meditation:
emptiness is form
form is emptiness
another aspect of this dichotomy was unmentioned
though is central to issues related to modernist
views of space, time, place and much architectural
discourse related to these aspects is outdated by
a few centuries nowadays.
for instance, issues of 'inside' and 'outside' are
still based on visual perception and not on either
knowledge or technology. a wall contains and shapes
space, for instance, keeping things inside, outside.
for sunlight, which much of this is based on (the
definition of space by way of shadow, shade, light
on a material, a distinct sculptural mass, etc.)
it works well enough for Newton's time. light is
to consist of rays from the sun which can be bent,
reflected, blocked. light is not considered in
terms of particles, photons, quanta, none of it.
if it were so, then the modernist principles of
glorifying the shaping of space by way of design
would seem rather hollow in that the dimensions
of space-and-time are rather empty as conceived;
there is a 'filled space' in a western scientific
worldview, it is radiation - space full of energy,
matter, information largely unconfined by humans
and largely mysterious and outside the views of
minds that do not accept these as architectural
conceptions and thus they are not a measurement
for the success of architecture to interact with
this space: of radio waves, wi-fi, radiation, UV,
infrared (IR), natural radiowaves from the cosmos.
the modern conception of space is empty though
the one that exists in daily lived experience,
of those who are living in this era, space is
full of electromagnetic energy, information of
radio networks and broadcasts, and the material
world of atoms and molecules which occupy space,
building within its structure. these dimensions
are beyond the 3D and 4D and without them ideas
of architectural space are largely irrelevant,
or at least stuck in Newton's time while the
subatomic realities of Einstein are standards.
for architecture of modernism, gravity is still
the most prominent force, and its height of
accomplishment. beyond this it is null, void.
each issue in the modernist's ideological frame-
work is similarly limited.
'massing' is another example, where in addition
to 'material' a type of physicality is meant to
be defined by forms. why not use the universal
reference to 'mass' which is the materiality of
matter itself? then instead of dealing with the
architect's individual cosmology (wood is god-
like) the realities of atoms, particles, and
other material sciences, chemistry, and other
physical sciences of the designed and built
can be held in relation to architecture as a
measurement of the ideas as are prophesized?
the properties of materials today are another
realm altogether, where materials now being
deployed integrated aspects of energy and
information within material forms: sending
data through structural i- and h-beams for
broadband; wallpaper that blocks radiowaves;
fiberoptics in traditional materials, etc.
for each modern principle there exists a
much higher-fidelity, more 'real' experience
that exists yet is not part of the doctrine
nor the goals of the architects who profess
to do it all and more, while doing nothing
if considering a new electromagnetic context
which is largely another paradigm to what is
being built today, how it is conceived and
understood, and the purposes of designing
in such a society - not monuments to the
architects and their own celebrity, rather
to a larger world and issues shared in the
universal scale, however relative, using a
grounding, empirical yet creative approach
not limited by ideologies and ideologues
who can only live, and repeat, the past.
brian
E L E C T R I C A L O R D E R
http://www.electronetwork.org/works/ae/order/