The Unforgiving Minute

In Metropolis magazine, Andrew Blum asks:

“ Within the span of a decade, the impact of media in our experience of space has entirely transformed… The presence of “the Net”—by which I loosely mean all two-way, personal media—has become as much a factor in our experience of space as the play of light and shadow on a wall, or the cultural accretions that dignify local architectural styles. But it’s not clear to me that the process of design has meaningfully acknowledged that.”

He pulls out a few examples of architects who “struggle… to reflect this new sense of networked media and space”, pointing to David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang, Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo, and Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon,¹ but suggests that “[t]he real work of architecture that adapts and reflects this new mediated world is yet to come.” What Blum wants to see is a world in which “our building facades [don’t] just communicate information to us… but we communicated back, communally?”

At the opposite end of the spectrum, Jonathan Hill‘s Immaterial Architecture cites an example of architects approaching the problem from the opposite end of the spectrum, starting with Peter Wilson‘s 1988 prizewinner, the Ninja House:

“For Wilson, comfort in the metropolis exists in ‘electronic shadows’, moments of psychological and physical privacy from the flow of information”… A defensive exterior ensures that no electronic communication enters or leaves the Ninja Houses… For the Ninja House the threat of natural weather is less evident than the invasive flow of electromagnetic weather.”

Both approaches respond to the information age as a natural phenomenon rather than a social and technological construct, and perhaps they’re right. It would fall in line with the idea that human evolution is no longer guided by the natural physical environment, but by the artificial environments that many of us are now surrounded by.

DS+R's Blur - just because it's extremely cool.

There are limits, of course – the ravages of changing climates will revive an architecture that is more responsive to the natural natural²-  but Wilson identifies the fundamental difference that “Unlike natural or man-made weather, electromagnetic weather is generated inside as well as outside the home.” The question posed by Anthony Dunne (in the course of designing his Faraday Chair) remains:

“[T]oday all space is electronic, and… the challenge to designers is to create an “empty” space, a space that has not existed for most of the century due to the explosion of uses for the electromagnetic spectrum… My proposed object for presenting a non-electronic, radio-free volume would use a faraday cage to show the ubiquitous nature of radio space and make perceptible the absence of radio. The object would ask: if the inside is empty, what is outside?” (Hertzian Tales, p. 142-3)

You are guaranteed not to get a good nights sleep.

Most of the examples given in Blum’s approach are attempts to bargain with the electronic world, to find a modus vivendi; the approach described by Hill is a solid case of denial, denying the electronic visitor as you might shut the door on the Jehovah’s Witnesses on a Saturday morning. It seems to me that both of those approaches are stages in dealing with terminal illness (and yes, I realise that those categories have no foundation in reality – but they make for a lovely metaphor, don’t they?).

What we’re looking for are designers – whether architects or technologists – who’ve gone beyond those two stages (not to mention anger and depression).³ Adam Greenfield can show you what this might look like, with an insistence that we don’t talk about “smart cities” but simply “cities”, acknowledging that the interactive environment is both here to stay and guaranteed to expand.

Despite this there’s something missing here, which is a lack of agreement on what actually makes the city a valued experience (and there’s something to be said for describing cities in terms of experience as much as infrastructure). Greenfield is all about making that experience banal – not in a negative way, but in such a way that the interface doesn’t become our experience of the city, but helps to enhance it instead (he absolutely doesn’t want people bumping into lamp posts while glued to their smartphones). Blum, on the other hand, has something else in mind, a kaleidoscopic experience that speaks to the uniqueness of the city.

“After all, what makes cities vital are their color and diversity, the wild mix of scales, even the noise and confusion. This has been the defining sensation of modernity, from the Parisian boulevard to the contemporary aerotropolis. Social media has the potential to amplify this quality, making people feel disoriented and overwhelmed—but also focused and inspired.”

At first glance this looks more radical than Greenfield’s drive to integrate technology rather than draw attention to it, but after a while it starts to look like it is simply repeating the mistakes of Big Architecture – mistaking the dazzling repertoire of shining stars for something genuinely transformative in the way the city is experienced. I’m not entirely sure that people are crying out to feel disoriented and overwhelmed – isn’t it hard to shake the feeling that this battle has only just begun?

UPDATE: From Alone Together, Sherry Turkle pursues the metaphor:

“As for online life, [today’s young people] see its power—they are, after all risking their lives to check their messages—but they also view it as one might the weather: to be taken for granted, enjoyed, and sometimes endured. They’ve gotten used to this weather but there are signs of weather fatigue.”

1. There’s something about the gender and ethnic mix going on there, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. [↩]
2. The repetition of the word ‘natural’ is deliberate, to distinguish it from the cultural natural – or what we might more easily call ‘heritage natural’. [↩]
3. Personally I’m comfortable with the depression stage, watching something inexpressibly valuable in our culture being eroded year on year. [↩]