Waffle Structure by Erisa and Keti

A Manifesto for an Architecture of Information

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND THE RENEWAL OF ARCHITECTURE

By Antonino Sagio 

The word "substance" comes from Edoardo Persico, he said: "For a century, the history of art in Europe has not merely been a series of particular actions and reactions but a movement of collective consciousness. Recognizing this means discovering the contribution of current architecture. 'The substance of things hoped for'". In Persico, Pagano, Terragni, Venturi, Argan and Giolli, there was a leaning toward "substances" that had to do with the simplification and standardization of industrial processes; the answers to issues regarding public housing projects, services, urban planning; the search for an abstract elementary, hygienic esthetic. There was, in that "substance of things hoped for", the striving toward modernity, toward the transformation of world crises into esthetic and ethical values at a tempo that architecture could cultivate and manifest.

The basic theme of this text is that the renewal of architecture we have been experiencing over the past few years.

On Urbanscape

Let us start with a macroscopic phenomena such as the "brown areas". The information society has less and less need for great tracts of land, particularly if positioned in the city, in order to produce manufactured goods. The morphological-type categories of urban analysis in the Sixties and Seventies have become more and more vague and indefinite if used as design parameters, while methods of looking at the city emerge which examine the complexity, interchange and interweaving between architecture and the environment. Architecture insinuates itself into the weave of existence. It uses and relaunches pre-existing objects such as ready-made ones.

On Landscape

 Post-industrial and electronic civilization man can resettle his accounts with nature since, if manufacturing industries dominated and exploited natural resources, then information industries can appreciate and value them. At least in the technologically advanced countries, this structural change of direction opens the opportunity for a "compensation" of historical proportions.

The nature that this concept of landscape looks toward is no longer one that is floral or art deco or even that of the masters of organicism. It has become much more complex, much meaner, much more "hidden", as Heraclitus once said, and is investigated also by architects with an anti-romantic eye through the new formalisms of contemporary science. The key word here becomes Fluidity.

 On Communication

One of the criticisms frequently aimed at the new architectural research is that of adhering to "advertising and communication" models that implicitly remove "truth" from building and construction. To respond to it, we need to ask ourselves exactly what has happened in the last thirty years in the vast sector of communications.

The advertising of the industrial society attempted to demonstrate the goodness of the product through its characteristics. Information society advertising, on the other hand, transmits "a narration", a story of the product, absolutely taking as a given that the product works. The same process occurs with architecture: instead of the representation of absolutely objective logic a narration is substituted.

 In other words, we need to see "what" communication is desired and we believe that it is possible not only to follow the weak, half-hearted celebration of economic or political power, perhaps even dictatorial or monopolistic, but also a new sense of feeling.

 On Hyper-Functionality

An interesting fact is that overcoming the old diktats of coherent, unified and organic qualities in the most successful cases brings greater success precisely because of the much lauded functionality. The relationship with urban space, the conceptual and expressive research into image, the organization of different uses, the most efficient methods of construction, the optimization of the technological machinery all frequently manage to obtain a level of efficiency much higher if liberated from the cage of a final destiny of immanent coherency.

 System/Space

Now, the grouping together of these modifications leads to a substantial difference in the center itself of architectural research and therefore in the idea of space.

In the feeling of the Twenties and the New Objectivity, a direct relationship was sought between a space and its function, therefore a "spatial organ".  This is why the center was the interior space, the idea of the interior space as the motor of architecture.  At times we have spoken of vuotometrico: architecture is made in concert with the space it shapes; interior life spills over naturally into exterior life.

On the Information Revolution

In conclusion, attention needs to be focused on at least three substances as the drivers of this current architectural renewal.

The first is a new awareness of the fragmentary nature of the metropolitan landscape, that is both the occasion and reason for many of today's projects. That transforms them, as any true architecture always has done, into a new esthetic sense and prefigures and imagines a different city.

The second substance turns on the concept of landscape, as a great paradigm of contemporary architectural research that puts the relationship between architecture and nature back into play.

 The third substance is that which conceives of space "as system" and not as a mechanism that concerns only the interior of the building. Space as system means thinking, in a closely combined coupling, of the relationship of bodies and between the bodies into which buildings are fragmented. But in order to allow urban space to be a lively participant in a relationship that is mutable and continually connected between building and environment.

These substances find both their cause and tool in information technology.

Mies Van Der Rohe, said, "The new era is a reality; it exists independently of the fact of whether or not we accept it or refuse it. It is neither better nor worse than any other era; it is simply a given fact and is in itself indifferent of values. What is important is not the 'what' but purely and simply the 'how'". The how is ours.

This interesting article shows us the importance of an architect in the achievements of modern society. Focusing of the potential industrialization and on the effort to improve the housing and the hygiene of the environment and the building, were very important steps that helped to think about the future.

This article also shows us how dynamic the architecture is and how it can remain static but also change with the passing time. It integrates the existing parts of a city with the new ones. And that helps us to keep something historical but to create new concepts apart of that.

And when we arrive to the ‘destructive’ zoning of the industrialization and the bad use of the land, we can say that that would be the end. However the integration of the greenery was the best solution for that problem. The greenery was not just a disconnected part of the city but it served as a strong part of the city that worked with it. It was very optimal how the integration of the city and the greenery worked and the concept of the zoning started to disappear.

The evolution of the construction as a second part was also important and more complex. The connection between the inside and the outside of the building, as well as the interior as a very important part of the building were a new concept and give us the idea of the city that works as a system. These are the last marks that brings architecture were it is now.

All these changes show us that even todays architecture is not perfect. And even if we can find some elements from the past, we can say that the transformations of the cities are visible and that came from the information and the technology.

Reference: http://www.arc1.uniroma1.it/saggio/articoli/it/manifesto.html