D4 Concept Design

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Atelier Project Atelier - Atelier Template 1 (74)Prepared

INA WAGNER, PELLE EHN, RDIGERLAINER, PER LINDE, JANNA LINDSJ,

ANNIKA NYSTROM, ANDREASRUMPFHUBER, DIETER SPATH

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Concept Design

Translating ethnographic fieldwork and

material from art/architecture intoconcepts and future scenarios

Version 1.0

Abstract

This part of of the project report looks into inspirational learning, the nature ofinspirations as well as the role of inspirational material for design work and analysesexamples from art and architecture as sources of inspiration. Fieldwork and

art/architectural examples are used to describe the inspirational learning space in termsof qualities the particular atmospheric, material, and spatial qualities that the ATELIERproject seeks to support. The catalogue of qualities defines some of the parameters ofthe architectural space. . It also describes the first mock-up space which has been setup at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and some early inspirational experiments inthe space. The last section presents a set of future scenarios envisioning how specificcombinations of architecture and technologies may be used in support of learning

Contents

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE OF THE DOCUMENT

LEARNING FROM INSPIRATION IN ART/ARCHITECTURE

INSPIRATIONAL LEARNINGTHE NATURE OF INSPIRATIONSTHE ROLE OF INSPIRATIONAL OBJECTSEXAMPLES FROM ART AND ARCHITECTURE

Diller and Scofidio - conceptual architecture: architecture preoccupied with

technology

Diller and Scofidio for Eyebeam: the creation of a space for new media arts


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PRADANY, Koolhaas/KRAM design and others: architecture preoccupied

with technology and interactionWorkspheres, Moma NY: personalizing a work environment

Mvrdv: the personalized work space within an open architecturedonald judd + archo 02: experimental installationsel lissitsky, maholy nagy, ica boston and others: keeping the poetics of the

sketch modelElectronic Lounge, Festival Zentrum & Netzkunst Ausstellung, Architects:

beigeHaus Sobek, 2002, Architect: Werner Sobekbackspace.org, Media Lab and Riverside Lounge 1994

Moderate:witness, Video series and spatial installation

Relational architecture, Rafael Lozano-HemmerWalks, Janet Cardiff

Kramlich Residence, Architects: Herzog /de MeuronInstitut du Monde Arabe, Paris, Architect: Jean NouvelPalais de Tokyo, Paris, Architects: Anne Lacton and Jean Philippe VassalPablo Nerudas housesEurocity, Architect: Rdiger LainerYOUgend, Exhibition Project, Rdiger Lainer

INSPIRATIONAL LEARNING SPACES QUALITIES AND PRACTICES

THE TRANSIENT AND EPHEMERALMATERIALITY AND THE DIVERSITY OF MATERIALSMIXING REALITIES AND FORGING CONNECTIONSCREATIVE DENSITYCONFIGURABILITY - ADAPTABILITY TO A DIVERSITY OF USES AND IDENTITIESEXPERIENCE OF DIMENSIONALITY AND SCALINGRE-PROGRAMMING AND THE DIFFERENT VIEW

NARRATIVITYTEMPO - RHYTHM

THE ARCHITECTURAL SPACE

THE SPATIAL QUALITIESARCHITECTURAL EXAMPLES OF LEARNING SPACESTHE SPACE FRAMEA FIRST INSPIRATIONAL EXPERIMENT

FUTURE SCENARIOS

CONFIGURINGThe configurable spaceThe stageThe collaborative spaceChecking-in at the editing entrance

Activity awareness applicationCONNECTING AND AUGMENTING

The sea of design materialCreating a documentary of a project

Attaching digital media to physical models

RE-PROGRAMMINGThe dream space


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The display spaceExploratory games

CRUISINGThe Jacket: supporting visitors in creating a media path

REFERENCES


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Introduction

The objective of this work package is to co-ordinate conceptual development andredesign of the different dimensions of an inspirational learning space builtenvironment, multimedia materials, technologies, and people and to explore futureuse scenarios. Concept design intends the transition from describing and analysingcurrent practices to developing a vision of an inspirational learning environment. This isdone in four steps:

The first part looks into inspirational learning, the nature of inspirations as well as therole of inspirational material for design work and analyses examples from art andarchitecture as sources of inspiration.

Fieldwork and art/architectural examples are used to describe the inspirational learningspace in terms of qualities the particular atmospheric, material, and spatial qualitiesthat the ATELIER project seeks to support.

The catalogue of qualities defines some of the parameters of the architectural space.The third section gives examples of architectures for learning and specifies the firstmock-up space which has been set up at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. It alsodescribes some early inspirational experiments in the space.

The last section presents a set of future scenarios envisioning how specificcombinations of architecture and technologies may be used in support of learning.

Purpose of the document

The purpose of this document is to provide a common conceptual basis for theATELIER project which helps integrate the effort of those engaged in pro-searchingpractice, design the architectural space, and develop the technologies. It in particularprovides conceptual guidelines and concrete examples for setting up experiments inthe inspirational learning space and helps technology designers to think in terms ofinspirational resources and learning.

Learning from inspiration in art/architecture

Inspirational learningOur ethnographic fieldwork contains many examples of inspirational learning. It helpsconcretise the general ideas about design work and learning with which the ATELIERproject started.

Learning, we saw proceeds by circulating references students working with designrepresentations in different media, gradually transforming them into a design in aprocess which is non-linear, informal, and highly cooperative. The diversity of materialand media is an important facilitator of learning. Students work with and produce text,diagrams, comics, video, sketches, sketch models, screenshots, virtual models, andprototypes material of different degrees of abstraction, different scale and materiality.Important is the possibility to connect and augment these materials, to access them

easily, and to maintain some of them present in the work environment.


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Learning is stimulated by the presence ofinspirational resources images, music,metaphors, atmospheres, film, samples of materials, everyday objects, which provide anelement of surprise and discovery and help see things differently (the chance finding ofunexpected material in a place, a strange combination of association objects, etc.).Often it is the transient and ephemeral character of these resources that triggersstudents imagination.

Learning requires the possibility to transform and re-program - to explore solutions andcontexts, to shift perspectives, to carry out experiments, to present and perform, tohave time and space for free play and day-dreaming.

Learning is highly interactive. Students constantly switch between individual andcollaborative work. They share knowledge and design material, use collective displays,

take turns in working on a specific task to then arrange a spontaneous meeting. Whileswitching mode and tasks, they circulate the space, expanding and concentrating itaccording to their needs.

People, co-present and distant, are a crucial part of an inspirational learningenvironment, as representatives of diverse cultural contexts and skills, of (controversial)viewpoints and emotions. Students receive regular feedback from peers, theirteachers, and external reviewers, spontaneously, or as part of more formalarrangements. They listen to guest lectures and they meet people when they arecruising the outside world, exploring the city, a particular context or site. There is theneed to bring the impressions and the material they collected back to the studio, tomake it visible and share it with others.

Story-telling both, as part of learners discursive practice and as supporting projectmemory and history, reinforces the learning process and the availability of insights acrosstime and space.

These practices, which have been described in more detail in WP1 Pro-SearchingPractice, will be picked up as themes for describing the qualities of an inspirationallearning space and future scenarios

The nature of inspirationsDesigners need to mobilize a wide range of resources for their work from metaphorsand images to materials, technologies, and people. Inspirational and experientialresources play an important role in this process. Architects, for example are workingwith inspirations from many different aesthetic and scientific discourses from the fine

arts and the theatre to biology and mathematics. While some architects use pictorialmaterial for generating and expressing their ideas, others prefer poetry andmetaphorical text, again others build their designs on (historical) research, theassembling of facts or datascapes.

Inspiration is to do with particular qualities of objects, people, ambience, a place.Inspirational resources are ubiquitous.

My approach is, when you have formulated a question in your head, youjust have to go on the street and quite often the answer passes you onthe next T-shirt, you just have to read attentively, it is written on a T-shirt, there you have all the answers you need, a kind of urban I Jing oneplays And from this perspective I think inspiration can come from

anywhere (Gregor Eichinger).


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Inspiration always emerges within a context. Objects or a place, for example, are notinspirational as such but may be so in connection with a project, idea, particular task:

What provides inspiration is not the object as such, the source, but whatI can do with it, how I can manipulate it. If you work with a painting byErnst Caramelle, it has nothing to do with urbanism, only if you start doingthings ... Any object for example a simple cup may becomeinspirational, but only if you load it up with associations, additionalmeaning, put information into it. (Rdiger Lainer)

There may be more direct links or more process-oriented links between an object,people or an ambience and the designers associations. They become a reference forthe thinking, the concept they trigger or help take shape.

Inspiration may arise in combination with movement (the train ride) or from somethingremembered and imagined. They arise from the transient and ephemeral way in whichassociation objects, people, an ambience are encountered, their peripheral presence inthe back of one's mind, and with activities that are connected to movement (Bscheret al 1999):

I feel inspired by what is transient, ephemeral, I dont need objects tohold onto. Sometimes there are things at which I can look for years butthese are not so charged for me. What interests me are things that aretransient, non recoverable which are present for a short moment, thememory of them.(Gregor Eichinger)

The role of inspirational objectsFor some designers specific inspirational objects pieces of art, images, music, video,etc. are an important resource. These objects are not to be taken literally, they areob jets trouvs that inspire your thinking, help express and communicate ideas, andcapture particular qualities of a design. While some inspirational objects remain quitepersonal and transient, others may become shared by a designer community and almostparadigmatical. Peter Greenaways collection of 100 objects that represent the worlddraws upon peoples collective knowledge of objects. This small collection of objectswas assembled by asking architects as well as architectural students for pieces of artthat are of specific relevance for them.

Rdiger Lainer


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Ernst Caramelle this imprint from the sun, it is a slow imprint, if youchange something on one layer, the whole plane is changed.

Hockney this is a quite direct association image, it shows how you canplace different webs on the same level, a perfect 2D view of a 3Dlandscape hochgeklappt.

Ryman the white paintings, some small changes create the impressionof big holes, there is a superimposition of reduction and intensity, how totransfer these reduced elements with their integrated tension into space,by layering, by displaying light and shadow onto a simple space, how to

intensify it - the whites start to vibrate - twelve different whites for anoffice building.

Max Bill this Mbiusschleife in stone, 20m high, is one of a series oftwenty, it shows a high tension between mobility and stability, how toaccelerate tension in architecture.

Lois Weinberger open the asphalt and let things grow - like the idea offilling plastic/paper bags with concrete, build a wall and let the paperwhither away, leaving imprints on the concrete.


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Dieter Spath

Gelatin: Nella Nutella

No architectural theory nor building of Venice has succeeded in finding anew starting point for rethinking Venice until Gelatin came to Venice. Bydoing what is simple and close falling, going, jumping, being pushed intothe canals inspires that much in the search for new uses of the city to beable to invent new joyful starting points for programming and realisingarchitecture.

Manuel Singer

Piet Mondrian, Broadway(1941-42)

Most important is the motivation I get when I am looking at it. Maybe it isbecause of its mysterious, gripping, sensual, clever, ironic, and beautifulmanner. But anyway, it works


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Annika Nystrom

Donald Judd, 15 variations on a box

To me it tells something interesting and inspiring about playing with thesimplicity of a form to generate harmony or disorder, beauty or ugliness

Florian Beigel

Giorgio Morandi, Natura Morta

Inspired by the concentration of working on one topic for the whole l ifealways in one space, painting in between and trying to transfer it to theown architecture of building and programming the in-between.


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Paul Klee, Highways and Byways

Representation of a city that is half real and half drawn, like a calligraphyof the city.

Richard Serra, Torqued Ellipses

Inspiring is the silence in the work of Richard Serra.


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Examples from art and architectureInspiration for the design of the learning environment can be found in many examplesfrom art and architecture. From this rich tradition we have selected projects thatexemplify some of the qualities we seek to support, in particular the transient andephemeral, materiality, re-programming, connecting and mixing realities, tempo andrhythm, as well as narrativity.

Diller and Scofidio - conceptual architecture: architecture preoccupied with

technology

Diller and Scofidios work is preoccupied with technology and the effect technology hason our behaviour in everyday situations, and environments. In their architecturetechnology is often used to create spatial settings in a non logical order or situation. Aview from a different site might be integrated in a room via monitors and remote v ideocameras placed as windows in the rooms. A survey of the entrance of a building is inanother project displayed on the third floor, reconnecting the visitor to the first spatialinput by real time surveillance.

In the Slow House technology is used in a very explicit way with the architecturaldesign. Again the monitors are important elements in the space and the idea of avacation house as an escape from an everyday setting and environment. The designdeforms the model of classical perspective and leads the visitor through a door, along acurved wall that leaves no visual information as one walks through the building. One

monitor opens a window to the fictional world of TV, placed on the curved wall.Another monitor is placed in the middle of the w indow towards the ocean view, theend of the curved wall. This monitor is showing the exact view through the windowbut can be manipulated in time. Saved and replayed, fast forwarded or frozen.

The spatial layout and the technology work together in creating a house that is comingdown to being a window leading to a door ( flesh, diller and scofidio ). A passagefrom artifice ( the city-culture operating at its most apparent) to nature ( the view-culture operating at its utmost subtlety). (Diller and Scofidio 1994, 2001).

Diller and Scofidio for Eyebeam: the creation of a space for new media arts

Another quite provocative investigation of space is currently being carried out by the

team. They are in the middle of a design process for a centre for digital culture in NY.The first year of the project will be a research year, but there is a material alreadypresented that shows an attitude to the process of creating architecture that it is


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inspiring an worth trying to follow as it is being developed(http//:www.diacenter.org/dillerscofidio, Leeser 2002).

The criteria for the space is a fundamentally updatable, technologically and profoundlyrearrangable ( physically ) building set up. A space that are to be modelled on opensource code capable of being rewritten , upgraded, reprogrammed, reconfigured toaccomplish previously unanticipated tasks.

The building is proposed to be designed with a double-skinned ribbon structure,looping back at itself. At one side of this ribbon an art studio is placed, and on theother the exhibition space. Between the two all the equipment is placed, easilyaccessed and upgraded when the need and use of the space changes.

There are also ideas of an electronic tag system for the building. Every visitor will, asthey enter, log in. By filling out a questionnaire they will then get a profile for their tag.The tag works with a smart network that tracks the visitors and gives them access tocertain parts and facilities, denying them access to others. The tag system will alsowork with the bookshop and the caf for tabs, as well as the information system.

The building is also to be interactive, not only in the exhibition and informative parts,but also architecturally. As a visitor, in the building or on line, one can manoeuvre partsof the faade. So-called smart walls are to be created with liquid crystals betweenconductive film and glass panes so that the electric current regulates the level oftransparency, and daylight conditions within the building.

This work in progress holds a large number of aspects concerning architecture,technique as well as interaction and performance - inspiring and speculative.

PRADANY, Koolhaas/KRAM design and others: architecture preoccupied with

technology and interaction

This is a project where architects in collaboration with interaction designers have beendealing with issues such as inspiration material, visualization of the design process andthe material that informs it, as well as interaction design that trigger investigation ofcultural activities. The main idea was to rethink the concept of shopping. In order toaccentuate the concept, interaction design and architecture was used in an innovativeas well as provocative way (Koolhaas 2002, Gullbring 2002).

The store is located in the former Guggenheim Soho space in New York, in otherwords a art gallery space by tradition, in two stories that runs a hole block from


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Broadway to Mercer street, along Prince street in Soho. The store consists of a seriesof events and spaces within the larger room. A variety of aesthetics, materials, andspatial elements. Some of the space has more of an traditional shopping set up withthe collection pieces on display. Other spaces within the shop are not productive inthat sense. These spaces are rather about contemplation, privacy, mobility luxury. Asif luxury was not to shop, but to experience spaces that trigger creation, surprise andmystery.

The room one enters from Broadway has a large stair placed in the centre of thespace. This stair leads down to the more private regions of the store. The stair is

designed as an element for displaying bags, shoes and other products, but also worksas a relaxing area where one is invited to have a seat. In the other end the stair raisesas a wave through the space. A ramp in which a stage is built in. This element is one ofthe examples in this space that triggers cultural activities to take place in the room.The message is quite clear to the visitor. This space is also concerned with otheractivities than the commercial. In the ceiling is a series of metal boxes places. In theseboxes other products are displayed. The boxes run on a wire system and can instantlybe rearranged and together with the stage reconfigure the function and layout of thespace. There is no static installation for the staff, they all have handheld devices thatread the tags of the products for prices and facts. All over the space a large number ofscreens are placed. Some of them are hanging on the clothes racks, others are placedflat on the custom made furniture in the store. These screens have a multi functionalpurpose. Video clips, drawing material and other images are running on them when

they are not activated. But the staff can then take their customer and walk up one,activate them to call for information from the database, video from a show, fabricsamples etc.


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As a customer you are invited to take part in the design process in various ways. Theinspirational material is on display in different audiovisual installations, integrated into theroom. There are also rooms without any products, designed as small Prada galleryspaces. These are smaller rooms within the large store with a series of monitors builtinto the wall.

Another interactive piece invites you to explore the Prada Atlas - a piece where thePrada stores of the world are marked, where you can zoom in on any chosen one, getthe information about location as well as the collection. One can also see the Pradalocation according to the financial spread of the world, the location of the false Pradamarkets, Prada's location in relation to population, religion etc.

This is another piece where the customer, the user, is invited to a large range ofinformation, work in progress and inspirational material. A kind of democratic gesture ifone wants.

In the lower level of the store there is a dressing room - a space and form of usewhere technology and the interaction play a central role. The room is built up as a glassbox within the larger space - a transparent and open glass box which you as acustomer can activate and turn into a non transparent closed space by pressing aswitch by the sliding door. In the dressing room are two niches built into the wall.When an item from the shop is placed here the piece will be identified and on a displayone will see the information about it. A customer can choose here to see clips from afashion show, material samples, matching items from the other collections and so on.

In the room a camera has been set up and a large mirror. When trying on a piece onecan by this set up see a delayed moving image of oneself in the mirror.


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The idea here is that the technique is there, integrated with elegance, to give thecustomer access to as much information as possible and make the communicationbetween customer and staff as flexible as possible. In this case the dressing room givesyou a private space where you can get access to all the information wanted, as well aschoosing to what extent you want it to be private or public by reconfiguring the actualwalls.

Workspheres, Moma NY:personalizing a work environment

Workspheres was an exhibition at Moma in New York, dealing with issues concerningour future work environment (Antonelli 2001). Speculative pieces were presented by aseries of artist commenting our work situation, our needs and wishes as well as ourfears.

Issues that seemed to be exposed to a lot of speculation where those ofprivacy/publicity, as well as the personalised work space contra the anonymouslandscape of mobility. The exhibition also dealt with the idea of capturing our mostcreative moments, recording our cognitive processes of creativity and attention at anygiven period of time. Ideas of attaching these kind of mind fragments to a piece offurniture, to store information in the objects that surround us were shown in variousways at this exhibition. Some of these projects are attempting to rethink the computerinterface itself, as a shared work environment.

The nomadic worker was a target that many of the pieces had focused on. How doesthe nomadic worker move all his/her culture and knowledge between the placeshe/she visits? How does he/she set up the camp for a longer or shorter period of time?How does he/she find a place for contemplation, a shelt er from the stressfulsurroundings? And how does he/she mark the place that belongs to him/her, even if itis only for a very short period of time?

1. Naoto Fukasawa, IDEO, Tokyo, Personal skies: Fukazawas project has twoelements, a chair that adapts chameleon-like to the clothing of the user, and a meansof personalizing the work environment by projecting a personal ceiling above the desk(it could be an image of the sky in a choice of season or weather conditions, or of thehome), sending a customized message to the rest of the office like a screen saver.


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2. Hella Jongerious Bed in Business: In the Jongeriouss specially commissionedworking bed (part of My Soft office collection )technology is introduced into thebedroom. A keyboard and mouse are embedded in a smart pillow utilizing touchsensor technology to deal with the phenomena of the flash of creative intuition thatcomes in our waking dreams.

3. Jennie Pineus Head Cocoon: Cocoons are intended to provide a simple andaccessible solution to shelter us from the stressful, intense work environment of theworkplace. The Head cocoon can be taken anywhere. It folds up and comes with itsown bag.

4. Jeff Reuschel, Ronna Alexander (Haworth) MindSpace: Our cognitive processes ofmemory and attention are applied to a snail-like model of a workspace by providing an


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environment that stores information-rich artefacts. In much the same way that a post-it note has a form that has come to signify an urgent demand for attention foranything writ ten on it, so MindSpace makes use of a web of associations and sensorycues( visual, auditory and tactile) that serves as signals to help the user recall andretrieve information.

5. John Maeda Joe Paradiso MIT media Lab Atmosphere : The project deals with theproblem of managing the enormous amounts of information we receive daily. A largecloud of information can be physically manipulated by three handheld devices on a widescreen.

6. Giuseppe Lignano Ada Tolla, Lot/Ek Architecture Inspirio-Tainers: An industrialcontainer used for air freight cargo is transformed into a self -contained environment for

work and relaxation.Mvrdv: the personalized work space within an open architecture

The dutch architecture firm mvrdv, has designed the headquarters for VRO, a privatebroadcasting company in the Netherlands that is an example of a very interestingworkspace (http//:www.mvrdv.archinet.nl/). Mvrdv has during the last couple of yearsreceived a large attention and are known as a firm that makes use of, and lays claimto, diversity. They proceed as a team, but are constantly inviting different andsometimes unexpected disciplines to collaborations with them, mixing disciplinarycategories. A way of working that to a large extent informs their designs, and mostoften they are able to keep a large number of early conceptual ideas although thedesign to the very last outcome.


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The broadcasting company VRO used to be spread around ten villas in Hilversumoutside Amsterdam. The building that is now their headquarters is a huge constructionwith a layout of an interior that folds the surrounding urban space into the actualbuilding. The interior is created as a series of ramps and waves of polished concrete.These shapes are the continuation of the surrounding landscape, the grass hills in thelandscape outside. A landscape that is highly present all through the building both, bythe concrete shapes of hills and by the large glass elements that shield the inside fromthe outside.

Between the levels that are created in this interior landscape a large number of glasselements fills up the openings in between the floating concrete, creating dynamic andinteresting sightlines within the space. Small staircases connect smaller spaces, orplatforms, within the large interior landscape. In the in between space of the floating

floors are restrooms, storage etc. located. Some straps of terraces, outdoor meetingrooms and relaxation areas are integrated in the work environment - spaces thatoverlap the gasp between indoor and outdoor. In one case a space is even designedso that one has to walk through an outdoor passage to get to the major meetingroom in the building.

As one walks around the building, up and down the t ilted floors, one has an experienceof exploration and surprise.

The actual workplaces that inhabit the building appear like personal camps in thislandscape. There is a large variety of elements, screen set ups, desks, snakelikeformations of tables and chairs, permanent or temporary display set ups, and no overallasthetics what so ever. No space, small or large, has a similar set up as another. There

is a unique strap of landscape for every work place. A unique sightline, a unique curveof the walls, a unique level in the building. The people that work here seems to haveconsidered their work environment close to something like a landscape to camp in. Alandscape with high adaptability as well as an openness to free choice of bothfunctional and aesthetic values. Walking around in this work environment one is met bya crystal chandelier hanging from the concrete beams, an oriental carpet lying on thesloping floor, a small white party tent over a meeting table, objects and furniture thatidentifies the different camps. Individual work places personalized with a free andflexible attitude. Free and flexible in relation to the architectural characteristics and tothe function of the different camps set up within the large space.

The space has a high density and each work place is quite small counted in squaremeters. But this density is certainly experienced as a creative density. Thedifferentiated levels, shapes of walls, floor and roof, together with the variations insightlines adds to an impression of a series of unique and personal workplaces that eachhas its strong and well defined place and character.


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A cafeteria is placed in an oversized stair, leading up to the roof. By large glass slidingdoors can one reach the roof landscape. A series of smaller slopes covered with grassleads up to the top where a table and bench are placed. An isolated workplace withinternet connection and power elegantly placed on the side of the table. If onechooses to work here for a day one might run into the goat from the farm next door,that on a regular basis comes here to trim the grass.

donald judd + archo 02: experimental installations

Thisis a couple of art installations using architectural elements for exploration of spatialqualities and of conception of a defined space in different larger settings. This is also an

example that shows an experimentation with materials and light conditions as well asthe aspect of scale (ARCHO 02).

These types of spatial experiments or installations can serve a good purpose as spatialexperiments in our work. Experiments where one can create speculative pieces thatdeal with a certain function or quality. It can be useful for experimenting withcomponents from the catalogue to set them into a spatial setting, evaluate thedemand they set on the room as well as understand the value they might add. Theymight work as up scaled parts of a larger model of an environment, or as a series ofplug ins that together create a larger environment. An environment that has thequality of being updatable, technologically and profoundly rearrangable by differentcombinations of plug-ins. This might then be a way of understanding what it means tocreate a space that are to be designed so that it can be rewritten and reconfigured.


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el lissitsky, maholy nagy, ica boston and others: keeping the poetics of the sketch

model

Artist imagine architecture is the name of an exhibit ion at the ICA in Boston. An

exhibition where artists are dealing with the idea of bringing a new perspective to

questions of scale, structure and social interaction through architectural model making.In this exhibition issues are raised concerning the use of a model as a methaphor forthe unattainable or desired, but also about the materials of the model as somethingattractive for their everyday associations and unpretentious characteristics.


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1-4 : Dorothy Riley, 1941 The spatial explanation of a building, 5 : L. Moholy-Nagy, 1940

Space modulator ( construction in plexiglass on a mirroring plane )

There are a number of artists during our century that have used thearchitectural/sculptural model for explorations of different media and materials, forcommunicating ideas and concepts more or less abstract. Investigations andexplorations that have been made by artists and architects as they deal with differentmedia and tools put to their disposal. This kind of explorations are of a large interestconcerning the mixed media issue. The issue of how and where the virtual realitymeets the physical and what qualities the different types of models have, how theyinform our design process. They help us understand variations in semantic perspectives.For instance a model can be looked upon from a conceptual, constructional oratmospheric perspective. A project can be analayzed in its various temporal stages.

One example that we have discussed might be to build a model where one can tagdifferent elements and connect a certain layer of information to it ( in any media wechoose .). A way of exploring the possibility to work with a model that holds acomplexity of material, where one can set the level of information used at a certaintime. The model could also in this way hold the history of our design process to giveus the possibility to reinform the work in progress. In this work I find the historicalexperiments of Maholy Nagy (1961) and El Lissitsky most valuable, as well as the morerecent work of the artists of the ICA exhibition (ICA Boston, Artists imaginingarchitecture, 2002).


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Electronic Lounge, Festival Zentrum & Netzkunst Ausstellung, Architects: beige

This temporary architectural installation an augmented lounge and Internet caf -was created in a listed building from the 1950s as part of the film+arc.graz festival onmedia and architecture in Graz, Austria. The architects borrowed a metaphor from aUnix protocol for their design of a media skin. The Kernel wraps up all other protocolsand at the same time none of them. Similarly, the media skin docks onto the buildingsexisting faade, turning itself inside out, ending in the interior lounge as a cableplugged into the Internet terminals. The Kernel simultaneously acts as spatial shelter,projection skin, seating, and terminal. A simultaneity of real and net world is created.So are peoples movements in real space presented in the net space. Their Internetsurfing is projected onto the media skin. This is a good example of how to materializethe net on the one hand, of the transient and ephemeral character of impressions onthe other hand (Rumpfhuber/Sdoutz 1997, Schrer 2002).

Haus Sobek, 2002, Architect: Werner Sobek

Werner Sobek designed his own private high-tech prototype house. Its glassarchitecture is equipped with sensors. The customary haptic interfaces of builtarchitecture, such as door handles, fitting and locks are eliminated. Clapping oneshands, waving in a pre-defined pattern etc. makes the refrigerator door open, thetoilet flush or the light slowly dim. Familiar gestures have to be unlearned, new oneslearned. The whole house turns into a sensorial interface. This example helps thinkabout how to use body movement pantomime and other movement arts forgetting access to material and for influencing the environment (ARCH+ Mai/Juni 2002).


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backspace.org, Media Lab and Riverside Lounge 1994

The backspace was opened in 1994 in an empty basement space near Tower Bridgein London by Net artist Heat Bunting, the net Agency obsolte.org, and the label NinjyTune Records, all based in the same building block (http://backspace.org/ , Rae-Huffman 1997, p. 14).

The space is open to an interested public that is invited to make contact and subscribefor a small amount of money. Subscribers work on Internet project sand get feedback.After one year of running the place a huge and interesting amount of net-art projectswas produced. The space is open twenty-four hours a day, it is a chat room turned

physical, with people logging in and out and working on a diversity of projects.

One interesting feature is captured by the backspace metaphor. It alludes to a spacewhich is non intentional and has to be appropriated. A similar metaphor and real spaceat the same time is the garage - a place which, due to its informality and workshopcharacter, makes everything possible, from inventing computers (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs)to making music (the group Garage using a garage for their rehearsals).

Moderate:witness, Video series and spatial installation

A space is equipped with four monitors. On each one and the same person narrates astory in 15 sec clips. The image of the person changes between being clear and sharpand rather fuzzy. The visitor may read the story in a linear way or in differentcombinations, depending on his/her movement through the space.

This is an example of media being translated into space, with the structure of the filmbecoming materialized. Space is experienced through rhythm, with the rhythm cuttingthe space. This helps think about how to use video and film within space (AndreasRumpfhuber@AKI Montevideo/Amsterdam 2000, Schrer 2002, p.45).

Relational architecture, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Lozano-Hemmer has been working since 1994 on a series of interactive light installations

in cities. His most famous installation was done in Mexico City.


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His work is part of what is called relational architecture. At its core is the design ofbuildings and public spaces by using alien d istributed, networked memory.Relational architecture transforms the master narrative of a specific building or place byoverlayering audiovisual elements that re-contextualize it, suggesting different readings,turning buildings into repositories for distant memories: Relational buildings haveaudience-activated hyperlinks to predetermined spatio-temporal settings that mayinclude other buildings, other political or aesthetic contexts, other histories, or otherphysics. In this sense, virtual architecture dematerializes the body, while relationalarchitecture dematerializes the environment (Lozano-Hemmer 1997).

Light installations such as these are to do with narrativity and memory, with attachingadditional meaning to built architecture (http://www2.alzado.net/evinformacion.html,http://prixars.aec.at/history/, ht tp://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rafael/fear/.

Walks, Janet Cardiff

Janet Cardiff equips visitors of a building or part of the city with a CD walkman or smallvideo recorder. While following the artists directions, they become involved in thestories they watch and listen to at the same time. Voices, footsteps, music, the soundof a car or gunshots make up a fictional soundtrack overlayering the actual indoor oroutdoor space.


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Cardiffs work builds on the conventions of cinema and science fiction. It explores thecomplexity of subjectivity in a world where the distinction between sensation andimagination tends to collapse. Janet Cardiffs work is an example of connecting andmixing realities, of cruising, and of re-programming a space (Manovich 2002, Biagioli 2000, p.36, http://www.abbeymedia.com/Janweb/muenster.html).

Kramlich Residence, Architects: Herzog /de Meuron

This is the residence of a video collector (Riley 1999). Herzog/de Meuron attuned thearchitecture to the needs of projecting video. Their reference was Mies Van-der-Rohesidea of the pavilion with a fluent ground floor. The two sinus curves of the living room

create an undulating, fluent space, its relationship to the outside world remaining fuzzy.

The videos are hanging on the wall as images with fuzzy borders, filling the space withchanging atmospheres.


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Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, Architect: Jean Nouvel

Jean Nouvel constructed one of the first media facades. He used the photo technologyof the lens for regulating the daylight in the building. When the sun is shining, thelenses gradually close, filling the interior space with a sharpened light (Boissire 1992).

This may be seen as an early example of an augmented space, mixing technology andarchitecture.

Palais de Tokyo, Paris, Architects: Anne Lacton and Jean Philippe Vassal

Remarkable in this project is the architects reaction to the limited budget for adaptinga huge museum space. As there was not enough money for darkening the large spacefor video projections, they argued in favour of changing the museums opening hours.The possibility of showing video performances was perceived as more important thanperfectionizing the architecture of the building.

Paris has now a museum that is open during the night, at a time when people visit barsand clubs. This is also an example of re-programming an urban space.


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Pablo Nerudas houses

Pablo Neruda designed his own houses. Sometimes this meant that the buildingregulations were not observed. His designs reflect his poetry as well as his biography.One story says that still lacking a desk for his study, Neruda mentioned that the seawould provide him with one. In fact, he later used a piece of wood that was washedashore for constructing his desk. His houses are narratives turned into material (IslaNegra 1982 from the book, "Neruda Retratar la Ausencia, Editorial Dolmen,Photographer Luis Poirot).

Eurocity, Architect: Rdiger Lainer

In the Eurocityproject light and images are used as materials, which accentuate andaugment the qualities of glass or concrete surfaces, rather than dissimulating theirpresence. A central idea is the notion of the buildings faade or skin as translucentand as creating a textile impression, filtering the light in a highly differentiated way:


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During the day the building transforms its appearance, shimmeringhermetically in the morning and partially reflecting its surroundings. Thechanging light produces an almost imperceptible metamorphosis. Thearrangement supports the configuring of cinematic images - lightinterventions of different kinds. Projections (e.g. of movie titles) can beused, or light images which change the buildings skin. When it gets dark,the lighting of the buildings inner space creates a festive character, thefaade turns into a veil delicately hiding people and movements. Thebuilding's faade acts as a 'transformation layer', facilitating changingrelationships between inside and outside. The building can communicateits contents. Depending on the daylight, these connections are one-wayor reciprocal. Their specific quality derives from their degree of

transparency, opaqueness and compactness of the faades material.(Zschokke 1999)

YOUgend, Exhibition Project, Rdiger Lainer

Lighting technologies are used in the exhibition projectYOUgend . The idea here wasto explore the relationship between space generating architecture and narrativetechnology. The exhibition was planned as an implantation in an existing re-vitalizedbuilding. It consists of a landscape of enclosed atmospherical spaces, followed byspaces for more in-depth explorations of themes, open ramps and bridges. This silentarchitecture forms a stage for narratives. Sound, light, video and colour projectionscreate varying atmospheres and they produce events. The layering and connecting of


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these different media allow differentiated ways of experiencing, walking through,listening to, and viewing the space (Lainer/Wagner 2000).

Inspirational learning spaces qualities and practices

The fieldwork participant observations of students work at the Academy and at theMalm School, interviews with architects and students together with the examplesfrom art/architecture provide rich resources for thinking about the inspirational learningspace. As a first step we describe this space in terms of particular atmospheric, materialand spatial qualities that should be created and supported:

The transient and ephemeral character of inspirations

Materiality and the diversity of materials and representations

Mixing realities and forging connections

Creative density

Adaptability to a diversity of uses and identities

Experience of dimensionality and scaling

Re-programming and the different view

Narrativity

Tempo/rhythm

The transient and ephemeralInspirations often arise from the transient and ephemeral way in which objects, people,an ambience are encountered, their peripheral presence in the back of one's mind, as itis strongly expressed by one of the architects. Short-time events, fast, assembled, ad-hoc, such as film, video and fashion photography, are important resources:

fi lm tries to use images, sound and content for creating dense,shortened, intense moments this is not just film but where things are

assembled and produce an atmosphere (Fashion photography) is also ashort-time event. Some things need to coincide fashion, thephotographer, the styling, graphical aspects. extremely short -time, muchfaster than film (Gregor Eichinger).


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Some architectures play with ephemerality. Diller and Scofidios Slow House is the lastpiece of the car slowing down on its way from the city. The wave in Herzog deMeurons Kramlich Residence is an ephemeral element, furnished with transient videoimages.

Materiality and the diversity of materialsWe saw how both, the interaction design and architecture students, work withrepresentations in different media. The materiality of some of these representationsplays a crucial role in envisioning particular aspects of a design. For example, architectswork with a great diversity of models of different degrees of abstractness. Thesemodels help experiment with and develop aspects of a building such as colour or

interaction with daylight. The qualities of the materials chosen for a model play animportant role in these experimentations.

You pass a staircase on your way to a meeting in an apartment and thestaircase resonates in you at least for half an hour before it leaves you.You have arrived in the apartment but all this stays with you, material,acoustics, smells .

One of my dreams is to have a kind of laboratory to say, here we havea wall from freshly cut wood, lets say for two months, so that we getused to the smell, and then comes maybe concrete entrenched withwine and in the right dimensions, so that the whole body mayexperience it. (Gregor Eichinger)

In the studio or classroom material often is present in the form of random collections(left-overs from previous projects, samples etc.). Finding specific material for a modelmay influence the choice of material for the building such as in this example:


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T: (stands up and starts looking into a paper bag filled with materials) Forwood we can use cardboard and for glass something transparent, and for thefabrics we should take something semi-transparent

V: Yes I also thought that .. no actually it does work The properties arethat it is not solid it does not stand. But I think that the fabric does not haveto be opaque

T: But there are also transparent fabrics

V: It depends on what we want to di fferentiate already in this model torepresent what it is about

Crucial is the possibility to explore the physical properties of material to smell, feel,and manipulate it. In another episode V is undulating a transparent plastic sheet. Atfirst she is doing this to try the consistency but soon the material starts making sounds

and she continues to explore the sound further playing it as an instrument.

The PRA DA shop by Koolhaas/KRAM design and others uses technology as buildingmaterial. The projection screen turns into a door, the door into a screen. Screens arehanging on the clothes racks, as if the images they produce had the same textuality ascloth.

Mixing realities and forging connectionsStudents go back and forth between media and representations, circulatingreferences (Latour) throughout the design process. As each of these representationsexhibits and clarifies particular aspects of the design, it is important to forge andmaintain connections.

In writing about their creative work, a number of artists and architects have used thenotion of mapping:

express ; there is only the moment and your expression of it, using themeans available at the time, no matter what form or language it mighttake. If the analogy of the journey is taken, then our work is the map ofour experience and it is recorded by the use of equivalents. Even inconceptual art, in which the performance / thought is the work, it isstill an equivalent, because it is premeditated. No matter how automaticthe procedures leading to its creation , a piece of work is about, and ofprocess. In fact these automatic procedures are a de facto recognition ofprocess. And in that sense all work is time based and sculptural sincenothing exists in a vacuum and something is made. (TOMATO, a media

design group in London).


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the map is open and connectable in all its dimensions; it is detachable,reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be drawn on a wall,conceived as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as ameditation. (Deleuze and Guattari)

Drawing maps of ones own work, territories and expressions is a way of connecting.Laying on top of someone elses map, to see what happens, to see your own patternsdifferently. And then to continue that way of working in the next task. Turning thatmaterial inside out, changing perspective, changing tools and media.

Students also go back and forth between realities as in this example from the MalmSchool where probes material depicts places where students go to be alone think ordaydream, with their ideas travelling back to the studio. In interaction design exploring

context and bringing the perspectives of different actors into the studio is important.

The architecture students explore the city or a specific site for a project, bring videoand audio material as well as pictures and sketches from such excursions.

Connecting may happen by installing a temporary worksite in a specific place such asone architect who

... does already the planning on the site itself which creates an entirelydifferent situation for the designing that you are always there and alsothat you need to temporarily install an office with all the problems involved- this is a quite particular way of producing architecture, if for example youhave to re-interpret a canteen turning it into a workspace ... .(con:)


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It may be inspiring and stimulating to bring the space outside into ones work space the site of a project, street life in front of the door, a significant place in the city, as isthe case in the architectural office with a large window connecting the space to thestreet outside.

We wanted this contact with the street outside .. . we have theseVenetian blinds, they enable you to switch yourself off but you may alsoleave them open ... this has a positive effect, this possibility of being intouch, this has something refreshing for me, when the traffic passes by,maybe because we rarely go outside, working so much ... it is like ascreen ... with our heads a little above people passing and you overhearparts of their conversations ...(Anna Popelka).


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Connections may be of very different qualities and they may be mediated throughdifferent media. Architectural examples are the translucent skin of the faade ofRdiger Lainers Eurocitybuilding or the relational architecture of Lozano-Hemmer withvideo projections adding narratives to a faade or a public space. Janet Cardiff usesvideo and audio recordings for connecting a space with faces, places, and stories. Inthe PRADA shop the Atlas allows customers to get information about locations andthe collection, taking them e.g. via video to the place where a man sells fake Pradaproducts on the street.

Creative density

Fieldwork observations show how engaging in an immersive mass of material may

support intensity in design situations.

While some people want things to be messy and rough such as in writers FriederikeMayrckers office, others may want to have things in order and cleared up.

Friederike Mayrckers working spaceKyoichi Tsuzuki. Office Space from Tokyo

Style (Antonelli 2001)

There are plenty of examples of odd/surprising/useless objects laying around that maysuddenly stimulate peoples creativity. For instance the pink foam boxes which

someone found in the garbage bin and placed in the Malm studio within a day theyfound interested users who started playing with them. Another example of thiscreative density are surprising or interesting combinations of objects such as books,CDs, objects of everyday life. These dense assemblies offer the chance to findsomething unexpected.

... how books are arranged (in a bookstore), how you may driftthrough und how you encounter other books while searching for one,this is the surprising element in these spaces ... things encountered bychance ...

... I had a tiny office underneath my apartment and it was never clearwhere which books should be ... this separating which is not possible

when you design ... these mixtures, when you suddenly find Der Mannohne Eigenschaften amidst books about architecture .... (con:)


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A limited space may provide stimulating perspectives, with things and spaces overlayering each other.

This provides a real potential that you may rapidly switch between theseworlds and arrive at mixing them ... Often when we sit here and watchTV and on the table these big scale models ... watching TV and from thecorner of ones eye looking at the model and then all of a sudden wantingto change something . This state of not looking-at-directly, this secondlevel, to look without focusing, was an interesting situation ... these arethe chance happenings that come for free and which bring distraction andstimulation ... (con:)


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Configurability - adaptability to a diversity of uses and identitiesAdaptability means the possibility to reconfigure a space so that you can personalize,exhibit, build models, collect, have a nap, make coffee, interact w ith material and oddobjects, etc. There are many architectural solutions for this. The PRADA shop in NYcontains many examples of adaptability, such as the stair which is designed as anelement for displaying products or the ramp into which a stage has been built. PabloNerudas houses are perfectly configured to his need to express stories and poems.Diller and Scofidio for Eyebeam have constructed a space which is a fundamentallyupdatable, technologically and profoundly rearrangeable set up. The backstage andthe garage stand for spaces in which everything is possible.

The need to quickly configure and adapt ones workspace is visible in our fieldwork.

It describes for example how students expend the work space for certain activities toconcentrate it once more when e.g. focusing on a particular task. In the first days ofthe Lego Mindstorm task this group used small tables put together for sharing legobricks, sketches and manuals. They then made their own track fields with obstacles for

testing the vehicles. As design grew more intense, the group tightened the space.

The intensi ty of work also makes it desirable to be able to use the space for multiplepurposes, solitary work as well as group discussions and presentation, sketching as wellas building models, having a nap, and eating lunch. At the Academy students oftenstay over night when they work long hours, and sofas and a bar for relaxing are high ontheir list of priorities.

Is the office a studio, is it an office in the Milleniums Tower, or is it morea workshop for producing bicycles or an artists studio, or ... and this iswhat I miss sometimes, an architectural structure which made almosteverything possible, from setting up a small company, to living spaces, tooffices ... The Milleniums Tower would not allow you to ... weld thingstogether, and this is something essential for producing architecture, thatyou dont sit all the time, that you stand like at a work-bench, in clothesthat may get dirty ... to be able as the architect-planner to work onmaterials, hard materials such as steel or wood, to place a machine ... thatthe space enables this This is an important quality, to hang up samplesof materials ... to use the space in a much tougher way, because it is aworkshop and not a writing space. ... I also think that ones attitude isdifferent, when you get up and manipulate things instead of being seatedin a constrained space ... this makes a difference from the perspective ofyour body, if ... the scale of a model is of a size that you may place a dollshouse in it, some effort is needed to move it ... where you startsimulating architecture in its materiality ...

... also to remain in one space, this is what many of them do, to stayover night ... a space that for a short time turns into this magic spacewhich you dont want to leave .... . (con:)


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Often it is just the possibility of a small change of place which makes a difference:

... and we often have these informal conversations on the balcony, sinceB and I smoke ... this small change of place, it is funny but our talking getsdifferent there ... this tiny balcony but you talk differently from when yousit at a table ... (con:)


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Students also express the desire to personalize their workspace or to express theiridentity as a group Personalizing ones work space may mean the opportunity tosurround yourself with the things that matter (e.g. the student who refers to hiscolour sheet which might look like a flag of a banana republic as reminding him to stayon his track) and to exhibit your work, to make it visible for others. Personalizing alsomay mean to leave simple marks, e.g. the chair taking on the pattern of your clothes,the ceiling showing some image of relevance for you or your work (Fukasawa, Personalskies), the MVRD building (Winy Maas) where the personal may take somewhateccentric features, such as hanging up a glass lustre from Murano.

Experience of dimensionality and scalingArchitecture students often find it difficult to imagine things when they are blown upto full size. Playing with dimensionality, scaling up and down may be useful exercises.Scaling may help discover new features of a material or a site, experience how a modelor texture looks like when it is blown up. Below are a 1:1 model of a building from clothas well as a large-sized model (from Spath, Dieter (2000), Guadalajara /Mexico, Projekt"Mosku", CHBL).

As part of planning an intervention in an urban area, the architecture students carriedtheir models to the site, looking into them with an endoscope. This scaling workshopgave them the opportunity to their models into the real space and to see them in realsize in the space.


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Re-programming and the different viewEssential to design practice is the ability to develop a concept -based understanding of adesign. This requires to mobilize, extend, and flexibilize the design idea (which may berepresented in a first sketch, model or textual description), in a process that helps re-program the facts and generate a different view. This different view rests on thedesigners ability to perceive the novel within the familiar, to discover relations betweenseemingly incongruent objects and notions to relate the unrelatable.

Re-programming is at the core of many art/architecture projects such as the high-techprototype house Sobek, the video installations by Lozano-Hemmer, the Palais de Tokyoproject, the photo lens windows of the Institut du Monde Arabe or Janet Cardiffswork. Each of it touches upon a different aspect of the familiar which is re -read and re-interpreted. Interaction designers re-program by blending the perspectives of differentactors or by disrupting social conventions of interacting.

A quality that enables or supports such a different view in a visual way is fuzziness views that blur, distort, veil and allow things to remain ill-defined, unfocused andindistinct. At the Academy experiments with projections on textures - blurring,distorting, creating layers were carried out. If you for example project your modelonto yellow cloth, it may look like concrete.

In a project it may be important to arrive at a different view of material. In thisexample, material - collection of branches and leaves - was re-programmed, casting itinto metal and using it for the faade of a building. The architect (Rdiger Lainer)envisioned a shimmering surface, introducing the metaphor of industrialization and there-interpretation of nature.


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NarrativityThe architecture students work has strong narrative elements, in particular in the firstconcept development phase of a project. They often use diagrammatic sketches forexpressing their stories of use or particular qualities of a space.

This card (left) tells the story of how convenient it may be to live on top of a streetmarket:

... you are in the midst of cooking and real ize that you forgot something... then you just rush downstairs to get it.


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This drawing (right) communicates the idea of visitors leaning and sitting in the faade

of a building - the faade as something that you can lean on (belehnbar), or that youcan sit on (besitzbar), this idea of the lounge.

Creating narratives is an important part of the formation of interaction designers inMalm. Here the students present their work using video cards. The collage depictssituations were technology is troublesome.

Artists and architects have found a great diversity of ways of introducing narrativity,some of them using technology, among them, again Lozano-Hemmer and Janet Cardiffor the installation moderate:witness.

Tempo - rhythmThis quality is to do with scaling over time stretching events or living in 15 second

worlds which are used in the installation moderate:witness to introduce rhythm intothe space.

Although not directly observed in the fieldwork, the temporal structuring of the designprocess is an important feature of the work. Different activities have differenttemporalities. While some are contemplative and slow paced, others are speedy. Timeis an explicit parameter in the Malm School and tasks are timed in hours, days orweeks. This gives students the opportunity to probe different rhythms and levels ofintensity.

There are phases of tension and relaxation in the process of work. A phase of non-intentional browsing and cruising may be as important as a phase of concentrated workunder time pressure.


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The architectural space

The spatial qualitiesAn architectural space is not static, it constantly changes with peoples activities. Thenotion of use-as event (Lainer/Wagner 1998) emphasizes the changing, evolving,temporary and sometimes performance-like character of activities in space. It isresonant with Bernard Tschumis idea of architecture not as an object (or work, instructuralist terms), but as an interaction of space and events. His ideas revolvearound choreographed, cinematic movement (in time, through space), and throughthis he arrives at an alternative way of looking at the materiality of architecture as in itssolids and voids, its spatial sequences, its articulations, its collisions (1981, in Nesbitt1996, p. 159).

At the same time, a space is not neutral, it is a space for something, being furnishedwith specific practices, artefacts, symbols, knowledges, and ideologies. It providesactors with a 'view from somewhere' (Haraway, 1991), a special vision. Dorothy Smith(1990) emphasises the possibility to locate and identify positionings as a precondition ofknowing. A particular script, she argues, can only be produced at a particular place.

This notion of space as shaping social practices on the one hand, being constantlychanged by the people who inhabit and use it use as event on the other hand,needs to be kept in mind when thinking about how to implement particular qualities inthe spatial design.

Among the qual ities which the architecture of the ATELIER space should embed, are:

Ephemerality the possibility to create transient impressions, e.g. by producing movingimages, blurring, distorting, creating layers.

Configurability the space as a workshop with the possibili ty to program it for varyinguses: for individual as well as cooperative work, for working with computers or buildinga model, for performing and relaxing.(Re)programmability the possibility to test out things, perceive them in a differentcontext, e.g.


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To paint the f loor with a light blue colour in order to be able toexperience that a light blue floor is something comfortable, not somethingcold or disturbing (Anna Popelka)


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Connectivity with medial and real windows onto the outside world.

The space that was selected for the ATELIER project w ithin the Academy offers somepossibilities for creating these conditions. It is located in one of the four towers of theAcademy building that was constructed by Theophil Hansen. It is far from perfect andcannot do everything. For example, it has no windows, with the light coming in fromopenings in the roof, and it has no natural ventilation. However, the lack of perfection,the spatial constraints are important, since they stimulate activities, the creativeappropriation of the space, its re-programming for changing events and needs.

Architectural examples of learning spacesThe architects thinking about the ATELIER space has been influenced by a diversity of

architectural projects. We want to mention a few.

The Site Office

Some architects and urban planners, such as Robert Mull, create their office at the site,turning the site into a planning space. The physical presence of the context - beingexposed to the genius loci influences the planning process. Also having to cope withthe problems of setting up a temporary office may become part of the process, whenthe architects needs to reprogram the site for the requirements of their own work(Photo con: Projekt: "Start Down" (2001), Linz).

Cruising - mobility

There is an increasing number of examples of mobile offices, where the nomad workertravels the world with the Internet in his/her backpack (Projekt =Multi Mind 2000).One of the earliest examples is Hans Holleins bubble office. The trolleys that havebeen shown as part of the Workspheres exhibition at the NY MOMA are high-techversions of it. Mobil trumen (dreaming while being mobile, NL architects) transfers anyplace, including the metro, into your own living room.


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Zeichensaal, TU Graz

The Zeichensaal (drawing space) at TU Graz is a well documented student project. Thebasic idea is to provide the architecture students with a multifunctional space whichcan be adapted to varying needs. Its main feature is its workshop character studentscan do anything, from sketching, drawing to building models. They, for example, usedthe regular floor pattern as a ruler for measuring. Another feature is the possibility topersonalize the space. Students brought an aquarium from their home, turning thespace into a stage. Installing a TV set and a kitchen space made the boundariesbetween work and living fluent.

Sound Lounge, NL-Architects, Biennale di Venezia 2000

This installation private city/public home by NL architects was set up in a large space.This hybrid of a public living room was meant to be a space for experiencing music, film,photography, and the Internet. By creating individually programmable sound spaces andfocusing them onto the seatings, the architects produced a diversity of small placeswithin the space (Biennale di Venezia 2000).


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Media Floor and Media Ceiling, Expo Hannover 2000

This project of Jean Nouvel and others at the Expo 2000 in Hannover under the themeof mobility points at the possibilities of mediatizing all basic parameters of the space,including floor and ceiling. In this longest cinema of the world projectors and mirrorscreate the effect of a 3D movie (Nouvel 2000).

The design of the PRADA shop or Herzog-de Meurons Kramlich Residence alsoexperiment with this possibility. Turning unusual places into a screen for projections notonly increases the space for doing things, it also helps create stimulating experiences.

Constant, Experiment Studio Rotterdam, 1966

The construction of the Experiment Studio (Constant 1974) was the nearest thatConstant came to testing his theories of direct sensory stimulation througharchitecture. "Constants plan for Experiment Studio Rotterdam motivated ideologically.The key intellectual manoeuvre was to think of architecture as a medium rather than asthe art of shelter. Architecture mediated between the individual body, the social body,artificial sensations, and nature" (Sadler 1998). The areas as shown on this floor planwere designated for 1 documentation room, 2 sound room, 3 bending-over room, 4metal space room, 8 crawling hallway, 9 smelling room, 10 module hallway, 11workshop. With this construction Constant created an experimental space for thehomo ludens, reflecting the situationists ideas of life as a play, or what Mc Luhans

book Understanding Media of 1964 projected as the future.


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The stage like structure which floats above the ground reminds of the 20s, whenMoholy-Nagy worked with projections of moving light for creating surprising effects onthe stage, like in his stage designs for Piscator (Gropius 1934). Digital media introduceadditional possibilities. They

allow architects to play with rapid changes of scenery, mobi lefurnishings and sequences of (coloured) light, in similar way

D4 Concept Design

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