INFRATECTURE. Trauma of the New Interior.

[2S2] TRAUMA OF THE NEW INTERIOR.

When the horizon disappears, what then appears is the horizon of disappearance.
(Dietmar Kamper)

Like the internet, the new mega-scale building typology which is ubiquitous in the post-industrial age has been fertile territory for the implementation of urban metaphors. This phenomenon can be found in the shopping mall which assumes the form of a city arcade, or in the office building atrium which attempts to be an urban piazza. As we become engulfed by an increasingly large building envelope, it would seem that the clumsy appropriation of traditional urban spaces in this new interior has sufficed to keep us oriented and to make us believe that no transformation has actually occurred. In this way, we disguise the new with the mask of the old, most likely in order to maintain sanity in the wake of accelerated change. Thus, we live in Ito’s ‘Simulated City,’ and confront Baudrillard’s ‘Death of Reality.’

HOK, Nortel Headquarters, Toronto (1996)

Former distinctions between public and private typologies have dissolved. As privatized space reigns supreme, it has coopted the formal language of public space, leaving its important sociopolitical dimensions behind. The post-industrial megastructure actually houses, and therefore represents, the new company town. Nortel’s recently completed 400,000 square foot corporate headquarters outside of Toronto is laid out like a city, with ‘public spaces’, streets, and neighborhoods. HOK devised the concept because they desired to subdivide the vast space and "wanted to infuse this workplace with the richness of city life."⁹⁶ To their credit, HOK’s design has largely been a success for Nortel employees who feared a sea of cubicles instead. However, I feel that the project is least successful where it strains to mimic some idealized gestalt of the traditional city: "the architectural vocabulary is limited; it all has a cleanly coordinated look, much as the elements of a mall or airport look alike regardless of their function. Colors are harmonized, calm tones and textures blend together–and, naturally... everything is the same age. And with virtually all the structures being of consistent heights, a distinctly nonurban uniformity prevails."⁹⁷ In the design for a 515,000 square foot New York Times printing plant (1997) in Queens, Polshek and Partners and Parsons Main, Inc. led a workshop "in which they constructed model toy cities as an exercise in team building."⁹⁸ The exercise resulted in the design of a colorful interior ‘urban’ environment which incorporated "a yellow metal gatehouse, a plaza paved with a crossword puzzle, a red canopy, yellow filter boxes, and a blue metal wall on the north end of the building to enliven the plant," among other things.⁹⁹

In the article "Globalization and the New Interior," Mark Wamble describes the relationship of the new interior to geography, claiming that the middle ground of the city has lost its role as a mediating device.¹⁰⁰ The gestalt of the city has forever changed, and as a result, the traditional building façade has also lost its role as a mediator. The resulting trauma evoked by the inability to read the city therefore results in the fabrication of such simulations, so that the inhabitant of the new interior may quickly comprehend a high level of information based on intuitive responses. This trauma reinforces the importance of the terms of engagement to architecture. Currently, these terms are often met with design solutions which only mimic old forms, rather than projecting new ones which relate to the complete change in circumstances.

⁹⁶Brunner, Kathrin, quoted by Spiegler, Marc, "Company Town" in Metropolis (February/March 1998) p. 71

⁹⁷Spiegler, Marc, "Company Town" in Metropolis p. 72

⁹⁸Rappaport, Nina, "Industrious Design" in Metropolis (April 1998), p. 36

⁹⁹Ibid., p. 36

¹⁰⁰Wamble, Mark, "Globalization and the New Interior," Quaderns

Images: 1. HOK, Nortel Headquarters, Toronto (1996)

A Master's Thesis in Architecture at Rice University by Blaine Brownell.