relations and sub-rules of space

Someone said “People can inhabit anything. And they can be miserable in anything and ecstatic in anything. More and more I think that architecture has nothing to do with it. Of course, that’s both liberating and alarming”. It sounds a bit like a punch line but if we think about it, it’s not false. But it’s not entirely true either. Seeing it in the “nothing” absolute term is not right since the materiality has a sense on its own. I’d like to see how, I’d really like to see what really makes a place. But while we enjoy the superficial of things, how it looks, how it functions, things and especially space goes a bit further than that.

To prove this, let’s make a very simplistic experiment. I put you in the most beautiful space you can imagine. Awesome. Then let’s sprinkle something in there: a person and a task that you absolutely hate. How is the space now? Bad. Right. You can look at it from time to time for relief, but it will not have much influence. Space is just a beautiful container. Did I mention that you can’t escape from this space? We can go ahead and determine that space matter much less than what it contains.

one of the image from searching “beautiful space”. Indeed.

Rules of space

When we walk in a space, be it your home, your work or your friend’s house, there is a serie of rules that apply. We are compelled to act in a certain manner. Those who don’t act that way are considered weirdos. You know, guys who scream in metros and public transports, people walking too fast or too slow etc… The rule in my city’s public space is basically: walk fast, pretend you don’t know anybody and appear busy/important, don’t smile at strangers, look at your phone often. Very simplistic. Very basic. Most people obey. When there’s a absence of sub set of rules (consider a bar terrace), people behave by “default”, which, most of the time is pretty boring. Consider it the “politically correct”. And, of course, most of the time, legislative and financial rules apply. People brag about the materials or influence they own.

The inherent issue with these default rules is that people sometimes don’t know how to act. Since it is tacit and not written, hence, unclear and not defined, they are not easy to follow. So what do people do by default? Do the least weird stuffs possible. Appear as if you are a background. This is a problem. When rules are unclear, people don’t know how to act accordingly. Public spaces are cluttered by these tacit rules. I like to call them “frozen space politics”. People are frozen in a sort of appearance that is utterly uninteresting and unauthentic.

the one having fun is the kid. adults act boring.

Sub-rules of space

Talking about kids. If you happen to be in Lausanne, walk down the Navigation quay and you’ll see a wooden boat. On it, you’ll see a lot of kids playing. It seems like magic. They all seem in another world, preoccupied being pirates or something. It doesn’t seem to belong to this world. “Yeah, but they are kids”. Turn around.

You’ll see a group of older men/women talking and absorbed in a giant chess game. It’s a classic. And it’s also magic. This is where the general rule bends. The boring general rules of society, vaguely named success, attractiveness, power or what the fuck else, disappear. The space has bent itself in socially to create a bubble. It has broken the general rule and became, by itself, a sub-rule space. Like a castle within a giant flat sandbox.

If the immersion of the space is high enough (linked to the quantity of simultaneous stimulis), all the rest of the world litterally disappears. Think for a second about when you were in love for the first time as a teenager. Yes, nothing else existed outside of your love interest. That’s pretty much because the human brain has a limited processing power. Beyond a certain amount of datas (38 petaflops, which is huge, but overloadable) it shuts down the rest. That means that if the rules and the space is interesting enough to overload your brain, you literally forget all your problems. It’s the theory of flow. It’s quite poetic to think that we flow in space.

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So the question remains: within all the rules, what sub-rules do we want to create in space? Call it sub-politics if you will, promoting control, elitism. or rather freedom and interaction. We have to be absolutely clear on our intention on this. Some people in the design world have chosen and I can safely say that they have chosen wrong. Do we follow them? Or do we create our own sub rules? What is more important? Matter? Life?

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a sandbox. “look, I have built a big ass stadium”

Interaction in space

I have really appreciated my little experiment for the last few months with a sandbox. And I now love the metaphor of life as a sandbox. You are in one single space with other people. You make things (or buy things). You break things. But.. it is just sand at the end. What mattered most was the interactions you had throughout your life. The interaction with your creation, the interaction with people, the interaction with your creator. What mattered most is the stories that is told and remembered.

As designers, we emphasise on things. We “develop” and “build” and make “economical growth”. But walk into any design critic and you’ll encounter a very obscure way of seeing the world. Words such as “concept” “clarity” “modern” “strength” or some shit spring across.  I have asked once “what is contemporary?” to be met with a silence. I’m supposedly very stupid.

Isn’t design’s main goal to promote life in the environment? Like, you know, life. And nature. And that stuffs. Not concrete, not “thickness of lines”. Isn’t life the center?

Our entire culture has been based on the ancient cultures. Which came to life within a space that promoted interactions and life. The agora and the stoa. What remains of the agora is irrelevant. It’s just stones now. But the heritage of what happened within those columns is much more than pretty tourist pictures. It’s stories. It’s ideas. It’s beliefs. It’s philosophy. And it’s ultimately society.

And those come from interaction between people. It comes from relationship and friendship. Like a friend of mine has said during our lunch the other day “you know, what makes a place lasting and real is the social bonds”. He is absolutely right.

a very beautiful place in Grüningen

Interaction with nature

We interact with our peers but we also interact with our environment. And most of the time, we interact with our peers in the environment. Walking in a forest or near a lake reminds us of how beautiful things are. But we have built cities and closed walls to shield ourselves from everything. Architecture, ironically, can kill life. It should be otherwise. Our built environment begins with a strong idea of how we want to interact with nature. How do we create a human habitat that is actually integrated in the natural ecosystem? It sounds a bit cliché. I really believe that our cutting off from nature is rendering us a bit insane.

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I like to think about space as a giant sandbox in which we make things, we interact within ourselves and nature.

So ultimately we make space with materials, but there’s also a very important facets to sensible and sensitive space. I know a person who says “it’s not architecture if you can’t piss it in the snow”. Really? that’s it? No. Like, no way. That’s for selling projects to money hungry people with short attention span. Space is more than just a fucking diagram, it is subtle sub-rules and social and natural interaction. We might rename it environmental and social design. Rather than a very archaic “architecture”.

Etymology: Architect from Greek arkhitekton “master builder, director of works”.

There’s a bit more to it.