuss the future of the practice due to technological innovations. Technologies will be used as a tool for artificial intelligence, used for reinforcing creativity. This chapter will also touch upon the idea of performance-based design, which is a system that analyses of a building’s life-long performance, which would be the essential for architects to understand, as this technology will place design back into the architect’s hands.