Field Conditions

Hilary Sample presented a video of how the MOS house might be used if introducing the element of time.

In traditional architectural drawings, the program is a labeled and static element. The gymnasium is labeled as "gym", instead of showing how it's uses may change over time. The drawing fails to communicate how people and things move through the space. It does not propose how the gym may grow smaller or larger and start encompassing other spaces in the building according to a specific event in time.

If program is thought of as an element that changes according to time of day, year and long-term, then spaces can be arranged according to interactions and possibilities of movement within the school.

Looking at field conditions in nature is a way to think about program. As in the examples below, there are specific elements that remain constant but there is still a living element that is constantly changing and evolving over time according to outside environmental conditions. In a building, permanent elements are the walls, floors, and structural elements (maybe the dead load). Impermanent elements can be thought of as the live load - or the objects and people that encompass it. Weather, light, time, politics and culture could be influences on the building's field condition.


The cuttle fish's skin changes as it moves and interacts with its environment.



The brain activity of a human shows where concentration of brain usage shifts according to what a person is doing and thinking about. Therefore concentration in certain areas will be more prominent overtime, as the video shows.



Computer generated starlings, Starlings, Starlings, Clouds: In Craig Reynold's computer program that simulates the flocking of birds, he set up three rules: 1. the bird must maintain a min. distance from objects 2. birds must match velocities with other birds in the area 3. birds must move towards the perceived center.




One distinct thing that all these evolving systems have in common, is the inability to reproduce any form. Within each field is an infinite number of possibilities. This is because the evolution of their form depends on unpredictable interactions with their environment.


Gondry's chemical brothers video - how film can represent constant and changing elements in music:


Koolhaas' Parc de la villette - "The program by the city of Paris was too large for the site, leaving no space for a park. The proposed project is not for a definitive park, but for a method that - combining programmatic instability with architectural specificity - will eventually generate a park."

FAIRBANKS: A GENERATIONAL SHIFT IODERNE BECOMES ULTRA MANAGED
The problem with the modern: suppression of change, lack of time, organic life unacknowledged. There is too much emphasis on the physical rather than comprehension of space and time. A map of Manhattan's grid systems, subways, bridges, etc. in no way describes the unpredictabilities, flexibilities, usages and interactions that occur within what is thought as a rigid grid (but as Allen points out in his article, all grids are fields - but not all fields are grids). No map or method of drawing has been able to fully represent such a system. In the architectural field, there has been a shift to time-based works, and the article mentions a few architects who are thinking about this in their work:
http://www.marblefairbanks.com/
http://www.glform.com/
http://www.shoparc.com/
http://www.metaxy.com/

Stan Allen: The Field
Barry Le Va











Allen talks about how the evolution of art has led many post-minimalist artists to produce "field" artworks; or spacial fields implicated by sculptural work. Post-minimalism works involve the choice of materials. The artist does not have precise control over a material, but develops the conditions (or rules) of what will direct the flow of the material. The final art piece becomes the evidence of a time-based process since interactions between the artist and material become the form. Time and outside forces create the field condition of the material.

According to Cannetti, Crowds have four attributes: 1. The Crowd wants to grow. 2. There is equality in a crowd. 3. The crowd loves density. 4. The Crowd needs direction (maybe this is the "physical" architecture (?)).

Iannis Xenakis:

A field represents "change, accident, improvision." It leaves space for uncertainty.