INTERNATIONAL OBSERVATORY
OF STUDIES IN ARCHITECTONIC
AND ARTISTIC DESIGN

living between
INTERACTIONS MAN HOUSE COSMOS
new researches on contemporary space

SEMINARS OF STUDIES, RESEARCHES, WORKSHOPS, CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS, WEBSITE, EXHIBITION, BOOK, FINAL DISCUSSION

PALERMO  MADRID  PORTO   january - december 2003

realscript / ubiquitous house
Shinichi Ogawa

 

realscript

Architecture means spaces which describe the facts comprising our reality.
Architecture is a text describing the society, economy, modes of thought, and emotional sentiments of its time. The act of conceiving architecture from the human actions, sentiments, mutual relationships, and physical things and information which circulate through its spaces is like writing a giant text which records the manifold events taking place there. A text of good quality
communicates accurately the various facts which arise in that world, while also creating the potential for new worlds. Architectural creation does not mean using architectural form to fabricate a beautiful model of an ideal way of life. Rather it means creating a context within which to project, as it is, the physical being of its inhabitants and the complex reality of their physical
surround.

 

 

 

 

01 ubiquitous
We are exposed to a ubiquitous reality in our physical being and daily life experience. Architecture is a medium through which a diversity of people, things, information, phenomena, and emotions pass, are circulated and
transfigured. Our times demand not a formulated rationalism in which function balances with form, objective with action, and cause with result but rather
spaces offering a high degree of selectivity; spaces which can accommodate fragmented human sentiment and action, and spontaneous events which transpire ahead of conscious thought. The capability of function and form to change and adapt offers great selectivity and allows a diversity of things to transpire and exist at the same time.

 

02 real
An unconcealable, pragmatic daily aesthetic.
When we think of architecture not as a substantial reality but rather as a bundle of events, then what we have in reality is a flow of people, things, and information, while the city and architecture become a secondary existence, a collection of intersections for this varied traffic. Space, while a context for the transformation of human sentiment and physical being, is a fabric of various, simultaneously occurring things, a fabric of things of different nature which collide and coexist. The events which arise in each place and the flow of varied media coming and going within a space find connection, overlap, and become layered, while fragments of disparate things come into being.

 

03 invisible
Architecture is the construction of ideas.
Before becoming a physical being, architecture is concept, idea, notion---an invisible act of creation. Philosophy, conceptualization, design content, consciousness, idea, spirit---such things should have beauty. When the actual building comes to stand as a physical thing, the actions, ideas, concepts behind its existence will no longer be apparent. The invisible deep-layer structure preexisting the visible surface-layer structure will support the physical architecture as a skeletal framework and give it its value. The vestiges of ideas will come to stand in the physical building, even while fading from its surface appearance.

 

04 neutral
To be at an equal distance from all things is a necessary condition for ubiquitousness.
Traffic, in the form of information, culture, emotional perceptions, economics, and ideas, is necessary in urban and architectural spaces, and in the spaces of
our physical being and consciousness. When architecture is reassembled at an abstract level, liberating it from architectural concepts and vocabulary, space becomes neither this nor that and acquires freedom. Spaces themselves being neutral, the flow of physical objects and information, a traffic of a varied
nature, can freely exist. A neutral space becomes a foundation promotive of change in human intent, emotion, and action; a horizon productive of varied
interpretations, perspectives, functions.

 

 

ubiquitous house

A house for "existing everywhere at the same time."
A house for oneself, living in a certain place, but also for oneself, existing simultaneously in various worlds. To exist in a certain place, in an age when people around the world simultaneously share massive volumes of information, is simply one choice from among unlimited possibilities.Let us create spaces which---even while having a neutrality which enables them to exist anywhere in the world---can exist not anywhere but rather only here, within a special relationship with their place. The context which architecture must take as its background is no longer simply the surrounding environment and the character of its place. Let us create architecture which is open to the immense volumes of information ubiquitous in the world and able to take the world as its context, even while being in its place.

 

 

 

 

 

05 transscale
We exist in a world of relative observations of scale; our consciousness freely traverses the entire range of scale.
Outer space, city, architecture, physical being, cells, and so on---our consciousness traverses every degree of scale, supersedes the hierarchy of total and part, and relativizes all phenomena and physical things. Totality and part do not coexist in their absolute meaning; what exists in reality can be a totality and can be a part.All architectural parts exist not as physical materials, glass, steel, and so on. Rather they come into being within the relationship those materials enjoy with light, text, their environment, our physical being.

 

06 body
Our ubiquitous physical being, ever changing and finding extension.
Today, we are exposed in our physical being to a flow of varied things and information. While adapting to this flow, or else while circulating it within, as if breathing it, our physical being changes. If we can think about the
relationship people have with architecture in an phase before conscious thought, we will perceive that relationship as a mutual dialogue or a rapport, on a level beyond reason, function, rationality. Architecture which offers a high degree of selectivity in response to fragmented, ambiguous human actions arising from the unconscious, or else architecture which adapts automatically to the unconscious demands of our physical being---this is architecture as an extension of our bodies, as a secondary body.

 

07 script
Architecture is an aggregate description of real actions.
All manners of things exist within dynamic relationships and reciprocal actions. People, physical objects, information---while joined in such relationships, they are exposed to intense motion. While they themselves
continue to move or act, furthermore, they alter their partner within such movement and are themselves altered. Space comes into being from the movement of people, things, and information and from their state of change. We can also say, however, that these events occur within the framework of space.
Architecture is a structure which gives connection to diverse phenomena and spheres which cannot fully be addressed in the visible world.

 

08 abstract
Abstract things enjoy spiritual superiority over real things.Architecture accommodates and envelops our changing physical being and changes as an extension of it. A transforming architecture exists within our transforming physical being. To give form to architectural space within existing formulas and concepts is insufficient. Architecture must be freed from all manners of formula and concept and given a neutral existence. Architecture has an objective real existence, and at the same time, it is something which arises from subjective awareness. It stands as a duality between these two opposing concepts. Architecture is substantial reality and architecture is idea.