Sign as Surface: Meaning Beyond the New Digital Aesthetic Symposium
Patrik Schumacher 2003
Afterword for the symposium: Sign as Surface: Meaning beyond the New Digital Aesthetic,
Published In: Sign as Surface Catalog, New York
On
September 9, 2003 the AIA/NY Chapter Technology Committee hosted a
special two-and-a-half hour symposium entitled, Sign
as Surface: Meaning Beyond the New Digital Aesthetic at the Cooper
Union in the Albert Nerken Engineering Building, Wollman Auditorium.
The
event was co-moderated by curator Peter Zellner and Paul Seletsky,
Chair of the AIA/NY Chapter Technology Committee and featured presentations
by Evan Douglis, Christopher Hight, Kamiel
Klaasse, Wade Stevens, Tom Verebes, Chris Perry and Ali Rahim. Patrik Schumacher of Zaha Hadid Architects
and Co-Director of the Architectural Association Design Research Laboratory
responded to the architects’ presentations. His after-word to
the symposium is presented here.
Divergence or Confluence?
Sign as Surface shows the second generation
of two distinct tendencies which became manifest in the mid-nineties
as serious contenders for the position of leadership in the avant-garde
segment of the architectural profession/discipline. The opposition
between these two trends - one concentrated in the US and the other
one in Holland - is a well-established fact within architectural
discourse.
While the original protagonists (i.e. Eisenman,
Lynn etc. on the one hand and i.e. OMA, MVRDV etc. on the other hand)
are realizing their concepts on a grand scale, it is interesting to
look at the emerging talents (i.e. Evan Douglis, OceanD, Servo and
Contemporary Architecture Practice on the one hand and i.e. NL-Architects,
FAT, Neutelings, Lyons etc. on the other hand) that push the respective
tendencies further along their diverging trajectories.
Peter Zellner’s programmatic statement for
the exhibition characterizes the opposition of the two “competing
tendencies” as the opposition between “practices rooted
in representation and metaphor and those founded on material systems
and organizations.” This characterization reveals that Zellner’s
vantage point is in fact aligned with the US based tendency: the cited
opposition reflects the original self-demarcation of the US tendency.
While I myself tend to align my own design efforts on the same side
I equally refuse to locate the discourse of signification within an
alien territory. The divergence between concerns of signification and
concerns with material formation can not be construed as an ideological
choice about the future of architecture. The semiotic dimension of
architecture can not be dismissed by fiat – neither can it usurp
the field of relevant research and practice. Therefore I subscribe
to Zellner’s attempt to turn this confrontation into a dialog.
The exhibition motto Sign as Surface (instead of Sign vs.
Surface) indicates this intention which was further pursuit at the
attendant conference hosted at the Cooper Union.
However, the presentations initially reinforced
a strong sense of divergence. Kamiel Klaasse (NL Architects) presented
a series of built projects that were striking by means of their surreal
programmatic juxtapositions and by their ironic treatment of familiar
architectural motifs: A window doubles as basket ball target, a sky-light
doubles as centre-circle of the basket ball court, a handicap ramp
doubles as skate-board-bowl, a column doubles as water-dispenser etc.
Klaasse’s laconic style of presentation matched the dry humor
of the built work itself. Theoretical accounts were avoided - the
built effects were supposed to speak for themselves.
The presentations of Evan Douglis, Tom Verebes
(OceanD), Chris Perry (Servo), and Ali Rahim (Contemporary Architecture
Practice)- the US practices- were
discussing abstract installations exploring the new formal and material
possibilities afforded by the latest generation of digital design tools
and proto-typing technology. The presentations focused on the theoretical
descriptions (iteration, modulation, self-organization etc.) as well
as technical description (splines, nurb-surfaces, CNC-milling) of the
artifacts – avoiding
any reference to the potential social deployment and meaning of these
proto-architectural experiments.
The stark contrast between the super-concreteness
of NL versus the super-abstractness of US appeared to imply an utter
incommensurability of the underlying discourses, both in terms of language
and agenda. There seemed to be no point of contact around which a communication
could be initiated. No cross-references were made. The purpose of the
exhibition/conference seemed doomed.
What point of contact could be construed between
a window and a nurb surface? Well, Sign as Surface shows how a nurb-surface
can articulate a tectonic concept that might develop into a structural
skin with structurally integrated apertures and that might produce
intriguing window-equivalents. The profundity of such a possibility
escapes us as long as the discursive domains of abstract technique
and concrete effect remain segregated.
One of the problems that created the sense that
the presented communications were incommensurable is the fact that
NL addresses the general public while US addresses the discipline.
However, in the end both tendencies need to develop an internal as
well as an external discourse.
Another barrier resides in the fact that the US
work presented here has not yet reached the stage of implementation.
However, there are built examples that can serve to substantiate the
intentions of the US tendency: Lynn’s Korean Church, Nox’s
Waterpavilion, or Kol/Mac’s Manhattan apartment. If one compares
these spaces with those constructed by NL one might identify certain
convergences. The two ways of working are comparable and directly compete
with respect to quite similar intentions and effects: hybridization,
subversion of typologies, mutation of use-values, decoding of familiar
meanings, making strange etc. Both collage (NL) as well as morphing
(US) produce comparable psycho-social effects. Both tendencies equally
resist pragmatic functionalism and a priori performance criteria. Both
tendencies follow ‘lines of flight’ and forge unexpected
assemblages in the search of uncharted effects and (perhaps) latent
utopias. (1)
In this perspective the two tendencies can observe
each other’s experiments, compare results, and transmute each
other’s discoveries. The Dutch programmatic alchemy might inspire
chimerical articulations in America and vice versa.
This possibility would follow in the footsteps
of Tschumi’s realization that cross-programming might be effectively
spatialized by means of superposition – a radical “compositional” technique
pioneered by Peter Eisenman. One of the next major formal innovations
was perhaps Zaha Hadid’s radical dynamization and curvilinear
distortion of the complex spatial arrangements previously achieved.
The next step was Lynn’s/Kipnis’ shift from fragmentation
towards the smooth inter-articulations afforded by folding and morphing.
That an aggressively formalist agenda was pushed
at the same time can be appreciated as a heuristics of research, i.e.
the exclusive concentration on difficult formal problems that could
not be mastered without initially unburden itself from the concern
with social meaning. However, this exigency of an incipient research
program did not deserve to be glorified into an ideological paradigm
shift: the abandonment of the semiotic paradigm in favor of a formal/organizational
paradigm. The precise character of this supposed new paradigm was shifting
as the design problematic started to expand beyond pure questions of
form to successively include structure, material and fabrication processes.
Further, as a certain strand of the folding movement (FOA, UN-Studio)
assimilated MVRDV’s data-scape approach, a (parametric rather
than typological) sense of program and use-pattern was augmenting the
discourse. This successive augmentation of the discourse is following
a typical path of maturation. Zellner’s definition of a tendency “founded
on material systems and organization” tries to summarize this
self-augmenting bundle of concerns which is maturing together with
a definite formal/tectonic repertoire. The time might be ripe to speak
again of the growth of a new tradition. I have no doubt about the importance and profundity of this
new tradition.
However, I would like to argue that the persistence
of the polemic demarcation against any concern with signification – which
made sense initially is response to the trivialization/exhaustion of
the postmodern and deconstructivist contributions, is becoming a barrier
for the full maturation of this new language of architecture.
It is a fallacy to counter-pose organization and
signification as incompatible paradigms for architecture. Instead it
should be recognized that both are inescapable dimensions of architecture.
In as much as architecture is inhabited by (culturally formed) subjects
the organizational effects of architecture rely to a large extent upon
effective signification. The social inhabitation of complex institutional
spaces can not be achieved purely by means of the physical channeling
of human bodies. The effectiveness of the spatial order relies upon
the active orientation of the subjects on the basis of a “reading” of
the spatial territory. Current forms of differentiated office landscapes
(2) may serve as example: The traditional physical demarcation of territory
by means of solid walls is replaced by the subtle coding of zones and
the articulation of (hopefully) legible thresholds. This means that
the importance of the semiotic dimension of architecture increases
rather than decreases – albeit the process of semiosis is much
more dynamic and complex than the post-modern pioneers of semiotically
conscious architecture presumed. Literal citation and the accumulation
of ready-made icons is to be replaced by subtle de-codings, overcodings,
iterant and mutant re-codings, multiple simultaneous allusions etc.
Also, an abstracting destruction of stale iconic values is required
to clear the ground for semiotic re- and self-organisation. This work
does not move from representation to material performance, but from
simple signification to hyper-signification - and might be
thus theorized. In seems timely to reactivate and connect to certain
strands of the deconstructivist discourse in order to theorize the
semiotic potential of the current US avant-garde work. There is no
chance that this work should remain mute.
The recent research emphasis on infrastructural
projects - chosen to underline
the ethos of material organization - has
obscured the necessity for a sophisticated semiotics of folding. Such
projects are indeed dominated by mechanisms of physical channeling – and
I think they are all the less interesting for that matter. In fact
I would argue that the difference between architecture and engineering
is rooted in the degree to which functionality can be reduced to matters
of material organization. Architecture organizes social life via the
articulation/perception, and the conception/comprehension of spatial
order. This means that representation and organization can not be pitched
against each other as a superficial reading of the exhibition might
suggest. Signification vs organization has to transmute
into signification as organization: Sign as Surface.
Patrik Schumacher, Zaha Hadid Architects, AADRL
Notes:
1. Latent Utopias was the title of an exhibition curated by Patrik
Schumacher & Zaha Hadid for the art festival Steirischer Herbst
in Graz 2002-03. The attendant catalog: LATENT UTOPIAS - Experiments within Contemporary Architecture,
Ed. Zaha Hadid & Patrik Schumacher, Springer Verlag, Wien/New York
2002
2.
On this topic the author has written (www.patrikschumacher.com):
Robotic
Fields: Spatializing the dynamics of Corporate Organization
in: Designing for a Digital World, edited by Neil Leach, 2002
Business – Research – Architecture,
In: Daidalos 69/70, December 1998/January
Productive
Patterns, in: architect's bulletin, Operativity, Volume 135 - 136,
June 1997, Slovenia and in: architect's bulletin, Volume 137 - 138,
November 1997, Slovenia