Reading Response 1 (Week 3)

This week's readings engaged in very different, and between them very comprehensive, analyses of the affinities between modern media and architecture. Discussions of circuitry, televisions, computers and networks all seemed to point more or less hopefully in the direction of a digital democracy founded on dematerialized forms with modular reassembly capabilities.

One topic I found especially interesting and that was taken up especially in Mark Wigley's "The Architectural Brain" and Aaron Betsky's "A virtual reality" is the idea that in our hyper-mediated society the surfaces and forms of bodies, buildings and networks become indistinguishable. Or rather, as Betsky has it, architects strive to make their designs indistinguishable from the digital tools with which they were created. While he views this trend towards architecture as an expression of our digital times poorly formulated, indulgent and as a process that seldom produces a successful building, Wigley posits a much more hopeful diagnosis, albeit arrived at via the investigation of artifacts and manifestos rather than completed building projects. The questions both seem to arrive at, questions Lev Manovich's article addresses more hopefully, are: "How does our total devotion to digital media and knowledge impact our relationship to space, and how should our spaces be constructed differently in light of that changing relationship?"

Interestingly, I found one of Paul Virilio's examples provided maybe the best way of thinking of this relationship between built environment and digital technology. His discussion of the television as a window from the living room onto the entire world that facilitates viewers' atrophy provides a helpful precedent in understanding how architecture might respond more cautiously to media technology. In the case of the suburban home, whose television and garage are its structuring elements, technology effectively eclipsed centuries of traditional home design in favor of completely unsustainable communities. Clearly, the stakes are very high, and to re-organize our entire system for living around a technology that is constantly evolving and perpetually consuming energy seems imprudent. Perhaps, as Manovich and Betsky seem to be advocating, the most elaborate and experimental adaptations of digital technology into architecture belong in public spaces and art galleries, where they are open to contemplation, experimentation and public scrutiny, rather than in spheres of direct influence like the home and office.

Many writers and architects seem over-eager to adapt the newest technologies to their latest building projects, and there is an unfortunate impulse towards throwing caution to the wind in favor of the new. Not to sound like a pessimist, but a little patience and planning will go a long way towards making our mediated architectural hybrids more livable, durable and sustainable.