5. transArchitecture

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Just as the printed book dethroned architecture, the computer is dethroning the book. In the space of virtual dimensions that has been created, architecture has arisen anew as transArchitecture: an architecture beyond architecture, mediating the transition between actual and virtual in the manner that conventional architecture mediated between knowledge and experience, humanity and nature, inside and outside, public and private, need and excess. transArchitecture is the architecture of hyperlinked hyperspace.

transArchitecture attempts to mend the rupture between knowledge and architectonic exploration. It brings knowledge that has been put on standing-reserve back into the realm of poietic experience.

transArchitecture, architecture beyond architecture, is an architecture of heretofore invisible scaffolds. It has a twofold character: within cyberspace is exists as liquid architecture that is transmitted across the global information networks; within physical space it exists as an invisible electronic double superimposed on our material world.

With the development of a nonlocal public domain enabled by the information space we call cyberspace, the relation between scaffold and carapace is inverted and bifurcated. Although both are now liquid and variable, the scaffold is no longer temporary and subservient and the carapace is no longer that by which the scaffold is justified. There is a doubling and a redoubling: first, transArchitecture doubles in order to exist both within information space and within familiar physical space; second, each of these branches is redoubled into visible and invisible form.

Within cyberspace, the visible aspect of transArchitecture becomes activated in potentially fantastic forms, while the invisible aspect is takes on the form of a purely virtual topology of connectivity and interactivity. Outside cyberspace, the situation is reversed. The visible aspect of transachitecture is identical to the architecture we normally inhabit while the invisible aspect creates multiples of physical volume and activates them by establishing regions of space that sense and act intelligently and that connect us to other physical or virtual spaces. We can thus think of inner and outer transarchitecture, visible and invisible transarchitecture. Threaded like a tangle of Möbius strips, infinitiely many virtual rooms coexist within each physical room, infinitely many public spaces coexist within each public space, infinitely many worlds superimpose themselves on this one.

References

Benedikt, M. (ed.), Cyberspace: First Steps, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991. Heidegger, M. The Question Concerning Technology And Other Essays, Lovvitt, W. (trans.), New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1977. Hugo, V., Notre-Dame De Paris, Krailsheimer, A. (trans.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Mitchell, W., City of Bits: Space, Place And The Infobahn, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Moser, M. and McLeod , D. (eds.), Immersed In Technology: Art and Virtual Environments, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1996. Plato, Timaeus. Wallin, N.L., Biomusicology: Neurophysiological, Neuropsychological and Evolutionary Perspectives On The Origin And Purposes Of Music. New York: Pendragon Press, 1992.

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transArchitecture

5. transArchitecture