Final Post

Architecture Theory movie WP from Megan Khunakridatikarn on Vimeo.

Parametricism

We are now live in the time of post Fordism. It is the era of people use thing differently. In Fordism period people use everything the same because it is the age of mass production. Technology back then does not allow us to have a lot of choices. But now as the new technologies were invented, people are allowed to choose or even custom made thing. If we talk about Fordism, we would think of Ford car the model T. In the past the model T has came out in only two colors. But now people can buy car in any color as they wish or even has a custom painted car.

Beside the example of something tangible like car, another example can be found on the virtual, Internet search. In every computer has it’s own DNA. That DNA is the memory of the usage of each computer. From the example in the class, Ajarn Taylor searched the word Jordan and let us searched it as well. He got the result came out to be about Michael Jordan but many of us got the country Jordan or Air Jordan. Another one is key word that we searched in class was meaning of life. For me the first thing that I got after the search is Mormon.org because I have a lot of connection to mormons. But for others got something like movie or something else. So the technology allow the market to be more customize according to how the customer wants

Parametricism is a new style for architecture that derives the form from the parameter of the field. Parameters in every field are distinctive. Even that the site stay empty but what is never empty is the field it is why the parameter can be extracted from the field. Every single element of fenestration may be different sizes according to how we want it to be according to the parameter and our intention. In addition, because of the advancement in technology that was stated above, it allowed us to have the custom made window frame. So the parametric building is design for only one particular site because it comes from the parameter of the field surround.

Guang Zhou Opera House, Zaha Hadid

Object

As the last blog, which I talk about system, I stated that we all have the interaction with others not only organism but also other objects as well.  Object could make us behave some certain way because our perceptions were frame according to the usage of the object that we saw.

A door, we all know that it is an architectural object that meant to be a threshold. All we have to do to walk through it is to push or to pull to open it. And we all know that it is a responsibility of a person to close the door that he or she open.  The door that is left open would annoy to other people within the space. As I stated earlier, the door meant to be a threshold but so is the arches. One thing that make it different from the arches is it can be close to give the privacy to people that live inside the space, it can protect those people from weather, pollution or any unpleasant things. It is our perception that makes us feels annoy to the fact that the door is left open. From that we hire people to only open and close the door and these people are doormen. Or we even invent the sensor that could open the door. People can never satisfy by the object itself. They always fine the discomfit in the object and develop it to become even more comfortable to any kind of users.

I’m just thinking of what I have learned so far in this class. I think this class has greatly impacted on me. I once think that everything that is visible is real but they are not. As I look back and rethink of every theory that Ajarn Taylor, object has a strong relationship on how our perceptions were frame. In post-modern world that we are living in, people do care about how they look more than who they really are. Moreover, they even use that as a standard to judge people at first sight. There is no surprise for me to see that people in my age pick a guy to date by his look rather than his soul. People care so much about the appearance because it frames their personal images. In other term, we are trapped under the power of the materialistic.

System

No one can survive in the world alone. No matter how good that person is, he still needs to interconnect with another living organism. Because every organism living on this planet is a part of a system call ecology. It is a big system that one needs another in order to survive. Nothing is autonomous.

Every matter has its own potential to become something in community because there is “system” that gives the matter to become something. System makes the matters become form. There are two ways to look at the system, which are holistic view and ecological view. To view the object holistically is to look the system within the object. The example is to look at a bicycle, and see how each component allow another component to move and how that component drives the bicycle to move. Another way to look at the bicycle in a bigger picture, this way of looking is to look it ecologically. To see how the bicycle are made. To see how the making of bicycle affects another thing or to see where each component comes from.

To see things ecologically can also be categorized into two: shallow ecology and deep ecology. Shallow ecology is to look at the system without concerning about human. It is the way to see the system of how everything connects but excluding human. On the other hand, deep ecology is to look at the system that includes human as one of the factor. Human are the one who makes changes ecologically around the world. We interrupted the system with the new technology we invented, which it creates a great ecological impact.

The system causes us to look at the world differently causes our perception to be different same as palimpsest that we write on top of it.  

Topos, Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia

Place and location are not the same thing. Location refers to a particular point on the surface of the earth, while place refers to a relationship of person to space. Everything in this world, and that everything in the world comes from our perception. "Topos", a Greek term for place, defines Utopia, Dystopia and Heterotopia.

U or EU a Greek root means "good" or "not" and “topo” means place. As these two roots combine it creates the term "Utopia", a good place and not a place. The concept of utopia was introduced by Sir Thomas More in his book "Utopia" as a perfect society that has no time, no place and totalitarian control of society. Utopia is a perfect society with social order. The first Utopia that we know is a Garden of Eden. According to the Bible, everything in Garden of Eden is Perfect place. There is no one fight. There is no pain. Everything grows well. It is timeless and placeless. Until, Eve take the apple of wisdom so Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden. The concept of Utopia is not physical and to make this becomes physical needs interpretation. Of course, that interpretation comes from us, human. We are the interpreter.

Because of us interpret the Utopia idea and physicalize it, it creates another concept of topo, which is “Heterotopia”. Heterotopia is a physical representation or approximation of Utopia, the space of otherness. Hetero means others. So it also refers to the parallel relation that creates the utopia thought. To look at it in a more simple way, we look at the city as not nature because we compare it to forest and mountain that we have a perception of it as being nature. One example of Heterotopia is prison. Prison is the simulation of being ordered, being punished and being restrained. To make that needs a parallel environment so people inside feel that they are punished.

From the picture above is a picture for prison. The hall way is free for the guard to walk around. The guards can walk to anywhere he wants unlike the prisoners that are restrained in the cell. The parallel relationship between freedom and restraint defines one and another. One concept makes the understanding of another concept becomes stronger.

From the reading “Of Other Spaces” by Michel Foucault, Foucault gives us the example of mirror. A place in mirror is a utopia. The reflected world is not real. The image in it is not real. However, the mirror image can also be the heterotopia as well because mirror is an object. We can touch.

The last topo is Dystopia. Dystopia is the opposite idea of Utopia although it does not exist. Dystopia is a bad place, bad society where people kill and fight to one another, society where things are disorder. Example can be found in many literatures, one of them is “Machine Stops” by E.M. Foster. It talks about the future when humans rely on too much technology to live on their own until one day when the system shuts down. That time is the time when humans need to stay alive and have to live on their own again.

Place

If there were a hundred unrelated people to ask to describe their home, none of them will say the same thing. One person might say that his home is a one-story house with gable roof and chimney inside has his mom and his dad live in. Another person might say a high rise apartment have the most comfortable bed living alone. For me, home is where I live with my mom and my siblings. It is where I sing in a shower. It is where I bake during weekend. And it is where I sleep almost everyday. ;) It is where four of us shared our happiness and depression. That is a home for me.

When people think of home, they think of a place they live. One house can never be a home or a place with no memories ties them up with our perception. It will be just a space. From the example of home, the locations of home for those people are different from one and another. But that is not a factor why they define home differently but because of the memory that tie to the space they live become a place for them call home. Place is where you have interaction with. It is a social construct. It is a connection of people, earth, sky and divine. Home is a type of dwelling and to dwell means to isolate, to interact and to interconnect.

In class we were shown the movie called “Powaqquatsi”. This movie has no dialog but background music. It is a movie show about how people live in Brazil. It shows a hard lifestyle that Brazilians have. What they have to care is not object, reputation or social status but something that could sustain their life day by day. This is a place called Brazil that shows in the movie. Our memory ties us to the name Brazil through the movie. The place has context, interconnection and interaction from people to earth to sky and the divine. That make that place a place.