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Agents of Transformation and the "Death" of Urbanism Preeminence of the Decorated Shed Staging Uncertainty |
[1S1] INTERFACE. Earlier I made the statement that it is critical to understand the juncture at which the mobile and immobile factors of cities meet; like a truck and a loading dock, or electronic money and an automatic transfer machine. It is at this level of engagement that cities can be read, made tangible, and understood. It is at this confluence of dynamic and static forces that architecture finds its greatest potential. To artists, critics, and scientists alike, this juncture is called the interface.30 Nicholas Negroponte describes the less-than-auspicious origins of the interface in the development of the computer: The evolution of computing has been so fast that we’ve only recently had enough low-cost computing power to spend it freely on improving the ease of interaction between you and your computer. It used to be considered wasteful and frivolous to devote time and money to the user interface, because computer cycles were so precious and had to be expended on the problem, not the person. Scientists would justify stoic interfaces in many ways. In the early 1970’s, for example, a handful of ‘scholarly’ papers were published on why black-and-white displays were ‘better’ than color. Color is not bad. The research community just wanted to vindicate its inability to deliver a good interface at reasonable cost or, to be a bit more cynical, at the expense of some imagination... We are still paying the price today.31 While Negroponte is referring specifically to the inadequate level of attention paid to the GUI (graphical user interface) in computing, his statement could be expanded to address design issues in general. I would suggest that a large percentage of the design/build community which shapes our physical environment, including developers, planners, engineers, and architects, is likewise eager "to vindicate its inability to deliver a good interface at reasonable cost... or at the expense of some imagination."
If the first place of engagement between a city and its visitor in antiquity was the city wall, then what is the border that stands between the modern city and its occupant? With the development and proliferation of transportation and communications technologies, walls and other physical territorial markers have given way to other proprietary lines, which are often invisible or subject to rapid fluctuations. In his article "The Overexposed City," Virilio addresses this change: ...since men began using enclosures, the notion of what a boundary is has undergone transformations which concern both the façade and what it faces, its vis-à-vis. From the fence to the screen, by way of the rampart’s stone walls, the boundary-surface has been continually transformed, perceptibly or imperceptibly. Its most recent transformation is perhaps that of the interface. The question of access to the city, then, should be asked in a new way: Does a greater metropolis still have a façade? At what moment can the city be said to face us?32 The subject of the modern city is at ill odds to read it legibly. Clearly inscribed stone walls have given way to temporary/portable structures, transparent and reflective glass, neon and flashing lights, and most importantly, a new variability in the distance between boundaries and edges which indicates the dissolution of the former territory of the wall. "Thus, differences in positions blur, resulting in unavoidable fusion and confusion... If... the city from now on is to be deprived of doors, it is due to the fact that the urban wall has given way to an infinity of openings and ruptured enclosures."33 According to Wim Nijenhuis, it is precisely the "dissipated and immanent frontier that informs the ‘urban’ together with the fusion of reality and nonreality in perception [which] signify the rise of a new world frontier, namely, the interface."34 This ‘new world frontier’ is manifest in the new media which define the urban threshold:
Thus, the modern gateway to the city is the internet access terminal, the money machine, the dashboard, the cellular phone, and the ticket counter. We live in a paradoxical age in which the city has simultaneously reached its ultimate dissolution and its ultimate ubiquity. In other words, it is nowhere and everywhere at once. 30This word has received so much use that by now it is a cliché. The Random House Dictionary gives these two definitions for interface: "1. a surface regarded as the common boundary of two bodies or spaces, 2. a common boundary between systems or human beings." I am enhancing the definition to include "a common boundary between matter and energy, or the physical and the virtual, or atoms and bits." 31Negroponte, Nicholas, Being Digital (New York: Vintage, 1995) p. 89-90 32Virilio, Paul, "The Overexposed City" in Zone 1/2 (New York: Urzone, 1986) p. 17 33Ibid., p. 18, 20 34Nijenhuis, Wim, "City Frontiers and Their Disappearance" in Assemblage 16 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1992) p. 53 35Virilio, Paul, "The Overexposed City" in Zone 1/2 (New York: Urzone, 1986) p. 18 Images: 1. Nolli’s Map of Rome, 2. Apple’s e-World, 3. Air Traffic Control Room, Dallas-Fort Worth Airport
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The representation of the
contemporary city is thus no longer determined by a ceremonial opening of gates, by a
ritual of processions and parades, nor by a succession of streets and avenues. From now
on, urban architecture must deal with the advent of a ‘technological
space-time.’ The access protocol of telematics replaces that of the doorway. The
revolving door is succeeded by ‘data banks,’ by new rites of passage of a
technical culture masked by the immateriality of its components: its networks, highway
systems and diverse reticulations whose threads are no longer woven into the space of a
constructed fabric, but into the sequences of an imperceptible planning of time in which
the interface man/machine replaces the façades of buildings and the surfaces of ground on
which they stand.35
A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell. Copyright © 1998 by Blaine Brownell. All rights reserved. |
