... tongue obviously at least a little in cheek here, and I know it's been done before, but it might be fun to get the H8rs and True Believers all in one room and let 'em sort it out once and for all ...
Markos Novak's liquid architectures are one way of thinking about digital formalism that is imaginary, a kind of virtual futuristic cyber utopianism. The form is no longer static...
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. It seems like on the one hand, there's something really valuable about the attempt to create the kind of forms that no ones's ever seen before, and to come at that from the direction of architecture, it being inherently rigorous, structural and geometric. But on the other hand, with more people becoming increasingly concerned about architecture's impact and potential in the social, political, and economic spheres, sometimes you've got to wonder if all this won't seem like decadent deck chair arranging to future generations. I'm agnostic, and optimistic that social and formal concerns aren't mutually exclusive, but I'm just, you know, throwing that out there for y'all to talk about, if anyone's interested.
superficial and uninteresting... it creates an architecture that is purely based on "taste". Digital Formalism is like the girl with the fat ass that you wanna bang out... but would never ever think about taking home to mommy... (once again I hate to genralize... because I am sure that there are some formalistic architectures that got beyond the visual realm and delve into ideas that are a lot more sophisticated)
Okay, but what about the desire to make something truly new? Like in the renaissance, right, the baroque didn't exist - and then it did. Some people took some new ideas about perception, some new technologies, some loopholes in the rules of the old system, and came up with something totally new. Even if it is just viusal and spatial.
We (other people in the profession) are totally over it because we've seen it before. If you drop some Karl Chu in the lap of an ordinary civilian, they'll be like WTF!? Formal research has come up with some crazy stuff that has a good to claim to engendering new types of beauty. Isn't that important? Are we all just bitter because we were fished in early and now we know all the tricks?
765,
I think that the connection of DF to baroque is pretty weak. Baroque told stories full of passion and feeling. imho, digital formalism completely takes the human out of the equation (even to a large extent out of its design). DF lacks emotional values, it is by and for the computer. Passionate spatial story-telling gives way to technological showmanship.
As you said today we have problems that are far more important than figuring out what cool shapes we can script into software. I think that DF is a cynical retreat from the ugly issues that cities have to deal with. Finally as abyssinian said DF is all about taste, an elitist taste for the very few that know what the hell is going on. And as architects continue to speak in the foreign language of form and script we continue to lose grip on the real, messy, and ugly built environment.
About a week-and-a-half ago, I read the AD issue on "Elegance", edited by Ali Rahim. What struck me as interesting were the attempts to theorize digital formalism -- in many instances, the means-end relationship between formalism and its iterative processes was firmly established, yet I did not buy the connection. Take, for instance, Mark Gage's contribution to the AD issue, "Deus Ex Machina: From Semiology to the Elegance of Aesthetics." Now while I appreciated the thought that went in to the essay (the text would even drop names like "Sylvia Lavin" and "Immanuel Kant" in a fell, breathless swoop), there were some moments that left me quite puzzled. An example is when Gage states that "elegant" or "seductive" forms depend on figuration and mutation. I do realize that figuration and mutation, for example, can be executed via different types of scripting and whatnot ... but why does it have to rely on these formal gestures of figuration and mutation. It was really interesting, if only for the fact that a lot of theoretical energy was spent with the true end result being that the essay's argument kept drowning in one of those emergent, feedback-looped eddies that it so encouraged.
Well, the idea that the baroque developed from nothing is quite incorrect. the seminal ideas behind the baroque can be traced to The Council of Trent which developed a framework for the representation of religious art. Over time, with contributions from writers and religious figures, three main points defined what the early baroque was to become.
i) clarity, smplicity, and intelligibility
ii) realistic interpretation
iii) emotional stimulus to peity
With the exception of Michael Angelo and the Venetians, the artistic responses were formalistic, anti-classical, and anti-naturalistic. A style that we refer to as Mannerism. This mannerism for the most part however did not respond to the framework that was set forth by the religious reformers.
It is only from about 1580 onwards, that a counter-reformatory art on a broad basis is discernable.
Borrowed from Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 by Rudolf Wittkower. Michelangelo misspelled on porpoise.
"marcos novak might just be the worst digital formalist ever...he's like the girl w/ the fat @$$ you wouldn't "bang out""
Novak wrote about liquid architectures in 1991 I believe, about the same time that the world wide web was created... Where virtual and real become blurred, forms and spaces are subject to the desires of the occupant, free from physical constraints, free of gravity, dynamic... In other words, the occupant generates their own forms based on subjective desires and needs. Its like cyberpunk.
" free from physical constraints, free of gravity, dynamic.."
which unfortunately architecture is not.
and as someone else pointed out, these are issues that architects have been dealing w/ since at least the period of the baroque, as wolflinn so eloquently points out
btw, as a tried and true formalist, i'm basing my critique of novak purely on aesthetic terms, the topic wasn't "digital intellectualists", although maybe that's the problem w/ this stuff. i'm not smart enough to say.
It's probably more sci-fi than real, but personally, this is the realm I think digital form making has some real weight...
Lets say in 25 years. Virtual realities and physical realities start to overlap... Everyone is wireless, not carrying laptops, but carrying their internet with them everywhere they go, it's basically micro... nano? where your virtual communications, say phones, computers, archinect, instant messenger, videophone, your car navigation, googlee map / earth / youtube, all aspects of your home, temperature control, visual graphic representations, all urban media... They all become integrated and interactive. In other words, buildings and physical surfaces, physical materials now have a *digital* component to them that people can interact with through virual interfaces... It seems like science fiction, but there are technologies that make it plausible.
In this imaginary future, digital formalism, whatever forms you can think of, become more powerful... It would open up the possibilities of design, *real architecture* that is not constrained by politics, physical and structural limitations, economic constraints?
What's wrong with form for form's sake? In our present day world, it is expensive, it is sometimes at the expense of functionality, it eats up resources and energy, it imposes its own culture and politics, meanings on others, exercises authority over a space... But in a world without alot of these constraints, form for form's sake is given wings... It might be just graphical overalys within space, or it could be environmental controls... Making some of the space design democratic... It creates work for designers... Although this layer of spatial design might be somewhere in the realm of architecture / graphic design / environmental graphics / lighting / film? etc.?
What if people could choose their architecture like choosing an outfit to wear? All of these digital form making gurus who can make sexy images but cannot build them suddenly become fashion designers... Make architectural forms accessible to the average consumer?
what are we talking about? 'digital' is such a broad word that has so many implications. are we talking about representation, or architecture (built architecture) that can only exist through the use of a computer? i'd be interested to talk about the latter.
i think the theory of digital formalism or 'digital baroque' (greg lynn, karl chu, etc.) has been exhausted, if there ever was a good theory to begin with. But with that said, i think if we lump 'digital' with only form finding, then i think we are missing out on a lot of really good built work e.g. mercedes benz museum, onl cockpit, etc. with performance built into the digital process.
can you elaborate how performance is built into the digital process here? are we talking about built structures that can only exist through computer aided design technologies, or are we talking forms generated by (informed by) performance drivers with the aid of computers? or something about these built works that themselves integrates digital with digital technology? what is it that makes these projects not form driven?
In the mercedes benz project, it seems that the exhibition and website are interconnected... projected images on concrete surfaces, the spatial relationship of web space and physical space?
How do these project separate themselves from digital formalism of say greg lynn? are we talking digitally generated, but without the "form exploration for form's sake" disclaimer?
i can elaborate on the onl cockpit project since i did some analysis on that building for a class i am taking. without sounding like i am trying to pitch the project, onl came up with a process that computed each glass panel size and connection (all unique) relative to thousands of other glass panels and connections based off a point cloud (generated using a script). file-to-factory meaning the data was relayed to the manufacturer very early during the design process enabling them to streamline the construction schedule (economic performance). while this was going on, they were able to analyze the digital model for structural performance and could loop back the updated data to the manufacturer to adjust accordingly. this has more to do with speed and efficiency than to say this building would not exist without a computer, but you can imagine the mathematical complexity of understanding all the thousands of unique panels and connections in your head...it would take a genious.
as for the mercedes benz museum, i don't know as much specifics, but i do know that digital models were used deep into the construction phase. un studio has a new book out called 'design models' that describes how digital models are used to address real-life scenarios (client communication, construction, etc.). in it, they state, that at the formal level, their work (blobs) belong to the same family as greg lynn, but at the performance level, they're in a whole different ballpark. 'atlas of novel tectonics' by reiser + umemoto has a good diagram of this point. i don't remember the specific chapter, but its the one with the race horse and race dogs.
in the end, i think there is nothing wrong with seductive form, it's adding the extra layer of performance that i think architects should be as equally imaginative and innovative about.
He seemed a little jaded saying a few times how he started thinking about the issues that have led to Second Life and DF since 1979. Specially because I guess Eisenman said in MIT last week that he is rethinking his previously negative view of Df, an issue that Novak had unsuccessfully brought up to him almost 30 yrs ago.
It was a very interesting lecture and his work is exquisite, but I couldn't stop thinking, "so, what?" Lots of cool things that at the end of the day stay in the realm of "cool" or if actually built lose all their power. I am also skeptical of all the talk of biology and cellular structures and then forgetting about the real natural world these things area part of. In one particular project he explicitly ignores the human scale and replaces it with allegorical uses of the interior of his own brain, as mapped out in MRI's. Once again, cool, but....
I agree with the point that this type of work loses its power when built... But I wonder if, within the next few decades, this type of design may not need to be built in the conventional sense to become architectural. As virtual environments begin to overlap real environments, we may see some remarkable "built" works that escape "bricks and mortar"...
Everything comes down to how good things are executed. I don't think it's fair to generalize about formal architecture being good or bad. Everything comes down to how well it was done.
For example, it'd be naive to just say one genre of music sucked, just because you don't like 10 songs.
There are good and bad examples of every style out there.
Novak was a good professor. I learned tons from his class (it was nor an architecture class, more digital environments).
The 'so what' question is something I think of for theory and theoretical investigations more than formal architecture. That's just me, but a formal study, stick bass wood model (a la Eisenman), etc. goes a million miles farther than 10,000 ambiguous words.
bRink and others interested in ubiquitous computing (which is tangential to this discussion) - check out this interview with Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware...
DIGITAL FORMALISM
... Menace to Society or Threat to Civilization?
Discuss.
... tongue obviously at least a little in cheek here, and I know it's been done before, but it might be fun to get the H8rs and True Believers all in one room and let 'em sort it out once and for all ...
An architectural deathmatch, if you will?
Markos Novak's liquid architectures are one way of thinking about digital formalism that is imaginary, a kind of virtual futuristic cyber utopianism. The form is no longer static...
http://www.postmedia.net/mctxt.htm
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. It seems like on the one hand, there's something really valuable about the attempt to create the kind of forms that no ones's ever seen before, and to come at that from the direction of architecture, it being inherently rigorous, structural and geometric. But on the other hand, with more people becoming increasingly concerned about architecture's impact and potential in the social, political, and economic spheres, sometimes you've got to wonder if all this won't seem like decadent deck chair arranging to future generations. I'm agnostic, and optimistic that social and formal concerns aren't mutually exclusive, but I'm just, you know, throwing that out there for y'all to talk about, if anyone's interested.
... or not?
Viva el Urbanismo Nuevo!!!!
form for forms sake is nihilistic.
superficial and uninteresting... it creates an architecture that is purely based on "taste". Digital Formalism is like the girl with the fat ass that you wanna bang out... but would never ever think about taking home to mommy... (once again I hate to genralize... because I am sure that there are some formalistic architectures that got beyond the visual realm and delve into ideas that are a lot more sophisticated)
abyssinian please stop using my lovelife as an anology. thank you...
marcos novak might just be the worst digital formalist ever...he's like the girl w/ the fat @$$ you wouldn't "bang out"
digital formalism can be cool...as sanford kwinter once wrote "who's afraid of a little formalism" anyways....
Okay, but what about the desire to make something truly new? Like in the renaissance, right, the baroque didn't exist - and then it did. Some people took some new ideas about perception, some new technologies, some loopholes in the rules of the old system, and came up with something totally new. Even if it is just viusal and spatial.
We (other people in the profession) are totally over it because we've seen it before. If you drop some Karl Chu in the lap of an ordinary civilian, they'll be like WTF!? Formal research has come up with some crazy stuff that has a good to claim to engendering new types of beauty. Isn't that important? Are we all just bitter because we were fished in early and now we know all the tricks?
765,
I think that the connection of DF to baroque is pretty weak. Baroque told stories full of passion and feeling. imho, digital formalism completely takes the human out of the equation (even to a large extent out of its design). DF lacks emotional values, it is by and for the computer. Passionate spatial story-telling gives way to technological showmanship.
As you said today we have problems that are far more important than figuring out what cool shapes we can script into software. I think that DF is a cynical retreat from the ugly issues that cities have to deal with. Finally as abyssinian said DF is all about taste, an elitist taste for the very few that know what the hell is going on. And as architects continue to speak in the foreign language of form and script we continue to lose grip on the real, messy, and ugly built environment.
About a week-and-a-half ago, I read the AD issue on "Elegance", edited by Ali Rahim. What struck me as interesting were the attempts to theorize digital formalism -- in many instances, the means-end relationship between formalism and its iterative processes was firmly established, yet I did not buy the connection. Take, for instance, Mark Gage's contribution to the AD issue, "Deus Ex Machina: From Semiology to the Elegance of Aesthetics." Now while I appreciated the thought that went in to the essay (the text would even drop names like "Sylvia Lavin" and "Immanuel Kant" in a fell, breathless swoop), there were some moments that left me quite puzzled. An example is when Gage states that "elegant" or "seductive" forms depend on figuration and mutation. I do realize that figuration and mutation, for example, can be executed via different types of scripting and whatnot ... but why does it have to rely on these formal gestures of figuration and mutation. It was really interesting, if only for the fact that a lot of theoretical energy was spent with the true end result being that the essay's argument kept drowning in one of those emergent, feedback-looped eddies that it so encouraged.
Or perhaps I'm missing the point.
Well, the idea that the baroque developed from nothing is quite incorrect. the seminal ideas behind the baroque can be traced to The Council of Trent which developed a framework for the representation of religious art. Over time, with contributions from writers and religious figures, three main points defined what the early baroque was to become.
i) clarity, smplicity, and intelligibility
ii) realistic interpretation
iii) emotional stimulus to peity
With the exception of Michael Angelo and the Venetians, the artistic responses were formalistic, anti-classical, and anti-naturalistic. A style that we refer to as Mannerism. This mannerism for the most part however did not respond to the framework that was set forth by the religious reformers.
It is only from about 1580 onwards, that a counter-reformatory art on a broad basis is discernable.
Borrowed from Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 by Rudolf Wittkower. Michelangelo misspelled on porpoise.
Novak wrote about liquid architectures in 1991 I believe, about the same time that the world wide web was created... Where virtual and real become blurred, forms and spaces are subject to the desires of the occupant, free from physical constraints, free of gravity, dynamic... In other words, the occupant generates their own forms based on subjective desires and needs. Its like cyberpunk.
" free from physical constraints, free of gravity, dynamic.."
which unfortunately architecture is not.
and as someone else pointed out, these are issues that architects have been dealing w/ since at least the period of the baroque, as wolflinn so eloquently points out
btw, as a tried and true formalist, i'm basing my critique of novak purely on aesthetic terms, the topic wasn't "digital intellectualists", although maybe that's the problem w/ this stuff. i'm not smart enough to say.
It's probably more sci-fi than real, but personally, this is the realm I think digital form making has some real weight...
Lets say in 25 years. Virtual realities and physical realities start to overlap... Everyone is wireless, not carrying laptops, but carrying their internet with them everywhere they go, it's basically micro... nano? where your virtual communications, say phones, computers, archinect, instant messenger, videophone, your car navigation, googlee map / earth / youtube, all aspects of your home, temperature control, visual graphic representations, all urban media... They all become integrated and interactive. In other words, buildings and physical surfaces, physical materials now have a *digital* component to them that people can interact with through virual interfaces... It seems like science fiction, but there are technologies that make it plausible.
In this imaginary future, digital formalism, whatever forms you can think of, become more powerful... It would open up the possibilities of design, *real architecture* that is not constrained by politics, physical and structural limitations, economic constraints?
What's wrong with form for form's sake? In our present day world, it is expensive, it is sometimes at the expense of functionality, it eats up resources and energy, it imposes its own culture and politics, meanings on others, exercises authority over a space... But in a world without alot of these constraints, form for form's sake is given wings... It might be just graphical overalys within space, or it could be environmental controls... Making some of the space design democratic... It creates work for designers... Although this layer of spatial design might be somewhere in the realm of architecture / graphic design / environmental graphics / lighting / film? etc.?
What if people could choose their architecture like choosing an outfit to wear? All of these digital form making gurus who can make sexy images but cannot build them suddenly become fashion designers... Make architectural forms accessible to the average consumer?
what are we talking about? 'digital' is such a broad word that has so many implications. are we talking about representation, or architecture (built architecture) that can only exist through the use of a computer? i'd be interested to talk about the latter.
i think the theory of digital formalism or 'digital baroque' (greg lynn, karl chu, etc.) has been exhausted, if there ever was a good theory to begin with. But with that said, i think if we lump 'digital' with only form finding, then i think we are missing out on a lot of really good built work e.g. mercedes benz museum, onl cockpit, etc. with performance built into the digital process.
digital does not mean virtual.
mercedes benz museum
dot, interesting projects...
can you elaborate how performance is built into the digital process here? are we talking about built structures that can only exist through computer aided design technologies, or are we talking forms generated by (informed by) performance drivers with the aid of computers? or something about these built works that themselves integrates digital with digital technology? what is it that makes these projects not form driven?
In the mercedes benz project, it seems that the exhibition and website are interconnected... projected images on concrete surfaces, the spatial relationship of web space and physical space?
How do these project separate themselves from digital formalism of say greg lynn? are we talking digitally generated, but without the "form exploration for form's sake" disclaimer?
i can elaborate on the onl cockpit project since i did some analysis on that building for a class i am taking. without sounding like i am trying to pitch the project, onl came up with a process that computed each glass panel size and connection (all unique) relative to thousands of other glass panels and connections based off a point cloud (generated using a script). file-to-factory meaning the data was relayed to the manufacturer very early during the design process enabling them to streamline the construction schedule (economic performance). while this was going on, they were able to analyze the digital model for structural performance and could loop back the updated data to the manufacturer to adjust accordingly. this has more to do with speed and efficiency than to say this building would not exist without a computer, but you can imagine the mathematical complexity of understanding all the thousands of unique panels and connections in your head...it would take a genious.
as for the mercedes benz museum, i don't know as much specifics, but i do know that digital models were used deep into the construction phase. un studio has a new book out called 'design models' that describes how digital models are used to address real-life scenarios (client communication, construction, etc.). in it, they state, that at the formal level, their work (blobs) belong to the same family as greg lynn, but at the performance level, they're in a whole different ballpark. 'atlas of novel tectonics' by reiser + umemoto has a good diagram of this point. i don't remember the specific chapter, but its the one with the race horse and race dogs.
in the end, i think there is nothing wrong with seductive form, it's adding the extra layer of performance that i think architects should be as equally imaginative and innovative about.
Just went to a novak lecture.
He showed this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjexZ88wIno
He seemed a little jaded saying a few times how he started thinking about the issues that have led to Second Life and DF since 1979. Specially because I guess Eisenman said in MIT last week that he is rethinking his previously negative view of Df, an issue that Novak had unsuccessfully brought up to him almost 30 yrs ago.
It was a very interesting lecture and his work is exquisite, but I couldn't stop thinking, "so, what?" Lots of cool things that at the end of the day stay in the realm of "cool" or if actually built lose all their power. I am also skeptical of all the talk of biology and cellular structures and then forgetting about the real natural world these things area part of. In one particular project he explicitly ignores the human scale and replaces it with allegorical uses of the interior of his own brain, as mapped out in MRI's. Once again, cool, but....
and so on and so on and shooby doobie doobie...
+q, that video is one of the coolest, most abstract and amazing things I've ever seen.
'Rolling, activation, adhesion, and transendohelial migration are the four steps in a process called: leukocyte extravasation.' Hell yeah!
isn't it, he actually showed it first without description:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rBnlexdoVE&mode=related&search=
That's disappointing, it's actually a lot better with the voice over.
+q,
I agree with the point that this type of work loses its power when built... But I wonder if, within the next few decades, this type of design may not need to be built in the conventional sense to become architectural. As virtual environments begin to overlap real environments, we may see some remarkable "built" works that escape "bricks and mortar"...
Everything comes down to how good things are executed. I don't think it's fair to generalize about formal architecture being good or bad. Everything comes down to how well it was done.
For example, it'd be naive to just say one genre of music sucked, just because you don't like 10 songs.
There are good and bad examples of every style out there.
Novak was a good professor. I learned tons from his class (it was nor an architecture class, more digital environments).
The 'so what' question is something I think of for theory and theoretical investigations more than formal architecture. That's just me, but a formal study, stick bass wood model (a la Eisenman), etc. goes a million miles farther than 10,000 ambiguous words.
leave Sly and The Family Stone out of this!
bRink and others interested in ubiquitous computing (which is tangential to this discussion) - check out this interview with Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware...
ah, great book ap.
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