Andre Kong - Dissertation-lasvegas

R E : L E A R N I N G F R O M L A S V E G A SBETWEEN DIGITAL AND URBAN SPACE

MRIO ANDR SAMPAIO KONG

MA ARCHITECTURE 201311,924 words

A dissertation thesis submitted in fulfilment of the MA Architecture course

at the Royal College of Art

2013

Andr Kong

11,924 words(excluding footnotes and bibliography)

R E : L E A R N I N G F R O M L A S V E G A SBETWEEN DIGITAL AND URBAN SPACE

A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S

I would like to thank my supervisor Barry Curtis for his invaluable support and patience. I would also

like to thank James Haldane for his advice and interest in discussing my work. Furthermore I would like

to extend my gratitude to Delmar Mavignier for providing me with AV equipment for my experiment,

and to those with whom I have discussed my ideas over the past year.

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C O N T E N T STitle

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

I N T R O D U C T I O N

C H A P T E R 1M O V I N G O N F R O M L A S V E G A S1.1 Vehicles of Change

1.2 Signs of the Built Environment

C H A P T E R 2VA R Y I N G ( O PA ) C I T I E S2.1 The Augmented City

2.2 The Embedded City

2.3 The Physical City

C H A P T E R 3L E A R N I N G F R O M A D I G I TA L D R I V E3.1 A Digital Situationist Experiment

3.2 New(er) Babylon(s)

C O N C L U S I O N

Bibliography

Appendix

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L I S T O F I L L U S T R AT I O N S

Figure 1: Photograph of the Las Vegas Strip taken by Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour pixelated by the author. (p.5-6)

Figure 2: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown driving down the Las Vegas Strip. < http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ullqN1TBFZc/TxrmguMfJ7I/AAAAAAAAKKI/Jwn1E7RuVIc/s1600/RobertVenturi%252BDeniseScottBrown.jpg> (p.9)

Figure 3: First edition of Learning from Las Vegas. < http://c2.bibtopia.com/h/380/953/507953380.0.m.jpg > and < http://www.bibliopolis.com/books/images/clients/raptisrarebooks/1167.jpg > (p.13)

Figure 4: The Google self-driving car. (p.15)

Figure 5: Citizens are increasingly isolated and distracted from the physical world. < http://technology.canoe.ca/2013/07/09/shutterstock_10.dba32104401.original.jpg> (p.17)

Figure 6: Crash Alert. < http://robohub.org/tag/crashalert/ >(p.17)

Figure 7: Type n Walk app. (p.19)

Figure 8: Le Corbusier, Plan Voisin, Paris, 1925. (p.19)

Figure 9: Geographical reality becomes blurred, whilst symbolic digital representations position and track you. (p.21)

Figure 10: Free Vodafone charging lockers for mobile electronics. (p.23)

Figure 11: The infamous iOS6 map upgrade distorting reality. (p.23)

Figure 12: Graphic representations of the sets of relations between different typologies at different speeds. (p.25)

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Figure 13: iPavement slabs. (p.25)

Figure 14: The Duck and the Decorated Shed in Learning from Las Vegas. Venturi, Robert, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour. 1993. Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (p.27)

Figure 15: A billboard and a pop-up ad - programmatic satellites. (juxtaposed by the author). and authors screenshot. (p.29)

Figure 16: The Las Vegas Strip signs (VSBI) and an overload of augmented targeted advertising (Mat-suda). (juxtaposed by the author) < http://www.gizmoweb.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/las-vegas-car-view-of-strip-14-1024x657.jpg > and (p.29)

Figure 17: Diagrams showing the symbolic character of architecture in Lodnon (by the author).(p.31)

Figure 18: Amazon warehouse near Milton Keynes and the front end Amazon app (juxtaposed by the author). and (p.33)

Figure 19: The Apple Campus 2 (Foster+Partners) and eight generations of iPhones. (p.35)

Figure 20: Still from Keiichi Matsudas Augmented (hyper)Reality: Augmented City (p.37)

Figure 21: (Clockwise from top left) Cellspace on a smartphone screen; Augmented reality over a drivers windscreen, NYSE Virtual reality trading floor (Assymptote Architects). (p.39)

Figure 22: To access digital information in the city, users must point their hand held devices to scan the city. (p.41)

Figure 23: Google Glass. Screenshot (p.41)

Figure 24: Ceiling fresco in the Church of San Ignazio, Rome, Andrea Pozzo. (p.43)

Figure 25: Billboard Building, Tokyo, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto. (p.43)

Figure 26: The skeumorphic iOS6 (left) and the new flat iOS7 interface. (p.45)

Figure 27: Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale (Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov)

tps://architizercdn.s3.amazonaws.com/thumbnails-PRODUCTION/ae/33/ae334f505aab-2c317b32d993a6c25780.jpg > (p.47)

Figure 28: Boulle, Deuxieme projet pour la Bibliothque du Roi (1785) (p.47)

Figure 29: Unlimited Yihaodian AR supermarkets, China. (p.49)

Figure 30: Tesco QR supermarket at an underground station, Seoul, Korea. (p.51)

Figure 31: Take a WiFi break with KitKat, Amsterdam. (p.53)

Figure 32: Robotic brick laying (Gramazio & Kohler Architects) (p.55)

Figure 33: Driftwood pavilion at the AA (2008/09) (Tutored by Charles Walker) (p.55)

Figure 34: Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour attaching a camera to their car, 1968. (Learning from las Vegas Research Studio) (p.57)

Figure 35: Stills from the clip, 1968 (Learning from Las Vegas Research Studio) Confidential Source.(p.57)

Figure 36: Guide Psychogeographique de Paris, Guy Debord. (p.59)

Figure 37: Abstraction of a smartphnone Google Maps directions whilst travelling. (by the author) (p.61)

Figure 38: Stills from the Digital Drift experiment video. (by the author) (p.63-64)

Figure 39: Constants New Babylon models. , , and (p.65)

Figure 40: PacManhattan uses the city streets as the Pacman corridors. (p.71)

Figure 41: Serendipitor app. (p.73)

Figure 42: Relativity, M.C. Escher, 1953 (lithograph). (p.75)

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Figure 1: Photograph of the Las Vegas Strip taken by Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour pixelated by the author.

Te c h n o l o g y i s r o o t e d i n t h e p a s t . I t d o m i n a t e s t h e p r e s -

e n t a n d t e n d s i n t o t h e f u t u r e . I t i s a r e a l h i s t o r i c m o v e -

m e n t o n e o f t h e g r e a t m o v e m e n t s w h i c h s h a p e a n d

r e p r e s e n t t h e i r e p o c h . 1

L u d w i g M i e s v a n d e r R o h e

2

1 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Technology and Architecture, 1950 in Rethinking Technology, ed. William W. Braham and Jonathan A. Hale (Oxon and New York: Routeledge, 2007), 106.

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Figure 2: Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown driving down the Las Vegas Strip.


Smartphones, tablets and other mobile media devices are increasingly common and affordable technologies. In its 2011 market report, Ofcom, the communications industry regulator, described the UK as a nation addicted to smartphones.2 As users interact with such equipment, they isolate themselves from the reality of the built environment they inhabit, refocusing their attention upon a digital interface displayed on a small screen. Yet, while on one hand such technologies disengage us from the immediate physical experience of the city, on the other their location-based services and social features often offer opportunities for reengagement with the urban context and society on a wider scale. This paradox gives rise to the question, how does the built environment respond to users who are increasingly shifting focus from their immediate physical context to engage instead in a virtual networked realm of digital life?

In Learning from Las Vegas it is suggested that speed enabled by the automobile impacts a drivers perception of space, influencing the production of architecture. (Fig.2) Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour quote from Appleyard, Lynch and Myers The View from the Road to describe the driving experience as a sequence played to the eyes of a captive, somewhat fearful, but partially inattentive audience, whose vision is filtered and directed forward.3 This altered perception is argued to have transformed architectural scale, hierarchy and symbol. The text draws on traditional typologies of public space and urban patterns as a tool for comparison.

This dissertation seeks to take the theory one step further by referencing these arguments to analogically speculate into the near future. It will examine the potential consequences of the shift in user attention on the way our buildings and cities will evolve. The automobile will be substituted with mobile technology, and Las Vegas with the future urban metropolis in an analysis additionally informed by observation of current social behaviour, urban and technological trends, and an understanding of past visions of future cities.

2 Ofcom, Communications Market Report, (London: Ofcom, 2011), p.4.3 Donald Appleyard, Kevin Lynch, and John R. Myer, The View from the Road, 1964, quoted in Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbol-ism of Architectural Form, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 74.

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These considerations will be interrogated alongside the 1972 analysis of the phenomena on the Strip, primarily explored in the texts Part One, as opposed to arguments made for postmodernism in Part Two and Three. In this canonical text, Las Vegas is analysed only as a phenomenon of architectural communication4 without questioning Las Vegas values, just as an analysis of the structure of a Gothic Cathedral need not include a debate on the morality of medieval religion.5 Similarly, to narrow the discussion at hand, the analysis will steer from interrogating the moral and social values of a mass dependency on pervasive digital media, acknowledging it is an issue but focusing exclusively on its effects on the urban environment.

Throughout the dissertation several references will be made to mobile media, portable devices, smartphones, tablets, pervasive digital media, handheld devices- terms that are ultimately interchangeable, simply refering to any form of digital electronic equipment that is portable and networked. Furthermore, due to the length of the texts title, and the number of authors, Learning from Las Vegas will often be abbreviated to LFLV, and Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour referred to as VSBI, for practical purposes.

Today, we are able to do more in less time, largely due to an increased networked informational mobility. But is it at the cost of the city, architecture and the real world, as we know them?

4 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgot-ten Symbolism of Architectural Form, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), p.6.

5 Ibid.11 | 12

Figure 3: First edition of Learning from Las Vegas.

C H A P T E R 1M O V I N G O N F R O M L A S V E G A S

From the first edition published in 1972, VSBIs Learning from Las Vegas, was immediately recognised as a radical statement in architectural history and theory it is one of the texts that came to shape postmodernism and influence the works of figures such as Fredric Jameson, Charles Jencks and Andreas Huyssen. (Fig.3) Aron Vinegar credits the text with permanently shifting architecture to the centre of cultural debates as a result of its identification and theorisation of the postmodern condition.6 It is a text that has acted as a catalyst between two schools of thought modernism and postmodernism.

Despite the fascination of Las Vegas as an instant city, wilfully created (by gangsters) to serve a relatively simple function in a very unpromising place, the location itself is not the subject of LFLV as VSBI openly state. In I am a Monument, Vinegar rightly emphasises that this text is in fact a departure from the actual city7, acting instead as springboard for a larger argument and more complex framework. Its lessons are useful beyond their site and more importantly for this research, beyond their time.

The text deals with themes of urban sprawl, the symbolism of architectural form and the effect of technology and the banal on architecture. Equally, this dissertation is not about Learning from Las Vegas; instead it is the point of origin from which it proceeds. It uses the text as an analogical instrument for analysis of current and future conditions affecting the development of space, representation and architecture.8

These relationships, and combinations between signs and buildings, between architecture and symbolism, between form and meaning, between driver and the roadside are deeply relevant to architecture today9

6 Aron Vinegar, I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2008), p.1.

7 Ibid.8 It is worth noting that in Learning from Las Vegas, Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour were learning from something that had already happened. However, this study is a projection into the future through lessons learnt.

9 Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 74.13 | 14

M O V I N G O N F R O M L A S V E G A S

Figure 4: The Google self-driving car.

The following two sections establish a conversation drawing from LFLV to explore a networked users experience of space through the themes of mobility and symbol.

1.1 Vehicles of Change

In iPhone City, a compelling essay questioning the handheld devices power to eclipse the physical city, Benjamin Bratton argues the smartphone is the new car, and that mobility has evolved from mechanical to informational. He defines this new mobility as inertial, where ensconced in out furtive provisional networks, the car is no longer the primary technology of mobility10. Michael Bull, author of Sound Moves, also establishes a link between the mobile device and the car, building on Roland Barthes 1957 essay on the Citroen DS, which in turn he compared to the Gothic Cathedral forming a narrative of increasing mobility and privatisation11. The comparison persists today, it is often argued digital portable devices have broken down human interaction, despite Lefebvres prior diagnosis of the automobile as the source of this problem.12

Nevertheless, the smartphone and tablet are not replacements for cars they are not substitute devices for mobility. Instead, they are extensions mobilising users at an informational level. They do not replace the need for physical mobility in actuality, the purpose for these devices is to achieve informational mobility in physical mobility. As Manuel Castels points out, telecommuting meaning people working fulltime online from their home is a myth of futurology.13 In I,Robot and other film fantasies set in the future, the car and the networked mobile device are seen to converge as the car is subsumed into a system of guidance and integration. In fact, there is no need to go as far as fantasy Google is already carrying out tests on driverless cars.14 (Fig.4) In sum, theory tends towards an increasing predominance of an informational mobility on the go, enabling a comparison between the car and the portable digital device.

*

10 Benjamin H. Bratton, iPhone City, Architectural Design (2009) John Willey & Sons, 92.11 Michael Bull, Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban Experience, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007), p.2.

12 Ibid., p.16.13 Manuel Castells, Space of Flows, Space of Places: Materials for a Theory of Urbanism in the Information Age, 2004, in Rethinking Technology, ed. William W. Braham and Jonathan A. Hale (Oxon and New York: Routeledge, 2007), 447.

14 http://www.google.co.uk/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/self-driving-car-test-steve-mahan.html (ac-cessed 20 June 2013)

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Figure 5: Citizens are increasingly isolated and distracted from the physical world.

Figure 6: Crash Alert.

In LFLV, the car is discussed as a technology of mobility, which brought about unprecedented speed and an altered perception of space impacting the expression of architecture. This distortion of the environment gives way to a place constructed as a communication system. The Strip values:

symbol in space before form in space. []This architecture of styles is antispatial; it is an architecture of communication over space, communication dominates space as an element in the architecture and in the landscape []a new landscape of big spaces, high speeds and complex programmes.15

Unlike the cars increased physical speed, which accelerates the reception of visual stimuli of the outside world, the mobile device physically slows its users down as attention is geared towards a screen, causing them to largely overlook the physical world. (Fig.5) In fact, proof of this phenomenon lies where both technologies overlap in most countries it is forbidden by law to use mobile devices whilst driving as both compete for attention and disable a users capacity to multitask.

*

Such pragmatic considerations extend to health and safety in buildings when people are no longer aware of their surroundings. Potentially, even hazard warnings would be synched to phones to alert a user of the dangers in physical space the same way road signs are placed to alert drivers at significant points in the network.

Indeed, this is already being researched Crash Alert (Fig.6) is an application that captures and displays information beyond the users peripheral view using a depth camera attached to a mobile device. The depth cameras field-of-view is orthogonal to that of the eyes-busy operator for increased peripheral awareness16, enabling a user to walk freely through a city, without the need to look away from the screen. The developer, Dr Juan Hincapi-Ramos describes the effect of handheld devices on perception:

The problem is that when are looking at your phone you are not only looking downwards, but you are also narrowing your field of vision because of the attention you are placing on the device.17

15 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 8.

16 Juan Hincapie Ramos and Pourang Irani, CrashAlert: Enhancing Peripheral Alertness for Eyes-Busy Mobile Interaction while Walking (Winnipeg, MB, Canada: University of Manitoba, 2013), p.1.

17 Anna Lacey, 2013, BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-22631731 (accessed 03 July 2013)

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Figure 7: Type n Walk app.

Figure 8: Le Corbusier, Plan Voisin, Paris, 1925

The camera is strategically adapted to the top of the mobile device so that when it is in the users hand it points forward in the direction of travel.

When it senses something approaching, it flashes up a red square in a bar on top of the phone or tablet. The position of the square shows the direction of the obstacle- giving the user a chance to dodge out of the way.18

Because the red square is positioned in the periphery of the screen, users can continue to use the tablet or phone in the same way, to read, message, browse or play games. Note that even on the screen, an awareness of obstacles is still peripheral, similarly to a real sense of proximity to objects around us. In this case, physical space is captured in the form of data and reinterpreted on a different plane and through a different medium, adapted to the users altered perception. The result has shown that in 60% of cases users have safely dodged obstacles, at a time when accidents are increasingly occurring as a result of portable device distraction.19

This application is a development from two other apps that have addressed this issue before. Type n Walk and Walk n Text are similar applications, with a concept of transparent texting where the user texts over the phones camera live stream, enabling a view through the phone (Fig.7). Although less symbolic than Crash Alert, it is not as effective because the camera will most often face the pavement. These applications require users to text with the phone in an upright position, which is disruptive to the ergonomics of smartphone design. Furthermore, it requires users to look at the whole screen attentively, competing for attention with the localised text message.

Intriguingly, Dr Joe Marshall, a specialist in Human-Computer Interaction, puts the design of mobile equipment at fault: The problem with mobile technology is that its not designed to be used while youre actually mobile. It involves you stopping, looking at a screen and tapping away.20

*

18 Ibid.19 A US study in the Journal of Safety Research showed that in 2008 there was a two-fold in-crease in the number of eyes-busy related accidents compared with the previous year. In other words, people are so busy looking at their phones or iPods, that they stop paying attention to their surround-ings. Ibid.

20 Ibid.19 | 20


Figure 9: Geographical reality becomes blurred, whilst symbolic digital representations position and track you.

It is important to remember that the extent of the automobiles impact on architecture extends beyond speed and its impact on perception; the car impacted urban infrastructure, aesthetic expressions, and changed social nature of the city. Preceding LFLV, there were several architects who addressed the automobile as a pervasive technology, including Wright and Le Corbusier whose domestic projects and urban planning integrated the automobile. Indeed, it was an automobile company that sponsored the unrealised Plan Voisin (Fig.8), and the influential foretaste of the future at the New York Worlds Fair 1939/40 was largely sponsored by GM and other automobile manufacturers, staging future cities that were entirely dependent on cars and road systems.21 More recently, Marc Aug22 has discussed the car in architectural theory, looking at character of transitory spaces brought about by increased mobility. Aug believes that supermodernity produces non-places,23 spaces without identity, culture or history. Yet with the portable media device enabling complete isolation anywhere, within globally connected bubbles, one could argue that any place could become a non-place. Moreover, one could argue that Las Vegas itself is an example where the automobile and the banal can itself establish culture, identity, and a distinct sense of place. Given the range of architectural reactions to the car throughout history, it seems only natural that architects respond to todays ubiquitous technologies capturing the zeitgeist of our times, in a plurality of responses.

*

Despite similarities in the technologies, there is an inherent difference between the connected mobile device and the car. Portable digital technologies establish a dichotomy between the isolated nature of the user in a physical environment and the ability to simultaneously unlock a whole new experience of the city through online services and GPS positioning. If on the one hand such media disengage us from our immediate physical experience of the city, on the other, their location-based services and social features offer opportunities for reengagement with the urban context and society on a wider scale. (Fig.9) Oxymoronically, whilst users are withdrawn from their surroundings, they are simultaneously provided with rich information to facilitate navigation and urban experience. The users proximity to the city is brought closer at an informational level where the user is able to source data and knowledge in real time about the immediate surroundings and anywhere else in the world. An enhanced different perception of personally customisable information, navigable in time, provides the user increased precision that would

21 http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/15-12/ff_futurama_original# (ac-cessed 05 August 2013)

22 Note Marc Aug is an anthropologist, but is being referred to here as an architectural theorist due to his relevance to the architectural discourse.

23 Marc Aug, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, 1995, quoted in Michael Bull, Sound Moves, 15.

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Figure 11: The infamous iOS6 map upgrade distorting reality.

Figure 10: Free Vodafone charging lockers for mobile electronics.

not otherwise be possible to know or read from looking at the environment first hand. The power of these devices thus extends to re-organise perception and, to an extent, suppress redundancy or inefficient wandering it is hard to get lost or to indulge in flneurial activities prized by the situationists.24

What are the implications for users who become over-reliant on this new form of digital perception? Arguably, dependency on these technologies reduces users own capacities to learn from reality to the point that without them they are literally lost. Indeed, one can observe how few people nowadays remember phone numbers (even of their closest relations) because of their ease of access stored in mobile phones.25 Likewise, names of streets are increasingly disregarded, so what happens when we are in a situation in which our city is no longer familiar because it is only ever experienced through a screen, as a symbolic representation of space? And what happens when technology fails or a device runs out of battery the dependency on a fuel to enable mobility in the city is a question raised in LFLV where it is observed that petrol stations and auto repair shops overpopulate the strip virtually between every building. This can be indicative of a future requisite for urban infrastructure to support a reliance on the digital world; wireless charging, fast charging hubs in the city, or battery replacement points are all potential components of a future vision of an electronic metropolis. Albeit a simple and relatively embryonic expression of this condition, mobile phone charging lockers already exist in electronics stores, airports and shopping malls. (Fig.10) However, what happens when technology fails? Consider, for example, the impact of the infamous iOS6 upgrade for iPhone maps which distorted aerial views into a melted vision of the city and misplaced people in virtual communication system (Fig.11)or the multiple news stories of people blindly following faulty GPS systems into rivers, cliffs and other life threatening situations.

1.2 Signs of the Built Environment

Considering Las Vegas architecture as a communication system invites us to think of an architecture that communicates digitally in the future.

[In Las Vegas] a driver 30 years ago could maintain a sense of orientation in space. At the simple crossroad a little sign with an arrow confirmed what was obvious. One knew where one was. [] But the driver [in 1972] has no time to ponder paradoxical subtleties within a dangerous sinuous maze. He or she relies on signs for guidance enormous signs in vast spaces at high speeds.26

24 Although such technologies may also have a playful effect as will be discussed in chapter three.25 Adam Greenfield, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, (Berkley, CA: New Riders, 2006), p.148.26 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 9.

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Figure 12: Graphic representations of the sets of relations between different typologies at different speeds.

Figure 13: iPavement slabs.

We must remember the differences in nature between the old grain of European cities and their younger counterparts in the US. Whilst the city planned for the car is largely wide and linear, often based on a grid system, European cities grew organically from medieval Old Towns with narrow, maze-like patterns that rely on a different understanding of space for navigation.27 However, the idea of signs in architecture, tailored (in this case, in scale) to an altered condition of perception extends to the present urban condition. The visual role of signs and directions on a screen locating places around you, the GPS direction arrow on Google Maps, and the ability to gain information from a distance, through symbolic representations of a reality from which one is detached, are equally relevant in their implications for designers of the built environment. In LFLV:

The cloverleaf and airport communicate with moving crowds in cars or on foot for efficiency and safety. But words and symbols may be used in space for commercial persuasion. The Middle Eastern bazaar contains no signs; the Strip is virtually all signs. In the bazaar communication works through proximity [] persuasion is mainly through the sight, [] on the Main Street, shop window displays for pedestrians along the side walks and exterior signs, perpendicular to the street for motorists, dominate the scene almost equally. [] On the commercial strip the supermarket windows contain no merchandise. There may be signs announcing the days bargains, but they are to be read by pedestrians approaching the parking lot.28

These sets of relations (Fig.12) between scale and speed call for a further iteration when analysing distraction by mobile devices. If on the one hand, those using such devices in a dense urban fabric are on foot and distance to buildings is short (therefore similar to the bazaar or Main Street), on the other, the level of visual disengagement is closer to that of the Strip. What then are the effects on the city? An apparent solution would be to turn to the pavement. As the user is looking down, it becomes an increasingly important component of the city, as a backdrop to mobile media, similarly to the Strip, where the side elevation of the building is important, because it is seen by approaching traffic from a greater distance and for a longer time than the faade.29

This could take various forms: digital displays over which you walk, showing information about the city, directions and advertising, a system of augmented reality overlaying information onto it, simple projection, or simply an analogue method of displaying physical information such as posters or signs on the ground. Alternatively, information could be added to the screen contextually, based on user location, thus bypassing the physical city.

27 As Colin Rowes ideas in Collage City on urban texture.28 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 9.29 Ibid., p.35.

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Figure 14: The Duck and the Decorated Shed in Learning from Las Vegas.

iPavement (Fig.13) is a new product that embeds intelligence within pavement tiles, collecting data, as well as providing WiFi and more accurate positioning in maps. It is a component of the internet of things, where everyday objects communicate with each other through embedded processors (further discussed in chapter two). However, this product works on the basis of proximity30 rather than on the visual advantage of the directional aspect of the users field of view.

*

In Las Vegas the architectural expression relies exclusively on symbol and scale to exist. Without the manipulation of these elements, it would not be noticed, which in turn would not attract people, bringing it to the end of its existence. It is described as a city where

symbol dominates space. Architecture is not enough. Because the spatial relationships are made by symbols more than by forms, architecture in this landscape becomes symbol in space rather than form in space. Architecture defines very little.31

As a result, VSBI categorised buildings on the strip as one of two archetypes- the duck and the decorated shed- both communicating and calling for attention. (Fig.14)

1. Where the architectural systems of space, structure, and programme are submerged and distorted by an overall symbolic form. This kind of building-becoming-sculpture we call the duck in honour of the duck-shaped drive-in, The Long Island Duckling, illustrated in Gods Own Junkyard by Peter Blake.

2. Where systems of space and structure are directly at the service of the programme, and ornament is applied independently of them. This we call the decorated shed.32

Both architectural expressions are advertisements for their commercial programme. The billboard is a more overt example of an element of the built environment that is part building but mostly advert is, as a

30 As you connect on the fly, a host of cloud-based pop-up apps offers localised information and services on your smartphone. Published through Viacities OS 2.0 -- the companys own operat-ing system -- apps include a digital street library of locally written works, a map pointing out nearby restaurants and attractions, a neighbourhood daily-deals newsletter and a real-time alert system about disrupted public services near the user. From http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/08/start/street-surfing-free-wi-fi-access-hits-the-road (accessed 05 July 2013)31 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 13.32 Ibid., p.87.

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Figure 16: The Las Vegas Strip signs (VSBI) and an overload of augmented targeted advertising (Mat-suda). (juxtaposed by the author)

Figure 15: A billboard and a pop-up ad - programmatic satellites. (juxtaposed by the author).

satellite to an architectural programme elsewhere. In todays society where most programmes (including cultural) are commercially driven, requiring target numbers of users/customers to justify their existence, the lack of attention on the built environment launches a provocation as the balance between existence in the material world is reassessed against its existence online. It may be that such satellites are online (Fig.15).

We are already bombarded with advertising throughout the day, both digital and analogue;33 we are unable to control the pervasive nature of intrusive pop-up ads, packaging, televised commercial breaks, product placement in film, music videos and computer games, and targeted advertising on social media. The emergence of premium account services for email, television (TiVo), gaming, and other online platforms, which suppress advertising, is indicative of a need to escape this constant disruption.34 In the film Minority Report, we are presented with a vision of personally tailored advertising enabled by augmented reality and user recognition. In Keiichi Matsudas video Augmented (hyper)Reality: Augmented City, we are presented a darker and cynical vision of a future where augmented reality advertising clutters domestic and urban surfaces to an overwhelming point, but to which the protagonist seems to be immune to. Interestingly, the graphical nature of Matsudas vision is remarkably similar to Las Vegas neon signs piling over one another (Fig.16).

In todays urban context, architecture, symbol, sign and direction operate differently to the patterns observed in LFLV in the 70s, hence these archetypes cannot be transposed simply across time and into a different spatial grain. In Las Vegas, there were essentially two types of sign the programmatic/promotional (the decorated shed and duck) and the directional/geographic (the road direction signs), both designed to be seen from a distance, at high speed. This is only possible due to the extensive and linear nature of the Strip as a continuous experience where signs are progressively revealed from a distance. If we consider present day London, we observe a far finer grain of signs in space (Fig.17). Similarly to Las Vegas, there are programmatic/promotional signs (shop fronts) and directional/geographic signs (street plaques), although these rely on direct proximity and designed to be read at walking speed. Comparatively, their scale is inferior to their counterparts in Las Vegas.

33 Christian Gaca, Advertisement in Video Games: Sell My Tears, Says the Game Publisher, in Space Time Play, ed. Friedrich von Borries, Steffen P. Walz and Matthias Bttger (Basel: Birkhauser, 2007), p.466.34 This is reminding of the scenario presented in the episode Fifteen Million Merits, in Charlie Brookers Black Mirror series where adverts are constantly being played and the characters are forced to use their credits to stop viewing them when they want to be in peace.

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Figure 17: Diagrams showing the symbolic character of architecture in Lodnon (by the author).

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Additionally, a new directional/programmatic/promotional type of built sign- the iconic35 or monumental building (tall buildings particularly), enables you to locate yourself within the city through relative visual proximity. In this respect, the building works at least as effectively- if not more- as a street sign in relaying geographical position. In The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch, explores the citys legibility analysing historical ways in which people have navigated the urban fabric. Besides signs, maps, street numbering conventions, and distinction in character between different parts of a city, Lynch highlights the importance of highly visible landmarks to allow people to situate themselves.36 Such types of sign buildings are also promotional, both as a recognisable home for the businesses within them, but also globally promotional and geographic, as national icons in a tourist industry.

With smartphones the whole sign paradigm changes- you enter a portal to infinite signs, a hybrid of all, chameleonic in nature, able to be directional, promotional, programmatic (able to host online content/business), personal and interactive. Their GPS tracking systems mean that one no longer needs to use visual queues from the built environment to position oneself spatially.

How does this system of signs in the city operate in conjunction to the reduced visual field examined in the last section? Does it require signs that are more experiential than directional? Such questions place architecture versus digital graphics. In a situation where a planar interactive interface dominates the physical environment one could argue that graphics dominate architecture and symbol dominates space for symbol and representation are the primary communication tools in digital space.

For example, consider the point when an online interface becomes more important than the building that houses its programme. In many ways this is already the case, where a company such as Amazon invests more in its digital interface than in its warehouses. (Fig.18) Similarly this is discussed in LFLV where the sign is more important than the architecture [which] is reflected in the proprietors budget37. What are the consequences when more time and thought is invested into the architecture38 of the website or digital experience than building that hosts it?

35 as referred to by Charles Jenks in The Iconic Building. 36 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1960), p.9.37 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 13.38 Curiously, the nomenclature applied to digital space is often taken from the construction of physical space the terms software architect, window or programme are directly borrowed from architecture. Indeed both involve planning for the way a person uses space, be it in terms of physical circulation (corridors) or hyperlink chains and content positioning focused on improving their user friendliness.

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Figure 18: Amazon Warehouse near Milton Keynes and the front end Amazon app (juxtaposed by the author).

William J. Mitchell discusses the death of the branch bank following the advent of ATMs and mobile online banking. Thus the digital has the ability to even disintegrate physical programmes and typologies, some which have existed for centuries (markets, post offices, supermarkets, banks, bookshops). Instead, only a sign of it is required, an advert, an online interface the same way casinos, albeit physical constructions of sheds, only existed as decoration and signs to attract people. Even programmes such as a caf or bar that are not able to be virtually replaced, are now seeking digital validation through geo-social media websites such as foursquare to attract business and establish online presence as referred to in marketing.

As Mitchell explains, banking organisations were no longer represented by their dignified high street facades, but by screen logos on ATM and personal computer screens39. Yet he also identifies that the end of one programme frequently sees the birth of a new one, such as large-scale back-office facilities, call centres, and server farms; often geographically decentralised in the form of industrial warehouses. It is inevitable to establish a relation between this phenomenon and the urban sprawl of Las Vegas.

In turn, such arguments question the obsolescence and life span of architecture and signs. In Las Vegas, VSBI consider the rate of obsolescence of a sign [] to be nearer to that of an automobile than that of a building40. Equally, the rate of obsolescence of mobile media is arguably closer to that of a sign than of a building. The difference in temporality between the two suggests that the latter may remain fixed whilst the first is ever changing, applied onto it the same way the billboard poster changes, but the structure that supports it remains, as well as the road and all the surrounding elements with which it converses. Indeed today there is a growing tendency for screens instead of billboards, which can be readily updated.41

This raises points concerning the speed of change in digital technology industries (and media) versus the building industry. Technology is developing at an exponential rate compared to the slow pace of architecture indeed, Moores Law states that the amount of processing power available at a given cost will double every eighteen months, indefinitely [] and take up half as much volume42. This is partly due to a difference in market scales, economics, and the inherent life cycle of the product of each industry where architecture takes longer to design and build, most often a one-off piece, conceived to last decades or centuries, and the mobile device is designed with planned obsolescence, mass produced, constantly being reengineered. Whilst it is true that architecture has reacted to the automobile since it was developed 120 years ago, comparatively it has evolved less than a mobile device media has in the last 30.

39 William J. Mitchell, e-bodies, e-buildings, e-cities in Rethinking Technology, 429.40 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, 34.41 Curiously, this was presented as a futuristic device in the film Bladerunner in 1982.42 Adam Greenfield, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, (Berkley, CA: New Riders, 2006), p.116.

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Figure 19: The Apple Campus 2 (Foster+Partners) and eight generations of iPhones.

Architecture simply may not be able to accompany such a fast evolving industry. For instance, plots of land for the new Apple Campus 2 designed by Foster+Partners were purchased in 2006 and the building is expected to open in 2016. Meanwhile, Apple launched the first iPhone and has since developed seven new models. (Fig.19) This challenges the Miesian call for an architecture that grows with technology, one becoming an expression of the other.43 Indeed, Martin Pawley argues that the modernists conscious desire to embed and express technology and machine qualities in their architecture were what led to their failure, disregarding the evolutionary aspect of technology and the obsolescence that it implies44. Peter Reyner Banham also points to the need for architecture to speed up in the final chapter of Theory and Design in the First Machine Age- he demonstrates how the modernism of Le Corbusier and Mies was posited on cars and aircraft whose forms evolved much more rapidly than the architecture.45

The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he will be in fast company [] if, on the other hand, he decided not to do this, he may find that a technological culture has decided to go on without him.46

Architecture has always appropriated technologies and material developments from other industries (naval, aerospace, etc) and has consequently been picking up from the past. But for architecture that contemporaneously dialogues with digital technology, it would have to be upgraded in the same way as its counterpart, the portable electronic, calling for an architecture of flexibility. It potentially becomes a blank canvas for an ever-changing digital programme that would in turn force us to question the boundaries of architecture where does construction of physical space end and digital space begin? Are the roles of software architect and architect converging and blurring?

43 Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Technology and Architecture, in Rethinking Technology, ed. Bra-ham and Hale, p.113.44 Martin Pawley, Technology Transfer, 1987, in Rethinking Technology, ed. Braham and Hale, p.298.45 Peter Reyner Banham Functionalism and Technology, 1965, in Rethinking Technology, ed. Braham and Hale, p.14746 Ibid.

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Figure 20: Still from Keiichi Matsudas Augmented (hyper)Reality: Augmented City

C H A P T E R 2VA R Y I N G ( O PA ) C I T I E S

In I am a Monument, Aron Vinegar discusses the modernist drive for expressive transparency against fantasies of absolute expression and inexpression in the Duck and the Decorated Shed.47 VSBI, criticise modernism for morally assuming that a buildings exterior should express interior in a dialogue between inside and outside. Instead, they advocate a contradiction of false fronts to express meaning and content achieving clarity through the use of rich visual symbolism.

On another level, the idea of transparency versus opacity can be observed in the cluttering of signs and symbols along the strip, in the city, and in a digitally mediated scenario. If, on the one hand, visions of an augmented city may provide transparency, by adding information of what happens behind solid walls- enabling a user to see beyond material, revealing data of a programme held within- on the other, its pervasive nature risks overexposing itself to advertising, to the extent that it prohibits users of viewing more (as envisioned by Matsuda) (Fig.20).

When discussing the boundaries between physical and digital space there are three main levels within a gradient from material to digital Cellspace, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality48. (Fig.21) In Cellspace, information is displayed on a smartphone or tablet. In AR, information is arranged as a digital layer over the users visual field to enhance physical space by augmenting it.49 In VR, all actions happen in virtual space; physical space becomes unnecessary, as the users virtual experience blocks perception of material reality. An example of this could be the online world of Second Life that literally allows people to live an alternative life.

These are not mutually exclusive types of space indeed, cell space is now beginning to offer AR space, by overlaying information over a smartphone cameras live feed. In The Poetics of Augmented Space- The Art

47 Aron Vinegar, I am a Monument: On Learning from Las Vegas, 50.48 The terms Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality shall be abbreviated to AR and VR, respec-tively. 49 Lev Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space: The Art of our Time, in Space, Time, Play, ed. von Borries, Walz, and Bttger, 253.

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VA R Y I N G ( O PA ) C I T I E S

Figure 21: (Clockwise from top left) Cellspace on a smartphone screen; Augmented reality over a drivers windscreen, NYSE Virtual reality trading floor (Assymptote Architects).

of our Time, Lev Manovich discusses the evolution of VR and AR describing the 90s as an escapist decade fascinated with the idea of virtual spaces and the ability to live in a parallel world.50 A paradigm shift is replacing the VR user in virtual space as the icon of the computer era, with physical space populated by electronic information-

The decrease in the popularity of VR in mass media and a slow but steady rise in AR-related research in the last five years are two examples of the ways in which the augmented space paradigm in now overtaking the virtual space paradigm.51

AR is often described in opposition to VR.52 One could argue, however, that if augmented reality becomes so dense that real space is mostly obscured, then it is closer to VR.53 As in architecture, technology is subject to plural development with opposing movements. Based on the course of change to date and current investment in different technologies, three scenarios will be discussed.

2.1 The Augmented City

What are the effects of augmented reality on the city? Firstly, it may resolve issues of directional engagement raised in chapter one. As the name implies augmented reality requires reality in order to exist; it uses the real world as we know it as a canvas to overlay information and visual graphics. So instead of looking down at a device in hand, the user if forced to look around to access the information sought. Currently this is still achieved using a smartphones back-camera to capture reality as a base for added data the handheld device becomes a scanner and digital display for the city. It requires the user to physically move the device and point at the city. (Fig.22)

50 Ibid., p.251.51 Ibid., p.253.52 Ibid., p.254.53 Interestingly, this reversal was arguably anticipated in the very origins of VR. In the late 1960s Ivan Sutherland developed what came to be known as the first VR system. The user of the system saw a simple wireframe cube whose perspectival view would change the as the user moved his head. The wire-frame cube appeared over whatever the user was seeing. Because the idea of a 3D computer graphics disposal whose perspective changes in real time according to the position of the user became associated with subsequent virtual reality systems, Sutherland is credited with inventing the first one. It can be ar-gued, however, that this was not a VR but rather an AR system because the virtual display was laid over the users field of vision without blocking it. In other words, in Sutherlands system, new information - a virtual cube - was added to the physical environment. Ibid., p.253.

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Figure 23: Google Glass.

Figure 22: To access digital information in the city, users must point their hand held devices to scan the city.

However, Google Glass, the next generation of augmented reality will soon be commercially available in 2014. (Fig.23) The revolutionary aspect of this technology for communications and mobility is it is hands free and placed directly in front of a users viewing field. Glass avoids the need to look down and potentially solves problems of isolation bubbles and inattentiveness when using portable handheld devices.54 Regarding maps and way finding, directions could quite literally be overlaid onto the pavements freeing the user to re-engage with the city. Though curiously, UK drivers have preemptively been banned by the DfT from using it whilst driving,55 suggesting it may be more of a distraction than is thought, despite eliminating distractions by GPS screens on dashboards.56

Regardless, AR points to an increasingly transparent architecture. Users will see beyond buildings, accessing relevant inside them, in real time, or even see inside, without needing to enter them57. But as we have discussed, existing buildings could sell their facades and surfaces to companies for advertising, or business could use their own building facades, applying a front like the decorated shed. In this case, digital camouflages the real, and transparency becomes relative. In this case Manovich describes how an augmented space gains a new dimension-

We can say that various augmentation and monitoring technologies add new dimensions to a 3D physical space, making it multidimensional. As a result, physical space now contains many more dimensions than before, and while from the phenomenological perspective of the human subject, the old geometric dimensions may still have priority, from the perspective of technology and its social, political and economic applications, they are no longer more important than any other dimension.58

54 Furthermore, one should question its hands free nature Glass is controlled by voice com-mands, but as witnessed from sophisticated voice activated features on smartphones such as Apples Siri, such features have not been adopted on regular basis possibly because of the social implications of utter-ing commands and dictating text messages in public, or perhaps it is a human condition to prefer haptic interactions.55 http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/jul/31/google-glass-drivers (accessed 17 July 2013).56 Contradictorily, most research involving augmented or virtual reality has been supported by the military at some point in time to enhance the mobility experience. (Wayne Piekarski and Bruce H. Thomas Outdoor Augmented Reality- Technology and the Military, in Rethinking Technology, ed. Braham and Hale, p.438.57 IKEA catalogues now offer AR features where you can scan a page and see inside cupboards, mattresses etc58 Lev Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space: The Art of our Time, in Space, Time, Play, ed. von Borries, Walz, and Bttger, 252.

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Figure 25: Billboard Building, Tokyo, Yoshiharu Tsukamoto.

Figure 24: Ceiling fresco in the Church of San Ignazio, Rome, Andrea Pozzo.

This argument poses a significant question for architects: what are the implications of designing a three-dimensional space that will house further dimensions? Architects have always dealt with time, but this temporal dimension is new and continuously changing. It will transform the phenomenological experience of the spaces created. Indeed, Manovich and others see this problematic as an opportunity for many architects to rethink their practice59. The question relies on layering contextually dynamic digital data over material space- a superficial layer flickering over the skin, transforming an inert space into a an interactive interface, personal to each user. Other than in Las Vegas, in the past, architects and artists have dealt with themes relevant to augmented space in the future if we consider trompe loeil renaissance frescos, Opart artists, or architects that have used text or image as an integral part of their designs, they were dealing with a conversation between form and surface, between narrative and information, between illusion and reality. (Fig.24 and 25)

If the phenomenology of space is to be ultimately created by this new infinitely thin dimension- is currently more in the realm of computer graphics than that of architecture as we know today- we are left questioning the role of architects. We are already working within an industry that is increasingly fragmented, as buildings become more technically complex, broken down into packages of different specialities60. Large corporate contractors who provide total solutions now often replace the traditional role of the architect, who was until recently the coordinator of all these variables, a master of all trades. Already in 1987 this was a concern Martin Pawley bitterly describes the role of the architect, and the increasing superficiality of the profession (both literally and symbolically).

The power of the architect over construction has shrunk to the literally superficial: a thin skin on the front a new building, like the badge on the nose of a car; a small feature on the outside of a refurbished building; a bureaucratic role in the filling of applications and the authorisation of payments.61

This argument reinforces its close connection to Las Vegas in that buildings are not necessarily designed by architects, surface is the dominant component of communication and the banal is celebrated as an equally valid visual expression in space.

However, a reduction in architectural expression to serve as canvas for the digital need not mean shed as it is employed in LFLV (as a canvas for decoration). Instead, a use of a more muted palette of materials and

59 Ibid.60 (mechanical and environmental, structures, faade engineering, lighting, etc)61 Martin Pawley, Technology Transfer, 1987, in Rethinking Technology, ed. Braham and Hale, p.297.

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Figure 26: The skeumorphic iOS6 (left) and the new flat iOS7 interface.

minimal architectural expression, without necessarily compromising building quality.62 Unexpectedly, the postmodernist character of an infinitely thin digital layer of symbol and signs applied to the city as attractors, may call for architecture of minimal expression. Considering that modern architects abandoned a tradition of iconology in which painting, sculpture, and graphics were combined with architecture63, how does the application of this visual layer (of seemingly banal pieces of virtual graphics) co-exist on a modern architecture? Interestingly, even graphics and signs are increasingly tending towards simple and clean geometries and colour palettes. The new iOS7 has stepped away from skeuomorphism using real-world textures like wood or leather to a flatter look that has already been adopted by Windows, Google and the principal social media channels. This raises a question for architects what is the materiality of the digital and how does it sit with that of the physical? Are we moving to an architecture of surface, of superficiality?

*

The Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale is an example of an architecture designed as a platform for augmented reality. The inside of the building, consisting solely of QR codes as cladding tiles over pure geometric solids, form a scannable surface, to be viewed with tablets. (Fig.27) Here we are seeing an architecture designed to be experienced through the handheld device. Its materiality is embedded with uniqueness (in the sense that each tile is different) but an overarching generic quality that is detached from context, repeatable, yet potentially able to become more contextual at a digital level, enabling personally tailored responses that a traditional architecture is unable to provide. The resultant expression of a digital platform architecture is a minimal and formal one, designed as a surface. Though ironically, it looks rather dated in its architectural language, reminiscent of the neo-classicist architecture of Boulle. (Fig.28) Interior and exterior are totally disconnected is this a shed for digital decoration? Ultimately one has to question the validity of this architectural experiment does it hold more value than mere novelty and gimmick? Alternatively one could argue that this may be an early example of a generic architecture in which programme can change by altering digital space rather than building.

Flexible cities and spaces are one of the main potentials that AR brings to the architectural discourse. For decades architects concerned themselves with flexibility of spaces, hybrid programmes, moving partitions, reconfigurable frameworks, but none have ever been able to fully realise their intentions. Primarily this is due to constructed material spaces nature: it is inherently inert and thus requires artificial mobility devices such as hinges and sliding rails to create the illusion of flexibility. Thus AR unexpectedly revives

62 as is the case in Las Vegas, where quality of finish is compromised. 63 Venturi, Scott Brown, and Izenour. Learning from Las Vegas, p.7.

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Figure 28: Boulle, Deuxieme projet pour la Bibliothque du Roi (1785)

Figure 27: Russian Pavilion at the 2012 Venice Biennale (Sergei Tchoban and Sergey Kuznetsov)

1960s utopias such as Archigrams Plug In City in their aspirations for adaptable and activist potential.

Acknowledging the possibilities of immaterial architecture opens the door for action that penetrates, extends and dissolves material space as a classical field for architecture. Due to the influence of new media and digital technologies on architecture, approaches are once again being formulated that are increasingly turning to the dynamic, traversal and performative character of architecture and urban development.64

*

What is architecture when digital and physical space is continuous and seamless? What are its implications and what does it look like? Unlimited Yihaodian is a chain of 1000 augmented reality supermarkets. Unlike the Russian pavilion, here there is no physical construct built to support the digital instead it is the city itself that is barcode and canvas. (Fig.29) This is a curious phenomenon because the digital supermarket, in a sense is just a visitable virtual model in which one is essentially doing online shopping it provides no shelter, has no stock in loco, and is therefore unable to provide the benefits of physical shopping. Yet it represents itself as a building of a supermarket as we know it. Even though it could be anything the most spectacular of all shopping experiences, a traditional architectural memory of the banal supermarket is elevated to an archetype. It turns the image of a regular supermarket building (that would otherwise physically constitute more of a decorated shed) into a new type of virtual duck only perceivable through the lens of a camera on a mobile phone. One could argue that this type of intervention could have a role in instantly regenerating vacant sites and derelict parts of a city as it turns an otherwise mundane experience into a game-like scenario, able to be instantly virtually deployed in any vacant space. In this instance, nothing in physical space is designed for AR but instead AR is designed around the already existing physical space. It poses the question will the built environment even need to react to the use of augmented reality?

From one perspective, following the established logic of the automobile and its impact on architecture, we are led to believe that technologies of mobility and AR will impact the city. Yet, in the same instance, this is a new type of mobility that transcends physical space requiring little from it; the automobile required roads, and therefore it required pavements for pedestrian safety, and street signs for order. With its physical mobile agents (cars) it established the lines of the city, the sizes of spaces- they imposed conditions that affected the city at multiple scales. Nevertheless, AR is an ever-changing immaterial layer, which may in fact require the existing world as we already know it to operate- it requires the surfaces we already inhabit

64 Lev Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space: The Art of our Time, in Space, Time, Play, ed. von Borries, Walz, and Bttger, 220.

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Figure 29: Unlimited Yihaodian AR supermarkets, China.

to enable its existence, its visualisation. Without the physical world AR simply becomes VR and at that point ceases to be a participative agent in everyday life.

It is the very nature of AR that perhaps requires architecture as we traditionally know it, without any radical physical manifestation as a support platform for AR to work - it requires a familiarity of objects, and spaces to enable the data overlaid to be understood within those familiar contexts in which it appears. For example, would the game ARQuake65 be as engaging if it were to be played in a city designed as neutral surfaces for the display of augmented information? It would cause it to depart from the very principal of takingthe game from a computer screen into the real world. In this case it is not that architecture as slow moving industry is unable to keep up with technological transformation, but that instead, to exist, this type of technology requires a familiar environment.

2.2 The Embedded City The Internet of things or everyware is a growing branch of technology that can influence if and how portable digital devices impact constructed space. In the Internet of things, everyday objects communicate with each other through embedded processors; it has less of an impact on the way the world looks as we know it, but is completely revolutionary in user interaction and the way systems work. If we accept the line of reasoning that AR may require the world to remain familiar, then this phenomenon would augment physical space to an even greater extent. Adam Greenfield describes everyware as virtual reality turned inside out.66 It does not require graphic augmentation to convey information to a user; in augmented reality the user is still the sensor and decision maker. In everyware this step is surpassed and reactions become automatised. For example, instead of reading a hologram of the weather to know whether to wear a raincoat, your clothes are embedded with sensors and change their permeability in accordance with live data received from other sources. In everyware, the garment, the room and the street become sites of processing and mediation.67

Ultimately, this could free users from distraction, refocusing and returning their attention to surrounding physical space, home to millions of embedded microprocessors and sensors connected to one another. Many cinematic visions of what the future would be like today are considerably more aesthetically

65 A version of the popular computer game Quake using augmented reality over in the citys buildings.66 Adam Greenfield, Everyware: The Dawning Age of Ubiquitous Computing, (Berkley, CA: New Riders, 2006), p.73.67 Ibid., p.1.

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Figure 30: Tesco QR supermarket at an underground station, Seoul, Korea.

futuristic than our present reality, as technology has taken more visually subtle forms, embedded into existing objects and woven into the fabric of existing cities in a colonisation of everyday life by information technology.68

Indeed the idea of the familiar as a new interface for information technology is beginning to establish itself. We are beginning to see bracelets that sense and report on your health and fitness, remote control of domestic appliances, light and heating, and dustbins that alert municipal services when they are nearing capacity. Despite being invisible and retaining essentially the qualities of architecture as we know today, everyware has the potential to adapt architectural surfaces to create conditions that adapt to a users state, from colour or reflectivity of materials and temperature to lighting levels. In part these are more dependent on developments in material technology, but will be products for architects to specify and orchestrate in a manner closer to how architecture is designed today. Greenfield describes a routine scenario where

by entering a room, you trigger a cascade of responses on the part of embedded systems around you. Sensors in the flooring register your presence, your needs are inferred (from the time of the day, the presence of others, or even the state of your own body), and conditions in the room are altered accordingly.69

In this passage we are reminded of the potential importance of the floor as a surface in the future, regardless of whether the scenario is one that is augmented, physical or reliant on embedded processing. In many ways this resumes the developments of the raised service floor in the 1970s as the perfect platform for sensors to transmit information, and an adequate interface to display information.

With increased integration and permeation of the Internet of things, automation between actions and objects will escalate, affecting the reliance on handheld devices discussed in chapter one. Indeed, we may even witness a scenario where smartphones return to their origins as devices solely used for communication as additional features that have been integrated over time become embedded within their respective objects that requiring that information.

In this scenario the Internet ultimately becomes entrenched in everyday life, and consequently by default will also become integrated into architecture. In such future, instead of being distracted, people would engage with architecture more intimately than ever as it becomes interface for information and interactivity. Nonetheless it potentially exposes architecture and the intimacy of the home to hacking just

68 Ibid., p.33.69 Ibid., p.37.

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Figure 31: Take a WiFi break with KitKat, Amsterdam.

like any other networked device, where personal information may be obtained, as a networked space is also monitored and surveyed.

2.3 The Physical City

Despite the increased convenience of access and purchase, the comprehensive availability of descriptions, previews and online customer reviews, Amazon customers are often known to browse high street bookshops before buying online, effectively using physical bookstores as showrooms. This phenomenon depicts a humans need to interact with physical objects to assess their value. In an underground station in Seoul, a wall covered in an image of Tesco supermarket shelves present items with QR codes to be scanned for purchase. (Fig.30) Like the Russian Pavilion, it is a scannable space, though this project attempts to emulate the familiar physical version of the digitised programme: the supermarket shelf. This is a two-dimensional representation of the goods as advertising sign and symbol it states I am a Supermarket. This new type of sign substitutes a physical architectural typology of the supermarket or the market; programme is online and architectural vestige is a sign. Is this a duck?

Located on an underground platform, a node of physical mobility, it attempts to combine two programmes for an ultimate architectural expression of convenience and speed. Ironically we should question why this physical manifestation is even required when customers can simply log onto the online stores to shop from anywhere. On the one hand this is counter-intuitive to its digital nature, but also provides evidence of the human need for physicality, which may be a sign that total virtuality will never truly prevail.

In many technologies and in a majority of case studies discussed thus far, we have often witnessed vestiges of a need to retain parts of the material world: in the visual memory of a supermarket, in skeuomorphic smartphone interfaces, or the built environments role in AR. Despite the excitement offered by the Internets digital realm, designers and users are seemingly reluctant to let go of the physical world, concerned of getting lost in an overwhelming world of infinite data and interactions. This may indicate a radically different route for architecture in a digitally distracted world. It presents the possibility of a backlash, a complete reversal of the technological trends, where architecture stops trying to keep up with the exponential speed of technology, and actually heads in the opposite direction, becoming an alternative to it. In such a scenario, architecture could literally provide a safe haven from being connected, operating as fortresses in a world where outdoors everyone is continuously monitored online. In a way this could paradoxically embody the aspiration for architecture to capture the zeitgeist of our times, not by becoming integrated but by completely stating that we as humans need a way out of it to protect our reality.

Indeed, there is evidence of a desire for this in a light-hearted advertising campaign KitKat played on their slogan take a break, and introduced No Wi-Fi zones in Amsterdam, which block wireless

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Figure 33: Driftwood pavilion at the AA (2008/09) (Tutored by Charles Walker)

Figure 32: Robotic brick laying (Gramazio & Kohler Architects)

signals within a radius of 5 meters.70 (Fig.31)This is perhaps an early urban manifestation of a growing countermovement to our increasingly networked society. In many ways, the arts and crafts movement as well as steampunk provide us with historical precedents to a counter current to technology.71

The arts and crafts movement arose as a response to the rapid pace of industrialisation in the nineteenth century. In many ways, there are similarities to the digital revolution- like digital services, factory-made goods resultant of the industrial revolution increased standards of living and speed of life. Though these improved standards also carried drawbacks: industrial towns became polluted, covered in soot, and Pugin believed it corrupted moral and spiritual values.72 The arts and crafts movement was a reaction to such issues, with Ruskin, Morris, and Shaw, amongst others, championing the value of the artistic quality of handcrafted products and associated social values. They believed that through a return to individually crafted products, society would slow down and have time for reflection that would lead to greater social harmony.73

In the future, we could see a return to an architecture that rejects the integration of processors, or digital augmentation, but instead praises carefully crafted design with artistic quality. This may well be the case. But realistically, we live in a world where digital fabrication is rapidly expanding. Despite qualifying as digital processes, 3D printing, laser cutting and CNC milling are highly personal processes and tools that enable greater precision, customisation and craft; they put the artist or designer back in control of their tools, without a middle man factory, except human control is now of a computer instead of a hammer or chisel. (Fig.32 and 33) Thus even in a society that values material culture as an alternative to the digital, it is important to highlight that material itself has been digitally mediated. Here, opacity is restored, as is privacy in physical space, in parallel to a digital world in a constant state of flux.

70 http://popupcity.net/marketing/kit-kat-introduces-no-wi-fi-zones/ (accessed 04 May 2013)71 Some aspects of postmodernism (particularly in the works of Aldo Rossi and Leon Krier) also suggested that the right direction for architecture was to reprise its ancient monumental and symbolic functions.72 Marian Moffet, Michael Fazio, Lawrence Woodehouse, A World History of Architecture, (Lon-don: Lawrence King, 2003), p.448.73 The theme of return to the real to issues of affect nostalgia, texture and sensuality is a theme present in movements like steampunk but also in the subtle luxuries of high end branding. Interest-ingly, todays steampunk followers who visually adapt modern technologies (such as laptops or handheld devices) nostalgic of a material past, are reminiscent of an industrialised mechanical age, the same age that arts and crafts movement itself was trying to escape from. Perhaps it is a case of constant nostalgia, fixated on the golden plated narratives of an inaccessible time.

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Figure 35: Stills from the clip, 1968 (Learning from Las Vegas Research Studio)

Figure 34: Robert Venturi and Steven Izenour attaching a camera to their car, 1968. (Learning from las Vegas Research Studio)

C H A P T E R 3L E A R N I N G F R O M A D I G I TA L D R I F T

Research collated by VSBI with students from Yale University, is partly comprised of a collection of clips capturing the drivers experience down the Strip, filmed attaching a camera to the front of a car.74 (Fig.34 and 35) The video captures the issues raised in chapters one and two- speed of mobility and symbol in architecture. In many ways it is resonant of Baudelaires ideas of the flneur, the experiential drifter, but on wheels.

At first, signs, directions, precision and advertising media may seem like anti-situationist themes. However, in this video they are captured from a phenomenological experience of space- in an experiential journey. Arguably, the smartphone represents the antithesis of the situationist agenda, but simultaneously, online space seems to be the closest experience to the blurred situationist vision, manifesting in a form situationsits would not have been able to imagine in the 50s.

Situationist theory yearned for a world of playfulness and spontaneity in the city. Situationsits were nostalgic for a time when artists, architects, and designers had pursued disparate, open-ended experiments, for a time when the conditions of modern life above all the relationship between man and machine had been addressed head-on.75 They have often been regarded as an early source of a postmodern condition,76 and therefore are of particular relevance when discussing LFLV against the effect of pervasive modern technologies on the experience of the city. One can draw parallels between the situationist models of the spectacular and the anti-spectacular, with VSBIs analysis of the banal, challenging the perceptions of traditional design values and both skeptical of the moral high ground put forward by modernism. However, Sadler notes that

claims on situationism as a postmodern source need to be qualified; situationism would have abhorred postmodernisms celebration of the meaningless forest of consumer signs and objects. One likely bridge between situationism and postmodernism was the breakup in aesthetic

74 A technique borrowed from the artist Ed Ruscha.75 Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), p.5.76 Ibid., p.40.

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L E A R N I N G F R O M A D I G I TA L D E R I V E

Figure 36: Guide Psychogeographique de Paris, Guy Debord.

decorum presided over by the so-called anti-design of the 1960s.77

Hence, both the situationists and VSBI were interested in a departure from Le Corbusiers rationalist planning and experience of mobility in space. As Sadler notes, the situationists looked forward to pleasurable speed and mobility through the city at large, but not to its degeneration.78 However, it is important to remember that on the whole situationists were concerned about the introduction of technology into everyday life, seeing this as a threat to peoples individuality and creativity.

3.1 A Digital Situationist Experiment

Psychogeography was defined by Debord, as the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.79 It involves a playfully productive attitude, distinguishing it from simple pastimes.80 Importantly, psychogeography recognised

the self cannot be divorced from the urban environment; on the other hand, it had to pertain to more than just the psyche of the individual if it was to be useful in the collective rethinking of the city.81

This highlights the psychogeographic nature of smartphones and tablets, as they are both individualistic and social, offering opportunities for a joint reassessment of urban space. But unlike the experience offered by these devices, drifters were people alert to the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there capable as a group of agreeing upon the distinct spontaneous preferences for routes through the city.82 This emphasises that in reality, their activities were to some extent organised, with only some spontaneous elements to a journey. Furthermore, the drift unlocked an original way of surveying the city that was then represented on paper in situationist maps like Debord and Jorns Guide Psygeoraphique de Paris. (Fig.36) The situation is reversed in wayfinding apps, where a new method of representation of space in time, creates a different way of exploring and surveying the city. Whereas situationists were trying to immerse themselves in the city, at eye level, or in abstracted cartographical compositions, applications

77 Ibid.78 Ibid., p.30.79 Guy Debord, Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography, 1955, in Situationist Interna-tional Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, (Berkley, California: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981), p.5.80 Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), p.77.81 Ibid.82 Ibid.

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Figure 37: Abstraction of a smartphnone Google Maps directions whilst travelling. (by the author)

such as Google Maps do the opposite in floating above the city allowing you to experience something one cannot do in person.83

Curiously, the way in which commuters on public transport often use these applications is somewhat abstracted in that they only experience the geographical mapping of points of transfer in a journey, where the journey itself is skipped and suppressed by pressing a forward arrow to the next point of action. In many ways if it were to be mapped out on paper, a users experience would show the space represented around transport nodes, and the space in-between represented as empty space as in Debord and Jorns guide- except they were attempting to map the opposite, the parts of the city that had not been destroyed by capitalism. (Fig.37)

To better understand the issues at hand I decided to carry out an experiment and walk around London using my smartphone to perform tasks whilst filming my field of view- in similar fashion to VSBI in the car. The experiment was a digital drive, wandering through the city, to make observations on the experience of travelling in the city inside a virtually connected bubble instead of on the city itself. The edited footage portrays how indeed mobile media provides privatised citizens with the means to create islands of communicative warmth in oceans of urban chill.84 (Fig.38)

Wandering sometimes aimlessly, amidst strangers, I was continuously connected in communication with friends through texting, calling and social media interactions. The power of absorption of the content on a screen enables one to get lost in the city whilst drifting- even in Piccadilly, a highly central and graphically charged place, if you no longer recognise the street you are in you can completely loose geographical sense. This is due to the fact that the route that took you there has not been registered in your mind.85

Perhaps unsurprisingly, when I met a friend for lunch, I observed that whilst both of us were chatting, we were simultaneously checking updates and notifications on our phones, engaging in conversations over content broadcast online by other friends or strangers. The smartphone is both used as a tool for social isolation and interaction as a source for topics of conversation.

83 Although Google Street View enables users anywhere in the world to drift through any city in a VR-like experience. 84 Michael Bull, Sound Moves, p.9.85 For Benjamin, urban technology [had] subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training. (1973:171) This training enables the subject to retreat from urban space through neutralising it. Technologies of separation such as the iPod, the mobile phone and the automobile have progressively empowered the urban citizen precisely by removing them from the physicality of urban relations. Michael Bull, Sound Moves, p.28.

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Figure 38: Stills from the Digital Drift experiment video. (by the author)

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Figure 39: Constants New Babylon models.

Furthermore, even when interacting with a space that has been purposely visited like the V&A Museum (as oppose to transitional space one has no choice but to visit to move between places), there is a tendency for the mobile device to distract a user, even if it is to augment the exhibition, searching for more information of an object that is being viewed. The moment I notice an interesting installation piece, it becomes mostly admired through the phones digital camera to upload onto social media.

Equally in the act of following a map on a screen, the notions of space become fully distorted as distraction is not necessarily connective, but numbing, where the surroundings physical environment is not appreciated, but equally the arrow on the map may not need attention if one can see that it is heading straight to the end of a road that one is already on yet a sort of obsessive desire to know precisely the location and the time of arrival forbids a sense of encounter with the city, in favour of speed, precision and digital consumption.

Mobile devices are thus mostly anti-situationist in that most utilities are made to increase efficiency and speed of life. But, at the same time social participatory tools and playful applications support situationist theory and the idea of an endless transformative space.

3.2 New(er) Babylon(s)

New Babylon is an example of a situationistic counter-design to Modernisms functionalisation and realisation mechanisms for architecture and town planning.86 Constant Nieuwenhuys influential experimental vision for a city for drifting, brought architecture, social critique, art and politics together under a free-form, flexible, endless programmatic space. Constant aimed to evoke new experiences in the city, fostering playfulness and social interactions.87 He argued, the more perfectly defined the form, the less active is the onlooker.88 New Babylonians would be able to physically reorganise the streets they walked through in a floating flexible framework of light trusses, moving panels and lighting effects, for playful living. (Fig.39)

Today, New Babylon seems almost like a spatial-pictorial prototype of the computer-generated worlds of the world wide web. Both define models of liberated, collective creation and interaction

86 Lukas Feireiss, New Babylon Reloaded: Learning from the Ludic City, in Space, Time, Play, ed. von Borries, Walz, and Bttger, 218.87 Simon Sadler, The Situationist City, p.129.88 Constant Nieuwenhuys, Reflex Manifesto, Reflex (Amsterdam 1948), trans. Leonard Bright in Willemijn Stokvis, Cobra (New York: Rizzoli, 1988), pp.29-31, quoted in Simon Sadler, The Situation-ist City, p.141.

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within apparently open and incomplete systems by dissolving linear and hierarchical order structures.89

Indeed, New Babylon can almost be seen as a clouded premonition or an anticipated desire for the Internet, at a time when such space could not have been imagined the way it is today. Many of Constants aims were simply unfeasible to achieve in a material world where total freedom and flexibility is conditioned by a fixed framework, no matter how flexible its design is. Portable devices such as tablets and smartphones offer exactly what situationists had envisioned, full flexibility of interactions and playfulness anywhere in the city, on the move.

One can extract architectural objectives from New Babylon that can be put forward as hypotheses for the future development of our urban spaces; Constant created ambiences he promised would see the total suppression of volume even wanting to get rid of sunlight to create new environments.90 In many ways this sounds like a proposal for AR architecture, engaging with the visual sense in a richer an

Andre Kong - Dissertation-lasvegas

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