Unit 18
Crypto Phantom’s Sensorial Materiality Nannette Jackowski, Ricardo de Ostos, Manuel Jimenez Garcia This year Unit 18, or Generational Phantoms, investigated concepts of cryptography to generate architectures with rich encoded social and material effects situated in the contentious territory of Jerusalem.
The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013
In many societies, secrets, mysteries, secluded knowledge and confidential information have been converted into codes, signs and symbols; their real meanings only being noted by those in the know. Cryptography as the art of encrypting information has been used for centuries in security protocols and military communication to securely transmit classified messages. The development of encrypting/decrypting methods alongside the arms races in the Second World War was the midwife of the digital computer, as testified in our visit to Bletchley Park, a secret code-breaking facility during WWII in the UK. At this moment students started to explore encryption and architecture as vents for design as a channel to processing codes of social practices and history into its armature. Following the study of Alan Turing, one of the key cryptanalysts in Bletchley Park, and his exploration of what computational power can be and do, students developed their own process of encryption with the aim to create spatial structures and scripts. Here the notion of code was subverted from the well-known digital realm into analogue vocabularies of materiality. By generating methods of transforming information into matter, students created worlds where the computational is processed and ‘saved,’ not in bits, but in material grains and spatial scenography. How could architecture as a vessel of spatial and material information further levels of social interaction? Could cryptography and its neurotic concern with security, codes and calculation power be utilised in architecture, not only to protect but also to create unconventional access to layers of interactive performance in buildings? 226
Moving to Jerusalem as a main context, students pursued the concept of diplomatic spaces placed in a sacred city filled with multi-layered beliefs, deep divisions and ancient religious practices. Where diplomacy, coexistence and access are key to understand the nuances of one of the oldest cities in the world, students mapped social practices, rituals, myths and symbol systems creating an architectural repertoire, positioning themselves and reacting to the tranquil and tense conditions found. Investigating the Dead Sea Scrolls and their ambivalent interpretation, Anthanasios Varnavas problematised the notion of architectural meaning and digital language. Based on limestone extraction on site and the cultivation of knowledge the project is organised as a series of encrusted cave like spaces deliberately manufactured and encrypted by rough limestone drilling. The project unveils part of his experiential hypertext via a combination of wet surfaces and dry cactus, de-territorialising the contested landscape into a steaming primeval rock of opaque meaning. Exploring the connection between encrypting generational codes, Anthony D’Auria regarded his project as a computational machine where materiality becomes the medium for social-historical integration. Here the secrets of Bletchley Park evolved into the history of a group of Ethiopian Jews called ‘Beta Israeli’ and their dramatic migration to Jerusalem. The outcome is an Amharic language institute situated on the armistice line in Jerusalem where the construction of the building becomes interwoven with a political and material context. Social codes are metamorphosed into a bullet spray, concrete formwork becomes a toolset of language degradation and light apertures slowly unveil a building under tension. Encryption becomes the means to morph the weak signals of culture. What happens when ruins are territorialised, alienated from its users and disputed by religious driven politics? Set up in the City of David’s