Media architecture: origin, synonyms and interpretations

Media architecture: origin, synonyms and interpretations In Screencity 04/2013

Katia Gasparini Università IUAV di Venezia, Venice, Italy Address: Dorsoduro 2196, Venice 30123(I) Phone: Fax: E-mail:katia.gasparini@iuav.it Katia Gasparini, architect, PhD on Architectural Technology, adjunt professor at the Università Iuav di Venezia and at the Polytechnic of Milan (teaching: Technological Innovation for building enevelope).

Involved in didactic and research work about environmental quality, technological innovation for the architectural envelope, color and light in architecture. Member of the Iuav research group “Colour and Light in Architecture”; promoter and director of Screencity-International Academic Journal; member of national and international scientific committees. Freelance architect, mediabuilding and new technologies for media-envelope consultant.

Media architecture: origin, synonyms and interpretations ABSTRACT Nowadays the role of media architecture and their relationship with the landscape they identify have completely changed: from urban signals to symbolising themselves. The media architecture and urban screens are now the place for the most inventive experimentations of the latest colour and light technologies: multi-coloured or mirrored materials, new materials or innovative materials tested in buildings. The essay will describe the analysis carried out on the book “Schermi Urbani” (K. Gasparini, publishing Wolters Kluwer) on new light and colour smart technologies available nowadays for the cladding of architectural surfaces and with visibility and communication purposes.

Keywords: urban screen, media architecture, light architecture INTRODUCTION In his essay Eléments de sémiologie (Elements of semiology - 1964), Roland Barthes maintains that “when we say that today we are living in a civilization of the image, we fatally presume that previous civilizations hardly used iconic communication”. Actually we probably underestimate the phenomenon and its origins, forgetting that in ancient civilizations “the image was a fundamental part of everyday life (windows, paintings, almanacs, illustrated books). As a matter of fact the historical opposition concerns a purely iconic communication and today's mixed communication (image and language) rather than writing and image" (Barthes, 2002). According to Bathers, the feeling of being surrounded by a society of the image makes us forget that the image is never separated from words (pictures with captions, sound films, etc.). Therefore, nowadays we are dealing with a concept of image redoubled by language, in particular with our specific case concerning media façades or the media value at an urban or architectural scale. We might define it as “logical-iconic communication” (Barthes, 2002). This article is aimed at explaining and analysing the meaning of media façade on the basis of a few concepts that identify the project and its functional and building features in order to distinguish the different words used in contemporary architecture, both in Italy and abroad: media architecture, media building, media façade, light architecture, and so on.

First of all, this article makes a distinction between media façades and media architecture (this article is a synthesis of a more detailed analysis that I published in the book Schermi urbani. Tecnologia e innovazione. Nuovi sistemi per le facciate mediatiche, 2012). In both cases the word “media” is used as a prefix referring to a visual communication of texts and images. For the sake of clarity, media façades are defined by the specific materials and technologies used on the architectural surface for communication purposes, while media architecture can be also described by means of the cultural, planning, social and economic implications that its façades create within the surrounding landscape through their entire surface - identified by their shape, and not only as façade-screen - detached from the content. The concept of media building started to make its way in the early 2000s by means of a largely unknown composed phrase, conceived by a few experts who identified for the first time the existence of a new type of media and theorised its function: Paul Virilio, François Buckardt, Bernard Tschumi and others. Light architecture started to make its way almost at the same time. Shortly after search engines started to provide results containing words such as: media architecture, meta architecture, media façades, hyperarchitecture, interactive architecture, transarchitecture, etc. In the 1960s the concept of media building, clear only to a few “enlightened” architects and planners – Robert Venturi and Archigram for example - was considered a utopia. Nowadays it is instead a largely widespread type, above all in metropolis and big cities in Asia and North America. Few journals and magazines defined media building as the actual fusion between real and virtual world on an urban scale. In an era based on pure information, media building is a communication type dedicated to the building sector by which the information purpose prevails on the housing one through the use of interactive and multimedia systems and façades. It blends these two worlds by mixing together the spectacularization of physical flows and the spectacularization of virtual flows in a single support

(Ranaulo, 2001).

A classification, still in progress and certainly not complete yet, of the terms currently used in the media architecture field is provided below, aiming at assigning each term a precise identity in connection with its functions and the technologies used.

1. MEDIA BUILDING AND MEDIA ARCHITECTURE Media building seems to be an interactive communication tool by which the city and the architecture communicate and exchange information with the environment and the users through the synergy of multimedia interactive systems. Originally the media building was exclusively conceived as a support for providing information: digital information tools were hanged along the façades of buildings and structures. The concept of media building has developed during the last decade as a consequence of the increasing number of experimentations carried out in different places and using different technologies. The term has evolved as well and what was once considered as media building is now defined as urban screen or media façade. However, the media building can coexist with the media façade. From both a conceptual and a formal point of view, the difference lies in how contents are displayed and in the three-dimensional shape. On the one hand, both media façades and urban screens are based on a two-dimensional object, such as a surface - dynamic in perceptual and physical terms, and sometimes even interactive - while, on the other hand, in a media building, the entire structure communicates and visually or electronically interacts with the surrounding environment. Sometimes one of the façade of a media building can be a media façade or can be cladded using an urban screen.

Normally speaking, the terms "media building" and "media architecture" are used as synonyms. The slight difference lies in the planning and cultural features of each project. On the one hand, the media building can be realised after the completion of a new building or can be conceived as an installation, i.e. it is a secondary need, often born out of a redevelopment work aimed at increasing the visibility of a building or a place with respect to the surrounding urban environment, often for merely commercial purposes; on the other hand, a media architecture project is based on the media value of the building and the interactivity with its surrounding space and users: a visual as well as physical and cultural interactivity, often with artistic or socially important contents. In other words, the building project's main aim is to be media architecture. All the other functional and spatial requirements are less important compared to it.

2. VIDEO WALL The video installation can be laid out in different ways proposing each time a different experience.

They can be based on recorded tapes or close circuits, they can resemble an object or tend towards an environmental dimension. Sometimes in video installations “the attention is focussed on the images in the monitors or screens; other times they resemble an entire space and the connections between the images and the other subjects become more sensitive, capable of reacting to visitors' inputs, creating possibilities of dialogue, above all with interactive installations” (Cargioli, 2002).

Nam June Paik was one of the first artists to understand the potentiality of electronic media and their influence on culture and economy. His video art was the result of a synergy of different components coming from cinema, sculpture, visual art and music. Video installation is different from other art forms, such as theatre, cinema, traditional painting and sculpture, for the absence of a front screen separating the scene from the audience. The time span occupied by the images and objects of these installations requires the visitors’ involvement since they are the subject of the experience.

3. URBAN SCREEN The urban screen is a type of media system different from the video wall in formal as well as conceptual terms. Urban screens are usually created using digital technologies with the aim of conveying information through videos and films with cultural, commercial, educational contents. They can entirely or partially cover building façades, shop windows and, more recently, scaffoldings in building sites. In this latter case they do not involve digital displays yet systems combining semifinished materials (metal meshes), LED light sources and electronic components.

The MIA - Milano in Alto - installation in Piazza Duomo in Milan was the first example in Italy. As Simone Arcagni (Arcagni, 2012) specified: urban screens are generally considered as TV and cinema

screens inserted in an urban environment. They can be divided into two further categories: urban screens and LED screens. Urban screens are usually used for the broadcasting system called digital signage (Tirelli, 2009). Large LED screens are based instead on different systems and technologies since they are more often used in large urban and public spaces within cities (for example parks and squares), inserting a large-size medium into the urban fabric (cf. S. Arcagni, op.cit). They are usually installations connected to a specific time, event, a dedicated period or a physical object/subject. Thus they may last a few days, a month or even a year, as it happened in Milan. They are two-dimensional systems requiring a physical support, such as a building façade or a scaffolding structure.

4. LIGHT ARCHITECTURE In 2001 Gianni Ranaulo defined light architecture as “a model of synthesis between two worlds, often still considered to be incompatible: the real and the virtual” (Ranaulo, 2001). In several essays and articles recently published on general rather than scientific journals and magazines, both in Italy and abroad, the term “light architecture” is often confused with “media architecture” to indistinctly identify the same type of system. As a consequence, light architecture is considered as lighting architecture, a lightweight, immaterial, interactive, fast or evanescent type of architecture, reaching its climax in the media building. Light architecture, considered as the translation and interpretation of the concept of lighting architecture, can be read in a broader sense, not necessarily linked to the role of communication tool or of a tool dedicated to a specific event. For the sake of clarity, lighting architecture refers to the project for an artificial lighting system on a façade or building (light design).

In media architecture, the light design is much more complex and aimed at creating and conveying written and/or voice messages, and/or dynamic images in order for the building to interact with the urban environment and the users.

5. BLURRING ARCHITECTURE “Blurring architecture” is a term coined and theorised by Toyo Ito in 1999 after the exhibition held in Aachen. It was then translated with the Italian concept of “architettura evanescente” (evanescent architecture). “Blurring Architecture is an architecture with soft and diffused borders as a consequence of the overlapping and blending of the built space with the natural environment” (Longobardi, 2003).

In one of his written works in 1999 (ibidem) Toyo Ito defined blurring architecture as a continuation of the modernist experience, yet characterised by the creation of an artificial environment through the use of technology. He believes that we can no longer rely only on the natural environment or pursuit a self-enclosed architecture completely detached from nature. The main aim of “blurring” architecture is to increase the homogeneity and transparency of the framework in which the project is developed by creating spaces unique from an architectural point of view through the use of light and climate control of a group of people, or the special concentration of information content.

6. HYPERSURFACES AND TRANSARCHITECTURE The concept of hypersurface comes from the mathematical-scientific field through the generalisation of the hyperplane concept. It is considered as a surface in a hyperspace. Stephen Perrella believes that the prefix “Hyper” involves a change. From a material point of view, this concept identifies the new contemporary architecture status in which the shape is detached from its function, the project is released from the surrounding environment and the structure is separated from the significance.

Perrella maintains that a hypersurface in architecture is the result of endless relations between shape and image. For example, when an advertising image is attached to the side of a bus, its graphics both accepts and rejects the bus shape. The bus surface is therefore hidden and at the same it can be seen by the several willy-nilly readers. The bus keeps its main function while being perfectly suitable for these types of advertising.

The term transarchitecture (liquid architecture) describes “a transformation or transmutation of architecture that is intended to break down the polar opposition of physical to virtual and propose in its stead a continuum ranging from physical architecture to architecture energized by technological augmentation to the architecture of cyberspace” (Novak, 2000). Since then the rise towards the experimentation of new virtual architectural spaces encountered no limits. The first two transarchitecture projects were designed by two transarchitects, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture of the Asymptote group.

7. INTERACTIVE ARCHITECTURE Interactive architecture signifies a field of contemporary architecture in which objects and space have the ability to meet changing needs with respect to evolving individual, social, and environmental demands. This relationship is created through the application of embedded and kinetic systems on the architectural surface in order for it to interact with users and the environment. The project aims at creating an architecture that might be defined as interactive or responsive or even cybernetic.

In the project “Emotional Cities” made in Stockholm, the five tallest buildings in the city reflect the mood of the citizens (Penelope, 2011). The architectural surfaces become sensitive and responsive skins, based upon the study and visualisation of the emotions of individuals and groups. The five skyscrapers constantly change colour according to the prevailing emotion.

8. RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURE Responsive architecture is an evolving field of architectural practice and the research field that has preceded that of interactive architecture for a few years now.

Responsive architectures measure actual environmental conditions (via sensors) to enable buildings to adapt their shape, colour or purpose responsively (via actuators).

One of the aims of responsive architecture is to refine and extend the architectural scope by improving building energy efficiency through the application of sensor technologies, such as sensors, control systems and actuators, and the realisation of buildings mirroring contemporary cultural and technological innovations.

These architectures are different from other types of interactive projects since they feature smart and responsive technologies integrated into the building envelope and structure, thus directly connecting the building shape with environment inputs.

The term “responsive architecture” was coined by Nicholas Negroponte, the first to understand its existence in the late 1960s when spatial planning problems were investigated by applying cybernetics to architecture.

On this issue, I recommend consulting also: T. Sterk, Thoughts for Gen X— Speculating about the Rise of Continuous Measurement in Architecture, in T. Sterk, R. Loveridge, D. Pancoast, Building A Better Tomorrow, Proceedings of the 29th annual conference of the Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture, The Art Institute of Chicago, 2009; P. Beesley, S. Hirosue, J. Ruxton, M. Trankle, C. Turner, Responsive Architectures: Subtle Technologies, Riverside Architectural Press, 2006; L. Bullivant, Responsive Environments: architecture, art and design, London, V&A Contemporary, 2006; N. Negroponte, Soft Architecture Machines, Cambridge (MA), The MIT Press, 1975.

9. KINETIC ARCHITECTURE Kinetic architecture, considered in the broader framework of media architecture and façades, may be generally defined as “transformable kinetic objects occupy predefined physical space as well as moving physical objects can share a common physical space to create adaptable spatial configurations” (Fox-Miles, 2009).

Kinetic architecture embodies a concept according which buildings are designed in order for significant parts or systems of them, such as the façade envelope components, to be able to move while maintaining the building overall entirety.

The fact that the entire building or parts of it can move may have a pure aesthetic and formal purpose (e.g. a communication purpose for the building façade) or it may allow the building to react to specific environmental conditions and to perform functions (e.g. dynamic solar shading systems), otherwise impossible for a static structure.

The increase in the kinetic architecture applications starting from the 19th century, as a consequence of the development of mechanical, electronic and robotic technologies, led to new possibilities in the architectural field.

REFERENCES

1. Arcagni S., “Post Cinema. Architettura e media”, in K. Gasparini, Schermi Urbani, Wolters Kluwer, Milano, 2012 2. Barthes R., Elementi di semiologia, Torino, Einaudi, 2002, pp. 116-118 (Original title Eléments de sémiologie, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1964) 3. Cargioli R. S., Sensi che vedono. Introduzione all’arte della videoinstallazione, Pisa, Nitri-Lischi, 2002, pp. 7-14 4. Fox M., Miles K., Interactive Architecture, Princeton Architectural, 2009, p.27 5. Gasparini K., Schermi urbani. Tecnologia e innovazione. Nuovi sistemi per le facciate mediatiche, Wolters Kluwer, Torino, 2012 6. Longobardi G., Toyo Ito. Antologia di testi su l’architettura evanescente, Roma, Kappa, 2003, pp.5-7 7. Novak M., Babele 2000, http://www.trax.it/marcos_novak.htm 8. Penelope, Progetto Emotional Cities: i cinque grattacieli più alti di Stoccolma riflettono il mood dei cittadini, http://www.artsblog.it/tag/architettura+interattiva, 2011 9. Ranaulo G., Light Architecture, Testo & Immagine, Torino, 2001, p. 22 10. Tirelli D., Digital Signage. L’immagine onnipresente, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2009