Thoughts on Contemporary Culture and the Future of Architecture
“Art in general and, naturally, architecture, is a reflection of the spiritual condition of man at a particular time”. (Manifesto de la Arquitectura Emocional, Mathias Goeritz, 1953)
Following this idea and other examples throughout history (from the Vitruvian Man to Le-Corbusier’s Modulor, the Green Man, and the Cyborg etc.), contemporary culture, the characteristics of the contemporary subject and its relations to space and place, can tell us much about contemporary architecture. This short paper offers one perspective into the relations between man-culture-architecture nowadays, through the examination of parallel virtual realities, and suggests more questions than answers.
Taken nearly for granted, virtual layers of reality are integral parts (to various extents) in the lives of most of us. Whether it is just an e-mail address, smart-phones’ apps, a Facebook account, or even things we are not aware of – we all have a share in a Cloud. The first question to be asked is how these “two worlds” influence and shape each other and what types of boundaries exist between them. Concepts like identity, community, place, world, traffic, window, storage, travel etc., which originated in the conceptual framework of the physical world, were reinvented and profoundly extended in the virtual world; to such a high level that they gained new meaning that reflect back and reshape the “real” world.
The most explicit and extreme example to the study of transient boundaries between different realities is “Second Life” virtual world, which reveals a complex relationship between the virtual and the “real”. According to Julian Voloj[1], “a virtual world is a three-dimensional web simulation, a kind of virtual community in which people interact with each other through self-created virtual alter egos; so called ‘avatars’, who communicate with each other via ‘instant-messaging’”. According to Second Life’s Facebook page, this is a ‘world where you can be whoever you'd like and build and sell whatever you can imagine’. This platform has many sociological and cultural aspects, but the reason I find this example so interesting is the fact that SL offers an entire parallel world, way beyond other social networks, that echoes back to our physical reality and can tell us much about it and where it is heading.
Here are some facts. SL’s basic infrastructure is the grid. The entire grid reaches a total area of 72×109 km2, roughly 140 times the Earth's surface area, and supports more than 1012 regions (the basic component of the grid). As for April 2011, 2,059.86 km2 of this area was allocated to 31431 actual regions, creating almost the size of the country of Luxembourg. On this grid avatars can purchase or rent “land” to create and design different places with different themes and layers of content, and establish a shared community around them (often realized in common events, discussions, games and other activities; many times translated to “real” life). SL even has its own currency, Linden-Dollars (L$), allowing its ‘residents’ to exchange different goods among a broad range of services. But it is far from being an enclosed environment, and the Linden-Dollar is a prominent example for that, since it can be exchanged to “real” money such as US dollars or other currencies, on market-based currency exchanges.
Second Life World Map
With your self-created avatar you can travel this world by “foot”, by flying, through vehicles or instant teleportation to explore the different places it offers. Among some fantastic and imaginary places[2] we find a vast collection of replicas of “real” places and familiar typologies; programs such as schools, museums, retail, religious institutions, bars and cafés, working places, private homes, streets and roads, castles, gardens, music halls, and even branches of “real” embassies and political parties. SL is a hybrid world, both the ego and the alter ego of the real world – an exaggerated expression of it, a festival of human ideas, dreams and desires. Taking Second Life as one example out of many existing virtual worlds as such, and other expressions of real/virtual realities in forms of different social networks - they all share a common denominator, as they are all extensions of man: of us, our cultures, subcultures, and our world in general.
Glimps of Second Life places (SL destination guide: http://secondlife.com/destinations/)
But beyond what might seem as a gimmick, lays a serious question about the types of architectural mutations that emerge during the bidirectional crossings of the transient boundaries between different realities. A window for example, both as a concept and as an object (or a subtraction from an object), has many more meanings today than simply a hole in a wall. When the original meaning of the term ‘window’ will burnout, or will be referred mainly to its other (virtual) interpretations, it is likely that architectural mutations such as a house without windows will occur in the “real” world.
Another question arises while discussing places, landscapes and architecture in the same category as people, communities and culture, and it is whether architecture can also have ‘second life’. When I was about to create a Facebook account for the Empire State Building, as an experiment for this particular paper, I found out that it is already exist. It is true that it is not exactly the format I had in mind, but the fact that it has 551,862 likes, 21,813 talking about it and 1,113,417 Facebook holders mentioned they were there, is quite interesting. On this page people share photos of themselves and the building, practical questions regarding schedule, events and other ‘interesting’ facts. The building itself shares its own photos in different poses and different light settings, reveals its intimate interiors, moods and events. Not only that the building, as we say in architecture forums, “has a life of its own”, but it also has a second life of its own.
>> Spotlight Dress (unknown designer)
>> The Empire State Building show
Which of these ‘lives’ is more influential? It is not a new thing that buildings, usually famous ones, are being experienced mostly through their photographs, renders and drawings; as much as it is not new that architects in many cases invest more in the appearance of buildings and their facades than in the quality of the interiors; but following the shift of the cultural-gravity-force to the virtual world of the Cloud, this phenomenon is increasing dramatically, in a way that the gap between the image of architecture and the actual lived architecture is wider than ever before. From this perspective, it seems that there is a decrease in the quality of “real” architecture in an unbalanced ratio relatively to the image of architecture and architects throughout the media; but maybe “real” places and “real” architecture are no longer as important as they were. If we’ll go back for a moment to Second Life and to the not-yet-realized potential of the virtual extensions of man and the universe – what is, or better to ask what will be, the actual need for physical environment? Screens are already the hearth of our physical environments. But I would like to believe, as an architect of the “real” world, that as much as this perspective describes the end of (real) place, it can also be seen as a phase towards a mutual relationship between these parallel realities, meaning – between the “real” and the perception of it, its image and database. History shows that the objection from a traditional-conservative point of view, cannot really stop inevitable shifts in culture, and as the common phrase puts it “if you can’t beat them – join them”. How should architecture respond to these tendencies is maybe the most important question in the contemporary discourse, but understanding these tendencies and the way they are embedded in our visual perceptions and practices is an essential step along this quest.
<< Jonathan Marquis, Wilderspiel, 2013, explores the idea of inner and outer wilderness.
>> Raimund Abraham, House Without Rooms, 1974
[1] Julian Voloj, Virtual Jewish Topographies – The Genesis of Jewish (Second) Life, in: Jewish Topographies: Visions of Space, Traditions of Place, Ashgate Publishing Company, Hampshire, 2008.
[2] Second Life destination guide http://secondlife.com/destinations/