“…and it’s funny, because I was once asked about the year 2000, what you think about the next millennium? And I told them: architecture will disappear.” Yona Friedman.
This is a text I wrote on July of 2009. I introduce it here to link with the previous post, a reflection of Mark Shepard and Adam Greenfield about the disappearance of the physical part of the city.
I decided to write this post to clear up certain ideas which have been around me for a while about the future of architecture. To understand my doubts, because currently they are just that, firstly I should make clear what I mean by physical architecture and virtual or non-physical architecture. Physical architecture is the tangible, what is constructed. And the virtual would be everything that we can not touch but affects from different disciplines to the architecture. The recent explosion in digital technologies allows us to not only understand but also use them in new ways to generate architectural processes. Communication, education, sociology, participation, politics, ecology, exhibitions…
The integration of some of these elements into urban planning was attempted in the ’60s, and these attempts in architecture did not come to fruition. Now the situation is different because the tools at our disposal, which we are creating through the Internet, allow us effectively to carry out this integration. I think the reason that web 2.0 ideas have stagnated more deeply in urban planning has to do with that difference.
A recurring question is the kind of relationship we need to have with the physical to adapt to the new reality. It is the time to investigate what is not built, to create new tools to change the world where we live in. In my opinion we should not forget the tangible, but blend it in. It is possible that what we will do is gradually make physical architecture disappear, that will be one of our tasks, and also develop the way to integrate both worlds into one.
There will be situations in which we will limit the ubiquity of the Internet, to interact with the physical. On the other hand we will erase barriers and superfluous elements of constructed architecture. The real change will occur together, both realities hand- in-hand.
In Basurama‘s interview of Iñaki Ábalos, there were two phrases that particularly struck me. One of them defined the current moment as a paradigm shift from the formal to the thermodynamic. Without a doubt, there’s a paradigm shift, but to define it as thermodynamic seems insufficient and premature to describe a change that, to me, seems to be far deeper… The other great phrase is: “No one knows what the fuck to do or say …”
Another symptom to be considered was the new issue of Volume in its article “The Architecture of hope.” The editorial says things like:
“Were we considering an implicit reference to the ecstatic and expectant black and white images from the post-War period? Perhaps, after all, are we not now reevaluating our society and future just as they did then?” Oosterman, Arjen
And then there’s is an article entitled directly: “Architecture: a failed discipline” (Jarzombek, Mark)
Image: Jaime Eizaguirre
Translated by Ran Chen
