In the contemporary situation, we are conscious of successive changes and transformations that could alter the mental and physical context in which we previously moved. Understanding the course of these changes is not only a matter of survival but also a way of visualising the future that awaits us, where “to be or not to be” digital is no longer a question of choice.
Perhaps the most appropriate way to expose this problem, more appropriate than this dictum from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where an affirmation and its negation cannot be simultaneously valid, is to suggest an approach that can generically be understood in the context of a paraconsistent logic, where its validity is not rendered redundant in simple triviality. This logic, which accepts inconsistency in a sensible way and considers it informative in arriving at a valid conclusion, was eloquently summed up in the area of the discipline, by Fernando Távora: “In architecture, the opposite can also be true”.1
It is, however, in the interpretation by Martin Heidegger, on Die Frage nach der Technik (The Question Concerning Technology), a text produced for a conference held in Munich in 1953 that was part of the Arts in the Era of Technology cycle, that we have, in contemporaneity, a decisive contribution to understanding the meaning of these concepts in the context of digital technology.
Heidegger closes his text with the following challenge: “Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection upon art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning.”2
The problem, following this challenge from Heidegger, is how to understand in contemporaneity the digital question in architecture and understand “the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning”.
The triumphal entrance of the digital into the world of architecture took place, in contemporaneity, when the Sketchpad program was developed by Ivan Sutherland in 1963 as part of his doctoral thesis at MIT3. Sutherland showed that graphic computation could be used both for technical and artistic purposes, using a new form of interaction with the computer that was not limited to programming with punched cards but presented the possibility of a permanent dialogue with the monitor screen [a].
Sketchpad, which is regarded as a precursor of computer aided design (CAD) programs, and also a forerunner in the development of the graphic capacities of modern-day computers, is at the origin of what, in a not-so-distant future, will come to be regarded simply as design, as Mitchel and McCullough forewarned in 1995:
When tools are new (as the computer still is) they often seem strange and are understood in contrast to their predecessors. The automobile was first seen as a horseless carriage, the radio as a wireless telegraph, and the designer’s computer as a non-manual drafting device. But with time, as use becomes commonplace and more mature understanding develops, the old locutions sound increasingly quaint and eventually are discarded. The technology becomes transparent. Today’s motorists have long forgotten that they are engaged in horseless travel, and today’s architects would smile at the idea of pencil-assisted design. Chroniclers of our era may one day ask, “What was computer-aided design?” To them, it will just be design.4
In a thesis submitted to MIT in 2001 by José Pinto Duarte on the customisation of mass housing, for which he conducted a case study on the Álvaro Siza-designed Malagueira houses in Évora, constructing a form grammar5 that not only reproduced the existing corpus but also generated new examples on the basis of the grammatical rules, it was possible to test, in the presence of the designer of said housing complex, the validity of that forewarning6.
Indeed, Siza was shown a series of housing models generated by the grammar interpreter, i.e. the program that implements the grammar, and it was not possible to distinguish those belonging to the existing corpus from the one “designed” by the interpreter [b].
This problematic raises the question already formulated by Alan Turing between 1936 and 1950 – “can machines think?” – which is at the base of modern computational theory and the subsequent development of computers, subsequently leading to the emergence of artificial intelligence and the non-conclusive discussion of that controversy7.
A Turing machine is an abstract model of how a computer that reads data input, executes operations based on that data and produces the corresponding output functions. The machine is capable of simulating any computation executed by another computer and consists, normally, of a strip of tape on which characters can be read and registered, as well as a set of states that define the results of the actions or their performance. A Turing machine can therefore be used as a symbolic model for understanding the meaning and the limits of the concept of computation. In this sense, a form grammar interpreter can be understood as a Turing machine that transforms preceding forms into consequent forms on the basis of the rules adopted by the grammar.
Alan Turing8, who also investigated the question of computation and morphogenesis, attended the analytical philosophy lectures of Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge. Wittgenstein asked the following question to his students at King’s College: “why not an arithmetic of forms?”9
The picture was complete for the development of computational studies on the form in architecture, in that the form grammars could be understood as algorithms that executed arithmetical calculations and, consequently, controlled the generation of forms with previously specified properties.
Such concepts are not alien to the domain of architecture, considering that the characterisation of the lineaments by Alberti (l, 1) can be seen as a precursor of an arithmetic of forms, given that they are defined by “angles and lines with an exact orientation and connection”:
It is quite possible to project whole forms in the mind without any recourse to the material, by designating and determining a fixed orientation and conjunction for the various lines and angles. Since that is the case, let lineaments be the precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles, and perfected in the learned intellect and imagination.10
This “precise and correct outline, conceived in the mind, made up of lines and angles” can now, ever since the studies carried by Ivan Sutherland, be developed, presented and generated on a monitor screen, as is the case of the façade of the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, designed by Alberti in 1456 [c and d]11.
However, in a recent essay by Mario Carpo12, the author questions the Quattrocento model of the architect proposed by Alberti. Carpo calls this transformation digital turning, given that we are not really dealing with a revolution but a change of direction in how we make architecture.
Carpo goes on to refer to this change as a change in paradigm, in that, for Alberti, the design is the original, defined by the lineaments, and the building is its true copy, the sole purpose of which is to reproduce those outlines in their entirety [e]13.
Indeed, Alberti (IX, 9) is categorical in arguing how the prudent architect should proceed:
To sum up, he will define everything; he will leave nothing that is not prescribed by his law and his measure. Almost all this aspects, although they may seem to relate to solidity and use, above all, are of such importance in themselves that, if they are neglected, will bring with them an enormous defect of deformity.
In this case, the degrees of freedom between the designer and the builder are zero, which today is not the case in some specific cases. Carpo14 goes on to describe the Albertian design process as obsolete and to suggest that authorship of the design, as we know it, can be questioned.
Indeed, the CAD/CAM fabrication processes that revolve around the concept of rapid prototyping promise a brave new world where, thanks to modern robotic technology, the traditional separation of the conceiver of a design and the person who executes disappears. The trend points to the customisation of the final project in order to respond to the needs and desires expressed by the consumer, as is the case in the construction of brick walls by Gramazio-Kohler using robotic control for the ETH Zurich building, or for the Bearth & Deplazes designed winery in Gantenbein, Flaesch, Switzerland in 2006.
Precursors of this “movement” are the “projective tables” designed by Bernard Cache in 2005 and shown at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, where the potential clients ended up taking home, in line with their desires, customised and non-standardised furniture.
The pavilions designed by Toyo Ito (2002), and Álvaro Siza and Eduardo Souto de Moura (2005), in both cases with the collaboration of Cecil Balmond, for the Serpentine Gallery in London suggest non-standardised surfaces. In the former case, the construction’s casing is made up of a web of flat structural steel pieces in varying thicknesses and L-shaped profiles 0.55 m in height that were welded in advance for assembly on the site. The web, consisting of a myriad of seemingly randomly intersecting lines, configures a patt-ern of triangular and trapezoid forms, all different from each other, with are filled with aluminium panels and glazed surfaces [f]. In the second case, the pavilion’s undulating form is made up of a non-uniform grid of laminated planks of fir timber, with differing degrees of inclination and varying in size from 1 m to 1.5 m, joined together with mortise and tenon joints. The result is a non-stardardised alveolar structure [g].
For Carpo15, the modern digital technologies – which include the creation of an anonymous encyclopaedia, as is the case for Wikipedia, the use of open source software, to which everyone has indiscriminate access, and the use of cloud computing, where the storage and calculation capacities of computers and servers shared and interconnected through the Internet do not require installed programs nor dedicated data storage – indicate a high level of interactivity and participation that would suggest “[…] some form of almost collective decision-making. But the wisdom of the many is often anonymous; anonymity goes counter to authorship, and, since the inception of the Albertian model, authorship has been a precondition for the architect’s work.” In summation, “modern objects (authorial, authorized, and identically reproduced) might also disappear in the process”16.
So are we at a turning point in terms of the conception and practice of architecture as we have known it since Alberti penned his treatise, as Carpo would seem to suggest?
The oppositions that author enunciates can be summed up in the following terms: authorship versus anonymity; standardisation versus customisation and distinction between original and copy versus convergence in conception/construction.
In this case we are far from the paradigm suggested by Le Corbusier in 1925 in relation to the L’Esprit Nouveau pavilion, when he stated that: “My intention was to illustrate how, by virtue of the selective principle (standardization applied to mass-production), industry creates pure forms; and to stress the intrinsic value of this pure form of art that is the result of it”.17
While it is true that Le Corbusier was far removed from the digital, as we understand it today, the contextualisation of the digital in understanding the urban register was initiated as far back as the mid-15th century by Alberti himself, in his work Descriptio urbis Romae18. In his description of the plan of the city of Rome, by means of a horizontal goniometer Alberti introduces a system of polar coordinates that indicate the direction and distance (horizon and radius) to monuments, the city walls and the Tiber from a point in the Capitol. In this case, the corresponding map is not produced, but the author suggests that the reader draw it himself on the basis of those angular relations registered in a digital way. [h and i]
Perhaps we can find an answer, even if only partial, to Carpo’s questions in the notion of varietas, or variety, proposed by Alberti (l, 8):
But in this we should have regard to those Things, which being wanting in all Parts of the Structure, are greatly blamed; and which, where they are, make the Edifice handsome and convenient. It is that the Angles, the Lines and all the Parts have a certain Variety, but not too much nor too little of it, but so ordered both for Use and Beauty, that the entire Parts may answer to the entire, and like Parts to like.
This “certain variety” of angles and lines can be found in the Santo Sepolcro (Holy Sepulchre) temple in the Church of San Pancrazio in Florence, designed by Alberti after 1457 for the Rucellai family [j and k]. In this work, designed to “imitate” the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which Alberti never visited, one can note that the exterior walls are covered in square panels of marble. In the centre of each panel there is also a basic circular geometric pattern that is inscribed in each form. Inside these patterns, however, there are figures designed by marble incrustations, with no two figures being alike.
Variability is the motto for Alberti in the ornamentation of the outer walls of the Santo Sepolcro, where the pieces that make up the panels are customised so as to present the maximum versatility of ornamental motifs possible.
Thus, provided we do not shut our eyes “[…] to the constellation of truth, concerning which we are questioning”19, this is the true purpose of the uncovering of the persistent presence of the characteristics that constitute the digital in contemporaneity – as something that follows a course in constant transformation; but not just any course: a course whose domain is art, as the designs and works referred to herein suggest. |
[T.N.]: some quotations in this article were translated solely for the purpose of this publication.
1 April 1997.
2 Martin Heidegger. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Engl. translation and introduction by W. Lovitt. New York : Harper Torchbooks, 1977, p. 35.
3 I. E. Sutherland. Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system. [Online]. Cambridge : Computer Laboratory; University of Cambridge, 2003 [Consult. 28 Feb. 2012]. Available at: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/TechReports/. Technical Report no. 574, based on doctoral thesis presented at MIT in 1963.
4 W. Mitchell; M. McCullough. Digital Design Media. 2ª ed.. New York : Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995, p. 445.
Quando as ferramentas são novas (como o computador ainda é) frequentemente parecem estranhas e são entendidas em contraste com as suas precedentes. O automóvel começou por ser visto como uma carruagem sem cavalos, o rádio como um telégrafo sem fios, e o computador do designer como um dispositivo de desenho não manual. Mas com o tempo, à medida que o seu uso se torna um lugar-comum e a sua compreensão vai amadurecendo, as velhas representações, cada vez mais fora de moda, acabam por ser postas de lado. A tecnologia torna-se transparente. Os condutores de hoje em dia há muito esqueceram que estão envolvidos numa viagem sem cavalos, e os arquitectos de hoje em dia sorririam à ideia de projectar com o lápis. Os cronistas da nossa era poderão um dia perguntar, “o que era o design assistido por computador?” Para eles será apenas design.
5 A form grammar defines a set of forms designated as language. That language contains all the forms generated by the grammar and any one of these forms is generated by application, from the initial form, of a rule to a preceding form, generally labelled, so as to establish the sequences of obligatory and forbidden transformation rules in order to arrive at a stop rule that places a limit on the application of preceding rules.
6 Cf. J. P. Duarte. Customizing Mass Housing: A Discursive Grammar for Siza’s Malagueira Houses. Doctoral thesis, School of Architecture, MIT, 2001.
7 A. T. Turing. On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem. Proc. London Mathematical Society. S. 2, nº 42 (1936), p. 230-265.
8 A. M. Turing. Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Minds and Machines. Vol. 59 (1950), p. 433-460.
9 L. Wittgenstein. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1956.
10 English text taken from: Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykert and Robert Tavernor, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11 Adapted from a presentation by the 3dSignStudio for an exhibition on Alberti at the Palazzo Strozzi, Florence in 2004. [Online]. [Consult. Feb. 2012]. Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FYkjcY4uA.
12 M. Carpo. The Alphabet and The Algorithm. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 2011.
13 Photograph by the author. Cf. E. R. Castro e Costa. Modelação computacional e materialização digital de elementos clássicos de arquitectura. Master’s thesis in Architecture. Adenda. FAUTL, 2012.
14 Carpo. Op. cit., p. 23.
15 Ibid., p. 26.
16 Ibid., p. 47.
…modelo albertiano, a autoria tem constituído uma precondição para o trabalho do arquitecto.” Em resumo, “os objectos modernos (autorais, autorizados e reproduzidos identicamente) poderão também desaparecer no processo”.
17 Le Corbusier. Oeuvre Complète. 10ª ed., Vol. 1. Basel : Birkaüser, 1999, p. 104. Ed. orig. 1910-29.
18 L. B. Alberti. Descriptio urbis Romae. Ed. crítica, trad., fr. e comentário de M. Furno e M. Carpo. Paris: Droz, 2000. Ed. orig. 1450.
19 Heidegger. Op. cit., p. 35.