The Commands of (Architectural) Language
Speaking about the constructed reality is made easier because there is physics embedded within language and language has the flexibility and innateness of becoming reduced to simple forms to just “consist of language and the actions into which it is woven” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 7). Success of the process of construction is based on communication and the dialogue learned by the partakers of its success. We naturally deteriorate macro-languages by relating our own syntax and the “vernacular of the milieu of the space” (Goh, 2001, pg. 13).
Because “semantics is (not only) about the relation of words to thoughts, but it is also about the relation of words into other human concerns” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6), there are conflicting ways to see points of view or reasons for taking actions in certain circumstances. The language of thought - conceptual semantics - “provides … the dramas of social life. And sets the stage in countless arenas of human disputation” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 5). The way we construe events might reflect our alignment with select political party or to an ideal be it individually developed or a hand-me-down. “Is the American military incursion into Iraq a case of invading a country or liberating a country? …Are high tax rates a way to redistribute wealth or to confiscate earnings?” (Pinker, 2007, pg. 6). Is a belief in the Book of Genesis a disillusioned view of the world’s beginning, a trap for thinkers not to find pragmatic evidences or a divine event that justifies the world’s beginning? Is sustainability a “a foreign currency, the joker in the Oriental pack… an incorrectly catalogued fetish” (Chinchilla, 2006) or a responsibility?
Thankfully there is rarely confusion in such basic/reduced vernacular used in the construction industry, as this is indicated in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. Wittgenstein describes a simple language game (Sprachspiel) a concept intended “to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or a form of life” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 23)..jpg)
Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889-1951). Sourced from the homepage of Tony Bellotti.
This is a universal deconstruction of Wittgenstein’s Builders, not merely an attuning to the industry I so align.
“Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right. The language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building-stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass the stones, and that in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they use a language consisting of the words ‘block’, ‘pillar’, ‘slab,’ ‘beam’. A calls them out;—B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call…” (Wittgenstein, 1953/2001, pg. 3)
The important point is to realise that the builder’s language is an activity - the orders given by the builder and the executions of those orders by the assistant - into which is woven something we would recognise as language, albeit in simpler form. When the builder says ‘pillar’ a certain type of act is performed. Success is judged if the assistant passes the a ‘pillar’ to him.
Wei-wei, Ai. “Table and Pillar” 2002 (background) “Table and Beam” 2002 (foreground). Sourced from Galerie Urs Meile.
There is a direct connection here between words and extra-linguistic reality. The builder sends the command, as in a command-line software and the worker reacts through a number of stored, predetermined and accessed movements, as in a macro, combining two or more events.
Deleuze & Guattari report of the order-word, a procedural, seemingly void of expression, interpretation of language, that utilizes a sequence of instructions to achieve the retrieval of information. “The elemental unit of language - the statement - is the order-word. Rather than common-sense, a faculty for the centralisation of information, we must define an abominable faculty consisting in emitting, receiving, and transmitting order-words. Language is made not to be believed but to be obeyed, and to compel obedience.” (Delueze-Guattari, 1987, pg. 76)
This account, raises the question, could a language exist which consists entirely of commands? All art forms have been churned through the reduction machine, stripping back Baroque to Breuer to Pawson, Shakespeare to Hardy to Hitchens, Banquets to Burger King to vending machines. Is it possible that the information age will consume creative writing however passively informative creative writing can be. Consumed by command-line requests that spill to conversation and human interaction - to live is to request both virtually and physically.
Garnier, Charles. Opéra Garnier. 1875. Sourced from Gay Paris.
Pawson, John. Set design for Chroma at the Royal Opera House. 2008. Photo copyright of Richard Davies. Sourced from Dezeen.
Command-line. Sourced from Wikimedia.
If we dive further in the understanding of linguistics moving from Wittgenstein we find that in reality objects are 3-dimensional arrangements of matter, but language idealises objects as essentially 1, 2 or 3-dimensional. For example the word ‘line’ indicates something as 1-dimensional, the word ‘road’ indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ width), the word beam indicates something as 1-dimensional (+ having a finite thickness), the word ‘surface’ indicates something as 2-dimensional and the word ‘slab’ indicates something as 2-dimensional (+ a finite thickness). (Pinker, 2007, 5:07 mins)
The boundaries of objects are treated as objects themselves; ‘edges’ which define the 1-dimensional boundary of a 2-dimensional surface. ‘The patron walked along the edge of the parapet’, and ‘end’ which is the boundary of a 1-dimensional ‘road’ or a 2-dimensional ‘beam’). It can be summarised that space exists in our prepositions, matter exists in our nouns, naturally time exists in our tenses and is causality exists in our verbs. (Pinker, 2007, 7:00 mins)
However uncanny is the relationship between the interpretation of the structure of language to the built environment, it is a functioning language and armed with intrinsic language-games/order-words that allow for the materialisation of our realities.
Pinker, Steven. The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature, Viking Adult; 1 edition, 2007
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell Publishing, 1953/2001
Goh, Irving. Promising “Post-Colonialism”: Delouse-Guattari’s “Minor Literature” and the Poetry of Arthur Yap, Genre; vol. 22, California State University, 2001
Authors@Google: Steven Pinker, 2007, Producer, Google; director, Google. s.l: Authors@Google. 1 online video (Flash Format) (75 mins). [Video recording]
Chinchilla, Izaskun, Sociopolis, Public Issue, 2006
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix, A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. London and New York: Continuum, 1987/2004
Voluntary Common Land
Kibbutzim were created before the first Jewish settlement in the 1950s by Zionists that were mainly Russian-Jewish emigrants. The first funded community was called ‘Degrania’ in Israel, 1909. Kibbutzim became independent-social, economic and cultural units, somewhat like cooperative-socialist islands in capitalist seas.
A community can not be free if does not produce resources to be itself.
On small plots, farmers grow vegetables and fruits for their household and for a common market. Regional cooperation in agriculture saves expenses by common use of farming equipment, warehouses, other facilities, schools, clinics, communal halls, shops etc., located centrally. The aim is to reduce the running costs of diversified farming and increase production of industrial crops such as cotton, sugar beet and ground nuts, which could be processed at the central point; and as a consequence, a reduction in transportation costs results.
Nahalal moshav, Israel. Established by the Women’s International Zionist Organization as a Girls’ Agricultural Training Farm in 1929. The inner-most circle contains the communal buildings and resources, which are surrounded by individually owned farms. Contrary to the collective kibbutzim, farms in a moshav tended to be individually owned but of fixed and equal size. Sourced from Sourced from J. Robertson McIlwain [dot] com.
Kibbutzim originated the first building blocks of modern day Israel. Most, if not all of Israel’s main industries grew out of the Kibbutz environment. Most of the nation’s income is created by agriculture whist still using classic traditions established in productive agriculture (although there is present the use of high-technology to the achieve the level of ‘laboratories for research’; aiming to experiment with growth methods while increasing the production of crops without jeopardising quality). They are desirable places to test experimental agricultural techniques and many of them are adopt environmental approaches (see Green Kibbutz movement). The Algatech and the Geshem projects are large-scale projects designed for on-site production whilst managing natural resources.
Alga Technologies (Algatech), Kibbutz Ketura, mass-produces algae for cosmetics, nutritional supplements and for energy conversion and production. Sourced from Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute.
Kibbutzim also exist in the urban context: they are a means to resolve conflicts and social problems. There are more 75 Kibbutzim nationwide in which over 129,300 Israelis reside and collaborate. The Zionists defined the organization of Kibbutzim not only as a necessity but also the new Jews in Palestine (the founders of the Kibbutz movement), felt that they couldn’t rely on others only themselves - belonging to a Kibbutz was a form of societal identity. 
Kibbutzim are seen as the most effective way of taking control over land in Palestine - a tool for any Zionist. Sourced from Google.
Kibbutzim are miniature communal societies wherein the principle that all wealth is common property presides. The inhabitants usually are allowed some notion of private property, however all inhabitants are provided for, with all necessities such as: food, housing, clothes and social and medical services. The inhabitants cook and dine together - normally adults and children do not form standard families, even if the adults have private quarters. The raising of children, is also a common task of the Kibbutzim.
The Ideal Settlement: the Utopian settlement behavior. Kibbutzim, for the past 80 years, have been concurrently reflecting the changes in ideology that take place in society and consequently reconfiguring their layout and evolving the aesthetics. Sourced from Google.
Notes on Arabic Adoption
Dubai is a double-edged sword. At once there is an encounter with tarnished terrain – a lucid, lagoon of baroness propagated into hard-scaped, impenetrable reality of unprecedented scales. The other, a more global and serious reality, deals with the question of the fixed, temporary and the permanency of architecture now. Dubai garners the wealth to exploit construction at a never-before-seen rate – bypassing values like craftsmanship (the lack of which is a ubiquitous problem), tactility, durability and poignantly, adoption.
The fate of architecture is to become ‘pillar-less’ cages of fragility, non-dependency and un-attachment, suspect to Warhol’s fame but rapidly forced into the shadows of its newer, more ‘world’s biggest’ successor on some other terrain vague in another part of the city with a function that nobody really cares about. The landscape and its migrant labourers that set stone upon it have to admirably and muted, like the deterioration of the value of architecture, handle the changes to their existence, to the point that what really is at stake is survival.
Dubai “Another World”. Sourced from Photobucket.
The constructed conclusion, is a non-linear array of impersonalities, that change their function over time, not by choreography, but through definition by the State, relocation of resources, flip-sides to economic prosperity and the pressures of the success of capitalistic endeavours. What remains is the mechanical, rhythmic motion of the worker, and the memory of the architect aiming to recreate another masterpiece.
Dubai workers in the shadow of a UAE national. Sourced from Asia News.
Until the 1950s and the discovery of oil, Dubai was predominantly empty, home to Bedouins and open sand plains. The construction methods were textbook examples of Frampton’s “critical regionalism”; materials hard-packed from the earth, courtyards so as to keep the heat out, intelligent, breathable buildings and clusters allowing sheltered lane ways. It was a workers town, this was the silent vernacular that existed, world’s away from Simmel’s Metropolis. The acceptance of concrete in the 70s as the preferred material terminated any possibility of Dubai having an honest identity and pastiche development thereafter proceeded.
It is the validity of surface and the strength of program/locale that serves as indicators of the sustainability of an architecture’s adornment. The validity of surface is naturally achieved given the age of building, its defiance against ecological circumstance and wrong treatment in the militaristic sense. Dubai is not an old city (The Al Fahidi Fort, built in 1787 is believed to be the oldest building in Dubai) and does not possess architecture of artefactual significance compared to that of nearby Mashriq.
The Al Fahidi Fort, Dubai, 1787. Sourced from Trekway.
The strength of program dictates that, for example, a building of religious importance is more likely to be widely adorned than that of a hotel or banking institution. The reproduction of the ‘same-old’, a visible by-product of the industrial revolution and pre-fabricated age, may fight against fiscal pressures but greatly reduce the chances of public adoration. Success stories of modern public adoration in architecture can be found in the youthfulness of the Pompidou and the early works of Lacaton and Vassal – they speak wholeheartedly, honestly and beg for adoption. The pity is the infrastructure of Dubai relies on the tourist turnover. Perhaps the issue is not of the pastiche, copy-paste language of Dubai, but simply that the city is a transient one.
Lacaton, Anne, Vassal, Jean-Philippe, 1984, Straw matting hut, Niamey. Sourced from Lacaton and Vassal.
Continue reading in the Texts section (If not, soon).
Semiotic Mythologies and the Green Agenda
The frontier of the post-icon era, brought about by the downward-spiralling economy/ecology, has formed a new breed of architect of less moral stature than the capitalist’s ‘building designer’. Previously embedded as part of the marketing strategy of a brand, the architect today is tailored for a token green agenda. Governed by state dictation, most buildings today require efficiency attributes, some without a trace of carbon-emission; a nominal paradigm shifts exists in this newly created responsibility in which there appears to be two serious issues with the deployment of the ‘green icon’.
Semiotics:
The contemporary icon is conceived by a marriage of a successfully marketed entity and the established architect. The aim of the icon is to manifest a physical representation of the identity of the brand - the most potent example being Bank headquarters. Early 19th Century mercantile architecture resembled important civic institutional buildings; fortresses, allowing little light to permeate. Today they represent more than they are; transparent, readable, attainable, reflective, open and with a green agenda, certainly not the model modern banking stipulates. The misdemeanour of specifying sustainability as corporate identity wreaks of tokenism and fallibility. What best represents a banking institution today? A trough.
The image of banking institutions today. Sourced from Poor William.
The advent of green architectural marketing are second-order signs where buildings have fallen victim to Barthes’ Red Wine analogy. The bourgeois’ full, dark bottle is to signify healthy, robust, relaxing wine. The reality is that this image contains subtle embedded semiotic manipulations with the desire to sell the product and the simple desire to maintain the status quo (Barthes, Mythologies, p. 60). Sustainability is the bottle in this case.
Roland Barthes. Sourced from Islakotero.
Palace, 2009. Banking institutions then and now. Left: Former brank of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh (1847). Right: Cook+Fox Architects. Bank of America Tower, New York (2009).
Mis-education:
Architects are caught in the Green agenda, speculating merely as no-man’s-land designers, in the same way Government tries to regulate emerging technologies or the internet, albeit on a nominalistic scale. The thinking stops at the formulation of infrastructure embedded in the building and green baton is passed to environmental engineer/consultant/designer/specialist. This is merely a problem of specialisation, the age-old ‘jack-of-all-trades’ debate, which is why architects should choose their friends wisely. The issue is in the presentation of the design being flawed, superficial and let alone misconceived, however fulfilling the market appeal of the brand.
The running joke is that apparently today, icons are sensitive too.
The noble orientation of our established architects today is that of an architectural iconoclast.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.] (played 10 times)
Interview by Valle Medina and Ben Reynolds with Atelier Bow-Wow (Yoshiharu Tsukamoto)
Recorded in Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo on the 22nd October 2008 (30:54 mins).
Atelier Bow-Wow. Sourced from Atelier Bow-wow.
State of Play and the Illusion of Freedom
For some years now,
Paul Virilio has spoken about the state of play in our technologically
vexed context. He advocates that it is “interesting while maintaining a
critical attitude”, that we should not just be the player, but rather play
as if to know, or better still create the game itself. Virilio suggests that
there are two ways to look at play, one pertains a likeness to
playing cards which is a game that requires knowledge of how to play, but
not to know the construct of the game itself. If so wished, one can find the
combinations/permutations needed for success, however, it is not a
requirement. The other is attributed to “the play of a mechanical part when
it is loose in its housing” which Virilio remarks as “the play of today”.
This ‘type’ of contemporary play is simultaenously talking about the
sophistication of what we are playing with, and also the complexities and
the nearness to reality of the games themselves. “What is a game once the
virtual invades reality?” says Virilio. “To play today, in a certain sense,
means to choose between two realities.” There are obvious reasons why
computer games are in epic demand, for example the market has understood
that they allow a gamer to be in a position that they cannot attain with
their own bodies and/or their environment - because of its limitations.
Coupled with the imaginations of the developers and the sophistication of
their engines, the realities of gamers can exist in any form. This
is the catalyst for a vitual addiction. One can be a sports star, a war
hero, or even a town planner as in the
SimCity franchises, or even interact with other human beings on a
IM program and claim they are in another reality than what is really the
truth. One can use this portal to even engage in the act of love-making but
not have bodily intercourse, commonly termed as the degrading act of
cybersex. A sex without physical interchange, awkwardness, smells,
sensational expolosions, all that is very human and real.
Narrative in storytelling allows readers to concoct their own “mental
cinema” of what protagonist looks like, or even how soft the sand she is
standing in. I see
Camus’ Meursault as an intelligent being completely in touch
with his surroundings, manipulating what could be a sorrowful existence into
a romantic, sensual however existentialist dream - well-dressed but run down
and slouched, from the sun, walking and sweating. But the Meursault
represented by a virtual gaming narrative is pre-defined, stuck in a
carved-out box, set in digital stone and a realisation of someone elses
imagination - not yours or Camus’. The beauty of the novel comes in the
thought-images of the individual.
When asked what game we should play, Virilio says to “play at being a
critic. Deconstruct the game in order to play with it. Instead of accepting
the rules, challenge and modify them. Without the freedom to critique and
reconstruct, there is no truly free game: we are addicts and nothing more.”
To the developer, we should ask the developers to resist pre-definitions,
and allow users freedoms to infinite degrees. We should access resources to
develop ourselves. Our virtual spaces should be accessible and flexible.
There exists virtual spaces that allude to users being allowed to configure
environments, but still there is a creation with primary tools to achieve
this.
SIAL’s
Greg More created
Eureka a digital presentation environment that allows users “to
navigate spatial collections of multi-media assets.” What appears to be a
seamless navigating environment is just a re-alignment of an already known
interface.
Phun is an
inviting system that turns real-world physics virtual and for this very
reason is highly addictive. It arrives closer to the point of simulating
realities however abstracting the objects that appear within them. We can
set up our own test or experiment with objects that we could not purchase or
even construct in this world.
The third example brings closer the relationship between the body and the
virtual space as well as being affordable,
CamSpace.
And then there is Jeff Han and his VR empire.
Multi-Touch Sensing through Frustrated Total Internal Reflection. Image
from Jeff Han’s NYU
Homepage.
If you would like to read the full transcript of Jermone Sans’ interview
with Paul Virilio, you can see it
here at the Watson Institute’s Website.
We’ll leave you with the following, a picture of what Virilio believes the
human will be in his own context, ” …a weightless individual in a
little ergonomic armchair, suspended outside a space capsule, with the earth
below and the interstellar void above. A man with his own gravity, who no
longer needs a relationship to society, to those around him, and least of
all to a family.” It seems scarily similar to the idea that Peter Sloterdijk
holds (but we’ll leave that for another day).
