Architectural scale – Absorbing contemporary technologies

In earlier times, buildings served mainly to protect people from the elements and manifold dangers. But buildings were never cocoons; they always allowed interaction with the outside world, because light, people, and objects had to be permitted to come inside. 

Over the past 150 years, the permeability of buildings has steadily increased. This has been due in particular to new technologies such as electrification, air conditioning, the telephone, the inter- net, elevators, and so forth. Today buildings are linked with the outside world through numerous pipes and cables and often with wireless connections as well. But the infrastructure within buildings is still usually separate from the design; architects leave these systems up to specialized engineers.

How can this division be overcome? What would it mean to design architecture not chiefly to protect users but to support their activities? This workshop, headed by Georges Teyssot and Laurent Stalder, dealt with infrastructure space at the architectural scale.

The participants investigated the traditional relationship between design and technology, and they considered new ways to link the two. What is a smart city? And how would it interact with its environment? How can the aesthetics of technology be used?

In his summary, Georges Teyssot stated that current developments in technology are becoming increasingly important in buildings and in time will probably become as important as the architecture itself. The workshop participants also dealt intensively with the mistakes of the past. “Sometimes we deny our failures; society would rather look the other way,” Teyssot stated. “But we have to face our failures.” And the fear of disaster is important because it can spur change.

Georges Teyssot also referred to some particularly interesting presentations on elements of infrastructure, for instance windows or climate control systems that use completely new approaches. Many new technologies are extremely well suited to the needs of users. But therein lie new challenges, because “comfort can be very boring.” Thus there remains much to discuss at the interface between infrastructure and design. But what does interface mean? “Our conclusion could be: Infrastructure and architecture will soon be one and the same,” said Georges Teyssot. “They will form a new unit. The future will therefore be very interesting.”

Architectural scale mobile workshop

The two leaders of this mobile workshop, Reed Kroloff and Gregory Wittkopp, took the participants to three building complexes that are exemplary for social development and manufacturing in the greater Detroit area. The infrastructural logic of each complex was assessed and discussed by the group.

Lafayette Park is located on a site where racial tension had once repeatedly flared. In the 1950s the city decided to completely re- design the site by creating a housing project, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig Hilberseimer, and Alfred Caldwell. Unusual at that time was the intention to house people of different ethnicities and income levels within the same neighborhood. Many aspects of the program have proven successful over the long term.

The second destination of the group is above all technologically impressive: the “Dymaxion House” (pictured, left) – a prototype lightweight house. This aluminum building was designed by Richard Buckminster Fuller between 1944 and 1946 and intended for mass production.

The final stop of the mobile workshop was the Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Cranbrook Art Museum. Newspaper publisher George Booth founded the school, which was designed by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and opened one department at a time starting in 1920. Rafael Moneo augmented the impressive buildings with his museum in 2002.

read Foundations 19 online (flip-book)