discourse by Jaime Salazar
Living Environments In a time when human technology is nearing the microscopic level in scope and the inhuman in precision, building a house has remained a comparatively rough and unprecise undertaking. Compared to other materialisation processes that are completely computer-controlled, architecture is still a process carried out by people, as it has always been. Our living environments are conceived, built, financed and lived in by people. Ambitions, fears, changes, dreams, frustrations, conflicts and harmonies are decisive elements of the process of building, and part of the life of buildings themselves. Architecture has always to address the most contradictory of extremes. It has to shuttle between invention and tradition, between the need for the new and the fear of the new. It has to cater for the unforeseeable: for growth and shrinkage of built-up environments as well as for changes in use and in the dweller’s mindset. If there is something that could be described as architecture of the information era, it is a construction that is not considered as finished when the building process ends; it is architecture where information about the future life and use of buildings is fed back into the design process. One of the obvious efforts of our societies is the assurance of our future in the present. Foreseeing our personal and social future is one of the most important economical – and ecological – factors, and our living environments are a main feature of our intimate feeling of security. Architecture seems more than ever to be a prospective task, rather than a technical one. At the peak of technological progress, mankind is close to developing an artificial nature that echoes the nature from which it evolved; machines are very close to becoming ‘animated’ and our natural bodies are increasingly subject to a process of artificialisation,of becoming humanoid. Our computer networks are affected by viruses similar in effect to those that invade us. At the same time, we have recognised, after many decades of destruction, the fragility and complexity of our own origins. In a time where innovation is essential for any practice to survive the pressure of globalisation, architecture cannot be regarded as a mere technical service. Let us understand the act of building as an act of continuous improvement, as a manifestation of human inventiveness and ingenuity: the translation of the incredible complexity of our world into building practice. As it has always been.
Opposite photo by Michael Wolf, www.photomichaelwolf.com, Courtesy of Hasted Hunt Gallery, New York, www.hastedhunt.com Read more about Living Environments, starting on page 14.
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