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C h a l l e n g e

Studio[Ci] 2014 SCI-Arc Vertical Studio Project 2013 Collaboration: Liu Ziye

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SCI-Arc Thesis Project 2014

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SCI-Arc Core Studio Project 2012 Partial Collaboration: Mostafa Ghafari

D e f a m i l i r a i z i n g SCI-Arc Vertical Studio Project 2014 Collaboration: Yan Chen

B o s s

E a m e s

Jones, Partners: Architecture 2012

T h e

G r o u n d

6 7 0

R E P a r k

Roger Sherman Architecture and Urban Design 2013

C o m p l e x

M o r p h o l o g i e s

SCI-Arc Core Studio Project 2011

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SCI-Arc Visual Studies Seminar 2012

S k i l l m a n

L i b r a r y

B o n e s

E x t e n s i o n

Lawrence Technological University Core Studio Project 2007

L i v e

W o r k

S t u d i o

Lawrence Technological University Core Studio Project 2007

S p o n g e

C i t y

The Evolving City Design Workshop 2010

R o y a l

O a k

G a t e w a y

Lawrence Technological University Core Studio Project 2010

G r o w t h

T o w e r

Lawrence Technological University Competition Studio Project eVolo Skyscraper Competition Finalist 2009

V e r t i c a l

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Lawrence Technological University Competition Studio Project 2009 Collaboration: Lou Salge

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T i l d e n

Independent Competition Entry 2009 Collaboration: Jose Paredes

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What: Winning competition entry and subsequent urban renewal proposal When: June 2010 - August 2011 Office: studio[Ci]

Livernois Ave. Gateway

Livernois Ave. Gateway

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MITC + DIFT Gateway

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I-75 Buss Transit Stop

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Systemic Overlay [PLAN] Blue, Green, Gray, White Infrastructure

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Pedestrian Connectivity

Hub and Sub-Hub Locations

Green Buffers Vacant Land Opportunities

Railway Network

Highway Systems

Net- Zero Energy Hub Urban Form

White Infrastructure frast s

Bioswale Water Mitigation System Rivers

Proposed DRIC I NITC

Arterial Network

Green Infrastructure

Salt Caverns

‘D’ Car Share Facilities

Blue Infrastructure

studio[Ci]

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1 Mile

Water Systems Current and Future Bike Routes Major Arterial Roadway Corridors Railways Systems Highways Bike Share Facility Zipcar© EV Care Share

‘D’ Bike Share Facilities

LEGEND

White Infrastructure

Grey Infrastructure

Vacant Land and Existing Green Infrastructure Vacant Existing Green Infrastructure (Middle rouge / Ojibway Park) Ford Rouge River Plant Existing International Railroad Link Rouge River 1 Mile

studio[Ci]

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Pre-Settlement Forestry and Potential Reforestation Typology Proposed Mixed Conifer and Hardwood Plantings Wetland Prairie Mixed Hardwood Swamp Oak & Hickory Forest Proposed Contiguous Reforestation Boundary and Direction Reforestation Spine Existing Forested Area (Middle rouge / Ojibway Park)

1 Mile

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NOTE: All other open spaces are designated as being “Beech & Sugar Maple Forest.”

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The 5 Generative Use Opportunites for Vacant Land Reforestation: Proposed Mixed Conifer and Hardwood Plantings (Approx. 1100 acres) Existing Parks, Cemetaries, and Forest Energy: Potential Land for Hybrid Sustainable Alternative Renewable Energy (Approx. 90 acres) Productive Surfaces Hydro Current Density: Areas of mixed use density Water: Bioswales along Michigan Ave. and Vernor Highway Pervious Paving: Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal (DIFT) and the North American International Trade Crossing (NITC) Decomissioned Street Grid Agriculture: Proposed Urban Agricultural Land Use Existing Urban Agriculture Sites 1 Mile

studio[Ci]

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MCS International GreenLink Hub Analysis MCS International GreenLink Corridor Development opportunities for Mixed Use Density and Green Economy Areas claimed for reforestation (Approx. 148 acres) Areas claimed for agriculture (Approx. 97 acres) Existing agricultural land use Existing Mexicantown-Corktown Green Link Plan (relative to area) Urban Mobility connectivity between neighborhoods and points of interest/community assets International Water Taxi Service Corktown and St. Anne’s neighborhoods 1 St. Anne’s 2 Corktown Bike Share Facility Zipcar© EV Care Share

A Proposed American House assisted living facility and proposed composting facility

B Proposed Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) stop C Roosevelt Park Entry Gateway D MCS[solar] Interpretive Plaza E Proposed passenger rail stop along Canadian Pacific rail line F, G, H Entrances to the Historic Corktown neighborhood I Entrance to St. Anne’s neighborhood J International Water Taxi Port K Park/Marina Node

(Detroit West Riverfront District Plan)

L Windsor, ON Downtown Waterfront Park M Riverside Park

Built Density + Energy

Bus Rapid Transit Stop (BRT)

Built Density

Solar Lighting

(Density + Alternative Energy) Increased mixed use density along Michigan Avenue.

New structures to include solar panels on the roof and building facade, facing south, to take best advantage of solar orientation.

(Urban Mobility) We advocate for a BRT stop on Michigan Avenue at 19th Street to serve as a catalyst for new development. This stop will be serviced by other forms of transportation, including ‘D Car’, ‘D Bike’ share facility, etc.

(Density) Because of the convergence of multiple intermodal systems, this Sub Hub is recommended for intensive investment and densification (population and built environment). Proposed mixed use density phased in over time, to replace the existing DPW yard and former industrial use area. The implementation strategy includes the relocation of designated ‘Planned Development’ zones.

(Public Realm + Alternative Energy) New solar street lighting to replace existing light system.

studio[Ci]

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Car Share/EV Charging Station

Bike Lanes

19th Street Commercial Corridor

Mixed Use Development

Bioswales

Electric Vehicle Charge Station

(Urban Mobility) ‘D Car’ Electric Vehicle car share facility to be located at the Bus Rapid Transit stop on Michigan Avenue.

(Public Realm) Enhancement of the existing and proposed bike lane system on both sides of Michigan Avenue, buffered by a parking lane and bioswale system.

(Density + Public Realm) 19th Street to be re-purposed from industrial uses into an important new piece of public realm, lined with retail and community uses. The corridor would connect to the proposed Canadian Pacific public rail stop at Michigan Central Station, pedestrian bridge connection to the Mexicantown Neighborhood and MCS International GreenLink.

A concrete paving surface to extend from 19th Street and across Michigan Avenue.

(Density) Reinforcing existing patterns, first floor of all new structures will be activated with retail and commercial uses.

Upper levels include residential apartments and lofts.

(Public Realm) A series of bioswales with native plantings are part of a larger neighborhood blue infrastructure system located on both sides of Michigan Avenue. This will provide a natural cleansing process of the stormwater runoff.

(Urban Mobility) Designated electric vehicle charging stations will be integrated with public parking spots along Michigan Avenue.

This could be part of a city wide park and pay system.

Succession Planting

More Green, More Jobs

Green Buffers

(Public Realm) Reforestation is most successful in delivering benefits when planting patterns include an array of different deciduous trees and conifers which range in age from saplings to mature and are planted with an average of 21 trees/acre.

(Public Realm + Green Economy) Throughout Southwest Detroit, job opportunities can be created based on Reforestation. All generations can be engaged and trained through a community based educational approach.

(Public Realm) Green buffers will be implemented around the perimeter of the 350 acre D.I.F.T. (Livernois, Dix, Wyoming and Vernor).

These vegetated buffers will enhance the public realm and assist in mitigating the adjacencies between Intermodal Freight and residential and commercial areas.

Ford Sponsorship (Green Economy) Ford is an essential economic, social and cultural asset to the city and region, providing living wage jobs and stimulus to the local economy. Reforestation would connect multiple Ford owned properties along the Rouge River, from the Ford Rouge Complex to historic Fair Lane and the Middle Rouge River Forest.

Proposed ‘Net Zero Energy’ Vision

Urban Reforestation (Public Realm) Urban Forests provide four primary benefits: Urban Heat Index Reduction, Interception of Stormwater Run-off, Psychological and Economic Benefits, and Carbon Sequestration.

Proposed ‘Net Zero Energy’ Vision

N Reforestation and Park Overpass

Central Avenue Streetscape Improvements

Community Engagement + Benefits

Bioswales

Reforestation of Gray Infrastructure

(Public Realm) The plans for the D.I.F.T. include rebuilding the Central Avenue underpass. A public greenway with pervious surfaces and native plantings is proposed to enhance the public realm. Bicycle lanes are recommended and would connect to the neighborhood wide network of greenways and bike share facilities.

(Green Economy) A reforestation initiative should include extensive engagement of local residents, NGOs, private entities and public sector agencies through the formation of a reforestation task force, which would be involved in the planting and maintenance of trees and vegetation. Benefits include public health, training for green jobs, and increased awareness of sustainability.

(Public Realm) A series of bioswales with native plantings are part of a larger neighborhood green infrastructure system located in the D.I.F.T. The bioswales provide a natural cleansing process for stormwater run-off.

(Public Realm + Green Economy) Based on the findings of our initial vacancy analysis, we recommend that 1,100 acres of vacant land, beginning at the MCS International GreenLink and running along rail lines in Southwest Detroit, become an urban forest. Large areas of land are concentrated within the vicinity of the proposed Detroit Intermodal Freight Terminal (D.I.F.T.). This provides an opportunity to use the forested area as a noise and pollution buffer, while creating a forested wildlife habitat corridor.

Parcel Level fforeclosure data ffor the cities off Warren and Centerline, MI

Environmental Impact Analysis Layering: (1) Pervious v. Impervious, (2) River and Flood Plains, (3) State Roads and Daily Traffic Volume, (4) Overlay

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S h r i n k a C i t y S t r a t e g y f o r R e - S i z i n g D e t r o i t

studio[Ci] Urban Research, AIA Report on University Research Volume 5 2008 - 2010 Constance Bodurow Constance C. Bodurow, Calvin Creech, Alan Hoback, Jordan R.M. Martin

The project provides an example of our value densification interface, which constitutes an initial application of the Ci theory via formal urban design recommendations. Detroit serves as the context for the irst application of Ci, but the research team believes that the design methodology is replicable and widely applicable to empower the purposeful shrinkage of cities across the globe.

Excerpt: Attempts to describe the current and envision the future condition and form of the shrinking city lie along a wide spectrum--from the pessimistic (city as an “unlimited vacuum”) visions of Landscape Urbanism to the optimistic (city as a place for “unlimited capacity”) projections of Hyper-Urbanism. Detroit, Michigan, is a proud yet wounded city whose patriarchal structures have failed. The city portrays the most exaggerated (and often cited) example of the phenomenon of contemporary urban “shrinkage” and also provides the basis for investigation and intervention. Detroit does have sustainable ground in its original urban form and settlement patterns, concentrations of population, and growing political will to “shrink”, though in recent initiatives these criteria alone have proved unsuccessful as a basis for purposeful shrinkage. Ci may provide a theoretical and practical wayforward to a future, sustainable state.

The research team asserts that in response to the well documented phenomenon of “shrinkage” of the post industrial city, that a new urban eco-system is required, one which takes advantage of the complex combinations of social, economic and environmental forces while increasing lexibility and reducing susceptibility to their mercurial nature. During the summer of 2009, our research team engaged in an intensive, community based urban design project in Detroit. This work adds new theory to the discourse of re-sizing the shrinking city, and illustrates an application of Ci through a collaborative design process between the community and the academy.

Population

Energy

Investment

Blue, Green + Gray Infrastructure

Capacity

Design Example: Bagley Housing Study

Bagley Housing Study Density Assessment

Bagley Housing Study Integration Opportunity Overlay

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H e a d q u a r t e r s Ali Rahim Vertical Studio September - December 2013 Ali Rahim Liu Ziye

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SCI-Arc Graduate Thesis January - September 2014 Peter Trummer

“The problem of the house has not yet been stated.”

- Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture T h e

M y s t e r y

B o x :

The building houses a machine that we broadly describe as a data center. This title may be used to describe various types of internet infrastructure facilities of various different sizes. In this case, the machine is primarily three things a) a fiber optic cable distribution center b) a data storage facility and c) a cloud computing center. This deserves further explanation. What is meant by the term fiber optic cable distribution? Along floors of the oceans are transcontinental fiber optic cables that facilitate the transmission of light that contains the data transfers that compose the communications of the internet.

These cables are laid in bulk and connect different continents through cities around the world. These cables are brought up out of the water into various locations, typically called IX facilities (Internet Exchanges, where floor space is typically rented out to whoever wants direct access to what is called the “Fiber Vault”), where the communications are broken up and redistributed to various companies and geographic regions. This is a redundant, yet very valuable piece of internet infrastructure. Here, the theoretical properties of the fiber optic cable distribution are that it is independently owned: from the undersea cable to the hardware, to the communications transferred through it, its entire composition is owned by a company which does not share its bandwidth or facility.

This machine is capable of storing up to four Zettabytes of information, which is more than any collaboratively or privately owned data storage facility in the world, which leads me to my second item. The term data storage facility may be just as straight forward as it sounds. Every second, billions of bytes of data are being created and stored in the internet. For example: it has been estimated that the internet as a whole transfers over 1,900 Petabytes of data daily. To put this into perspective: one Petabyte is 1.0x1015 bytes. This is equivalent to 1,000 Terabytes. Larger still are Exabytes (1.0x1018 bytes), Zettabytes (1.0x1021 bytes), and Yottabytes (1.0x1024 bytes). While much of this is stored on individual devices (such as laptops, smartphones, and tablets, etc.), the large majority is stored in cloud servers which are often built in remote, secret locations; out of sight and out of mind. The data which is stored in these facilities is very personal and often classified and/or “anonymized”, being composed of our bank accounts, passwords, files, photos, likes, dislikes, searches, and overall behavior both in the real world and on the internet. It is the makeup of our subconscious being. The data stored here may aggregate to create a better understanding of ourselves that we consciously realize. Being that this facil-

ity is privately owned, the data stored is subsequently property of a private entity.

Lastly, this facility is a cloud computing center. This is not to be confused with cloud data storage. Cloud computers run the system that is responsible for the smooth operation of subsystem network machines within the global network of the private entity. When a subsystem machine’s software malfunctions, the cloud computer addresses the issue and resolves it, whether it be the re-booting or re-imaging of a system or directives for automated maintenance on machine hardware. All software related issues within the network are resolved here to retain absence of human interaction.

The incredible heat dissipated from the machine is a destructive force. Machines of this size create heat so intense that it can destroy the environment around it. Subsequently, one of the principle design problems was to create a system that dissipates heat produced using natural sources without having an impact on the local ecology. To do this a massive sub-grade cooling chamber was designed. This step-down heat dissipation chamber simultaneously cools the air and water channeled out of the machine from its high temperature to a tolerable degree for the environment.

Massive fans circulate the air through radiating pipes filled with external water and expelled water from the machine. After the process is complete the air is expelled through large exhausts above ground, while the water is dissipated directly back into the Arctic Sea. The walls of the chamber have been given a thickness of one hundred feet to provide insulating voids to dispel any excess heat emanating from within. Completely sub-grade, the massive chamber penetrates over one thousand feet into the Orca bedrock and is stabilized to the Pacific Plate through another five hundred feet of pylon length in an attempt to minimize damage in the occurrence of a potentially catastrophic earthquake.

The façade of the building is constructed of a custom fabricated TZM Molybdenum (Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum [o.5%, 0.08%, 99.42%]) brick system. Molybdenum is a refractory metal which is commonly used in structural steel applications because of its superior strength and high melting point. TZM Molybdenum is primarily a Molybdenum superalloy that has superior resistance to heat and salt erosion. Due to the intense heat output of the machine as well as the extreme conditions of the environment, a material that could withstand both is necessary.

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W o r l d :

“What was once asked of architecture, though, is now accomplished by other means, both informational and computational. Now the presence and vehicular movement of people and objects through global space is tightly integrated with an infrastructure of software, and to send objects in motion or to impede their trajectory is a logistical labor performed by pulses of light as much as flesh and steel.”

“[…] mystery is more important that knowledge.”

-JJ Abrams What is a blank object? It is an object with no color or characteristic, referential shape. It is an object with no indexical access for our perception. It is an object in which we have difficulty finding a relation to. It is a horrifying object; an object that belittles us. It is an object that we cannot rationalize and therefore it is sublime. As David Nye has stated:

- Benjamin Bratton, The 2006 Introduction to Paul Virilio’s Speed and Politics This is about the logistics and facilitation of spreading out through internal and external (virtual and physical) space. Economic functionality, societal structure, personal and governmental defense, and spatial management have become an internal, immaterial affair. We now have two maps of the world: that of the earth that we live on and that of the data connectivity maps that attempt to materialize the operation of the virtual world (i.e., the internet).

Space and time are becoming less of an obstacle in the operation of a single, global economically unified society. The instantaneous transmission of information through physical mediums is no longer relegated to economic structures and screens: it is in the process of becoming an encompassing apparatus equivalent to an alternate dimension of reality. We are no longer Astronauts, we are now Internauts. In order to go out, we must go in. Bratton and Virilio concur: “This ‘flat world’ imagines itself as slippery, oceanic grid modulated by differentially transporting, activating, internalizing, and/or prophylactically exteriorizing technologies: from shipping ports to aerotropoli, from banking software GUIS (graphical user interfaces) to web browser layout engines and data security protocols. Like an Andreas Gursky photograph, this ‘frictionless’ landscape of interconnected objects and subjects is the constitution of a new architecture, one that relies on fragile alibis of virtual immateriality and procedural transparency to achieve the political, economic efficacy it enjoys.”

“When cosmonauts floating in their interstellar dustbins cry out that ‘the dream is alive!’, why shouldn’t internauts take themselves for cosmonauts?

Why would they not, like overgrown fairy-tale children, cross the space between the real and the figurative, reaching as far as the interface with a virtual paradise?”

In order to have such a paradise, such a frictionless landscape, the machine is needed. It is the machine that facilitates such an apparatus and the human that impedes its operation. What is this new architecture? Where is it? What are we left with when buildings are designed for machines in the absence of humans?

In all machine architecture, the facilitation for human occupation is present. We can see this by closely examining the typographically categorical photographs of machine architectures of Bernd and Hilla Becher. In all typologies there is a pattern human-machine relations. In all, human accommodations are present: doors, stairs, windows, control rooms, platforms, handles, etc. While the scale of the machine may or may not be predicated upon the scale of its human relation, the induction of human elements is indispensible, providing an indexical product of interpretation and rationalization to the human world. When the human world is no longer an operational condition for the machine, the human world becomes solely a subject in which a rational indexical relationship is irrelevant. We are left with a blank object.

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“[…] the feeling of the sublime is really the feeling of our own inner powers, which can outreach in thought the external objects that overwhelm our senses” Nye continues (via Immanuel Kant): “[…] the infinity of the sublime ultimately is an idea, not a quality of the object itself.”

This observation is significant in the identification of the object as purely an object. The complexity of the blank object is in the mind of the observer, which in turn, is exactly what it retains from the observer in its manifestation.

Complexity is not a given descriptor of the blank object, only a conditioned dialectical implication to not take what you see at face value, regardless of scale.

The blank object contends with the forces of mediums that result in the perpetual complicating of things. The hyper-complex immateriality of the virtual exists in a hyper-complex network of machines and cables. As the virtual evolves from a prosthetic to an apparatus, so too has the complexity of the machine that facilitates it. As the complexity of the facilitating machine evolves from the hidden infrastructural component to the sublime object a new form of operational and architectural management emerges. Consider the abundance of vehicles and development of highways the freeways or the invention and distribution of the light bulb and the development of coal power plants, dams, and nuclear reactors. Graham Harman (in reference to Marshal McLuhan) explains further: “[…] changes can only be triggered on the surface of the world, in one of two distinct ways. The first of these ways is termed ‘reversal’ or ‘flip,’ in which a medium grows overheated through excess information. What used to be a silent background becomes so obtrusive that it reverses into its opposite, as when the previously hidden attributes of cars being to clutter our lives once cars reach a certain excessive number. The natural response to information overload is ‘pattern recognition;’ individual people cease to be individuals, and are modeled instead as points on a demographic curve. In this way, the hidden form becomes a tangible form in the more usual sense of form as a depthless, visible profile. In architecture, the best analogy may be Rem Koolhass’ retroactive manifestoes: once massive airports and supermarkets proliferate beyond measure, we may notice a new explicit formal language emerging from what used to be concealed environmental forms – or ‘substantial forms,’ as medieval philosophers called them.”

Thus, the proliferation of hyper-complexity from the overlapping of hypercomplex things (i.e., flight schedules, international coordination, gas prices, mechanical maintenance, TSA, weather conditions, external transportation, etc. are all hyper-complex things needed to facilitate the operation of an airport, which in turn facilitates the operation of these same things as well as other) reaches a point where it is reversed and understood as a minimally obtrusive thing in its evolved management and representation. The virtual environment and its accompanying machine is now at that point of reversal.

T h e

“On some level the ambivalent object is not an uncertainty at all, no matter how opaque it may seem.”

-Jason Payne, “Variations on the Disco Ball or, The Ambivalent Object

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The cube is one of the most ambivalent objects known to man. Nestled between the sphere and the pyramid, it is has been used as a symbol for cultures and civilizations for centuries, yet it remains ambivalent to its context. It has been so widely spread that it has become dismissible. It is minimal and

only describable through an articulate reading of its fundamental properties and characteristic manifestations (i.e., color, material, precision, flatness, etc.).

There is no precise, shared signified thing other than the cube itself, and this is exactly the point: it is one of the most multivalent, abstract objects known.

The cube, like all opaque objects, has a twoness: an undefined exterior, and an unknown interior. By undefined exterior I am referring to an object that either has an obscure (or non-existent) singular signifier or is plural (defined through its aggregated qualities) in it accessibility. The accessibility of the exterior is not dependent upon the existence of the interior, however, the interior of the cube is contingent upon the accessibility of the exterior. The ambivalence and undefined nature of the cube is that its accessibility or inaccessibility is not dependent upon an interior, but rather, cultural conditioning alone.

Jason Payne expands on this in “Variations on the Disco Ball” (Project: Issue 2).

“The problem of the floating signifier refers to the capacity of certain objects to carry different significations for various viewers.”

Here, Jason examines the possibilities of dislodging cultural representation from an object with a specific signifier to create a “novel reading” of an ambivalent spectacle (or some might say the sublime). The project is constituted by the consolidation of two different objects bearing different known and unknown qualities: the planetesimal Phobos (a small planet like space object, particularly in this case, Mars’ moon) and a disco ball. The result is an ambivalent object which manifests signifiers of a known entity (the disco ball), while simultaneously rejecting the realm of signified representation and manifestation through concavity, irregular albedo (as opposed to the sphere), and contextual indifference. While Jason refers to Peter Eisenman’s painstaking attempts at establishing autonomy and ambivalence, it is even less painstaking to reassess primitives than peer into the solar system to ar-

rive at novel readings.

Graham Harman extrapolates this concept through a different lens in “Form and its Aliens: McLuhan for Architects” (as referenced earlier).

Here Harman argues that through Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Massage” concept, architecture as a medium (form) is different than the message (function) regardless of their inextricably linked history. Thus, the signifiers of the form of the object should be considered separate from the signified identity of the object’s function, establishing autonomy not through formal disjunction and/or anamorphic manipulation, but rather through the identification of pluralistic or non-existent signified indices: in this case, a minimalistic reversal of the complex things that create the object’s necessity.

The paradox in architecture arises here as architects and designers come to the conclusion that the complexity of interwoven events that create a necessity for human-world objects should be reflected in the formal resolution of the object, while in fact, the opposite is true. Objects of a complex nature require simplicity and abstraction to be separated from human rationalization. Similar to quantum processes or interpretations of planets in other areas of our galaxy from the Kepler telescope, we are only led to speculation on their complexity, based upon previously established empirical knowledge.

This, however, does not remove the potential of infinite complexity within an object, regardless of its formal resolution.

In philosophy, there are constant battles of perception pertaining to being and presence. There is the understanding of perception and the understanding of the understanding of your perception, and so on. In regards to this Harman questions what “zero-person” cognition might be like and in turn proposes that architects question what a “zero-form, zerofunction” might be like. This is commonly read as a battle cry for incongruous, morphological, non-indexical, and isomorphic types of formal resolve in architecture, where there is a complete dichotomy not only of form and function, but material and immaterial, as well as perception and disjunction.

In Levi R. Bryant’s “The Democracy of Objects,” he frames the Object Oriented Philosophy/Ontology (OOO) discussion (he refers to his body of work as Onticology) through the way that we perceive objects as being and non-being dependent upon our realization of their existence beyond our senses. Bryant claims that objects are viewed as subjects in the way they represent our cultural definitions of their existence and that there are two realms of existence: the human and the non-human. Where the human world is the world in which humans have created and constructed cultural connotations of objects as a form of conditioning predicated upon our perception of our

own being, the non-human is the world in which objects exist outside of cultural representation, outside of the gaze of the subject and subsequently outside of our conditioned understanding of being. Bryant refers to George Spencer-Brown’s “The Laws of Form” in which Brown refers to this conditioning as the distinction between marked and unmarked space. Everything within our understanding of the world that we perceive is included within the marked space (defined by the right angle) and everything else is in the space that surrounds it.

An example of this is how our eyes perceive light: objects reflect certain wavelengths of light, while absorbing others, so the color of an object is based upon the reflected frequency of light that we can perceive. The object is actually all of the colors that it does not reflect. Our perception of light is very limited, so what we can see is only a very small portion of what is actually out there (i.e., microwaves, infrared waves, etc.).

With the cube, there has been (ever since its use as a device for rationalizing the unobtainable as an alternative to the circle in medieval philosophy) a rather large number of cultural associations linked with our perception of it. I could endeavor to list these, but it would be exhaustive and unnecessary. The dialectic, and thus the paradox, of this application of the cube in cultural contexts (regardless of which cultural context) is that the true potential of the cube as a perceptually unobtainable object exists through its aesthetic value as simply an object with minimal descriptors (signs) and a mysterious interior and contents (the symbol of a cube as Pandora’s Box is a prime example). Again, this is the diametrical twoness of the cube. While the use of the cube in art and architecture is always predicated upon materiality and scale, the cube as a physical object in space is separate, metaphysically, from its substantial and contextual constraints. The substance and context of the cube is only a necessary to discuss so that the cube may become intelligible through materiality, scale, juxtaposition, and composition while the immateriality of the concept of the cube does not exist without questions of its power or capacity. Thus, what we perceive of objects, particularly the cube, is a marked space predicated upon the substance and context of the cube, while its blankness subconsciously instills the sublime questions of its power and capacity, which is in the realm of the unmarked. Bryant writes: “Objects or generative mechanisms are defined not by their qualities or events, but rather by their powers or capacities. An object cannot be without

its powers or capacities, but it can be without its qualities or events.”

Architectural objects, as functional objects, are generative mechanisms.

They are specifically intended to create and change events in multiple dimensions and trajectories. The powers and capacities of architectural objects, when viewing architecture as homogenous objects (as opposed to part-to-whole aggregations, as this would fall into a discussion of substance, gestalt indexicality, and/or phenomenology) are not predicated upon the object’s established index (cultural sign), but rather the inaccessible capacity of the object as purely an object.

An analogy to this may be Martin Heidegger’s analysis of the hammer: when in hand, the hammer has a specific function, however, when out of hand and viewed from a distance, the hammer is an undefined object, which we cannot access the potential of. Typically in architecture, the exterior of the building as an object dictates a specific use with indexical instruments based upon cultural conditioning (i.e., prisons look like prisons, schools look like schools, houses look like houses, etc.), yet when the building as an object has its indexical instruments removed, we lose our ability to understand the power and capacity of the object within our realm of conditioned perception and we enter the unmarked space. The object becomes an object which contains deeper, more far reaching, alternative questions of power and capacity. Thus, when the stripping down of the complexities that define our understanding of architecture occurs, we are left with the most primitive of objects as a juncture for a new endeavor into a different realm of marked space. This is the introduction of non-human architecture.

The questions of the power and capacity of the cube are dependent upon the undefined exterior and unknown interior (and contents) as well as the absence of signs as indices. This places emphasis on the obscure, abstracted necessity and intent of the building. The undefined exterior is dependent upon the unknown interior, so returning to Marshal McLuhan’s anthropology as a vector for the connection between form and function brings us to his claim that the importance of the message being conveyed is not nearly as important as the medium in which it is conveyed through:

“The content or message of any particular medium has about as much importance as the stenciling on the casing of an atomic bomb.”

The function, or in McLuhan’s case, the message, is however the origin of the necessity of a medium for its conveyance in the first place. Therefore, regardless of the building as an object/medium that is accessible or inaccessible to our understanding of its purpose, its necessary existence as architecture is dependent upon the perpetual evolution of rote human conditioning in mechanistic advancement. In other words: the architecture is necessary to facilitate the needs and desires of cultural and social evolution, yet its medium of conveyance is not dependent upon this necessity or its contents, like the diametrical twoness of the interior and the exterior of the object itself.

An example of this is the AT&T Long Lines building in Tribeca, Manhattan by John Carl Warnecke. The Long Lines building is impenetrable both physically and perceptively. The building was designed to act as a shed (so to say) for mechanical phone and data switching equipment. Aside from the enormous vent shafts at various heights, the building has no apertures of any kind. The intense vertical gesture of its (apparent, unmodified) extrusion continues directly into the ground plane, providing no scalar instruments to relate it to its context. The building is simply indifferent. Its necessity however is dependent upon the need for trans-continental communication infrastructure. Its brute aesthetic nature is not only a stylistic approach (the tower is a great example of a Brutalist building), but also a security necessity: the equipment inside was invaluable so there was a need to design the building to both withstand a terrorist attack, or a war (the building was designed to withstand a nuclear blast), and deny any understanding of its purpose to the outside world. Its medium (form) thus attempts to diffuse its message (function). The interior is unknown and the exterior is indifferent and undefined.

This is exactly why it is literally an inaccessible object.

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Discussions of OOO in architecture can spiral into heated dis-

cussions and debates about what is and what is not an unfamiliar or defamiliarized object. However, it should be noted that any and every object can be seen as unfamiliar and any object can be de-familiarized through formal techniques to raise questions of accessibility through ontological examination. As architects we attempt to capture contemporary ideas of philosophy (as well as many other things) into our work to reflect the spirit of the times. Much like the broken columns in Peter Eisenman’s Wexner Center for the Arts, as a physical gesture of Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive semiotics, we must attempt to find the most simplistic and beautiful way to convey complex contemporary ideas because architecture is an artifact of civilization throughout different periods in history. Our contemporary issue is our contention with the virtual. It is not only the instantiation of a hyper complex prosthetic, but it is the impact of the contents as a programmatic social device that is as accessible as the blankness of the cube’s exterior.

While this may be argued to be a reconnection between the programmatic function and the physical form, it should be noted that it is the abstraction of the programmatic device into the form that creates the separation between form and function in the first place. There is no direct indexical relationship between the two.

This brings us to the complete, physical enclosure of a solid boundary between inside and out. The physical separation of the interior implies physical inaccessibility to the virtual. To understand this better, it may help to look at some examples in popular culture and political theory.

In The Matrix Neo awakens from his world to find his reality is much more destitute and mechanical than where he believed he came from.

The Matrix was a virtual world that existed within Neo as a non-physical dimension, completely separated from what we understand as the real world.

What was understood as the reality of the virtual was a facade of binary code cascading down a set of monitors. While this type of virtual dimension is a far stretch from our current grappling with the digital, our interaction within the apparatus of the internet crosses the threshold between the real and the virtual, the inside and the outside, and affects us as a mechanism of control in both.

Through various data collecting and media driven sources of customization we are influenced by what does not have direct access to us in the physical world. Our communications in the virtual are easily accessed, and used to watch us, much to our obliviousness from which we are lost in the fine print of legal documentation pertaining to concepts which we have little or no understanding of. The information we place on the internet as well as our browsing statistics are used as tools to manage how we are marketed to, the types of jobs we can obtain, and the overall census of our demographic groups and how we are governed. The plane tickets we have purchased and the places we have traveled, our magazine subscriptions and the articles we read, every web site we have ever visited, everything we have ever purchased, every photo we have posted, every tweet, Tumblr post, and Facebook update have been documented and are being used to govern and stabilize our economic machine. The rules of the physical world do not apply here. There is no gravity and there is no physical face to face interaction, yet we are constantly immersed in screens; living our virtual lives just as much, if not more, than our real lives.

Michel Foucault termed a phenomenon similar to this as Bio-Power. This concept was a derivative of his earlier analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as a metaphor for political control. Foucault described Bio-power (or Bio-politics) as the evolution of sovereign power, where death was once used to control populations through fear by the few, to now, where the educating and fostering of life is used to return production value to the many of the entire population. “[…] this formidable power of death – and this is perhaps what accounts for part of its force and the cynicism with which it has so greatly expanded its limits – now presents itself as the counterpart of a power that exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations.”

“This bio-power was without question an indispensible element in the development of capitalism; the latter would not have been possible without the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the

adjustment of the phenomena of population to economic processes.”

The insertion of bodies into the machinery such as Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times is a literal equivalent to our ambition to remain in the virtual. The more information we give, the easier we become to manage, the more encompassing the technological apparatus, the more literal the control.

This system operates unobstructed. Within the virtual are different laws, if any at all, stripping us down to the most rudimentary elements of our ability to live. Such is the case with the idea and the physical presence of non-human machine. In Utopia’s Ghost: Architecture and Postmodernism, Again, Reinhold Martin analyzes the theory of bio-power in architecture through an analysis of Post-Modernism in Architecture with the American gated community and Disneyland as the avatars of a devolution of government participation in architecture. Martin refers to them both as States of Exception, explicitly referencing Giorgio Agamben’s “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”. Martin argues that both the gated community and Disneyland exist as separate entities within a larger cultural context, where the rules of the outside world are different than the rules of the inside as a by-product of more capital involvement and less government involvement. Both have qualities of what may be considered utopia, much like the Modernist housing projects of the mid-twentieth century where the facilities provided for in the architecture can alter the reality of the physical context.

Thus, capital is able to dictate what and how architecture can exist within the context of the law, yet operate outside of the laws in which it was brought into existence. Agamben describes this concept in Grecian terms as the separation between biological life: zoe, the pure necessity to live; and the political life: bios, the necessity to living amongst others within an ordered (or nascent) system. The event in which the two are severed is exceptional, treated independently, and eventually morphed into the normative rule.

Applicably, within the interior of the state of exception, the separation between the biological life and the political life is severed by an unreal, virtual apparatus in which bio-power is instantiated. In other words, the management of subjects is conducted through surveillance based upon individual behavior (i.e., what we do on the internet) as opposed to optics.

Thus the infrastructure of the system that facilitates the management of the biological life must be abstracted and obscured to retain an ambivalence of the capacities and powers of the object through the exploitation of the political life represented. Architecturally the physical boundary that defines the difference between the inside and the outside should be uncompromising.

What may be perceived as the building, or cube, is the building shell for the primary core of the machine. The building shell meets the ground through a cavernous reveal that separates it from the surface of the ground, disconnecting the building from the land and removing its identity as an object of higher epistemological order. The building is thus an object in the ground rather than an object on the ground, thus contending and disrupting the continuity of the landscape as well as the correlational nature of subjective perception of architectural objects made for the human world. It is an object of a different environment than that of the natural or the man-made; it is an object purely of the machine world and it exists in an autonomous context of its own creation.

The building has no access for us. No doors, no windows, no skylights. Because it is designed explicitly for a machine, the need for floors, lights, and environmental controls are gone. The building is essentially blank, providing us with no scalar indices or hierarchical signification of part to whole. It is located out of our reach, keeps us apart from the machine, and exists without our perception. We are not intended to enter, therefore its interiority is about as revealing as that of a Matroyshka doll, the end to a hall of mirrors, or an entire season of Lost.

The building is an edifice. The machine inside forces it into the sky and deep below the ground. It opens up the forest, diverts the rivers, and challenges the mountains. It is a black hole and a universe. Inside we are all accounted for, every detail, and within we are managed. It is the evolution of the Panopticon, a state of exception, and the manifestation of bio-political power.

There is no entrance. There are no windows. There is no interior. We cannot enter, but from within, we cannot escape.

Virilio, Paul. “Chapter 5.” The Information Bomb. London: Verso, 2005. Print.

II. Virilio, Paul. “Logistics of Habitable Circulation.”

Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. [2006 ed.

Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2006. 13. Print.

III. Virilio. The Information Bomb. 42 IV. Nye, David E.. “Chapter 1: The Sublime.”American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. 7. Print.

V. Harman, Graham . “Form and its Aliens: McLuhan for Architects.” Graham Harman Lecture IOUD: Zero Form - Zero Function. University of Innsbruck. Institute of Urban Design, Innsbruck. 29 Jan. 2014. Lecture.

VI. Payne, Jason. “Variations on the Disco Ball, or, The Ambivalent Object.” Project1.2 (2013): 20. Print. It should be noted that Jason’s essay was instrumental during both the initial and final research of this project and I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and his work.

VII. Harman.

VIII. Bryant, Levi R.. The Democracy of Objects. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press, 2011. Print.

IX. Harman.

X. Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power over Life.” The History of Sexuality. New York: Random House, 1990. 133-159. Print.

XI. Ibid 137, 141 XII. Virilio, Paul. “Chapter 5.” The Information Bomb.

London: Verso, 2005. Print.

XIII. Virilio, Paul. “Logistics of Habitable Circulation.”

Speed and Politics: An Essay on Dromology. [2006 ed.

Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2006. 13. Print.

XIV. Virilio. The Information Bomb. 42 XV. Nye, David E.. “Chapter 1: The Sublime.”American Technological Sublime. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994. 7. Print.

XVI. Payne, Jason. “Variations on the Disco Ball, or, The Ambivalent Object.” Project1.2 (2013): 20-27. Print. It should be noted that Jason’s essay was instrumental during both the initial and final research of this project and I have nothing but the utmost respect for him and his work.

XVII. Harman, Graham . “Form and its Aliens: McLuhan for Architects.” Graham Harman Lecture IOUD: Zero Form - Zero Function. University of Innsbruck. Institute of Urban Design, Innsbruck. 29 Jan. 2014. Lecture.

XVIII. Ibid.

XIX. Foucault, Michel. “Right of Death and Power over Life.” The History of Sexuality. New York: Random House, 1990. 133-159. Print.

XX. Ibid 137, 141 I.

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