Alyssa Wright

Building Process
A Framework for Fluid Construction

June 15, 2007 / July 3, 2007

Abstract Our designed surfaces often lack significant textual differences. Architectural and technological constructions occur as consistent hardness rather than responsive processes. How did such rigidity come to pass? And how can we design systems that bridge form and function, body and environment, structure and membrane? This paper argues that most contemporary attempts at bridging lack material as well as conceptual integrity. To build otherwise, we must shift the relationship between unit and process, not only in form, but in material as well. To begin this shift, we look at three parts. The first defines a context for form by outlining a brief history of the grid. The second looks at specific ways architects and technologists have sought, rather unsuccessfully, to bring process into form. And the final offers personal, and no more successful, sketches for building process. Combined, this paper hopes to develop a framework where conceptual integrity opens the path toward fluid construction. Keywords
Materials Building_Flexible Structure_Intelligent

Single Unit, Multiple Grid In The Grid: History, Use and Meaning, Jack H. Williamson considers the structural typology of the grid (Figure 1) within a historical context. Correspondingly, the symbolic function of the grid constitutes two major forms. "The first major form will be referred to as point-based and includes the coordinateand intersection-based subforms. The second major form will be referred to as field-based and includes the module- and linebased subforms" [1]. This section follows Williamson's definitions of grid, and explores its corresponding symbolism within an architectural and technological context.

Introduction Our structures afford sensual consistency, perpetual hardness, and a plasticity lacking significant difference. In other words, we have created a world of three-dimensional flatness. In order to escape this flatland, we must integrate process into our conception of structure. So, like frameworks for identity where fixed and fluid states co-exist, our framework for building need to bridge the chasm between fixed and fluid. This paper begins to organize such a framework.

Fig 1 Typology of the grid: the four subforms. Coordinatebased, intersection-based, module-based, and line-based..

1.1. Point Based Grid In Western history, definitions of structure began in antiquity with geometry [2]. Using true measurements of proportional spaces, Greek "designers" combined the circle, triangle and square to build ideal forms [3]. Math then became one conduit between the physical and the spiritual, and the grid began to serve as a structure towards this purpose. Thus, from the classical to the late medieval period, the grid symbolized the threshold between the abstract above and the reality below. We continue to live in the crosshair of this grid. Through the intersection of linesthe point on the crossthe grid focuses our attention to a single space of consciousness. From the Roman Pantheon to the American dollar (Figure 2) the point-based grid narrates a drama between heaven and earth, where the journey comes second to destination.

Alyssa Wright Computing Culture Group, MIT Media Lab 20 Ames Street, E15-020c Cambridge, MA 02139 Tel.: +617-253-5182 E-mail: alyssa@media.mit.edu

grid from the invisible matrix (Figure 3). Within these movements, architects and technologists employed related but distinct techniques for rebalancing time into the grid. Architects often sought the curve of soft systems; technologists integrated haptic processes. The following highlights some limitation of each approach.

Fig 2 The great oculus of the Pantheon (left) | The Eye of Providence (right) 1.2. Field Based Grid As one moves from the Renaissance toward present day, there is a gradual shift in science from appearance to underlying structure. This corresponds with a shift away from the grid as solely threshold, to the grid as a field of neutral units. As Williamson writes, "Field-based grids were used to emphasize the expansive potential of the repeated module or individual axis-line in continuous or near continuous extension" [1]. The marriage of reason and nature during the Enlightenment marks a unique dissemination of this repeating module. The grid comes to represent not only the structural laws and principles behind physical appearance, but the process of rational thinking itself [1]. The significance of this ideological shift cannot be understated. The grid not only carries the drama of the cross, but also the continuum of space and time. Like the buildings they inspire, grids are shaped to Fig 4 Sketch of Le Corbusiers Radiant City

Fig 5 Frank Gehry Disney Concert Hall (left);: Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, The Olympic Stadium 2008 (right).

Fig 6 Greg Lynn: Numinous Flower Ceiling Lights, January 2003 "Intricacy" at ICA Philadelphia.

1.3. Architectural Attempts Fig 3 Segment of the print from the Post-Modern Modernist Generator by Don Relyea [5] withstand the wear of this continuum. By the Modern period, however, stability gave way to invisibility as the space/time ideologies of the grid disappeared with its ubiquity. A seminal essay in modern art, Rosalind Krausss Grids isolates this contradiction of invisibility. She writes: the grid serves not only as emblem but also as myth. For like all myths, it deals with paradox or contradiction not by dissolving the paradox or resolving the contradiction, but by covering them over so that they seem (but only seem) to go away. The grids mythic power is that it makes us think we are dealing with materialism (or sometimes science, or logic) while at the same time it provides us with a release into belief (or illusion, or fiction) [4]. In Modern architecture the grid helped engineer the flow of soft systems. It was seen, at times, to be the answer to preordained structure. Take for instance the Manhattan skyscraper (Figure 4). Born between 1900 and 1910, its initial vision saw each floor as a virgin site, a discrete world with its own particular destiny. In this ideal, the Skyscraper represented an unknowable urbanism. It promised to subvert previous stability by reworking the urban exoskeleton with an unpredictable combination of human activities. But economics as well as ego disallowed such instability. As Rem Koulhaas writes in Delirious New York, Manhattan has no choice but the skyward extrusion of the Grid itself [6]. Many architects foresaw contradictions in the grid and sought to resolve their disillusionment by building with nonlinear shapes. Frank Gehry, along with Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, are contemporary examples of architects designing with nonlinear forms (Figure 5). Meanwhile, architects like Greg Lynn have used isomorphic polysurfaces and inexact geometries to bring about structures the speak of relational forces rather than stability (Figure 6). The nonlinearity of these designs end at appearance, as rigidity continues to operate at the level of material. The fluid metaphors these building suggest end with the materials used to create them. For all the curvature, these building continue to be as resistant to space and time as their predecessors.

Tension of Space & Time The grids position as both a structure of space and process influenced Modern and Post-Modern design. Modern constructions de-emphasized the individual unit in favor of continuous fields. Post-modern exercised tactics to expose the

1.4. Technological Attempts As in architecture, the history of our digital grid--the pixelcan be traced from Descartes to the foundations of Christianity: As Sean Cubitt writes in Digital Aesthetics, The grid derives its onscreen presentations from modernist design practice, which itself can be traced back to Descartes invention of neutral space defined only by coordinates rather than contents, and to Mercators redefinition of the map as a blank field of longitude and latitude into which the marks of coordinate space can be drawn. But behind this insipid, unmarked space can be glimpsed an older grid deployed in the mediaeval scriptoria, a grid made up not of modular, transferable boxes, but of points and cruxes, in each of which the divine and the sublunary met[7]. Technologists have been reworking the grids story by adding the richness of human processes into the design. Since the early 1990s, the Tangible Media Group at MIT has built alternate visualizations of how to fit the pixel with people. Sometimes transforming architectural surfaces (e.g., walls, desktops, ceilings, doors, and windows) into an active surface and sometimes transforming common objects (e.g., cubes or tiles) into a graspable interface, the projects from the Tangible Media Group build structures that connect a virtual and physical world. These interfaces typically enhance a common structure with technological awareness. This design scenario has resulted a plethora of structural creations that begin to challenge the grid. However, in regards to pliable forms, almost all of these tangible interfaces have used flat textures. Programmable bricks and interactive surfaces are the backbones of tangible computation (Figure 7).

Sketches Through both the curve of architecture as well as the processes of tangible computing, our designs begin to include a depth we have lost with modernitytime. But again, the singularity of material calls into question the integrity of these structures. Hence building process becomes a conversation about difference of materials. If we look at other systems of structure this is not an unusual paradigm. While dominant in the area of human production, rigidity of space is hardly the only system of organization, and rarely (if ever) exists on its own. In the organic world, our soft tissues (gels and aerosols, muscle and nerve) mix with the mineralization of bone. In the human world, soft bodies (human flesh) mix with the urban exoskeleton of city walls. The systems of static and process are in constant flux, and responsive materials help translate this tension. The following outlines 4 sketches where process was as important as unit. They are hardly complete projects, but rather openings for further work. .

Fig 8 Single Cell Block (left) | Pyramid Formation (right)

Fig 7 Stackables: Manipulable Distributed Displays 1997 (left) | Kelly Heaton Physical Pixels 2000 (right) Often, flatness and rigidity are not the intention, but rather the result of material taking a back to seat to computation. Flatness also stems from a wider audience hacking common building units, rather than creating entirely different shapes. Attempts at non-rigid building blocks have been made, but are usually abandoned. As Kelly Heaton explains, organic forms are not easily translated into the inflexible structure of computer electronics. Basic requirements, such as power and data communications, continually precipitated engineering solutions that were too big, too rigid, too impractical or otherwise impossible [8].

Fig 9 Sol Lewitt, Four-Sided Pyramid 1999 (left) | Paul Sharits: Into the Light 2001 (right) Cell Blocks: Pliable building blocks that allow for structures of unpredictability and depth, Cell Blocks provides a modular framework for construction (Figure 8). Each Cell Block is a self-contained unit with the ability to connect with other units. Based, in form, on the Four Sided Pyramids of Sol Lewitt, but incorporating the flicker timing of Paul Sharits (Figure 9) Cell Blocks offer a unique pairing of physical and digital properties. The anatomy of each Cell Block not only combines the circuitry for lighting and connection with the movement of a thick fluid. Amoeba: Addressing the sensual dearth of common appliances, Amoeba is a tactile light switch. Like Cell Blockss liquid construction, one needs to immerse, in order to affect. Amoeba replaces the hard flick of a switch, with the sensuality of a massage. Again, the use of circuitry and fluid material allows for an unpredictability of affect.

Conclusion The curved line often serves as the ideal representation on our culture. The optimism and progress embodied by the curve implies a kind of fluidity unfettered by the grid. Technological advances have allowed construction to leave the hard lines of the industrial age, while tangible interfaces have moved the pixel into a physical realm. Combined, these developments point to a shift in our surroundings: a shift where time is as important as form. Yet, while the curve of architecture or the tangible of technology might be a cause for hope and a sign of progress, the hardness of these materials points toward contradiction. The integrity of curved fluidity is compromised if these structures do not include responsive materials. While the ambiguity and uncertainty of building process are difficult to control, further work should be done in the area. The advantages of such work provide a framework for building that honestly reflects the building of life.

Fig 10 Amoeba Light Switch (left) | Detail (right) Wish You Were Here: Originally intended to share data between academic and government agencies, the Internet was quickly subsumed by a rather personal intentionthe possibility of connection. Yet, like the static of an insomniacs TV, our computers are often lonely windows for reflection. Wish You Were Here (Figure 11) translates email messages into a Morse code display woven with fiber optics. The tension between touch and screen attempts to replicate the din of white noise so common in our digital longings.

References 1. Jack H. Williamson. The Grid: History, Use, and Meaning. Design Issues, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Autumn, 1986), pp. 15-30. 2. Adriana Rossi, "Study the Works of Peter Eisenman? Why?!", Nexus Network Journal, Vol. 1 (1999), pp. 65-74. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00004-998-0005-1 3. Raymond L. Bisplinghoff, L and Samuel Colman. Harmonic Proportion and Form in Nature, Art and Architecture. New York: Dover Publications, 2003. 4. ] Rosalind Krauss . "Grids." October, (Summer 1979), pp: 50-64. 5. Don Reylea. the Modernist 01. Postmodern Modernist Gallery, 2006. http://www.donrelyea.com/postmodern_gallery1.htm 6. Rem Koolhaas. Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. Monacelli/010 Press, 1994; Oxford University Press, 1978 7. Sean Cubitt. Digital Aesthetics. Sage Publications Ltd, London, 1998, pp. 89. 8. Kelly Heaton. Physical Pixels. Masters Thesis. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000, pp. 29-30.

Fig 11 Wish You Were Here, full view (left) | Detail of fiber optic screen (right) Listening Bubbles: From high-speed photography to nuclear fusion, the bubbles iridescence always drowns out its decay. The same iridescence inspires my own delight, but for Listening Bubbles (Figure 12) the echo became the point. For this project I attempted to isolate the sound of bubbles popping. Again, balancing the ephemeral of the bubble with the circuitry of microphones prioritizes process at the level of computation.

Fig 12 Listening Bubbles, full view (left) | microphone circuit (right)

Detail of